From an old old article in The Atlantic: “The Undertaker’s Racket“:
Cemetery salesmen are also prone to confuse fact with fiction to their own advantage in discussing the law. Cemeteries derive a substantial income from the sale of vaults. The vault, a cement enclosure for the casket, is not only a money-maker; it facilitates upkeep of the cemetery by preventing the eventual subsidence of the grave as the casket disintegrates. In response to my inquiry, a cemetery salesman (identified on his card as a “memorial counsellor”) called at my house to sell me what he was pleased to call a “pre-need memorial estate”—in other words, a grave. After he had quoted the prices of the various graves, the salesman explained that a minimum of $120 must be added for a vault, which, he said, is “required by law.” Why is it required by law? To prevent the ground from caving in. But suppose I should be buried in one of those eternal caskets made of solid bronze? Those things are not as solid as they look; you’d be surprised how soon they fall apart. Are you sure it is required by law? I’ve been in this business fifteen years, I should know. Then would you be willing to sign this! I had been writing on a sheet of paper, “California State Law requires a vault for ground burial.”) The memorial counsellor swept up his colored photographs of memorial estates, backed out the door, and fled down the street.
Keep in mind this article is from 1963, so you’d have to multiply any dollar amounts you read there by around 7 to get accurate metrics.
Mitford mentions the interesting idea that the industry, particularly the actual funeral service, is designed to remove most indicators of death possible. This was not the case in past times.
Here’s another, much more recent article, focusing more on the practice of embalming.
Up until the Civil War, losing friends and family members was more frequent but no less painful than today. The main difference was that we cared for our dead at home. We bathed them, dressed them and placed them in the coldest room of the house — also known as the parlor — so that relatives and friends could pay their respects before burial. The Civil War interrupted this cycle. The dead didn’t always come home. “After the funeral journey of Abraham Lincoln’s embalmed body from Washington D.C. to Springfield, (embalming) slowly gained legitimacy,” Laderman writes. “Lincoln’s body served as son to those who lost children to anonymous graves.” Yet, at the beginning of the 20th century, embalming was still a procedure regarded with skepticism and repulsion by many. Embalming “had been employed in medical schools usually in secret to preserve cadavers for instruction in the middle of the 19th century,” writes Laderman.
It reads okay up until the end, where it takes a bizarre editorial bent. Everyone needs to be an damned activist these days.