Funeral expense

“ If such a person cannot be had, the arrangements may be placed in the hands of the sexton of the church the deceased attended in life, or of some responsible undertaker.
The expenses of the funeral should be in accordance with the means of the family. No false pride should permit the relatives to incur undue expense in order to make a showy funeral. At the same time, affection will dictate that all the marks of respect which you can provide should be paid to the memory of your beloved dead. ”

“ The baby may have been insured for $30 and the undertaker’s bill is likely to be $40 or $50. One wife received $141 at her husband’s death, and the funeral expenses were $155, leaving a debt of $14, the cost of an illness, and a family of children to support. Such a funeral, of course, indicates lack of judgment on the part of the family, but it must be remembered that from time out of mind and in all ranks of society, a fine funeral has meant respect for the dead; and burial in the Potter’s Field is still a sign of the lowest economic stage to which a man can fall. ”

“ Even in Scotland the expense of the decent burial of a labouring man is not less than 5l., exclusive of the expense of mourning. I have been shown the payments on account of burials of an affiliated association of a convivial and benevolent character called the “Odd Fellows,” which has upwards of 150,000 affiliated members, chiefly of the better class of artisans, in different parts of the country. With them, the payments usually amount to 10l. per funeral. ”

“ The money that might, after the funeral was over, have paid the rent of a small house, and secured the widow and her young family from actual want, until she could look around and obtain some situation in which she could earn a living for herself and them, must all be sunk in conforming to a useless custom, upheld by pride and vanity in the name of grief.
"How will the funeral expenses ever be paid?" exclaims the anxious, weeping mother. "When it is all over, and the mourning bought, there will not remain a single copper to find us in bread." ”

“ The bodies of adults who are taken direct from the house of mourning to the grave, must be borne in the funeral carriage to the gate of the cemetery, where the bearers will convey the coffin to the grave.
The dead who have been placed in the house of reception must be borne in the same manner to the grave.
In exceptional cases, the dead may be borne to the grave by other persons; but this is only allowed when there is any particular cause of sympathy with the dead, or with the surviving family, and it must be free of all expense. ”

“ This does not imply that a family that prefers a very elaborate funeral should not be allowed to have one; but the great majority of people have moderate, rather than unlimited means, and it is not unheard of that a small estate is seriously depleted by vulgarly lavish and entirely inappropriate funeral expenses. ”

“ Shall they run the risk of burial by the parish, or shall they take Time by the forelock and insure each child as it is born, at the rate of a penny a week? If they decide not to insure, and they lose a child, the question resolves itself into one of borrowing the sum necessary to pay the funeral expenses, or of undergoing the disgrace of a pauper funeral. ”

“ One wonders, in looking at their blackened, smouldering grates, in a freezing day, what the fire is there at all for,—it certainly warms nobody. The only thing they seem likely to be lavish in is funeral expenses, which come in the wake of leaky shoes and imperfect clothing. These funeral expenses at last swallow all, since nobody can dispute an undertaker's bill. One pities these joyless beings. Economy, instead of a rational act of the judgment, is a morbid monomania, eating the pleasure out of life, and haunting them to the grave. ”

“ The people then generally apply to the nearest person?—Yes, they do. Everybody calls himself an undertaker. The numerous men employed as bearers become undertakers, although they have never done anything until they have got the job. I have known one of these men get a new suit of clothes out of the funeral of one decent mechanic.
§ 47. The conclusions in respect to the unnecessary expense of funerals appear to be applicable, with little variation, to the most populous provincial towns. In the rural districts the expense of funerals of the class of gentry appears to be even more expensive. ”

“ In the case of paupers dying in a parish house, or shipwrecked persons whose bodies are cast ashore, the overseers or guardians are responsible for their burial; and in the case of suicides the coroner has a similar duty. The expenses of burial are payable out of the deceased’s estate in priority to all other debts. A husband liable for the maintenance of his wife is liable for her funeral expenses ”

“ There are sound and strong reasons why a man, or a widowed mother, should insure his or her life. It may be a question whether a burial-club is the best place to put such savings in; but it is indisputably wise for those who have relatives dependent on them to secure the payment of a good sum of money on their removal by death. The only reason for such an insurance in the case of a child is, that the mere funeral expenses and family mourning may be paid; and every inducement to parents to make a profit of the loss of a child is a shocking and dangerous abuse. ”

“ When the murderer is insane, or a minor, aged less than eight years, the relatives or friends are only required to pay the funeral expenses of the victim; the same rule applies if any one is killed by a horse, yak, or other animal, the owner paying the funeral expenses of the person killed.
When a husband kills his wife, or a master his servant, he is required to pay the usual fine to the State and the funeral expenses. ”

“ No matter how great the squalor, there must be many children in the family,” etc. “Funeral expenses for parents are the most sacred of all obligations, and it is not uncommon for the living to sell their estates to the very last foot and often their houses to be able to render proper homage to the deceased.” Presents of coffins, elaborate ones, are often very common. ”

“ We are all liable to sudden death, and she ought to have been saving up, in case of such an event. She left nothing to provide for the child at all. Nothing at all. The furniture will barely bring enough to pay for her funeral expenses. ”

“ Funeral Expenses.—Witnesses' opinions as to the reasonable amount for burial or as to the cost of a funeral being reasonable, are not binding on a court or jury. The station of a man, the property that he leaves, the life that he has followed, all should be considered by the court. The whims and notions of societies and others are of minor consideration. ”

“ The authority may, if they think fit, pay out of the said sum the funeral expenses of the officer or so much thereof as they consider reasonable having regard to any death grant which has been or is to be paid under section 39 of the National Insurance Act 1965 . ”

