A new development in the United States in the early 1970s was the establishment of “direct cremation” firms, commercial ventures offering simple cremation for a fixed fee of around $255, roughly linked to the Social Security death benefit. For an additional $250 survivors could arrange to have the ashes scattered at sea from a plane or boat. The funeral directors poured scorn, labeling the procedure “burn and scatter” or even “bake and shake.”

The Neptune Society, founded in Los Angeles by Dr. Charles Denning, a flamboyant character who advertised extensively on radio and TV, was first on the scene, and easily the most successful of the burn-and-scatter outfits, boasting at latest count branches in ten Northern California cities plus locations in New York State and Florida. Neptune’s extraordinary success has been due largely to its appropriation of the name “Society,” creating thereby the false public impression that it is linked to the nonprofit funeral and memorial societies that have built invaluable goodwill by their consumer protection activities. New York memorial societies, the bona fide consumer organizations, were successful in securing statewide legislation that prevents any mortuary from labeling itself a “society.” California’s Funeral Board had likewise done surveys to show that the practice is misleading to consumers. The issue was laid to rest, however, when the troublesome board itself was abolished.

Neptune has not hesitated to resort to other dubious practices as well. For the last several years it has been embroiled in litigation on every front. Denning sued a rival burn-and-scatter concern in Northern California for using the name Neptune, which he had neglected to trademark and which had by now become a household word for consumers looking for direct cremation. In the mid-1980s, Neptune settled a class action lawsuit involving three hundred families for $22 million plus $5 million costs…. In 1988, ashes of 5,342 corpses discovered in remote mountain spot by Neptune pilot…. In 1988, out-of-court settlement against Neptune of $12.7 million…. A 1991 class action suit for mishandling and commingling thousands of corpses was recently settled for $6.8 million. And most recently, without admitting guilt, three Neptune crematories in California agreed to financial audits and to reimburse the cost of the state’s investigation.

Despite such adversity, and a bit of positively bad luck (the uncremated, badly decomposed body of a former mayor of Burbank, California, was discovered after four and a half months in a refrigerator; the case was settled for over $1 million), Neptune continues to flourish like a green bay tree.

Neptune’s cremation fees have soared. The minimum charge is now $1,200, up from the original 1970s price of $255. Today there are added charges: “sea scattering without family or friends present,” $125; add $395 for family groups of up to eight; there is also an added fee, $295, for “witnessing the beginning of the cremation process.”

Neptune’s success has not gone unchallenged by the conventional mortuaries. A recent offering of Chapel of the Chimes in Oakland, California, gives these prices:

In early 1995 the Cremation Association of North America published its long-awaited Special Report on cremation—what goes into the furnace and what comes out. Highlighted was the startling conclusion that 85 percent of the bodies that enter the furnace go in uncoffined—a reassuring affirmation of basic common sense on the part of the funeral buyer in the face of the industry’s heavily financed “memoralization” campaign. Why, he persists in asking, spend good money on a casket that will only be burned?

The specter of all those uncoffined bodies going into the retort most directly threatens the casket manufacturers, who as a result have thrown their own considerable resources into the fray. The Batesville Casket Company, “the world’s largest,” has produced a widely distributed four-color Cremation Optionsbrochure. The “options” narrowly defined are two in number: a funeral service to be followed by cremation, or a funeral service after the cremation. Your choice: salad before or salad after the entrée. Casket manufacturers—who recently had regarded the urn business as no more than a sideline—have now gone into it whole hog. Batesville offers a dazzling array of products topped by an “art-urn” line featuring elaborately sculpted pieces such as a seascape with leaping dolphins. Also available are urns crafted in bronze, wood, “semi-precious metals,” glass, and “true marble.”

A “scattering urn” is offered for those who might wish to, yes, scatter some of the ash as from a saltshaker and preserve the rest for display on the mantelpiece. The wholesale price range for Batesville’s art-urn line is $70 to $575, which translates to $450 to $1,695 for the customer making his or her selection in the undertaking parlor.

Funeral directors, facing cruel necessity, are also learning to adapt. Some of the more go-ahead mortuaries will provide a “rental casket” for the temporary display of the embalmed body during visiting hours. According to the CANA Special Report of the cremations performed in 1995 which were preceded by a service with the body on display, no less than 28 percent involved the use of a rented casket. As might be expected, accommodation for the dead is far more costly than for the living. The rental cost for the one or two days’ occupancy runs from $600 to $800 a pop, which would pay for an untroubled weekend in a resort hotel.

Since rental caskets are indefinitely reusable—the inert occupant causing no wear and tear, it’s in the funeral director’s interest to provide merchandise of good quality for the display of the corpse; finished hardwood is a favorite. The removable interiors cost the funeral director less than $100, and—doubling his investment on the very first rental—he can rent the casket again and again.

When in 1995 Massachusetts passed a law permitting rentals, there was an outcry from the trade that the practice might spread disease, “especially where body fluids are spilled in casket containers.” Not to worry, said health officials, because rentals can be fitted with new cloth and cardboard liners each time they are used. Some Massachusetts funeral directors quickly got the picture. With such an extravagant return on inventory kept in perpetual use, they are now urging survivors to consider rental units in preference to low-cost cremation containers.

Not only is cremation discouraged, even hampered, by the funeral industry, but once all impediments have been overcome, the ghouls who had formerly pursued the corpse now lust for the ashes. The natural impulse of survivors to scatter ashes or bury them in a garden or other favored spot has for years been frustrated in California, if not elsewhere, by laws that prohibit the disposition of cremated remains on private or public property. The widespread impact of this cruel restriction is illustrated in a recent (1997) instance where 5,200 boxes of cremated remains, entrusted to a pilot hired to scatter them at sea, were discovered in a storage locker and an airplane hangar.

If you can’t sell an urn, why not turn the ashes over to a flying service for sea scattering? Seems fair. But is it? Here again, the byword is follow the money. The dozens of mortuaries that collected $100 to $200 from the survivors for the service paid the poor wretch who was to do the scattering an average of $30 to $60. None of them took the trouble to ascertain whether their instructions were actually carried out. Using median numbers, it will be seen that the mortuaries realized, among them, a profit of $526,000 from this seemingly insignificant sideline. At the same time, preliminary investigation has revealed that the majority of the victims who paid to have their relatives’ ashes scattered were never informed that they had the right to take the ashes home with them. Had they known of this option they would not, of course, have paid to have them scattered.