Part 10

It is, I may observe, no uncommon practice for parties to leave deposits in their names, about the amount I have stated, for the very purpose of providing for the expenses of their interment, so as to ensure for themselves, under any change of circumstances, a decent burial; this feeling has prevailed so strongly in instances within my own knowledge, that, upon the happening of the death, the party has been found to have died at last an inmate of a poor house, and destitute of every kind of property, save only the little fund appropriated for the purpose I have stated. This feeling is not confined solely to the poorest class of our depositors: an instance lately occurred in which a depositor to the amount of 32_l._, made a special request that 20_l._ of this money might, in the event of her death, be paid only to _her undertaker_ on production of his account and of _her burial certificate_, and the balance to be paid to her relatives. The depositor died in the following year, and her wishes were accordingly carried into effect, with the concurrence of a relative, to whom it appeared she had communicated the arrangement she had thus made in regard to her money deposited with this institution.

──────────────╥──────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Total Number ║ of Deaths in ║Total Effects of such deceased Depositions, certified as the Year ║ under the following Amounts, viz:— ending 31st of║ March, 1842. ║ ──────────────╫─────┬─────┬─────┬─────┬─────┬─────┬─────┬─────┬──────── ║ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ Amount ║ £50 │£100 │£200 │£300 │£400 │£450 │£600 │£800 │to £1000 ║ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ and ║ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │upwards. ──────────────╫─────┼─────┼─────┼─────┼─────┼─────┼─────┼─────┼──────── 232 ║ 133 │ 32 │ 23 │ 10 │ 1 │ 5 │ 6 │ 6 │ 16 ──────────────╨─────┴─────┴─────┴─────┴─────┴─────┴─────┴─────┴────────

Occurrences such as those above alluded to are not unfrequent. Those who, as paupers, have led a life of dissipation, and have saved nothing for other objects, have yet reserved and concealed a small hoard to provide interment in a mode agreeable to their feelings. Besides the immense amount of money reserved for this purpose in the savings’ banks, it forms the great object of the benefit clubs: in most large towns there are burial clubs instituted for no other purpose. In the town of Preston nearly 30,000 persons, men, women, and children, are associated in six large societies for the purpose of burial; the chief of these clubs comprehends 15,164 members, and has since its commencement expended upwards of 1,000_l._ per annum, raised in weekly contributions, from a halfpenny and a penny to three-halfpence and two-pence per week. A benevolent officer, in giving an account of this club, expresses a hope that it may be practicable, in connexion with it, to get up some provision for the living, in the shape of medical attendance for the sick, an object which appears to have been entirely lost sight of in these societies. Besides the burial societies, of which the funds are deposited in the savings’ banks, there are others in which the funds are placed out in the hands of private persons, traders, who pay interest upon them.

§ 55. As an example of the allowances in the provincial clubs, it may be mentioned, that on an examination of the rules of 90 friendly societies at present existing in the borough and town of Walsall, comprising upwards of 5000 members, it appeared that the allowances insured for funerals were as follows:—that

For the Funeral │ For the Funeral of the Husband. │ of the Wife. 22 societies pay £10│36 societies pay £3 12 8│16 5 8 7│14 4 3 16│9 8 │3 6 │3 7

The burial allowances in the others were not specified.

§ 56. It must be premised, that it appears to be a serious error to regard the arrangements of all of this class of clubs as the arrangements of the poor people themselves; the arrangements are evidence only of the intensity of their feelings on the subject of interment, of their ignorance and their extensive need of information and trustworthy guidance.

There are, for example, in Westminster, Marylebone, Finsbury, the City, and the Tower Hamlets, districts of the metropolis, about 200 of such societies, composed chiefly of the labouring classes, comprising from 100 to 800 members each, possessing aggregate amounts of deposits of from 90_l._ to 1000_l._ each; raised in contributions of from three-halfpence to two-pence per week, and paying on the death of a member from 5_l._ to 10_l._ Besides these, there are clubs of a higher description, mostly amongst the smallest class of tradesmen, where the sums insured extend to sums as high as 200_l._, payable at the member’s death, and are understood to be chiefly devoted to the payment of the funeral expenses. The burial clubs for the labouring classes are generally got up by an undertaker and by the publican at whose house the club is held. The state of feeling addressed in the formation of these societies is denoted by the terms of the placards issued at the joint expense of the publican or of the undertaker, or rather of some mechanic or person of another trade, who gets the business done by an undertaker. These placards are frequently headed “In the midst of life we are in death;” and the addresses are in such terms as the following, which is taken from “The United Brothers’ and Sisters’ Burial Society,” held at the Old Duke William public house, Ratcliffe Highway:—

“In contemplating the many vicissitudes and changes incident to all persons of every station in life, and the many anxieties that crowd about our advancing years, more particularly the labouring class, through the uncertainty of employment, by long illness, or for want of friends reduced to extreme distress, and after a long and miserable life, and in expectation of that awful change which we must one time or other undergo, without ever providing for a decent interment, it will be some alleviation to our sufferings to remember that we bring no pecuniary burthen on our commiserating friends and relations, that at least we have divested our suffering families of that anxiety respecting our mortal remains which would add another pang to their already lacerated hearts: it too frequently occurs to the sorrow of many a feeling heart, who mourns over the deplorable loss of a beloved husband, wife, or friend; to obtain this desirable object, this society offers to the public, on easy terms, advantages worthy the consideration of persons in all stations of life.”

