CREMATING THE DEAD.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume III, Issue 829, 6 October 1916, Page 8

CREMATING THE DEAD.

THE OLD METHOD AND THE NEW 1 Written for THE SUN.] |With the Hon. G. \V. Russell urging the Christchurch City Council to estab lish a crematorium, instead of opening a new cemetery, the subject of crema tion is of more than usual interest to the people of Christchurch. No one in authority has yet attempted to argue against cremation from a sanitary point of view. The objection usually raised springs from a regard for custom. A SUN contributor therefore deals wi'h the subject from a sociological am! legal point of view.)

When Hie world was young ami romantic ii honoured its heroic tiead by sending them up in smoke. It may be taken for granted that the heroes liked the idea of travelling up into the empyrean in gases—or otherwise they would not have bothered about being heroes. Sometimes, however, the warriors of old were cremated, if they fell in battle, whether they had done anything heroic or not. Cremation was a handy method of preventing a barbaric enemy from celebrating a victory or expressing its distaste for defeat by mutilating the bodies of its slain enemies. Of course, cremation in those days was a very different process from that which is practised to-day. Then, having got your dead hero, you laid him, very ceremoniously, on a pile of wood, lit the bonfire, and watched the flames tlo the rest. Nowadays—

except in the isolated Hindu villages in which the old rite of suttee occurs sporadically, and in parts of Japan and among native tribes in other parts of the world—cremation is done in close furnaces of great power, and the morbidly-curious are deprived of Ihe chance of seeing a body returned to the elements. The Change of Fashion.

However, as the world began to pride itself on becoming more civilised, it left off farewelling its heroes in the cleanly and scientific way and took to putting them underground in vaults or sarcophagi. In course of time this method, too, became less popular, until it was reserved only for persons of particularly high degree. Others were left to moulder like ordinary people, the only post-mortem indications of their importance consisting of the funeral trappings or the memorial stones erected above their bones. Cremation went quite out of fashion. It was forgotten entirely. Burial in the ground became the only method of what was regarded as the decent disposal of a dead body. For centuries the only persons who had any favour for cremation were those who considered it a suitable way of disposing of their enemies, and who were powerful enough to put their theories into practice. But they liked to have the subject alive when the cremating process was started. A few poor devils there were from whose bodies cremation and burial in the ground were alike withheld, deliberately. These were certain classes of malefactors or, sometimes, mere broken wretches whose principal crime was stark poverty. It was a pleasant custom of the times to do these persons to death, in divers ways, and then to throw their bodies into hedgerow or field or to hang them in chains, until they simply rotted into nothingness. There was a tine scorn for public health in those "good old days!"

Cremation Society Formed

However, as the nineteenth century came and grew older, science began to raise its head more proudly, and there was talk of a peculiar subject, one hygiene. Here and there in modern Europe a few bold spirits practised cremation. But a definite movement towards cremation of the dead did not start until 1874, when Sir Henry Thompson, in a notable article in the "Contemporary Review," strongly advocated cremation, as a necessary sanitary precaution against the propagation of disease. Sir Henry Thompson backed up his arguments by the results of experiments in the incineration of animals, in powerful furnaces. A few months later, the Cremation Society of England was formed, with Sir Henry Thompson as its first president. It erected a furnace near Woking. Rut at that it had to stop for a considerable time. The furnace was unused for a decade. The society was so much in advance of the times that the Home Secretary of that day threatened to introduce a Bill to make cremation illegal, if the society endeavoured to use its furnace.

