Burial Clubs- The Much, Much Bereaved

Despite the many respectable benevolent organizations serving honest and hard-working clients, monetary gains inevitability invite fraud. While unable to afford insurance policies with massive payouts, many in England’s working class saved out a few pence for a subscription to a burial club of a friendly society. For some, the potential payout of £5 or £10 was enough to risk a prison sentence for committing fraud.

The General Register Office for England and Wales was founded in 1836. Country-wide record keeping replaced the old system of “Births, Baptisms, and Burials” kept by the local church. While this system was more accurate, easily referenced, and thorough, it opened up new cracks for crime. Friendly societies (at least those following the law) required both a death certificate issued by a civil registrar and a medical certificate (a form signed by a licensed physician verifying the cause of death) before making a payment. To collect from a burial society, a subscriber’s family only needed the death certificate as proof of the passing.

Fraudsters came to the registration office, falsely claimed the death of a loved one conveniently enrolled in a burial club, received their death certificate, showed the certificate to the representative of their burial club, and pocketed their payment. Often their “dearly departed” had wisely subscribed to several burial clubs, thus greatly increasing the rewards. Civil records show the same person dying multiple times on multiple dates, with multiple causes, with the same beneficiary profiting each time. 

In busy industrial metropolises, the clerk issuing death certificates rarely knew the deceased or the bereaved. He required only their say so that a death had occurred and had no power to investigate their claims. He could only report his suspicions and find enough evidence of wrong-doing to deny their certificates the next time.  It wasn’t until the 1870s, the law tightened up requiring all deaths to have a medical certificate before they could be issued a death certificate.

The lack of government oversight into their processes and practices allowed some organizations to operate as crookedly as their fraudulent clients. Investments of a Friendly Society registered with the British government were not subject to income or property taxes, making it a perfect place to launder ill-gotten gains. Inflated “running costs” and “hospitality budgets” hid embezzling and financial juggling. Adding to this mess is the fact that under British Law, an insurance company, a friendly society, and a burial club were all different legal entities subject to different laws and restrictions, and even then, not all were even registered with the government. If they didn’t bother even existing legally, why would they follow any other rules?

Unscrupulous representatives even pocketed their subscriber’s weekly payment and marked the policy unpaid. Stingy burial clubs used fine print to legally fight honest claims. Some barred subscribers from making any claims until two years after they joined!

Even when the society or club was striving to serve their clientele, honesty does not ensure solvency. Friendly societies and burial clubs dissolved every day to mismanaged funds, and well-intentioned but ill-advised investments. Even perfectly sound organizations foundered if too many elderly clients collected on claims, and not enough young healthy clients subscribed.

Adventure Ideas
One physician that confirms deaths for a friendly society, suspects he saw the same body 3 times over a period of six months and it hasn’t decayed.

A burial club’s founder invested some of the organization's money in a risky venture. It paid out spectacularly, but he’d rather not put all that money back into the club. To cover the surplus, he needs to invent a failure so he can claim to have lost it all. 

Burial Clubs- Making Death Pay

For many in Victorian Britain, a funeral was their last chance to show their worth on earth. As important as a memorializing funeral was to the upper classes, it was even more important to the lower. A family too poor to afford a funeral doomed their loved one to a burial “on the Parish”. A pauper’s burial was the lowest disgrace a Victorian could face. No coffin tastefully obscured covered by a pall. Only a linen shroud covered the corpse. No procession of pallbearers and solemn service. Instead, they laid the deceased into a massed grave with no headstone on undesirable land. Worse still, these uncared and unnoticed cadavers were a banquet for anatomists desiring to procure corpses cheaply and legally for dissection.

To avoid this ignominious departure, many among the working poor of England scraped out enough weekly savings for membership in a burial club.  Burial clubs (or more grandly “burial societies”) provided a subscription service, similar to insurance, guaranteeing to pay funeral costs no matter how long the deceased had been a member. Many burial clubs were run independently by entrepreneurs. Quite a few headquartered in the neighborhood pub or some other public gathering place key to local life.

