CREMATION

Evening Post, Volume CIV, Issue 87, 10 October 1927, Page 9

CREMATION

INCREASING IN SYDNEY

FEARS OF PREMATURE BURIALS

(From '.'The Post's" Representative.)

SYDNEY, 2atli September. J-Jio tact that cremation ill bydney is becoming increasingly popular, it one muy fittingly use that expression, and that, in two years, more people have been cremated in the metropolis of A Tew South Wales than m the older-established crematoria 111 the other big Australian cities, taking the whole period of existence of those establishments, recalls the controversial storm which has been raging in a section ot the Press round the statement' of a doctor that it is practically impossible nowadays to make an error regarding death, .hot a few people, disagreeing with the doctor, believe that even .to-day, as in the days when Poe, basing his story on fact, wrote lhe Premature Burial," burial alive is still a distinct and-ghastly possibility, it is possibly iv a measure because of this apart from other grounds, that cremation is now coming into favour in Sydney. In the case of cremation, it is stated, two medical men must view the body 'after death before it is converted into its primary constituents, leaving simply a pure white ash. 'That burial alive is still a bogey in the minds of ■many people is clear troin the frequently-recurring provision in wills that, after death is supposed to have occurred, certain stringent measures should be taken to make quite sure tliat life is .altogether extinct before the body is consigned to the grave. That errors can be made regarding death is , proved, according to one correspondent, by a case, oE wJiicli details are given, in New South Wales only a year or two ago. One correspondent asl;s, if there be any doubt about a person being dead, why the authorities do not insist on the application of Dr. Iccard's test. It is explained that this French scientist's discovery was made in 1911, and; that when injected into a living subject colours the skin, but leaves no trace when injected into a corpse. Even if many people will continue to barm it on religious grounds, and to identify it with pagan ritual, cremation, on grounds purely of sanitation, must inevitably be practised far more largely in the metropolis of Sydney before many years. Great tracts of land, abutting populous residential areas, are already converted into vast and, sad to say, ugly cities of the dead. Everywhere one sees shockingly neglected graves, vases and other ornaments rotted and rusted with age, and decrepit tombstones: That there is this tragic neglect is not always the fault of relatives. The good souls who visited these graves, perhaps every week, have in many cases long since passed away. One of the latest cremations in Sydney was that of a little schoolgirl. In the office of the Cremation Society, by the war, is a simple but dignified urn, containing the nnlies of a mem who died in Germany. His -widow, who proposes to live in Sydney permanently, has left the ashes in the society's care until she arrives.