paupers' funerals
Charity burial services
Paupers' funerals are burials arranged and paid for by the state when the deceased has no money and no family willing or able to cover the costs.
These are minimal affairs—simple coffins, unmarked or numbered graves, brief or no ceremony.
The term carries connotations of shame and abandonment, evoking a time when dying poor meant dying alone: He feared ending up in a pauper's grave.
Also called a public health funeral or indigent burial.
- destitutionExtreme poverty, lacking necessities
- coronersDeath cause determiners
- cremationBurning the deceased
- indigenceExtreme poverty, total want
- municipal fundingLocal government's allocated budget
workhouses · interment · unmarked graves · potter's fields · almsgiving · homelessness · community services · social workers · alms · public assistance · graveyards · burial rites · state intervention · local councils · death certificates · last rites · poor relief · mutual aid societies
pauper, funeral, paupers, funerals, pauperism, pauperize, pauperized, funerary, funereal