What kind of casket was William Randolph Hearst buried in?

Answer 1

When the famous newspaper magnate died in 1951, he was buried in one of the most prestigious luxury caskets available - a seamless copper deposit casket manufactured by the National casket company of Boston, Mass. The casket, a round corner design with the type series designation No. 21200, was largely the same as that which had been used for the funeral of President Franklin D. Roosevelt a few years before. With walls of a thickness of 1/8 of an inch (about 3 mm) and a triple lid - an undivided outer lid, split inner panels and a full oval plate glass lid over the body of the deceased - the empty casket had a weight of some 700 lbs. The interior of the casket consisted of white hand tufted velvet. Hearst's casket was one of the most expensive ones available at that time because caskets made of electrolytically deposited copper cost up to a dozen times the price of caskets made of 32 oz sheets of wrought copper. Black & White photos (available on the internet) taken at the Hearst funeral seem to indicate that his casket had a silver plated finish. This would have increased the high price of the casket for another 20%. For the Hearst family, price was of course no consideration.