Costs varied based on the desired quality of the funeral. Most plans paid out £2- £10 for an adult and £1-£4 for a child. The more expensive plans paid out for more expensive funerals. An average £5 funeral for a monthly two pence subscription looks a bit like this:

-One fine elm coffin decorated with black nails, a metal nameplate, flower embellishment, and four handles,

-One velvet pall to cover the coffin

-Three black cloaks, three black hat bands, three black scarves, and six pairs of gloves

-Two porters to help at the funeral

-One man to attend the funeral in mourning dress

Further luxuries such as brass nameplates, crepe paper banners, mourning jewelry, additional hired mourners, a hearse, and black feathers for the hearse increased the cost of the Burial Club’s premiums.

 The bigger burial clubs were part of Friendly Societies, broader benevolent organizations. For a small monthly fee, friendly societies also covered injury, illness, and pensions. Some even worked as saving and investment groups on behalf of their subscribers. They ranged from small clubs consisting of a single village to massive organizations with chapters all across Briton. The biggest and oldest friendly societies functioned similarly to a fraternal order right down to official regalia and ceremonies. Almost all friendship societies are grouped by a common vocation, such as the Gardeners’ Royal Benevolent Institution or the Railway Guards’ Universal Friendly Society.

Membership in these organizations grew every year. In 1815, almost a million working men subscribed to a Friendly Society. By 1870, these organizations had over 4 million confirmed members. For those unable to afford insurance, paying a few pence to a Burial Club or Friendly Society bought peace of mind knowing their funeral would not burden their families, and disgrace themselves.

Example Names of Benevolent Societies:

Benevolent Society of St. Patrick

The Burial Institution

Friends’ Provident Institution

Governesses’ Benevolent Institution

London Friendly Institution

Loyal Order of Ancient Shepherds

Provident Association of Warehousemen, Travelers, and Clerks

Stock Exchange Clerks’ Provident Fund

Wesleyan Methodist Local Preachers’ Mutual Aid Association

That’s enough of the basic facts. Next week, we’ll start examining the shady side of combining financial gains with death by talking about fraud in Burial Clubs.

House Rules and Habits- Surviving Character Creation

When I started this series, I had no idea how many idiosyncrasies I’ve developed to help me run Victoriana. As I thought over my house rules and started a brand new campaign, more and more came to mind. This week I’m stepping off my soapbox with a little advice for players about to start building their characters. Certainly, the most complex series of rules for almost any role-playing game is character creation, and that process in Victoriana especially lengthy and detailed. The multitude of options spread through the core rulebook can leave players confused, frustrated, or worse left with a character they don’t want to play.

One simple step streamlines the entire process and can make sense of all the wonderful madness of Victoriana character creations. Try to come into character generation with a strong concept. You don’t need all the blanks filled in, just a few key ideas such as occupation, subspecies, personality, and most importantly their class. Victoriana is a class-based game, but you’re not choosing between rogue, paladin, and warlock, you’re choosing your character’s place in society. Class dominates every aspect of your character and defines your options. Combined with a couple other specific details in mind, you will be able to navigate character generation and bring your character to the table.

Starting blank and writing down whichever options sound like fun at the time to can work but I do not recommend it. In my epicene, players that try this get overwhelmed or end up with a bundle of disconnected ideas and rules that don’t spark play. Having a few key ideas helps to quickly shave away anything that doesn’t reinforce your character’s concept. As long as you are making a character suitable to adventuring in gaslight fantasy you will find options befitting your concept during Victoriana Character Generation.

