The Cheapest House in London for Funerals of Every Description

Undertaker's flyer listing the services offered by Dickens & Company, furnishing undertakers and funeral carriage proprietors located at 14 Upper Cleveland Street, Euston. The flyer claims the company to be 'The cheapest house in London for funerals of everyday description' and lists prices for four classes of funeral including that of children. Undertaking was a lucrative but highly competitive business in the 19th century. Many undertakers were accused of particularly exploiting bereaved working class families. In his book Ins and Outs of London, written in 1859 W O'Daniel notes 'Among the lower classes funerals consist of a hearse and one carriage, but always attended by hired mourners. These mourners are composed of the very lowest of the low; they are generally as drinking, gambling, and murderous a set of men, or devils, as ever abode within the walls of a jail...Every undertaker thinks it incumbent on himself to outdo every other undertaker in ridiculing the dead. The shops exhibit from the ground to the roof all kinds, sizes and shapes of coffins; beautiful epitaths for the tomb of the dead; neat positions for "laying out; " and pictures of funerals underwritten thus:- "funerals got up in this style for £10," or plainer funerals, for less money.'