§ 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 most of the provincial towns the expense of the funerals of the more respectable class of tradesmen does not appear to be much less than in London. In Scotland, the expenses of the funerals of persons of the middle classes appear, from a communication from Mr. Chambers, to vary from 12l. to 25l. In Glasgow the expenses of funerals of persons of the middle class appear to vary from 12l. to 50l.
§ 48. To persons of the condition of the widows of officers in the army or navy, or of the legal profession, or of persons of the rank of gentry who have but limited incomes, the expenses of the funerals often subject them to severe privations during the remainder of their lives. 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. The cause of this appears to be that the funeral arrangements, and the determination of what is proper, and what customs shall be maintained, fall, as shown by the evidence, to those who have a direct interest,—and when the nature of their separate establishments are considered, are commonly acting under a strong necessity,—in maintaining a system of profuse expenditure. The circumstances of the death do not admit of any effective competition or any precedent examination of the charges of different undertakers, or any comparison and consideration of their supplies; there is no time to change them for others that are less expensive, and more in conformity to the taste and circumstances of the parties. An executor who had ordered a coffin and service of the “most simple description,” conformably to the intentions of the deceased, expecting the coffin to cost not more than five pounds, having, under peculiar circumstances, occasion to call for the bill previously to the interment, found, to his surprise, that instead of five the charge for the coffin amounted to nearly twenty pounds. “What,” he says, “could be done? we could not turn the body out of the coffin: I would have paid double rather than have disturbed the peace of the house on that solemn occasion, by a dispute, or by an objection either to that charge, or to the disgusting frippery with which those who attended the dead were covered against their tastes.” The survivors, however, are seldom in a state to perform any office of every-day life; and they are at the mercy of the first comer. The supplies of the funeral goods and services, are, therefore, a multiform monopoly, not apparently on the parts of the chief undertakers, or original and real preparers of the funeral materials and services, but of second or third parties living in the immediate neighbourhood,—persons who assume the business of an undertaker, and who obtain the first orders. The reason why the charges are seldom or ever disputed after interment is that, however severe or extortionate they may be, it would be more severe for the widow, or survivor, or friends, to scrutinise the items, or resist the payment of the total amount. Nor can it be expected of any individual to break through such customs, however generally they may be disliked. All isolated efforts to simplify the supplies and use of the goods and materiel,—all objections to the demands for them are exposed to the calumny that proper respect to the deceased is begrudged. A late right reverend bishop, who thought it a moral duty to resist an extortionate charge for such service, and he did so even in a court of law,—the well-intended, but isolated effort, was fruitless. Another reason for the impunity of the extortion is, that much of the funeral expenses are from trust-funds of the higher and middle classes, who influence the practice of the lower classes; and the trustees have but weak motives and means to defend them. In so far as the funeral expenses are concerned, such funds, as will appear in respect to the funds raised for burial amongst the labouring classes, are an exposed prey.
§ 49. If there be any sort of service, which principles of civic polity, and motives of ordinary benevolence and charity, require to be placed under public regulation, for the protection of the private individual who is helpless, it is surely this, at the time of extreme misery and helplessness of the means of decent interment. On inspecting the condition of the whole class of persons engaged in the performance of the service of undertakers, it may be confidently stated that the class who only act as agents, could not suffer, and must gain morally and socially, and ultimately pecuniarily by a change that would be beneficial to the public. No class can be otherwise than benefited by change, from an occupation in which they are kept waiting and dependent on profits which fall to them at wide and irregular intervals. Notwithstanding the immensely disproportionate profits of these persons in some cases, and the immense aggregate expenditure to the public, there appear to be very few wealthy undertakers. They are described by one of them, “as being some few of them very respectable, but the great majority as men mostly in a small grubbing way of business.” In this trade we have now the means of knowing to an unit, from the mortuary registration, the amount of service required; and we have some means of obtaining a proximate estimate of the number of persons engaged in its performance.
