BURIALS AT EIGHTPENCE.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVIII, Issue 2733, 11 February 1910, Page 2

BURIALS AT EIGHTPENCE.

A SOUTH AUSTRALIAN CONTRACT Contract burials, so far as the various institutions under the jurisdiction of the South Australian Government are concerned, are the subject of such keen competition among undertakers that the limits of absurdity appear to have* been reached in the last contracts let by the Adelaide Hospital Board (remarks the Sydney ••.Morning Hernia”). The Board calls tor tenders tor-Ilie burial of friendless and impecunious patients who die in the institution, so that they are in no way to blame for the ridiculously low prices at which undertakers express their willingness to do the work, and it stands to their credit that they insist upon decently-con-structed coffins. Under the contract which recently expired an undertaker was paid the trifling sum or 6s 8d -per adult, and 5s for children under the age or 14. in the new contract precisely the same conditions are imposed, but the competition seems to have been responsible for such an extraordinary reduction in prices that the undertaker wiio secured the contract is now under the obligation of conducting all burials of persons who die in the hospital, who had no friends and no money, at 8d per body. Obviously it is impossible ior any undertaker to make. a profit out of such a low amount, and the only hope he can have of deriving any benefit must lie from the advertisement he gets out of it. The same undertaker, working under a different contract, conducts the interment of persons who die in other Government institutions. He receives in his case 9s 4d for adults, and 2s 4d lor children.