Professional mourners are not only in Timaru - they're in Rotorua as well.
Yesterday, reports from funeral directors in South Canterbury claimed some people regularly attend funerals and wakes without having known the deceased.
Their reason for attending? The chance of a free cup of tea or a meal.
It's a scenario
that's not unfamiliar to one Rotorua funeral director. "There are professional mourners in Rotorua," Richard Bennison from Bennison's Funeral Home said.
Mr Bennison said he had seen cases of the false mourners in the city for the last 17 years.
"We're used to it now," he said.
There were a "couple of people" that seemed to be at nearly every funeral, he said.
The professional mourners were elderly and tended to sit down the back during a service.
After the service they would go for a cup of tea and a bite to eat with the genuine mourners, sometimes even going to the deceased person's house.
It was not the funeral director's job to question whether people knew the deceased or not and if they were causing grief to the family they would have been asked to leave, Mr Bennison said.
Other Rotorua funeral directors contacted by The Daily Post had not heard of professional mourners, although some people seemed to go to a lot of funerals, Keith Osborne of Osbornes Funeral Home said.
However, he believed this was probably because they knew a lot of people around the same age group.
Te Arawa Kaumatua Pihopa Kingi said people going to tangi in the Te Arawa area were relations or knew the deceased and he had not heard of any cases of professional marae mourners.
- DAILY POST (ROTORUA)
