INFLATION

     The invoice is from the Thomas H. Nealon Funeral Home, for the final expenses of the husband  of Ellen Donovan.  It is dated December 29, 1905, and the total is $166.50.  The casket, lined and complete with pillow set, was billed at $75.00.  The cemetery lot was $20.00 plus another $5.00 for opening the grave.  The hearse was $6.00, the three coaches were $3.00 each and the gloves to bearers, lined because it was December, were $3.00.  The funeral Mass was a major expense at $12.00 and there was a $5.00 payment to Mr. Meister for a suit of clothes. 
     The financial hardship must have been tremendous for the widow, mother of five young children, of course unemployed, and in a time before social security.  My mother, born in the month of March, was nine months old when her father died young, of the then prevalent tuberculosis.  My mother had no memory of her father, but she used to relate what her mother told her:   Her father used to remark how amazed he was that the baby, but nine months of age, was walking. Little Mary must have been an early walker in an early time
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  ELEVEN YEARS LATER:
    The invoice is from  Frank P. Himes, Undertaker, this time for the funeral expenses of Timothy Donovan, son of Ellen Donovan Hogan.  It is dated October 16, 1916, and the total is $156.   The casket was $75.  There was no fee for the cemetery lot, presumably purchased when  Timothy's father died.  The hearse was $7.00, two coaches were $5.00, and the gloves $2.50, probably unlined.  The Mass was $10.00, and there was a Burial Robe this time, at $9.00. The other listed expenses are about the same as previously. 
      Young Timothy, the eldest child, was less than eighteen years old when he died, and had already been working for several years to support his family.  His widowed mother had remarried, to a widower, a common practice necessary to the survival of both then, and they'd had one more child before she was widowed a second time.  Timmy had worked at various jobs when he could, in the city of Troy, where the family lived.  He had helped to clear out several churches when fires struck, also a frequent occurrence then, as now, in the city.  He had one job helping the owner of a grocery store when flooding ruined the  inventory.  His pay was in  canned goods, much appreciated by his family but with one drawback. The cans the grocer paid Timmy with had lost their paper labels, and so the contents were a mystery until they were opened.  My mother remembers sitting down to supper, and not knowing if the meal was going to be peas or peaches.
    Unfortunately, the last job Timmy held ended in his death.  The job was at the Cluett Building in Troy, and it was either painting or window washing--the details are lost to me. The job did involve a scaffolding and it held three men, teenaged Timmy and two older, more seasoned workers, of an  ethnicity other than Irish, as it happened.    On the day the scaffolding broke, the two older workers each grabbed on to the rope along the side, and Timmy, with nothing to cling to, fell---five? six? seven?--- stories to his death.  Or so the tale was told.
       So, as the Invoice records, the widowed Mrs. John Hogan  was responsible for only $56 of her son's final expenses.  The  Maryland Casualty Co. paid the sum of $100 to the funeral home. 
       And that's the way it was.....
    P.S.  A portrait of Timothy Donovan is presently on display at the Schaghticoke Fair.  (Some old records spell his name as "Thimothy."  Perhaps a misspelling, or maybe that was a spelling then.  IDK
     PPS   The picture was awarded a First Place Blue Ribbon.