BOOKS OF THE DAY

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The Cost of Dying (W, T. Wells) ..

713

The Childhood of Edward Thomas (Henry W. Nevinson)

720

A Dictionary of Slang (Prof. H. C. Wyld)

754

The Obscurest East (Christopher Sykes)

720

The New Patriotism (Evelyn Waugh) ..

714

The Walpole Society (Anthony Blunt) ..

722

The Whispering Gallery of Europe .. .. .. 716 England's Years of Danger (E. L. Noodward)

722

The Growth of Collective Economy (Honor Croome) . 718

Fiction (Kate O'Brien) .. . .

724

THE COST OF DYING

By W. T. WELLS IN a book by Sir Arnold Wilson and Professor Hermann Levy, published last year, the authors made an exhaustive review of the subject of Industrial Assurance. Their investigations revealed the existence in this country of 85,000,000 policies on the lives of 30,000,000 persons ; many of the policies being " gambling " policies taken out on the life of a person whose funeral expenses the proposer fears he may have to pay, unless he is willing to incur the social stigma of having a relative buried as a pauper in a common grave. In the year 1934 the premium income of the business as a whole amounted to £62,00o,000, of which the sum of £20,000,000 was allocated to expenses, agents receiving a total of £52,000,000. In the rather special case of Stockton-on-Tees, with its present impoverishment and its tradition of prosperity, it was found that premiums absorbed as much as 5 per cent. of the average family income. Seventy thousand canvassers are employed, and, analysing the case which the companies set up before the Cohen Committee on Industrial Assurance, the authors said that they " claim that the desire for a decent funeral is deep-rooted and, in the same breath, that nothing short of persistent solicitation and pressure will induce men and women either to take out or maintain policies."

In Industrial Assurance Sir Arnold Wilson and Professor Levy showed that an undue amount of the funds of the working and lower-middle classes was devoted to ensuring a " decent funeral," and recommended that Industrial Assurance, or death benefit, should, in Great Britain, as in certain other countries, be a responsibility of the State. Their new book takes up the argument where the other left off. The desire to give and receive an honourable burial is proper and in- eradicable ; " which. that it be done gravely, decently and charitably," as Jeremy Taylor wrote, " we have the example of all ages to engage us . . . so that it is against common honesty, and public fame and reputation not to do this office." What does the " decent funeral " cost ? How can the burden of funeral expenses be reduced ? The elimination of the present system of Industrial Assurance, with its high ratio of collecting expenses virtually fixed by one company, is the one approach to the problem ; the reduction of the actual expense of the funeral is the other.

The nation's funeral bill, the authors estimate, is about £15,000,000 a year ; of this sum about £7,000,000 is devoted to tombstones, funeral bakemeats and mourning clothes, leaving £8,000,000 to be divided between cemetery fees, charged by the various Burial Authorities, and the undertakers. At least nine-tenths of this bill, we are told, is footed by insured persons. A sinister relationship between the assurance agent and the undertaker is easy to suspect, difficult to prove. " There are certain undesirable people," Mr. Arthur Greenwood stated in a speech last year," who go to the trouble of finding out what an insurance policy is worth before they tell you what the funeral will cost." Leaving aside these cases, it is obvious that the more a funeral costs, the more profit the undertaker will make, and the better case the assurance agent will have for inducing proposers to insure for larger sums at higher premiums. The type of relationship which tends to arise was well illustrated by the dealings of a particular undertaker with that eminently shrewd and successful agent, Frederick Henry Seddon, who obtained, on the interment of Eliza Barrow, what he described to the horrified Court as " a bit of commission, like." There is a vested interest in making death expensive, which gave rise to the grisly comedy of the undertaker allowing the murderer a discount on the burial of his victim.

That ostentatious and expensive funerals are almost invariably

Burial Reform and Funeral Costs. By Sir Arnold Wilson, M.P., and Professor Hermann Levy. (Oxford University Press. 12s. 6d.)

given to those whose survivors can least afford them is notorious. The authors give striking examples of the entire disproportion of the funeral expenses of the poor to their total income. One will suffice : an old-age pensioner living in an almshouse with an income of los. a week, whose undertakers' bill amounted to £15 los. That the undertaking fraternity will unite to resist economies is shown by the boycott of the communal bier which was successfully carried out at Bushey. There is, too, flagrant exploitation of the psychological attitude towards expense induced in most people by the death of a near relative in the failure to render itemised estimates and accounts, the universal practice being to quote an inclusive fee. The average mourner does not know what the funeral will cost the undertaker and is not likely to enquire : he does not like to economise in his last tribute to the dead. As one under- taker pointed out to the "daughter of a suburban household, who had ordered an elm coffin for her father's remains, " You cannot have anything else but polished oak in a road like this."

The authors find little evidence, they say, of profiteering by undertakers. The undertaker does not need to profiteer : he is in the happy position of being able to persuade his customers to buy the most expensive article for which he thinks it possible to recover payment. And, like the vendor of industrial assurance, he can satisfy his conscience by saying that he supplies an economic demand, that the expensive funeral introduces an clement of poetry into the drab and prosaic lives of the .poor, and that economies would offend the sentiment of his customers.

There is some truth in this reply, and it is necessary to examine the foundations of the desire for funeral display. It is not an historic feature of English working-class life ; there seems little doubt but that it is an offshoot of the dislo- cation caused by the Industrial Revolution and that it derives directly from the dread of the shame and ignominy of the pauper funeral and the common grave. " My God I " shrieks a young widow, peering into the depth of 28 feet at the bottom of which her husband is to lie, " My Bill never did anything to go down that way. . . ." And one Londoner out of eleven is laid in such a grave.

The authors make certain specific recommendations, and discuss other remedies as fit subjects for inquiry by a Com- mission to investigate the whole question of the disposal of the dead. An additional contribution of 2d. a week to National Health Insurance would provide death benefit ; the handing over to disinterested Burial Authorities of responsibility for arranging funerals would remove the danger of undue pressure from the undertaker, who would simply be told what type of funeral was required, the Burial Authority having told the mourner what types of funeral were available and at what prices ; and a general control over the undertaking business should be exercised by a Commissioner responsible to the Ministry of Health.

The scope of this admirable book is not limited to exposing abuses in the undertaking business ; there are important recommendations as to the standardisation of cemetery fees, the reorganisation of Burial Authorities and their co-operation with Town Planning Committees. There are valuable surveys of the question of cremation and of the sanitary aspects of burial. Taken together, the authors' two books form a social document of first-class importance ; the reduction by a half of the nation's burial bill, which they claim is possible, and the elimination of excessive expenditure on Industrial Assurance, would be an immense addition to the national welfare. Sir Arnold Wilson and Professor Levy have done a great public service, and have fully made out their case for an early and thorough investigation.