The terms of insurance are—

“That to defray the necessary expenses of printing books, bills, &c., that members of the first class, if under the age of 55 years, shall pay 1_s._ entrance, and contribute 1_s._ per month to the box and 2_d._ per quarter to the secretary; and members of the second class, under the age of 55 years, shall pay 6_d._ entrance, and 6_d._ per month to the box, and 2_d._ per quarter to the secretary; and every person above the age of 55 years, and members of the first class, to pay 2_s._ entrance, and contribute 1_s._ 6_d._ per month to the box, and 2_d._ per quarter to the secretary; and every member of the second class to pay 1_s._ entrance, and contribute 1_s._ per month to the box, and 2_d._ per quarter to the secretary. No more than 20 members will be admitted above the age of 60 years. They to be free in 12 months; nor shall any article that may be hereafter made exclude them.”

The benefits insured are to be—

“That at the death of a free member, immediate notice shall be given to T. Scotcher, undertaker, who shall perform the funeral, and he shall inform one of the committee, and the first meeting night after the burial, his or her relation, next of kin, or nominee, on producing satisfactory evidence, will be entitled (if a member of the first class) to the sum of 10_l._; if a member of the second class, and above seven years, to 5_l._; if under the age of seven years, to 3_l._; but when the stock of this society amounts to 150_l._ in the public funds, if a member in the first class admitted ten years, 12_l._ will be allowed; and if a member admitted ten years in the second class, 6_l._ will be allowed, deducting all arrears on the books; and for the credit of the society, the committee shall see the undertaker’s bill discharged.”

The publican is secured by a provision that the box shall not be removed to any other public house; and the office of “J. Scotcher, undertaker and founder of the Society,” is made permanent. An arbitrary rule, in such terms as the following, is so couched (the officers being judges) as to suppress complaint. This rule is common to other societies:—

That if any member charge the committee, or any member thereof, or trustees, or secretary, with any improper practice in the management of the society, and cannot make it appear just, he or she shall be fined 5_s._, or be excluded.

It is to be observed that the high and exclusive spirit of some of the rules would seem to show how little the body of the members are consulted in the preparation of them. Thus, in the “Ancient Friendly Society,” it is provided that “if any man sits down to drink with the stewards to pay sixpence, whether a member or not.” It is provided in the rules of the “Loyal United Friends,” that “if any person sit down to drink with the committee he is to pay sixpence;” and it is the same with a large proportion of the others.

In what is called an “improved burial society,” of the date of 1841, called the East London Burial Society, held at the Swan public house, Bethnal Green, the terms are:—

That the members of this society shall pay their contributions weekly or monthly, and shall pay 1_d._ per quarter extra, to defray other expenses attending the society. Every member shall pay 1_d._ per week for the first class, from two to fifty-five years; the second class, from ten to fifty-five years, 2_d._ per week; the third class, from ten to fifty-five years, shall pay 3_d._ per week.

Richard Crafer appears to be the president, and William Duggan secretary; then Richard Crafer afterwards appears as the undertaker. With respect to him the following is inserted as a fundamental rule of the society:—

That Richard Crafer, being the founder of this Society, shall be the undertaker, and no future articles shall remove him, so long as he gives general satisfaction to the society, and in case of his death, his eldest son shall claim the same for the benefit of the widow, and at her decease the same shall devolve on the eldest son living.

Mr. William Duggan is appointed secretary, and for his attendance and services he shall be allowed the sum of 1_d._ per quarter, for as many members as there are on the society’s books: he will assist the society with his best advice, and register good and healthy members, and post the books. He shall be allowed 3_d._ each for all notices he may deliver on the society’s business, but not obliged to go more than two miles from the club-house.

This is preceded by the usual rule, that—

Any member _coming_ to the society’s meeting-house in liquor, so as to disturb the proceedings, shall be fined 1_s._, and ordered to leave the room; and should any member charge the committee, secretary, president, trustees, or landlord with any unjust proceedings relative to the society, and cannot substantiate the same, he or she shall pay a fine not exceeding 10_s._ to the stock, or be excluded.

