66 ‘pauper’ funerals held in Greenwich in past two years

Almost £140,000 has been spent on funerals for people whose families cannot afford to pay in the past two years.

Public health funerals, or pauper funerals, are held when families cannot or do not provide funding for a memorial.

The council will then step in and provide a basic burial under the historic Poor Law.

A Freedom of Information request has revealed that since 2019, £137,742 has been spent on 66 such funerals in Greenwich.

But the council has only contributed £11,636 of the cash, with the rest coming from the estate of the person who died.

While £93,915 was spent in the years 2019-20, only £43,827 was forked out in the period of 2020-21, representing a fall of more than 50 per cent.

This is down to the difference in numbers of pauper funerals held – 45 were held in 2019-20, compared to only 21 between 2020-21.

In that two-year period, the oldest person to receive the council burial was born in 1919, while the youngest was born in 1981.

While the majority of these burials took place at Eltham Crematorium, four took place at Woolwich Cemetery.

Little detail was given about the 66 people provided with the pauper funerals, but it is known that 45 were men and 21 were women.