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Additional/Back Issues The Cost of Death by Robert Bryce A review of Reprinted with permission This review first appeared October 15, 1998, in
Intellectual Capital.com Thirty years ago, Jessica Mitford began tormenting American funeral directors by questioning their practices and prices. Today, Mitford, who died in 1996, is still tormenting many of those same funeral directors, and through the wonders of publishing, she is managing to do it from the grave. Mitford’s The American Way of Death Revisited, which was published earlier this year, updates and expounds upon the findings of her 1963 muckraking classic The American Way of Death. While some of Mitford’s critics have argued she had no reason to duplicate her earlier book (several passages from the first book are used verbatim in the second), funerals continue to be one of the biggest expenses in the life (or death) of the average American. No Blood, No Life Mitford reports that the average cost of a funeral was $750 in 1961. Today, the average cost has risen to $4,700. At that level, a funeral often is the third-largest expense (after a home and car) that a person will face during his lifetime. Another handicap facing funeral buyers is that about half of them have never arranged a funeral before. Plenty of books have been written about buying a home and buying a car. Precious few have been written about purchasing a funeral. And that may explain why Mitford’s books have drawn so much attention.
The American Way of Death received tremendous acclaim in the popular press when it first appeared. It got rave reviews in the New Yorker and other publications. The book made Mitford an instant celebrity. It also made her a pariah among undertakers. It is easy to see why. Mitford was not the least bit squeamish about describing the processes funeral directors use when embalming and preparing bodies for burial. For instance, Mitford notes that embalming, a procedure encouraged by funeral directors, is not required by law in any state and can be avoided altogether. Nevertheless, Mitford discusses the process in graphic detail. In a typically cheeky passage, Mitford quotes an undertaker as saying that embalming helps "dispel fears of live burial." To which Mitford cheerily adds, "How true; once the blood is removed, chances of live burial are indeed remote." The ‘Clustering’ Phenomenon The most significant parts of Mitford’s revisitation of the funeral business focus on prepaid funerals and on the new multinational conglomerates that are capturing large segments of the worldwide funeral business. Mitford goes out of her way to skewer Service Corp. International (SCI), the Houston-based funeral giant that now operates about 3,200 funeral homes worldwide. In 1995, Robert Waltrip, the chief executive officer and founder of SCI, had agreed to meet with Mitford in Houston. Mitford "was looking forward to the meeting like a kid at Christmas," says Karen Leonard, Mitford’s research assistant. Alas, the meeting was not to be. Waltrip backed out at the last minute. Nor would any SCI representative meet with her. But Mitford makes plenty of pointed remarks about SCI in her book. Before SCI, funeral homes were all locally owned by individuals who planned to stay in the communities where they lived. "SCI entered this picture with the force of a hurricane, swept away the antiquated methods of the old-timers and substituted, ‘clustering,’ the latest in streamlined mass production," writes Mitford, who goes on to note that SCI has borrowed its mass production techniques of mortuary management from McDonald’s. But SCI’s ability to cut costs has not resulted in lower costs for the consumer. Mitford writes that just the opposite has occurred. "In Houston, where SCI, with its 20 funeral and cemetery businesses, has a predominant position (75% of the market), its prices — according to a recent survey — average 60% higher than those of independents in the area; in Washington D.C., 40% higher," she says. A Message from the Grave Perhaps the most important chapter in the book is devoted to the growing business of "pre-need" funeral sales. Americans have invested some $20 billion in prepaid funeral and cemetery plans. But much of the interest on the money can be appropriated for other uses by the company that sells the policy. And the pre-need plans fall into a legal gray area. Some are insurance policies. Some are trusts. And the state agencies in charge of protecting the consumers’ interests on the pre-paid plans often are ill-prepared to deal with complaints from consumers. But as Mitford notes: "Funeral directors have a strong motivation to sell ahead of time. Each funeral they have under wraps is one less that will go to a competitor." As her final act of insolence, Mitford decided to have a bit of fun at the expense of her foes in the funeral business. After her death, Mitford’s body was cremated. She had her friends send the bill to Waltrip at SCI. They never got a reply. |
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