Cost of dying
CONSUMING INTEREST LESLIE ADRIAN
It is not just the cost of living that has risen. Five years ago when Which? discussed the price of funerals the minimum for a simple 'disposal' (to use the genteel, undertakers' term) fixed by the National Association of Funeral Directors was £29 5s. This year it is £45. For this the package deal usually consists of one elm coffin (possibly with loan of violet- coloured cloth), use of a hearse, one following car for mourners, four pall-bearers, collec- tion of 'remains,' delivery to the cemetery and what the National Association discreetly calls 'the basic arrangements.' The price of this simple funeral may also include a one-night stay in the funeral director's Chapel of Rest. Additional nights are likely to bring addi- tional charges. And if the cemetery happens to be more than five miles from the funeral parlour, there is a supplementary mileage fee.
In fact, the typical funeral is likely to cost over £80 because of such charges as the grave fee (which can be anything from £4 for a com- munal site to £20 or over £100 according to its position, the character of the soil—clay adds to the cost—and the work involved); hygienic treatment or embalming; church fees; music; flowers; extra cars and various gratuities. Overtime payments to the under- taker's men mean that Sunday 'collections' add to the overall cost.
Even if cremation is chosen (and 47 per cent of Britons who died last year opted for the fiery furnace), the final bill will still be in the neighbourhood of £70. It also necessitates a second certificate of death from another doctor not related to and not in partnership with the signatory of the first. Although this is legally enforceable, it is not taken into account by the National Health Service and a fee ranging from two to six guineas has to be paid.
Which? complained of this anomaly back in 1961, but it remains—and in spite of Pro- fessor F. E. Camps's plea for the raising of the standard of death certification for burials to cremation level when he spoke at the Cremation Society's annual conference two years ago. (Which?, I need hardly say, wants one free certificate for both.) The idea behind the double certification is to ensure that the death was from natural causes, because once the body has been con- signed to the flames it is too late to wonder whether what appeared at the time to be a good honest heart attack was in fact a nefarious poisoning. (Most GPs are a bit short on medico- legal training and anyhow, if they have seen the patient within fourteen days of death, the certificate can be signed without inspecting the body.) On the other hand, according to Pro- fessor Camps, when a body has been in the ground for some weeks there is sufficient deterioration to mask much of the evidence of death, so it does seem odd that this con- sideration is given less weight when the body is not to be cremated.
The cost of dying depends to some extent on where you live (or die). The latest survey of costs, done in 1965 by the Cremation Society (47 Nottingham Place, London W1— 'life' membership, seven guineas), shows that the cheapest cremation in the UK can be had in Guernsey (£6 Os 6d) and the most expensive at Golders Green, where the ceremony, includ- ing such 'extras' as music and a two-line entry in the Book of Remembrance, costs sixteen guineas. However, the best buy in cremations is in the north, where in Middleton, Nuneaton and Rochdale the complete Golders Green treatment is provided for only £7 Is. In the north, incidentally, the funeral tea is still an institution which comes within the competence of the undertaker—a custom unknown in the south, I'm told.
One factor that makes the total cost of cremation cheaper than burial is that two lines in the Book of Remembrance (when it is not included in the package deal) costs between two and four guineas, whereas the very cheapest headstone (Portland stone without any ornament) is likely to cost about £40—lettering extra. Strangely, none of the commentators on the LSD of death gives a price range for head- stones—perhaps because there are so many variations on the theme, starting with a choice of four types of stone and six grave sizes. However, Elizabeth Gundry in A Foot in the Door warns families who publish a bereave. ment notice in the newspapers against the door-to-door salesmen. These pedlars try to cash in on the vulnerability that so often accompanies grief by watching the death column for the names of prospects to whom to sell monumental masonry at monumental prices.
The death grant of £25 being inadequate (and some people being ineligible for lack of sufficient National Insurance contributions) there re- mains the cheap and socially useful alternative pointed out by Which? and by Miss Gundrey in At Your Service—leave your body for medi- cal research via the Inspector of Anatomy at the Ministry of Health. However, this could cause great distress to the bereaved, for whom the framework of a ceremony, however sad, can bring comfort. Anyhow, they and the executor have the right to veto this arrangement.
It might be more dignified if the Ministry of Social Security considered making the death grant approximate more nearly to the current cost of dying.
Few people make wills; those who don't should live to regret it, for intestacy can give their sur- vivors undue trouble and embarrassment, even if the sums of money and pieces of property left are trivial. As the Consumers' Association publication Wills and Probate (8s) comments in its introduction, 'A man might have only £100 but his circumstances could make it essen- tial that he should leave a will to prevent his property going to the Crown. His neighbour might have £100,000 and yet not have to make a will at all in order to fulfil his wishes.' The little book sorts all this out for the layman sceptic, although it could be mistaken for a well camouflaged Law Society tract entitled 'Use a Solicitor before you Die.'
Seriously (and it is a serious subject—the book calls death 'the new taboo') the chances of causing distress to surviving relatives, or of making a disastrous mistake with a 'do-it- yourself will, are too great to be worth incur- ring. The CA text puts it all in the simplest pos- sible light.
One shortcoming is the scanty treatment of the guardianship of young children. The main reason a father should make a will is to setde the guardianship of his infant children (in the legal meaning of the term) in the event of both parents being killed in an accident, an even- tuality that is all too likely nowadays. The cs booklet dismisses this vital matter in two trite lines.
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