My mother reported an argument in the nineteen twenties between her father and his brother who wanted a loan.
Father: You won’t even have the money for your funeral.
Uncle: Just leave me in the Livingroom. I can stand it as long as you can.
My grandmother and her two sisters had a brother who in the 1920s would have been called "a bum."
He boxed in his youth, and spent the rest of his life drinking. He reportedly lived at a YMCA downtown. A cop who was a family friend would occasionally check in on him or see him on the streets
they all chipped-in to some kind of insurance scheme to pay for his funeral.