In the society of “United Brewers and Draymen,” of which J. Guy is secretary and undertaker, one of the fundamental rules is, that—

At the funeral of a member, the secretary shall provide fittings for porters and six pall bearers, for which he shall be allowed 1_l._, whether they are used or not, provided such member dies and is interred within three miles of any meeting-house.

The particulars of the provision commonly held out, is stated in the following rule of the General Burial Society:—

That the landlord for the time being shall be treasurer, and when there is sufficient cash, above what is necessary to supply the exigencies of the society, the same shall be vested in the public funds, in the names of the trustees appointed by the committee. The landlord, as treasurer, &c., shall give proper security for the due performance of his offices.

An evil entailed beyond the excessive amount of subscriptions paid for an object that is but poorly obtained, is the impulse given by it to the vice of drinking; to the destruction of real friendly sympathy amongst the working classes, by making the announcement of the death to be received as the demoralizing announcement of a coming carousal. Such expenses can only be incurred in the absence of proper feeling, in the face of destitute orphan children. The secretary of one of the better ordered burial clubs, a working man, thus speaks of the regulations which tend to drinking. He was asked—

What number of members have you?—Two hundred, who pay sixpence per month.

What is the publican’s advantage out of this?—The allowance is sixpence spending-money from each committee-man. I do not like this, and have wanted to change the place of meeting to a coffee-house, for the members frequently add a shilling to the sixpence spending-money, and are then not in a condition to begin business; but I find it is part of the rules of this, as well as of the other societies, that they shall be held at public houses.

On the occasion of the funeral is there no drinking?—Yes, there is; that is another great evil, and I wish there was a way of remedying it. The family provide themselves with drink, and the friends coming also drink. I have known this to be to such excess, that the undertaker’s men, who always take whatever drink is given them, are frequently unfit to perform their duty, and have reeled in carrying the coffin. At these times it is very distressing. The men who stand as mutes at the door, as they stand out in the cold, are supposed to require most drink, and receive it most liberally. I have seen these men reel about the road, and after the burial we have been obliged to put these mutes and their staves into the interior of the hearse and drive them home, as they were incapable of walking. After the return from the funeral, the mourners commonly have drink again at the house. This drinking at the funeral is a very great evil.

Besides the regulations of meeting which lead to expenditure for drinking, besides express regulations for allowances of drink, the “funeral allowances” are sometimes read by the publican to mean “expenditure” with him. The officers of a club in Liverpool having been summoned before Mr. Rushton, the magistrate, for the non-payment of a sum allowed by the rules, for funeral expenses, the steward of the club attended, and in answer to the claim, stated that the complainant had refused to take 4_s._ worth of whiskey at the house where the club meetings were held, a quantity which had been used and allowed in that and other clubs, as forming part of the “funeral expenses.” Notwithstanding the usage, the magistrate refused to sanction the steward’s reading of the term; and decided that the whole of the payment of expenses must be in money and not in whiskey.

It is difficult to ascertain the amount spent in drink, but it appears from the amount cited of the expenditure in the 90 societies at Walsall, that the required allowance was 2_d._ per month, in others 3_d._, and the aggregate sum spent in those clubs (if it were only limited to the rule), must have amounted to 981_l._ 13_s._ 4_d._; but besides these prescribed portions of drink, there are prescribed annual feasts, at from 2_s._ 3_d._ to 3_s._ 6_d._ per member, amounting to an annual sum of 257_l._ 10_s._, making a total of 1239_l._ 3_s._ 4_d._ per annum, expended in such expenses. Besides these, there are decoration expenses, in which one society alone expended between 70_l._ and 80_l._ Seventeen of the societies had lost 1500_l._, and one of them 600_l._, through various causes (such as the defalcations of secretaries), either directly or indirectly, attributable to an inefficient system of management. If the one year’s expenditure on drink, feast, and decoration money, were placed out in the savings’ bank, at interest, together with the amount of losses from mismanagement, the amount due to the contributors, to this small group of societies, would, at the end of 10 years, have amounted to the sum of 5328_l._ 19_s._ 3_d._

§ 57. To prevent frauds, some of the rules provide that the secretary shall see the body. For this service, in the society called the “Frugal Society,” where 7_l._ is allowed for the interment, a fee of 2_s._ 6_d._ is allowed to him, and 4_s._ if he have to go from two to five miles for the purpose. It is to be observed, that this is the usual fee provided by such societies for any inspection of the body.

The publican is generally made the treasurer, and usually the money is placed by him into the hands of his brewer, by whom from four to five per cent. interest is paid for its use as capital. In other instances it forms a capital for the publican himself; in some instances it is lent to other tradesmen. Though failures of societies have occurred from the failure of those to whom their funds have been lent, they do not appear to have been so frequent as the failures from the erroneous bases in respect to insurance on which they are generally founded.

