FROCK-COATS AND FUNERALS.

Dominion, Volume 2, Issue 280, 7 August 1909, Page 3

FROCK-COATS AND FUNERALS.

The: Undertakers' Industrial Board of Sydney found themselves brought to consider the "life" of a frock-coat at a meeting held last week. It. falls upon the employees to provide themselves with the frock-coat - and tall hat, without which a funeral could not bo "respectably conducted-in style," as a, witness 6aid. ■": Counsel for the employers remarked that he had had a frock-coat for 20 years, and .it was still fit for . wear. "Ah!" exclaimed tho witness, after a. pause, "you don't go to three funerals a, week." Counsel admitted' tho impeachment. "My frock-coat," continued the witness, "only lasts twelve months." The board seemed to consider that there was a wide discrepancy between the life of the lawyer's frock-coat and that of the undertaker, until thejwitness casually remarked: "I paid, 15s. for my frock-coat." This with an air of pride. One witness averred . that skill was required in conducting funerals. "We can't dump the corpses into the graves like bags of chaff," he remarked. "We don't want to offend,, qustomers." Tho chairman suggested that'the people being dead could not give. thom more custom. "No, but their friends can," said the witness. . "You know, every undertaker has ' tho ambition to bury* everybody else," Subsequently the witness remarked that there wero times when his work was of a very unpleasant nature, and would have gone iDto details, but that Mr. Bradburn stopped him by saying, "We will take that as granted. I want to sleep to-night. I don't want to get tho jim-jams."