SUNDAY FUNERALS

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLII, Issue 20587, 28 November 1936, Page 22 (Supplement)

SUNDAY FUNERALS

UNDERTAKERS IMPOSE A BAN Bv Tplpcraph —Press Association WELLINGTON, November 27. After this week-end undertakers will decline to bury the dead in any cemetery in Wellington or the Hutt Valley, according to a decision of the Wellington Provincial Funeral Directors’ Association made at a recent meeting. This ban on Sunday funerals will also apply to cremations. The president of the Association, Mr W. A. Wilson, ascribed this resolution to the effects of the restriction of working hours. “As all our employees finish up on Friday night,” he said, “it means that at present principals have to carry on themselves. The question of Sunday funerals has for years been a very vexed one.” According to Mr Wilson, Wellington is at present one of the few places in the world where Sunday undertaking is carried on. Both ministers of religion and funeral directors object to the practice, the former because the Sabbath is the busiest day of their week and they cannot conveniently spare the time to conduct funeral services, and the latter because it makes their’s a seven-day week. Another proposed move is to secure compulsory registration and State licensing of all undertakers, and this will probably be one of the subjects to be discussed by the Dominion conference of funeral directors to take place in Wellington in February. A New Zealand Federation will probably be formed at the same time. The existing bodies are the Auckland, Wellington, Canterbury, West Coast, Otago and Southland Associations.