“ For a long time they knocked against the massive gates decorated with black flatheaded nails, then they rang the sonorous doorbell, and its reverberating echoes resounded sharply and loudly somewhere around the corner, but though the court dogs yelled themselves hoarse, for a long time no one came. Finally an old scullery woman came out and announced that her master ordered the body to be taken to the dead man’s home, and promised to donate the sum of ten roubles towards funeral expenses, without deducting the gift from the earnings of the deceased. ”

“ but there, everything has its drawbacks, as the man said when his mother-in-law died, and they came down upon him for the funeral expenses. ”

“ Clark no doubt assured her that he had not yet made the discovery; and she went on eagerly: ‘You must not think I kept it for myself; for I have directed in my will that I should be buried without a coffin, and that my funeral expenses must not exceed five rupees.’
The latter injunction was with a view to lessening funeral expenses among Indian Christians generally, [376] many of them being apt to spend heavily at such times. But the whole story is eminently characteristic. Many people shrink from the very mention of a coffin, because of its associations. Not so Charlotte Tucker! ”

“ The funeral expenses were £6 13s. 4d.; and the Legacies comprised £31 13s. 4d. to Wife; ;£20 each to Sons, Edward and William, and £20 6s. 8d. to his daughter Anne in money, and in plate £31 6s. 8d.; to his Curate, 3s. 4d.; To five men servants, ten shillings each; to two maids, ten shillings; to the poor, twenty shillings: to the overseers of his Will, twenty shillings; for the mortuary, ten shillings. The expenses of Probate were 33s. 4d.; the keep of four children of testator and two maids to attend them for sixteen weeks was £10 13s. ”

“ Another danger of the irregular condition of these funds lies in the fact that outsiders may take out policies on the lives of certain families. A few years ago the country was shocked by the alarming story of a woman who had poisoned a series of persons merely to be able to get the funeral expenses paid to herself, while many a wretched little baby has in this manner been the horrible investment of heartless neighbours, who, knowing the poor thing was dying, took out policies for its funeral. ”

“ Taking next, the mourning fees, coffins, and other incidental expenses connected with a funeral, which could not amount to less than £5 each, they would have a loss by funerals of £4,115. Every adult lost eight years and eight months of his life, and every individual twenty-four years and four months. ”

“ The widow is frequently compelled to beg pecuniary assistance for the education of her children, which the superfluous expenses of the funerals of the adult members of the family would have supplied; and these expenses are incurred often in utter disregard of express requests of the dying, that the funerals should be plain, and divested of unnecessary expense. The expenses are often incurred equally against the wishes of the survivors. ”

“ When the working-man, in whose family a death has occurred, does not happen to be a member of a burial club, he is still governed by their example, and has to tax himself seriously to comply with the usages of society, and give to his wife or child a respectable funeral. Where it is the father of the family himself who has died, the case is still harder. Perhaps all the savings of his life are spent in providing mourning for his wife and children at his death. ”

“ The adoption of cremation would relieve us of a muck of threadbare burial-witticisms; but, on the other hand, it would resurrect a lot of mildewed old cremation-jokes that have had a rest for two thousand years.
I have a colored acquaintance who earns his living by odd jobs and heavy manual labor. He never earns above four hundred dollars in a year, and as he has a wife and several young children, the closest scrimping is necessary to get him through to the end of the twelve months debtless. To such a man a funeral is a colossal financial disaster. ”

“ To give one specific instance, there is the widow who spends every dollar left her by a departed husband to pay for an elaborate funeral for him. In the eyes of the world, he must be buried "right"; and though it leave her in debt, she makes an impressive funeral service. Would it not have been more sensible to bury him simply and unostentatiously, preserving a little of the money left her for the necessities of life? It is one of the ironies of life that often more attention and honor are paid to the dead than they ever receive in life. ”

“ I direct my executrix hereinafter named to pay all my just debts, including my funeral expenses, inheritance, transfer and other taxes, and the expenses of the administration of my estate as soon as may be after my decease. ”

“ But death, besides differing in the period to different individuals, differs widely in the numbers of burials, and in the consequent expenses to different families, classes, and districts. It is the number as well as the separate expense of each of the funerals which occur during the year to each class of persons, or to different districts, which determines the total expense of burial to the class or district. ”

“ There is now most happily an end of the vulgar prejudice that there is something indecorous and unseemly in the system of entrusting the arrangement of funeral rites to public companies. Why should not an enormous saving be effected in the sum of 5,000,000l., which represents the annual expenditure of the population of England and Wales alone, upon funerals and graves, by entrusting the commercial management of the matter to public companies? The money wasted upon the very mockery and beadledom of grief, might, with far greater propriety, be devoted to the comfort of the living. ”

“ As each child must be insured separately, the money paid for the child who does not die is no relief when a death occurs. Insurance, whether State or other insurance, is [70] always a gamble, and people on £1 a week cannot afford a gamble. A peculiar hardship attaches to burial insurance. A man may have paid regularly for years, may fall out of work through illness or other misfortune, and may lose all benefit. When out of work his children are more likely to die, and he may have to suffer the disgrace of a pauper funeral after five years or more of regular payment for burial insurance. ”

“ To bury a corpse is costly; but of a hundred children only a few, in the ordinary course of mortality, will die within a given time. Five shillings a-piece will produce 25L annually, and that will bury a considerable number. On this principle arose Infant Burial Societies. For a few shillings annually, a parent could secure a funeral for every child. If the child died, a few guineas fell due to the parent, and the funeral was accomplished without cost of his. But on this arose the suggestion—Why not execute an insurance of this nature twenty times over? ”