Sin-eating reminds us that, more than anything else, even the most staid of religions – in this case, Anglicanism – can be associated with surprisingly curious beliefs and rituals. The last known sin-eater was Richard Munslow, who died aged 73 in 1906. The price they paid was to be shunned by their community because of their macabre associations. Sin-eaters were usually elderly and destitute, and glad to have the money – not to mention the free food and drink. The belief was that the deceased’s sins were absorbed by the salt and transferred into the bread, and then into the sin-eater. Just before the coffin was closed and the funeral cortege set off for the church, the village sin-eater arrived, ate the bread and was given some coins and a glass of ale for their trouble. A plate of bread and salt would be placed on the deceased’s lap while they were lying in repose. Then someone remembered a curious custom from the nearby Welsh Marches – that of the village “sin-eater”. In 2018, archaeologists moving bodies for reburial from a 19th-century cemetery in Birmingham to make way for the new HS2 station were puzzled to find several that had plates on their laps.
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