That typically mid-Victorian attitude toward incineration of the dead affords an interesting little study in that particular branch of sociology which is concerned with the manner in which a race will cling tenaciously to its own particular idea of funebrial rites. As a well-known sociologist, Letourneau, has pointed out, in an interesting dissertation upon the funeral rites of various races, man generally looks upon death merely as metamorphosis, and pictures to himself another life based upon that life which is familiar to him. From this spring all the various funeral rites, because man desires to be translated into the next life in the nearest possible approach lo the shape in which he has enjoyed this life. In the olden days, the warrior always wanted his sword and shield to be buried with him—in I he after-life he wanted to be again a warrior, one of the ruling class. "Whatever be the custom adopted," says Letourneau, "man always furnishes the dead bod> with his arms and necessary food, under the hypothesis of a continuation of life after death. And like (he human body these objects have also their duplicate, their soul, their shade, which is destined to subsist and to serve their purpose in the kingdom )!' the dead. No doubt incineration was practised in so many different countries under the idea of emancipating more quickly and more completely these invisible efligies from the dead bodies, and also from the inanimate objects." Modern civilisation has modified—but not removed

entirely, be it noted—that old idea, varying only in detail according to races, of farewelling the dead, in their departure for the new life, in a certain manner and with certain accompanying objects and rites. Little wonder, then, that the idea of cremation shocked officialdom in conservative England, and little wonder that even the powerful plea of science has succeeded in only a slight degree with regard to disposal of the dead. The Legal Position Defined. For eight years after the formation of the Cremation Society, there was not a cremntorium in England. In 1882, however, a Captain Hanham had a small furnace erected on his estate in Dorsetshire, and he cremated his wife and mother. A year later he, too, was cremated. Then, in 1881, the old-new method of disposing of the dead received a notable impetus. A Welshman named Price, who was a Druid, placed his dead child in a barrel of oil, and set fire to the oil, incinerating the body. He was prosecuted at the Cardiff Assizes, before Sir James Fitzjamcs Stephen. In charging the Grand Jury, that learned Judge discussed the position of cremation, in relation to the law, in a manner which cleared the way for the Cremation Society to renew its activities. Sir James pointetl out that the change of burial for cremation was so complete that the burning of the dead had never been formally forbidden, or even mentioned or referred to, a;, far as he knew, in any part of the British law. The subject of burial for many centuries was exclusively a branch of the ecclesiastical or canon law. It was much more extensively studied in Roman Catholic countries than in England, because the law itself prevailed much more extensively. The general principle there was that participation in funeral rites was a privilege to which, subject to certain conditions, all the members of the Church were entitled, and Ihe deprivation of which was a kind of posthumous punishment analagous to the excommunication of the living. In some instances the civil authority had power to forbid burial, but there were no directions as to the method of disposal of the dead body. After further discussing burial customs, Sir James held that a person who burns, instead of burying, a dead body does not commit a criminal act, unless he does it in such a manner as to amount to a public nuisance at common law. It might be added that Price was acquitted.

Municipal Powers. After that cas<? had strengthened its hands, the Cremation Society made increasing use of its furnace 'at Woking. As time went by, crematoria were erected in various other parts of England. Two or three of them are municipal undertakings. In 1903 a Cremation Act came into force in England. It enabled any burial authority to provide and maintain a crematorium, but empowered the Secretary of Slate to make regulations for controlling the cremation of human bodies. The regulations which were made subsequently provide that cremation shall not be carried out in such a manner as to cause a public nuisance. Last year there were 1379 cremations in England.

New Zealand's Cemeteries Act provides, by Section -14 thereof, that "any person, by will or deed duly executed, may direct that his body shall, after death, be disposed of by cremation instead of by burial in the earth, and the executors of such person may carry such direction into effect in the manner provided * by this Act.'' Then follow sections empowering trustees of cemeteries to make provision for cremation, and empowering the Governor-in-Council to make regulations governing cremations. It may be noted that the wording of Section 44 rather suggests that cremation is illegal unless it is carried out in accordance with the written direction of the person deceased, and opens up a nice point as to whethef a father would be legally able t» have a deceased child cremated. Probably, therefore, that ardent advocate of cremation, the Hon. (1. W, Russell, Minister of Internal Affairs and of Public Health, would have to get the law altered before he could carry his ideas on the subject into practice. URN.