William Eassie

“ It is a matter of regret that those of our own poets who have been in favour of burning the dead did not enshrine their proclivities in verse. Southey, for instance, wrote that the custom of interment 'makes the idea of a dead friend more unpleasant. We think of the grave, corruption, and worms: burning would be better.' But he left us no poetry on the subject.
[27] It forms no part of my purpose to defend cremation against those who consider that its practice might lead to the commission of crime owing to the entire destruction of the body. ”

“ But we may assume that an universal system of embalmment is undesirable in our times. There is no purpose to serve in withholding from nature her very own. Cases may be imagined in which the practice would be advisable; but, as a rule, the earth's surface is required for the living, not for the dead; and we have, at least here, no underground caves. Had the Egyptians lived in a damp climate such as ours, there would have been no embalming. It is not every country that is suited to the practice. ”

“ If every individual promoter, male or female, of fifteen years old and upwards—without reference to the possession of property in any way—would, in view of the uncertainty of life, place such a request in his or her writing-desk, cremation would speedily prevail. The change from burial will otherwise be a protracted one, since few persons have enough strength of mind to run counter to the general custom, fearing the indignation of other relatives of the deceased. The weakest persons, however, have still a greater repugnance to doing anything contrary to the expressed wishes of the dead. ”

“ Nothing can apparently look more charming than a cemetery sparsely dotted with monuments, as, for instance, the Necropolis at Woking, seen from the railway station; but they speedily, far too speedily, fill. The cost of conveying bodies to these distant cemeteries must also be taken into account. In Vienna, where the city burial-grounds are 'more than full,' the question of conveyance to the new cemetery has provoked a great deal of angry discussion, and has been the means of bringing into notice several schemes for the transportation of the bodies to the site of burial. ”

“ It would be supremely foolish to object to the burning of the dead on the score of its being completely a heathen practice, and as if burial in the ground was not at one time open to the same objection. ”

“ No natural outfall will exist, and the drainage-water must be pumped up, the bare idea of which is horrible. It will be near also to water-bearing strata, or to a reservoir. Long before decomposition has taken place, owing to the smallness of the site and the impossibility of obtaining any more land except at high building prices, the organic matter hidden out of sight will be far too large in proportion to the area. From the foregoing we may conclude that a proper site for a cemetery is not everywhere obtainable, and that serious mistakes must often be made. ”

“ The aim of the Society is to promote the substitution of cremation for burial, by diffusing information on the subject, by co-operating with foreign Societies, and by raising funds to obtain an apparatus of the most approved kind, together with a suitable site, so that, for those who desire the performance of cremation after death, ample means should be available for the purpose. The letters of adhesion to the scheme which have been already received have come from every class of society, from Peers to the humblest commoners. ”

“ Few have given more time and study to practical cremation than Professor Brunetti. This gentleman sent a case of apparatus to the Vienna Exhibition, and records his conviction—arrived at after five experiments upon human bodies—that the total incineration of a corpse and the complete [104] calcination of the bones by fire is, under ordinary conditions, impossible. He has tried various combustibles, gas retorts, closed vessels, and the open air, and has arrived at the conclusion that special apparatus is indispensable to the success of any attempt at perfect cremation. ”

“ The only exception is in seasons of epidemics or when the land is laid waste by famine. Among the better classes the dead body is laid unmutilated, save by the removal of the intestines, in a coffin, and it is more or less carefully embalmed, according to the time it is to be kept. If the deceased belonged to a private family of moderate means, the burning takes place from four to six days after death; if he was wealthy, but not high-born, the body may be kept a month, but never longer, while the remains of a noble lie in state from two to six months, according to his rank ”

“ The actual process of burning here is simple and effective, and well suited for people amongst whom fuel is one of the dearest of the necessaries of life, besides being subject to a tax, which has been greatly mitigated by the present governor. A bed is prepared; it is said in the old [92] books that it should be as long as a man with his arm extended above his head, a fathom wide, and a space deep; it is also said that it ought to be on rising ground, so that the water poured on the ashes may easily run off. ”

“ Or if these questions are easily answered, why, if not for sanitary reasons, should any people have gone to the trouble and expense of cremation, when exposure or burial in the earth was so easy to perform and absolutely costless? [87]
When the necessity for cremation has once become a settled conviction with a people, nothing but the pressure of a conquering race or religion inimical to the practice will eradicate it. In parts of Madras where fuel is dear, the body is reduced to ashes with dried cow-dung and wood. ”

“ Scarcely a year passes over our heads without adding to our list of cremation-practising peoples. Thus we have lately learnt that amongst the Gāro Hill tribes of Bengal, the dead are kept for four days and burnt at midnight within a few yards of their residences, the ashes being put into a hole in the ground dug upon the exact spot where the burning took place, and a small thatched building erected over the grave, which is afterwards allowed to fall to pieces. ”

“ The common practice with us is to allow about a quarter of an acre of burial-ground to each 1,000 head of population, where the soil is favourable; but some authorities double this allowance, and leave room for embellishing the ground. Wise cemetery companies also allow a space between each alternate row of grave-spaces, in order to prevent trampling. They, moreover, encourage the purchase of family freehold grave-plots containing three or six grave-spaces. It is true that the proprietors of the burial-ground profit by this payment in anticipation ”

