An Edinburgh funeral director has appealed to the public to show a certain mark of respect for any passing hearses or funeral processions whilst lockdown measures are still in place.
William Purves, a local funeral director with multiple branches in the city, took to social media to ask the public to resurrect the tradition of paying respect to a passing hearse, whether it be through bowing your head, stopping for a moment or removing your hat.
The request comes as funeral numbers are extremely limited to allow for social distancing measures, as the country continues to fight the spread of coronavirus.
The post on Facebook was widely supported by the public and had over 1900 shares.
The current Scottish rules surrounding funerals state that you can only attend if you are a member of the deceased's household or close family member. You can also attend if you are a close friend if the person who has died will not have any family at the service.
You cannot attend if you are self-isolating or if you are in one of the 'high risk' categories.
Social distancing is also being applied at services, with those attending restricted from standing close to each other, as well as hugging or hand shakes.
The gesture requested by William Purves aims to make a difference while the chance to support people during bereavement is limited.
Andrew Purves, Director at William Purves, told Edinburgh Live:
"The role of a Funeral Director is to look after the person that has died, and look after those that have been bereaved. Over the last few weeks as things in the world have changed, this has become more of a challenge.
"We are no longer able to meet with families face to face as we would wish to do and much of our communication has been by video call or phone call and we are emailing paperwork to be signed. However, the biggest difference has been in the number of people allowed to attend funerals.
"Following Government guidelines, only close family are allowed to attend funerals, and the number of people should be kept to a minimum - this means that the funerals that we are carrying out have only a small number in attendance when for some, there would have been a large gathering.
"In order to protect our staff and our clients, we are not able to provide limousines for families to travel to the funeral, so often there is a lone hearse travelling through the streets of our city to the crematorium or cemetery, sometimes the family may be following behind in their own cars, but this may not always be possible.
"Over the years, particularly in the city, the old tradition of stopping as a mark of respect while a hearse travels by has mostly been lost. Some people still stop to pay their respects, but people often don’t notice or are too busy to stop. With so few people being able to attend funeral services, it is lovely to think of people paying their respects in a different way, as a hearse passes by."
