When were obits ever free? The family typically paid to run an obit in the paper. I can't imagine why it would be any different. After that, people had to pay $0.25 to $2.00 for the paper to see them.
Libraries typically keep archives of newspapers accessible for free. I imagine the long record of obituaries in this archive would be invaluable for certain types of research.
Newspapers used to cost a lot less than $0.25 and the ones still printed today tend to cost more than $2.
Isn't that just inflation?
what's your point?
Yeah, around the same time a decent wage used to be $20k.