THE FATHER OF CREMATION

Evening Star, Issue 12207, 27 May 1904, Page 2

THE FATHER OF CREMATION

Outside the work of his own profession, the late Sir Henry Thompson's most important achievfnwnt was the part he took in the establishment of cremation as a prop.;r method of disposal of the dead. He witnessed, and was much impressed by, the cremations by Bnmetti in 1869 and 1870, and contributed an article, entitled 'Cremation the Treatment of the Body After Death,' to the ' Contemporary Review' for January, 1874. In the same month a meeting was held at his house, and the following declaration was signed by all present:—"We disapprove the present custom of burying the dead, and desire to substitute some mode which shall rapidly resolve the body into its component elements by a process which cannot offend the living, and shall render the remains absolutely innocuous. Until some better method is devised we desire to adopt that usually known as cremation." The signatories included Shirley Brooks, William Eassie, Ernest Hart, the Rev. H. R. Haweis, Q. H. Hawkins, John Cordy JeafTreson, P. Lehmann, C. F. Lord, W. Shaen, A. Strahan, Henry Thompson, Major Vaughan, the Rev. C. Voysey, and T. Spencer YYells; and these frequently met to consider preliminary movements. The ' Contemporary' article was replied to at length by Air Holland, then Medical Inspector of Burial 3 for England and Wales, whose reply drew a rejoinder from Sir Henry, describing several experiments made by him on the bodies of animals in London and Birmingham, which proved that cremation could be easily performed without producing smoke or any unpleasant result, and leaving only a few pounds of pure white ashes. It was then decided to form a society for the purpose of promoting the practice of cremation. Th.s was done at a meeting at Thompson's house on April 29,1874, and the society was the lirst instituted, the second having been set on foot at Milan in 1876. Thompson was appointed president of the English society, and Mr Eassk honorary secretary, an oitice which he held mtil his death in 1888, when he was succeeded by the present honorary secretary Mr J. C. Swinburne-Hanham. After much earnest advocacy of the cause by Thompson and others, sufficient money was obtained, and a crematorium was built at Woking; but its use was forbidden by Lead Cross, who was thai Home Secretary.

and, the society were compelled to wait with , such patience as they could command. Three ■ instances of cremation in the provinces were left unnoticed by the Government, but, a body having been cremated in Wales in disregard of a prohibition fiom the local coroner, a prosecution was instituted, and the question came bsfore the Law Courts ' in 1884. Sir James Stephen then gave his j celebrated decision declaring the procedure | Mo be legal if effected without a nuisance, and the society at once decided to perform the process publicly. The first body, that of a lady, wis cremated at Woking on March 26, 1885, and the practice rapidly gained ground. Two hundred and forty bodies were cremated there in the single J ear, 1898. Si.* Henry Thompson retained , tho presidency of the society to the last, and was mainly responsible for the precautions whi:h are taken whenever there is any possibility of suspicion with regard to tho cause of death. He published a little look on the ' History and Practice of Modern Cremation,' which reached a third edition in 1899, and in which there are full details af the work of the society. j Among the objections originally urged ' against the practice of cremation, one of the most important had reference to the destruction of any evidences of death by ! poisoning, or other form of murder, which i might be afforded by the remains; and | oir Henry Thompson early felt that the | weight of this objection was almost en- \ tirely dependent upon the very imperfect ; manner in which the causes of death were I then (as they are now) ascertained and re- ! corded. In 1893 he acted as the chief I spokesman of a deputation to the then ! Home Secretary, Mr Asquith, in relation ! to thi-3 subject, and pointed out to him ! that, in the year 1890, about one death in every thirty-six which occurred in England or Wahs was registered without any certificate of the cause which had produced it, and that, from various circumstances, about one certificato in every twenty-four was without value; while in Scotland the state of things was even worse. The medi- ! oil profession had been called upon by the ' Legislature to accept the duty and respon- | sibility of certifying without any sort of I payment or other recognition of the ser- • vice thus rendered to the public ; and al- . thougu ihi, in no way rendered the dutv ■ less obligatory it was impossible to deny hat an observance so lightly regarded bv the wate was likely to be regarded as I lightly by the executive, and that in course ' of time the certificate had come to be! treated almost as a matter of form, or I a all events, as one of slight importance.' I Sir Henry, about the same time; contributed several letters to the Press upon the subject, and dwelt at length upon the necessity of improved regulations with regard to it. His efforts have not yet borne fnut, and from 40,000 to 50.000 bodieVare i annually buried under valueless or im£rfect i certificates, and without inv «,i • ■ •,« f« n, wuuout, any real inquiry •>s to the causes by which death has been ESS; f the ; Cremation Soc,et ™ under his guidance, found it necessarv to msist upon the fulfilment of specSTXirS mens ol their own, by which any conceal