§ 50. The number of deaths per diem in the metropolis (inclusive of the death of those who die in the workhouses, whose interment being provided for by the parish and union officers, are not cases for every-day competition) is on an average of three years 114. The number of persons whose sole business is that of undertakers, whose names are enumerated in the Post-office Directory for the year 1843 for the metropolis is 275. Besides these there are 258 “undertakers and carpenters,” 34 “undertakers and upholsterers,” 56 “undertakers and cabinet-makers,” 51 “undertakers and builders,” 25 “undertakers and appraisers,” 19 “undertakers and auctioneers,” 7 “undertakers and house-agents,” 3 “undertakers and fancy cabinet-makers,” 2 “undertakers and packing-case makers;” making in all no less than 730 persons for the 114 deaths, or between six and seven undertakers waiting for the chance of every private funeral. But these are masters who, whether they act as agents or principals, have shops and establishments, and the list does not include the whole of them, as the Directory is not understood to include all the masters residing in bye-streets and places. Some have two and three funerals per diem, and some eight or ten; and it is apparent, even under the existing imperfect arrangements, the undertaker’s service might be better performed by forty or fifty than by the 275 principals, who have no other occupation, and whose establishments and expenses, as well as the cost of their own maintenance, must, if the business be equally distributed, be charged on little more than two funerals a-week. If the business be not equally distributed, and a minority have (as will have been perceived) a much larger share of the funerals than the rest, the majority will be the more severely driven, as they are in fact, to charge their expenses on a much smaller number of funerals. When the additional number of tradesmen of mixed occupations are brought as waiters for the chances of employment, the number of burials distributed amongst them all is reduced to 10 funerals to every master in 11 weeks, or less than one a-week each. It is stated, that much larger numbers than are named in the Directory retain the insignia of undertakers in their shop-windows, for the sake of the profits of one or two funerals a-year. They merely transmit the orders to the furnishing undertaker, who supplies materials and men at a comparatively low rate; and it is stated that the real service is rendered by about sixty tradesmen of this class, who compete with each other in furnishing the supplies to a multitude of inferior tradesmen, probably exceeding 1000, amongst whom the excessive profits arising from extortionate charges are thus irregularly distributed. The profits of these agents or second parties are often, however, divided with others by the system (which pursues the head of the family to the last) of corrupting servants for their “good word” or influence by bribes or allowances, against which the only effectual defence is care to secure purchases at prices so low as to preclude them. Physicians of great eminence have expressed their horror at the facts of which they have been informed, of large sums of money having been promised and given to head servants to secure to the particular tradesman the performance of the funeral. The undertakers who were questioned on the subject admitted explicitly that such is “an occasional but not an universal practice,” and that such sums as 10l., 20l., and even 50l., have been known to have been given for such orders, according to the scale of expense and profit of the funeral. One undertaker stated that whenever a medical man took the trouble to bring him an order for a funeral, he always, as a matter of course, paid him a fee; and he believed it was a common practice. It was, however, only the inferior practitioners who brought these orders. Physicians usually carefully abstain from giving any recommendations of tradesmen in such cases.
§ 51. Such being the state of the service as respects the multitude of principals; the state of the service as respects the inferior dependents is, that as at present conducted it is, as far as it goes, demoralizing. The journeymen, who form the superfluous retinue of attendants for whom so much expense is incurred, gain very little by their extravagant pay. “They are,” says one master undertaker, “kept long waiting, and are taken away to a distance from their homes, and are put to great expense in drinking at public-houses, and acquiring very bad habits.” The accounts given by undertakers themselves of the conduct of the men composing the hired retinue of funerals, as at present conducted, are corroborative of the following instance given by a gentleman who was a witness of the scene described:—
“If the relatives of one who has been honoured with what is called a respectable funeral could witness the scenes which commonly ensue, even at the very place where the last ceremony has been performed, they would be scandalized at the mockery of solemnity which has preceded the disgusting indecency exhibited at the instant when the mourners are removed. An empty hearse, returning at a quick pace from a funeral, with half a dozen red-faced fellows sitting with their legs across the pegs which held the feathers, is a common exhibition. But let the relatives see what has preceded the ride home of the undertaker’s men. In the spring of 1842, two friends walked into a village inn about twelve miles from London, for the purpose of dining. One had recently sustained a severe domestic calamity. The inn is generally distinguished for its neatness and quiet. All now seemed confusion. The travellers were shown up-stairs to a comfortable room. But the shouts, the laughing, the rapping the tables, the ringing the bells, in an adjoining room were beyond endurance; and when the landlady appeared with her bill of fare, she apologized for what was so different from the ordinary habit of her guests. “Is it a club feast?” “Oh, no, gentlemen; they are the undertaker’s men—blackguards I should say. They have been burying poor Lord——; he was much beloved here. Shame on them. But they will soon go back to town, for they are nearly drunk.” The travellers left the house till it was cleared of these harpies.”
§ 52. Men of the class who are every day to be seen stopping in parties at public houses on their return from the places of burial, are intrusted without care or selection to perform what may be shown to be important sanitary and civil ministrations of enshrouding and preparing the body for burial. The impressions created by the bearing of these coarse, unknown, unrespected, irresponsible hands, add to the revolting popular associations with death.
The extent of the public interests affected by so much of the practice of interment, as the undertaker’s service embraces, will be better appreciated in a subsequent stage of this report, and after the consideration of the facts unfolded in the course of an examination of the influence of the expenses of funerals specifically on the states of mind, social habits and economy of the labouring classes in towns of England.
Specific Effects of the Expenses of Funerals, and Associations to defray them amongst the Labouring Classes.
§ 53. The desire to secure respectful interment of themselves and their relations is, perhaps, the strongest and most widely-diffused feeling amongst the labouring classes of the population. Subscriptions may be obtained from large classes of them for their burial when it can be obtained neither for their own relief in sickness, nor for the education of their children, nor for any other object. The amount of the twenty-four millions of deposits in the savings’ banks of the United Kingdom is 29l. each depositor. Judging from particular investigations, it would appear that upwards of 5l. of each deposit may be considered a sum devoted to defray the expenses of burial, and about as much more to provide mourning and other expenses. From six to eight millions of savings may be considered as devoted to these objects.