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mysteries |
Funeral Rip-Offs |
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Are dishonest funeral directors exploiting the public in their time of grief? The handcart rumbled over the cobbles in the empty streets around the university. in it was the corpse of a middle-aged man, freshly exhumed from a nearby cemetery. The men pushing the cart, still smeared with earth from their earlier endeavours, knocked at the door of the medical studies building, and were ushered in. Inside, an eminent teaching surgeon took delivery of their grisly cargo, handed the men a tidy sum of cash, and then let them discreetly out into the night. The next morning, the cleaned-up body was laid out in a teaching theatre. As the surgeon made his first incision, the students leaned in to watch... Stiff Opposition. In the early 19th century, doctors had to conduct anatomical research and teaching in secret, as the dissection of human corpses was regarded with horror by most of the population. The only bodies set aside for the purpose were those of executed felons, and the need for new subjects for teaching and research led to doctors buying cadavers from 'resurrectionists' - grave robbers by another name. The scandal of grave robbing - and particularly the activities of Burke and Hare, two 19th century resurrectionists who stole a march on fate by murdering their fellow citizens and then selling off the bodies - led the British government to pass the Anatomy Act of 1832. This attempted to end the illegitimate trade by granting medical schools the corpse of anyone so poor they would otherwise have to be buried at public expense. As most people still believed that the resurrection of their souls depended of the proper treatment of their bodies after death, the effect of this Act was to make people fear the consequences of a 'pauper's grave'. Paying for a funeral became a life's work for some, and the poor would often go without in life just to save enough for a decent burial. Over time, this situation aided immeasurably the growth of the funeral industry, making it a highly profitable business. Critics, however, claim that today the trade is corrupt and offers little more than a new form of 'grave robbing'. Recently, there have been reports of coffin touts regularly targeting visitors to Far Eastern hospitals. Aware that, on certain wards, the death rate is particularly high, they gather in the visitors' lounges to seek out and befriend anyone with a relative or friend in extremis. When the person dies, the tout tells the family that he has good friends in the funeral trade. he relies on the fact that the bereaved are in a state of shock and only too glad to turn over responsibility for arranging the funeral to their new 'caring' friend. The coffin tout then gets a nice commission from the funeral director for bringing business his way. Critics of the funeral industry claim that cynical and exploitative practice such as this is far more common in the trade than might be imagined. Although there are many reputable funeral directors who do give good value, the nature of the business and the fact that most people are unaware of its intricacies offers unscrupulous members of the profession endless opportunities to cheat clients. The overwhelming urge that many people feel to 'do right' by their dead allows some undertakers to push up the price of funerals by applying subtle psychological pressures top choose more costly coffins and other extras. Often, these so called 'luxurious' items turn out to be little more than cheap imitations. For instance, coffins described as 'oak' or 'elm' with 'brass' handles can often be merely veneered chipboard with plastic fittings. Linings and shrouds, also expensive extras, are often mass-produced and unnecessary unless the body is to be viewed. In all cases, funeral directors can make vast profits from such products. But this is just one of the money-spinning scams which are allegedly normal practice for many undertakers. In every area of the trade, it seems there are opportunities for bumping up the cost for the final bill. The practice of embalming of a corpse in necessary - in the case of remains that are to be sent abroad or deposited in a mausoleum, vault or catacomb, for instance - the process is not, as many undertakers would have us believe, a prerequisite. Indeed, none of the major faiths require embalming as part of their funeral rites. Despite this, many funeral directors embalm corpses automatically, on the grounds that the process protects the living from disease-causing bacteria found in or on the corpse. With very few exceptions, this is nonsense. Official studies have consistently shown that the vast majority of human remains do not constitute a health hazard. Furthermore, even if a particular corpse should present such a danger - for example, when the cause of death has been an infectious disease - it is widely acknowledged that embalming is practically useless in preventing the diseases transmission. The Sealer Scandal. In the US, the bereaved are encouraged to buy expensive sealed caskets, designed to prevent the elements affecting their loved one. These caskets are a lucrative scam operated by undertakers. Hermetically sealing a casket does not protect a corpse, but actively promotes its decomposition by anaerobic bacteria - germs that thrive in a near oxygen-free environment. this form of decomposition causes the body to bloat and putrefy. the amount of gas produced by the bacteria is frequently sufficient to burst the seals of coffins deposited in vaults or mausoleums. To prevent this, many mausoleum workers secretly break any seals they find, thus allowing the remains to deteriorate normally through dehydration. But even if you manage safely to navigate the fiscal minefield of making funeral arrangements and actually burying the deceased, your troubles may not be over. Today, graveyard space is at a premium and the chances of finding, and affording, a permanent resting place are, for most of us, remote. On average, a corpse is unlikely to remain undisturbed for even as long as a decade, and, in some countries, a years or two of peace is all that can be expected. In many urban cemeteries, each grave can contain the remains of numerous people, often stacked on above the other. it is virtually impossible to dig a new grave without turning over old bones. As a result, a common practice is periodically to remove all reference to previous burials, add a layer of topsoil, and sell the space as a vacant plot. in one UK cemetery, for example, some of the most expensive plots are to be found on areas originally used to inter the poor. Grisly Discovery. Still more disturbing are recent reports from the US. An NBC-TV report on 19th September 1991 found more than a dozen families in Tennessee who had discovered that their relatives had been interred with neither clothes nor coffins, and in some cases the corpses had been buried with rubbish. in the same report, a distraught mother whose son had died in a road accident told how she had found parts of his body on the cab of his truck in the breaker's yard - the mortuary having failed to remove all of them after the accident. And in Denver, US, in May 1990, a television reporter discovered human remains, blood-soaked cloths, syringes and chemicals associated with embalming in rubbish trucks outside a mortuary. Perhaps partly as a result of such horror stories, many people now prefer cremation to burial as a means of disposing of the dead. but here, too, there is scope for abuse. In Britain, cremators are designed to take just one adult coffin, so only one adult can be cremated at a time. The only exceptions to this are: a mother with her baby; two young siblings; or unidentified exhumed remains. Elsewhere, however, this is not always the case. In California, US, thousands of families are pursuing civil suits against more than 100 mortuaries, together with a crematorium which is alleged to cremated more than 16,000 bodies in piles of 30 or more at a time. The mortuaries, it is claimed, wrapped the bodies in corrugated cardboard and stacked them in trucks for their last journey to the crematorium. Once there, crematorium workers are alleged to have broken the jaws of the dead to remove gold teeth, before cremating the remains in large furnaces more suited to the burning of cattle. That the funeral industry makes vast profits out of death is, for many, bad enough, but it has been suggested that a minority of industry workers are responsible for even more scandalous abuses. Despite the rigid secrecy surrounding the funeral industry, stories of workers routinely abusing the dead for sexual purposes have filtered through to the media, usually from ex-industry employees, disgusted by the vile activities they have witnessed. Troubling Tales. A secretary at one US mortuary, for example, was reported to come in on her days off to 'wash and fondle the genitals of dead men'. When questioned about this, the woman made no denial, but merely accused a male worker in the same mortuary of regularly gripping the breasts of female cadavers and pronouncing them to be silicone implants. Such sickening activities are rarely publicized, mainly because of the distress it would cause the bereaved. Nevertheless scandals do occur. Cases of sexual abuse may be rare, but it appears that general malpractice in the funeral industry continues and is likely to do so until the public is prepared to accept full responsibility for their death and final disposition. Only then can people make absolutely certain that it is their wishes and not those of the undertaker that take precedence. |
Sources: The X Factor By: David Pescod |