Toward the end of the nineteenth century, rising funeral costs were making even the most basic burials unobtainable to the growing lower class, with a simple cemetery internment by an undertaker costing between $80 and $100 in 1883.[1] To rectify the issue, communities throughout the United States relied on a variety of solutions. In New York City, a seventy-nine-acre island was transformed into the location for the city’s pauper graves. Divided into sections, the island contained numerous trenches measuring forty-five feet long by fifteen feet wide by seven feet deep, where three wooden coffins were stacked on top of each other. In 1891, Helen Gardener, the editor of the periodical The Arena, visited the island and was shocked by its conditions: the pine boxes containing bodies were poorly crafted, causing portions of the dead to protrude, and the stench of death lingered throughout the island, made worse by the fact that the trenches were kept open to add additional coffins. By the time of her visit, the island contained over 70,000 corpses and was receiving fifty new bodies daily.[2] In other parts of the nation, companies began offering burial insurance to the working class as a means to reduce the financial burden of death. By the start of 1909, there were seventeen insurance firms in the United States with twenty million active policy holders.[3] Yet, even with insurance assistance, prices were still high as a cheap wooden coffin in 1912 cost $65, embalming fees averaged $15, transportation of the corpse to the grave site amounted to roughly $210, and interment was priced at $30.[4] Due to this factor, organizations began promoting cremation as a cheaper alternative to burial. In the 1870s, figures like Reverend Quincy Dowd pushed for the use of cremation to not only alleviate the economic weight of burial on the lower class but also address the growing public-health concerns over the unsavory conditions of cemeteries.[5] The efforts of Dowd and his peers worked, with cremation slowly rising in popularity while still maintaining its relatively low cast of $25.[6]
Works Referenced
Allmendinger, Susan, and David Allmendinger, ed. The American People in the Industrial City. New Haven, CT: Pendulum Press, 1973.
Dowd, Quincy. “Burial Costs among the Poor.” Proceedings of the National Conference of Charities and Correction, Cleveland, 1912. Fort Wayne, IN: Fort Wayne Printing Company, 1912. 121-125.
Dowd, Quincy. Funeral Management and Costs: A World Survey of Burial and Cremation. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1921.
Frankel, Lee. “Industrial Insurance.” Proceedings of the National Conference of Charities and Correction, Buffalo, 1909. Fort Wayne, IN: Fort Wayne Printing Company, 1909. 369-383.
Gardener, Helen. “Thrown in with the City’s Dead.” The Arena 3 (1891): 61-62, 68.
Report on the Committee of the Senate upon the Relations between Labor and Capital, and Testimony Taken by the Committee. Vol. 3. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1885.
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[1] Report on the Committee of the Senate, 500.
[2] Gardener, 61-62.
[3] Frankel, 369.
[4] Dowd “Burial Costs,” 121-122.
[5] Allmendinger and Allmendinger, 207.
[6] Dowd Funeral Management, 150.
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