Great Regulars: Even at the turn of the century

"the death of a man still solemnly altered the space and time of a social group that could be extended to include the entire community," noted the historian Philippe Ariès.

Then mourning rituals in the west began to disappear, for reasons that are not entirely evident. The anthropologist Geoffrey Gorer, author of Death, Grief, and Mourning, conjectures that the first world war was one cause: communities were so overwhelmed by the numbers of dead that they dropped the practice of mourning the individual.

from Meghan O'Rourke: The Guardian: Grief--the great universal

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