Thursday, January 25, 2007

The Disposal of the Dead

The history of the cremation movement along with the social and religious implications of the rapid and widescale rejection of inhumation in favour of this method is, I think, a fascinating and yet rather neglected aspect of our culture. It is one to which, I suspect, I will return from time to time as this blog progresses. In modern Britain, cremation is by far the most popular method of disposal of the dead. With over 70% of us opting for the fiery retort, it is worth remembering that `modern' cremation has only been with us for a little over a hundred years and that the early advocates of this method met with a great deal of opposition and even open hostility from practically all sectors of British society. For your edification, I will quote some verses penned by an anti-cremationist in a Surrey newspaper of 1879 in reference to the siting of Britain's first crematorium at Woking:





Have you heard of the new crematorium at Woking,
Where funeral fires, `tis proposed, will be smoking;
Where corpses, consigned from all parts of the nation,
Will be burnt by the new fashioned mode of cremation?

The people of Woking are all up in arms,
Protesting most loudly, and filled with alarms:
And now wonder. Oh! Horror, the thought is vexation,
Our deceased ones consumed by the fires of cremation!

The babe that we dandled so loving from birth,
And cherished so fond as the dearest on earth:
The sickening thought will not bear contemplation,
To burn his dear flesh in the fires of cremation.

Let funeral pyres blaze on Indian soil;
From its practice in England our feelings recoil;
And we should do best as a civilized nation,
To help our new subjects abolish cremation.

In our atmosphere rural we've no wish to spread
The stench that arises from burning our dead.
Earth closets, we're told, are the best sanitation;
No, thank you, we beg to decline your cremation.
Anon

Quoted in full in Brian Parsons: `Committed to the Cleansing Flame - The development of cremation in nineteenth century England' 2005 (pp74-75)

Bone Idle

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