CREMATION PRACTICE

Taranaki Daily News, 18 October 1927, Page 13

CREMATION PRACTICE

INCREASE IN SYDNEY. A CONTROVERSIAL STORM. Sydney, Sept. 29. The fact that cremation in Sydney is becoming increasingly popular, if one may fittingly use that expression, and that, in two years, more bodies have been cremated in the metropolis of New South Wales than in the older-establish-ed crematoria in other big Australian cities, taking the whole period of existence of those establishments, recalls the controversial storm which has been raging in a section of the Press round the statement of a doctor that it is practically impossible nowadays to make an error regarding death. Not a few people, differing from the doctor, believe that even to-day, as in the days when Poe, basing his story on fact, wrote “The Premature Burial,” bvrisU alive is still a distinct and ghastly possibility. It is possibly in a measure because of this, apart from other grounds that cremation is now coming into favour in Sydney. In the ease 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. INSTANCES OF DOCTORS’ ERRORS. That burial alive is still a lurking fear in the minds of many people is clear from the frequently-recurring provision in wills that, after death is supposed to have occurred, certain stringent measures should be taken to make quite sure that 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, of which details are given, in New South Wales only a year or two ago. This man, it was alleged, took an epileptic fit the night before his death. A doctor pronounced him dead, but a quarter, of an hour after the doctor had gone the man daggered the bereaved relatives by sitting up and talking to them. He survived the. next day, but in the night had another seizure, which proved, fatal. SURPRISE FOR MEDICAL MAN. That is only one case cited to show that even doctors are not infallible. That it is authentic is clear from the fact that the name of the man and of the town is given Sow. Another case which the doctors are asked to ponder over is that of a man working in Sydney. It is claimed that he, too, was once certified by a doctor to be dead. As a boy he fell a victim to blaek measles. One night he was left for dead by a doctor, who said he would furnish a death certificate the next morning. The doctor got the shock of his life the next day when he produced the document. The boy was alive, having recovered during the night. One correspondent asks, if there be any doubt about a person being dead, why the authorities do not insist on the application of Dr. Iceard’s test. It is explained that tide French scientist’s discovery was made in 1911, and that when injected into a living subject it colours the skin, but leaves no trace when injected into a corpse.

"‘UGLY CITIES OF THE DEAD.” Even if many people will continue to bann 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 the 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 school girl. In- the office of the Cremation Society, by the way, is a simple but dignified urn, containing the ashes of a man 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.