To simplify it further, I recommend my first-time players think of a cliché Victoriana archetype and a fantasy trope and then combine the two. That mixture can’t help but start ideas flowing or at least suggest a direction they could go. For example, go ahead and pick something from the Victorian Trope and the Fantasy Trope tables below:

Victorian Trope

Anatomist

Detective

 Gasfitter

Aristocrat

Ladies Maid

Stage Magician

Pickpocket

Music Hall Singer

Fantasy Trope

Animal Loving Druid

The Lost Prince

Uncivilized Barbarian

Peasant Hero

Tavern keeper

Balladeer Bard

Righteous Paladin

Bookish Wizard

Some of these ideas connect very naturally, for example, balladeer bard and music hall singer, done. Others are more interesting such as aristocrat and uncivilized barbarian. That strange juxtaposition is enough to get us thinking. I’m picturing a stranger to England with strange habits, a royal pedigree, and a keenness for hunting monsters. Or take gasfitter and bookish wizard. What modern convenience (or modern for the 1850s) would a wizard come to a middle-class house and install? Sigils, wards, or homunculi servants bound to the home?

Combining fantasy and the Victorian era lies at the heart of what makes Victoriana special, and it’s a great place to start building a character. Don’t let the plethora of options get you down. Start with an idea and chip away everything that doesn’t’ match what you want to play.

That finishes up this self-aggrandizing look at my house rules and habits. I hope this encourages those of you who haven’t had great experiences with Victoriana to give it another try, and give a long time Victoriana veterans food for thought. Next week we will start our multipart examination of Burial Clubs.

House Rules and Habits- Huldus and Halflings

As is inevitable with any series about house rules, we move on to discuss something that isn’t necessarily wrong. I just don’t like it. The corebook of Victoriana 3^rd edition avoids reinventing the classic fantasy races in favor of letting it’s unique mid-1800s setting bring out interesting juxtapositions and niches. Adventuring in the class-based society of London pulls these fantasy tropes into new places without requiring any additional reinvigoration. The familiar faces of the fantastic help pull players into the rich world of Victorian England.

So why change their names? Dwarves remain dwarves, gnomes remain gnomes, but calling “Halflings” and “Elves” “Huldus” and “Eldren” annoys me a bit. With the “Eldren” it’s not so bad. That name has been around since 2nd Edition and it perfectly evokes the subspecies place in Victorian society. On the other hand, “Huldu” derives from “Huldufolk”, creatures from Icelandic mythology roughly analogous to fairies. They live in specific stones set aside for their homes, and young Icelandic children are taught to never throw rocks for fear of hitting the hidden people. While there are some interesting connections between Huldufolk and Halflings, Halflings are already a fantasy trope so calling them Huldu just takes actual Huldu out of the game, and makes the Victoriana subspecies less accessible to new players. The name “Halfling” captures exactly what these creatures are, defines how they fit in society, and leaves the world wide open for stone-dwelling Icelandic elves.

I know this is nitpicking, but I do think it’s a good example of a problem with adapting real-world folklore for role-playing games. If you’re going to take folklore concept A and put it into your role-playing game as fantasy trope B, I think A should be as close to B as possible or B has to be made at least as interesting as A. I see this happen a lot. If werewolves are the result one curse and they live in one single forest, that’s very lame to me. Using these legends should make your world bigger, not smaller. In Victoriana’s case, it’s not so egregious, but I’m still calling them Halflings.

In case this rant left a bad taste in your mouth, I leave you with a few adventure ideas about Huldus and Halflings as your reward for reading this far.

Adventure Ideas:
A halfling master perfumer uses his naturally gifted nose to create the finest odors this side of the English channel. He detects certain charnel undertones in his competitor’s latest scent and notices those wearing the scent have a knack for bending others to their will.

Halflings' high fertility makes for large families. The miserly uncle of a halfling family died recently leaving his comfortable fortune to his nieces and nephews, or rather to the last surviving niece or nephew. Twelve of the inheritors mysteriously died. Is an heir killing off their competition to live as much their naturally short life span in luxury as they can? Or is the inheritance cursed from beyond the grave?

In the center of the tightly packed slums of London, an ancient stone sits surrounded by dilapidated houses. No windows look out over the stone, and no one ever takes the shortcut through the small courtyard. Locals know to leave the stone alone, but as the city grows and old houses crumble, progress demands the stone’s removal.