The publicity stunt, organised by deceased mail screening service Mortascreen, involved a horse-drawn funeral carriage filled with DM being led around Parliament Square to "take a public stand against the levels of direct mail that continue to plague the UK’s bereaved".

Mortascreen product director Karen Webster said: "The funeral is not by any means an attack against the medium itself, but against those that continue to tar the industry through their neglectful practices."

Recent figures from the Deceased Preference Service (DPS) showed that each year around 59m pieces of DM are sent to people that have died.

The worst affected cities were in the north of England, with 268,528 mailings sent to deceased people in Hull, which has a population of 240,000, equating to 1.12 pieces of mail per person. Other areas that ranked poorly were Wakefield, Newcastle, Liverpool and Sunderland.

"We have worked for years with the direct marketing industry to reduce the levels of direct mail that are being sent to people who have died," added Webster. "However, there remain a number of large mailers that refuse to adhere to direct marketing requirements."