The American Way of Death Revisited

Notes

1

See chapter 20, “New Hope for the Dead,” and this page for a list of nonprofit societies that will provide advice and information to nonmembers as well as to members.

2

While most of the sales techniques described in this chapter have not changed, the prices quoted should be increased tenfold to reflect current costs. The average mortuary bill in 1961, $400 to $750, is now, according to the National Funeral Directors Association’s latest survey, $4,700 ($7,800 with cemetery charges included).

3

Current crematory charges run from $200 to $350. In the Santa Rosa area today, Mr. Rhoades would have to pay $1,000 or more to move his friend’s body from the rest home to the crematory.

4

The funeral people, ever alert to fill a need, have come up with a casket that can be written on. The York “Expressions” casket, introduced at the 1996 convention of the National Funeral Directors Association, features “a smooth surface with a special coating on which those who gather may write one last farewell to the departed.” The caskets come with a set of permanent markers and a Memorial Guide that rashly invites “those who gather” to “make known their hidden thoughts.” As happens when chums are invited to autograph a schoolmate’s surgical cast, there will predictably be the occasional nonconformist who is unable to resist the temptation to use the permanent marker to express his hidden thoughts, however derogatory.

5

Elgin is no more, nor is Merit; they along with many other manufacturers, have been swallowed up by the industry’s Big Three: Batesville, Aurora, and York. The number of casket manufacturers has plummeted from 520 in 1976 to fewer than 100 primary producers today.

6

A sealer is a casket with a gasket.

7

Mortuary Management stated editorially that it is the funeral director’s traditional prerogative to “get first whack at the family.” Concept: The Journal of Creative Ideas for Cemeteries was quick to take issue with this statement, calling it a “shocking blunder” and adding, “Regardless of the truth in the statement, isn’t it improper to talk that way?”

8

See end-of-chapter note.

9

Rose Hills (Los Angeles) Memorial Park boasts “the world’s largest lawn mower.”

10

Not true. In many states, home burial is still permissible in rural areas; and in all states, cremated remains may be buried on private property. In every state except California, cremated remains may be scattered at will or with the landowner’s permission.

11

This article first appeared in the Funeral Monitor, March 25, 1996. Reprinted with permission.

12

In a remarkable coup for the funeral industry, their lobbyists in California won legislation that prohibits survivors from scattering cremated remains on private or public property—forcing them to go through the cemetery or the funeral director to arrange for the disposition of cremated remains. What few undertakers are likely to acknowledge, however, is that it is perfectly legal for a family to simply take the cremains home with them. After speaking with every law enforcement agency in the state from the FBI to county sheriffs, I learned that no officer is vested with the authority to check up on what happens to Aunt Martha’s ashes, nor are they willing to collar culprits caught in the act of “illegal” scattering. Although this law is totally unenforceable, the industry uses it to pressure the family to hand over the cremated remains for more profitable commercial disposition.

13

And more recently still, an executive officer of Service Corporation International (see chapter 16).

14

See footnote, this page.

15

Today such a funeral would cost $8,000 or more. Bronze sealers begin at $4,000 and run up to $25,000 for the heavier gauges.

16

While on a visit to London, I applied to the Royal College of Surgeons of England for permission to see Mrs. Van Butchell. I received this reply from the office of the curator: “While it is true that the late Mrs. Martin Van Butchell once occupied a place of honour in the historical collection of this College, it is regretted that she was finally cremated with so much valuable material in the destruction of the College in May, 1941, at the height of the London blitz.”

17

This journal later merged with The Casket. The result: Casket & Sunnyside.

18

Sometime after publication, I met Francis Gladstone, a direct descendant of the erstwhile Prime Minister. When I asked him about his illustrious forebear’s comment, he became interested and wrote to scholars of his acquaintance at Oxford. Lengthy correspondence ensued, but no one was able to identify William Gladstone’s alleged statement. In the course of their research, one of their number did come up with the dying words of another Gladstone, Sir Joseph, the father of the Prime Minister, who died in Liverpool, aged eighty-seven. His last words—“Bring me my porridge”—while not earth-shattering, have at least the merit of being historically accurate.

19

Italics in the original.

20

The FAMSA Web site, www.funerals.org/famsa/chains.htm, posts a listing of chain-owned mortuaries, although the rapid rate of acquisitions makes it hard to keep up with the latest on who owns what.

21

Semantics Note: In England, “rest room” means a room in which to rest.

22

When the above was written some thirty years ago, it seems likely that the writer was more than slightly enamored of “Mr. Ashton,” who is treated with such respect that his first name is never revealed. But as the calendar leaves float by, and with them the members of the Ashton family as they depart, their nine mortuaries are, in the mid-1980s, scooped up by none other than Howard Hodgson, the “yuppie undertaker,” and in turn by Plantsbrook, and then in 1994 by SCI. Ashton prices are now the highest in the relatively downscale areas in which they do business; they have run afoul of the Monopolies and Mergers Commission, which has ordered them to divest two of their eight mortuaries. O tempora! O mores! Which translates roughly to “What a falling off was there!”

23

“Memorial,” in the trade, means merchandise for sale—for instance, a headstone or plaque, a rose tree ($450), or other remembrance.

24

635 pounds at the exchange rate of $1.60.

25

Action by the government to implement the recommendations of the Monopolies and Mergers Commission (MMC) was delayed for some months by SCI’s application for judicial review. When the application was rejected by the High Court, the minister for corporate and consumer affairs was able to announce, on December 18, 1996, that he had accepted “undertakings from SCI which follow closely the MMC’s original recommendation,” and that they would instruct all its branches throughout the U.K. to disclose SCI’s ownership of their premises.

26

So-called protective caskets, having been heavily merchandised over the years, now outsell all other burial receptacles combined. Ask a funeral director why someone already dead will need protection, and he will, if he follows the manufacturer’s script, reply with severity, “To prevent alien and foreign objects from reaching your loved one.” There is one Southern mortician who, following his own drummer, has reduced the explanation to: “To keep bugs and critters out.” But as with any lucrative idea that has not been thought through, the casket manufacturers and the undertakers who serve as their exclusive distributors soon had to face up to the consequences. Protective caskets, which command substantially higher prices than those that are “unprotected,” achieve protection by using an impermeable, inexpensive rubber gasket as a sealing device. This causes a buildup of methane gas, a byproduct of the metabolism of anaerobic bacteria, which, thriving in an airless environment, have a high old time with the contents of the sealed casket. Exploding-casket episodes occurred with sufficient frequency to induce Batesville, the acknowledged leader in the field, to design a new line of protective caskets to deal with the crisis. A “permeable” seal is used, which lets the accumulated gases leak—or “burp”—out, to prevent the buildup of gas that causes the lids to blow off (and the appalled relatives to go to court).