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58
and this Council's obligation relates to persons dying within the
Borough, irrespective of the home address.
On 5th July, 1949, at which time funeral benefit comes into
force under the National Insurance Act, it is possible that the
number of applications may diminish, but there will always be a
certain number of cases where there are no relatives to undertake
the responsibility.
Each request made to the Council for burial under the Section
has to be considered very carefully and at the same time sympathetically,
since some of the applicants are victims of very sad circumstances
, and it is possible for one of these cases to take a whole day
or more to complete the preliminary enquiries and arrangements.
It is necessary to obtain particulars of the deceased's realisable
possessions, and this may involve making a complete inventory
at the home address, as was done in one case.
The following case gives an indication of the complications
which may arise in the administration of this Section:—
The deceased lived at Stoke Newington, and died in
Hackney Hospital.
Application was made by a daughter of the deceased, who
had neither seen nor heard from her father for twenty years, and
was under the impression that he was dead.
The daughter lived at Littlehampton, her husband being
a timber porter earning £4 8s. 0d. per week. She had no
knowledge of the deceased's estate and claimed that she could
not afford to bury him herself.
The deceased had occupied two rooms in Ormond House,
one of Stoke Newington Council's Estates, and his daughter
had never been inside the place; she could not, therefore, give
any information regarding the deceased's personal effects
which were still in his rooms.
Arrangements were made for representatives of both
Hackney and Stoke Newington Council Staffs to make an
inventory of the deceased's belongings, and it was ascertained
that he was the owner of insurance policies which were deposited
with the Liverpool Victoria Friendly Society. The Society
stated that the face value of the policies was approximately
£17 0s. 0d.