§ 58. Believing that if the sums insured for burial in most of the burial clubs were received in money, the premiums paid by the members of these clubs are excessive, as compared with the premiums paid in the higher classes of insurance offices, I have submitted a number of their regulations, which may be considered specimens of the common terms of assurance, to Mr. Jenkin Jones, the actuary of the National Mercantile Life Assurance Society. His conclusions, which are confirmed by Mr. Griffith Davies, the actuary of the Guardian Office, show that for a risk, for which, if the Northampton tables were taken as the basis of the assurance, that in the large society at Preston, where an annual premium of 3_s._ 9_d._ would be taken for one risk by an assurance office, 7_s._ 10_d._ is taken from the contributors by the club. The General Friendly Society, for a risk for which 3_s._ 9_d._ would suffice on the Northampton table, receives 11_s._ 5_d._ Instead of an average premium of 5_s._ 2_d._, the “Friendly Society” takes 11_s._ 1_d._ If we add 25 per cent., to the premium that would be charged according to the Northampton rate (which is supposed to represent a higher mortality than the average) for expenses of management, including books, stationery, &c., and to cover the loss of interest occasioned by weekly or monthly contributions, instead of annual premiums payable at the beginning of each year, in nearly all these clubs the poor man pays an excess for burial of, at least, one-third,—besides the expense of liquor more than he would otherwise drink, which he is induced to take at the time of his multiplied attendances to pay his weekly subscriptions. There are various causes (which it would require a long report to specify) for the failure of these clubs, and for the loss of the savings devoted to their objects. The chief manager, the undertaker, has commonly an immediate interest in the admission of bad lives, which bring him quick funerals. The younger members often begin to perceive that they are subjected to unduly heavy charges, and when they are in the majority, they break up the society and divide the stock among them equally, and the older members who have contributed from the commencement are mercilessly deprived of the consolation for which they have during a great part of their lives made the most constant sacrifices. Independently of the excessive rates charged by these societies, the principle upon which the charges are made is a very unjust one, viz.—that of charging the same rate to each member, without reference to age.

§ 59. It will be seen from the following table that the “Friendly” Society’s premium (11_s._ 1_d._) is rather more than double the average of the Northampton (5_s._ 2_d._), and the premium by the Northampton rates for ages 15 and 45 are 3_s._ 10_d._, and 7_s._ 9_d._; the premiums of the “Friendly” Society, therefore, according to their own average, ought not to be more for these ages than about twice these amounts, or for age 15, 7_s._ 8_d._; age 45, 15_s._ 6_d._; but members between these ages pay alike (11_s._ 1_d._), the younger member therefore pays 3_s._ 5_d._ _more_ than he ought, and the older member 4_s._ 5_d._ less than he ought.

─────────┬───────────────────┬───────────────────┬─────────────────── │“Friendly” Society │ Average Premium │ Premium according Age. │ Premium. │ according to the │to the Northampton │ │ Northampton Rate. │ Rate. ─────────┼───────────────────┼───────────────────┼─────────────────── │ _s._ _d._ │ _s._ _d._ │ _s._ _d._ 7–45 │ 11 1 │ 5 2 │ 15 │ │ │ 3 10 45 │ │ │ 7 9 ─────────┴───────────────────┴───────────────────┴───────────────────

And by the Northampton rate (upon the principle adopted by the society), the younger member would have to pay 1_s._ 4_d._ more and the elder member 2_s._ 7_d._ less than he ought. As an exemplification of the instability of such societies, Mr. Tidd Pratt mentioned to me that at a recent election of a poor man to a vacancy in the Metropolitan Benefit Societies’ Asylum, a condition of which is that the candidate must be above sixty years of age, and have been a member of a benefit society more than ten years, there were 32 candidates, from whose documents it appeared that the societies of no less than 14 out of the 32 had been dissolved, and that some of them had belonged to two societies, and that both had failed them. Such societies are nevertheless constantly renewed on the old and unsafe foundations; and so intense is the prevalent feeling on the subject of respectful interment, that to secure it, a large proportion of the working population pay the same extravagant premiums to several of these clubs, in the hope that one, at least, may at the last avail them. On the death of a mechanic, the first business of an experienced undertaker is to ascertain of how many societies the deceased was a member, and to arrange the funeral accordingly. I am informed that it is not unfrequent that such sums as fifteen, twenty, thirty, and even forty pounds’ expenses are incurred for a mechanic’s funeral under these circumstances. When two or three of the undertakers of different clubs meet on the same search, and when they cannot agree to “settle” between them their shares in the performance of the funerals, very complex questions arise, which, it is stated, the magistrates have great difficulty in settling.