Ditch Digger
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Le Fossier / Fossoyeur | The Ditch Digger /Gravedigger
"Grave-Digger", 1871 lead pencil drawing by Viktor Mikhailovich Vasnetsov, Wikimedia Commons.
Originally, a fossier was a person who dug ditches, generally with the help of an iron staff called a “loucet”. In French, he could also be called a fossoyeur, fossaire, fossilier or sépulturier.
Eventually, the term was given to the man who dug pits for the burial of the dead (a grave digger), and who saw to their maintenance. Often, gravediggers had several occupations in order to earn a living. For example, the beadle could also exercise the functions of a gravedigger.
The gravedigger could not work in winter, the ground being frozen. Those who died during the cold season were generally placed in a charnier, also called a "chapel of the dead" or "winter vault", a small building where bodies were kept during the winter. In the spring, the gravedigger could proceed with the burials.
Known persons who had this occupation: Mathias Bolduc, Henri Bourque, Jean Baptiste Brassard, Charles Chartrand, Wilfrid Corbeil, Arthur Dion, Toussaint Dubeau, Nicolas Huet, Michel Lecour dit Barras, Maxime Metivier, Pierre Sauvage, Guillaume Taphorin
Hear why Britain’s 2016 Gravedigger of the Year, David Homer, enjoys his “peaceful and comforting” job
Sources:
Alfred Franklin, Dictionnaire historique des arts, métiers et professions exercés dans Paris depuis le treizième siècle (Paris, H. Welter, 1906), 336.
Claude Lemay, "Fonctions et métiers délaissés", l'Ancêtre, number 281, volume 34, winter 2008, and number 280, volume 34, winter 2007; electronic edition, Société généalogique de Québec (www.sgq.qc.ca/images/_SGQ/R_LAncetre_plus_libre/ENT-FONCTIONS-METIERS-DELAISSES.pdf).
M. de La Curne de Sainte-Palaye, Dictionnaire historique de l'ancien langage françois, 1875. Originally at the Lyon Public Library, digitized in 2017, https://books.google.ca/.
Vanessa Oliver-Lloyd, “Le patrimoine archéologique des cimetières euroquébécois”, March 2008, digitized by the Ministère de Culture et Communications, Gouvernement du Québec (https://www.mcc.gouv.qc.ca/fileadmin/documents/publications/patrimoine/archeologie/cimetieres-euroquebecois.pdf).