Robert Evans, of Philadelphia, died in September, 1822. The exectutor of his estate recorded the following expenses in Evans's account book, now in the collection of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. This almost begs to be made into a Mastercard commercial, but I refrained. You have to draw the line somewhere, right?
"Shaving the corpse" - $1.50
"Carriage for the family of said deceased at his funeral" - $4.00
"Mahogany coffin" - $20.00
"Digging a grave" - $7.51
"Sundries for funeral of said deceased" - $3.50
Speaking of coffins -- I wrote a paper about a nineteenth-century Philadelphia cedar cooper who was buried in a "red cedar coffin."
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