“ Just as now a few Christians are contesting the propriety of burning the dead upon any consideration whatever, so the heathens were disputing the like question before the advent of Christianity. Heraclitus advocated burning—Thales and Hippon burial. Up to this day the Persian fire-worshippers will have naught to do with cremation because they regard it as a profanation of their deity. Nay, peoples are still disputing in countries which are painted in pagan black upon our missionary maps, and where Christians as yet have no footing. ”

“ The publication of crude and undigested fancies does more harm than good to the subject they are meant to benefit.
It has been urged that the practice of burning the dead had its origin in a heathen religion, but it is not wise to accept the imputation. Let us take Greece for an example. All historians inform us that the people of ancient Greece practised inhumation. But when they did practise cremation, they nowhere associated the burning of the dead with the worship of the gods. ”

“ Do not believe that the practice is in any way opposed to religion, for such a belief has no anchorage in truth. And in order to practically bring nearer to us the time when our much-enduring mother earth shall no longer be systematically poisoned, all those who are favourable to the institution of cremation should forthwith put [126] into writing their desire that their remains shall not be buried, but shall be consumed according to the method of cremation best attainable. ”

“ Cremation is the only practice which seems commendable in times of warfare. Numerous dead Saracens were burnt by the King of Castile. During the wars between the English and the Burgundians and the French—the latter led by Joan of Arc—the dead were on one occasion piled up outside the city of Paris, and consumed in one huge pyre. After the late battle of Cuenca, the Carlists threw many of their dead into fires presumably lit for the purpose. ”

“ Nearly the whole of the heat of the expended fuel is left in the regenerators, and the smokeless gases which enter the chimney to be cast into the air rarely exceed 300° Fahr. By means of valves the regenerators and air-ways which were carrying off the expended fuel, can be instantly used for carrying air and gas into the reducing chamber, and the heat left in them consequently utilised. Not only is a saving of 50 per cent. in fuel thus effected, but the noxious gases from the body would be entirely consumed in their passage down through the regenerators. ”

“ Cremation has met with the greatest enthusiasm in various parts of Germany, as might have been expected from so practical a people. The authorities in the town of Dresden, in Saxony, offered to make it conditionally legal, provided that its advantages were thoroughly made manifest by the promoters, which must have been duly done inasmuch as the Presse of Dresden informs the world that the first corpse was reduced to ashes in the Whitsuntide of 1874. [159] When the ashes were withdrawn, the funeral ceremony was celebrated in the usual manner. ”

“ By the order of Sir Cecil Beadon a cinerator was erected at Calcutta for the burning of human bodies; and various regulations were issued with the view of abolishing the ancient system of imperfect cremation. The funeral pyre was not absolutely prohibited within the limits of the city; but the disgusting custom of throwing partially-consumed bodies into the river was at once put down. Sir Cecil Beadon also forcibly suggested that all bodies should be taken outside of the city, to be burned in some suitable place set apart and enclosed for the purpose. ”

“ In any country where cremation is practised, it is only when there is absolutely no property whatsoever that burning is omitted. For instance, a Zaisaugh amongst the Kalmucks, whose property will pay for a proper offering, can have his dead body burnt, and only the utterly poor are buried or abandoned. ”

“ A body would be put in at one end of a closed vessel, which in its transit through the cinerator would be exposed to intense heat, and after a certain time drawn out and opened. The ashes of the deceased would alone remain, which could be carried away and kept.'
As it may prove interesting to some reader, I will now give a description of a cremation ceremony of the very highest class, as performed in Siam, in which country, as has been stated elsewhere, only those dead are buried whose survivors cannot pay the fees of the priests. ”

“ One estimable feature in this system of gas-producing is that the production can be arrested for half a day without deranging the producer, the fuel and brickwork being sufficiently bulky to maintain a dull red heat for that period. Air cannot enter the grate unless the gases given off in the producer are withdrawn to the furnace; and when the gas valve of the furnace is reopened, the production of the gases is once more continued. ”

“ The process, which lasts altogether twelve hours or more, is divisible into two portions:—First, the fire is allowed to char and smoulder, out of the free access of air, till all the heap becomes a glowing red-hot mass, just as in charcoal-burning or ballast-burning at home. But after the fire has penetrated the whole heap it is poked up, the air admitted, and there is a thorough blazing fire, which goes on burning till all the fuel is turned into ashes, amongst which are discernible some of the hardest bones—as the malar, temporal, and shafts of the long bones—semi-vitrefied. ”

“ When the coffin is not laid in contact with the soil, but entombed in a vault or walled grave, the occupied space is covered by a stone cemented down, air-tight, upon a ledge in the wall, and the raising of which is for ever forbidden. The entombment may also be made by an air-tight surrounding of concrete. The best practice of vault burial is to place some charcoal or disinfectant along with the coffin, so that no foul gas shall escape should reopening be necessary. ”

“ The process of cremation is effected by means of heated air. The gasometer is put in action by the consumption of coal, charcoal, peat, or wood. The gas thus produced is conducted through a pipe provided with a regulating-valve, where, meeting with a stream of air, also under regulation, it is converted into a flame. This flame extends through the room which has the regulator, so that the brick material which is piled up there is heated to white heat, and kept to this. ”

“ The danger is always persistent in the cases of dry and porous soils, exactly those which are most fitted for cemetery purposes. In a churchyard at Stuttgart, in which only five hundred bodies were interred yearly, and not more than one in each grave, the north-west wind rendered the emanations from the dead perceptible in houses two hundred and fifty paces distant. It will thus be seen that the soil best fitted to ensure decay is exactly the worst one for neighbouring houses. ”

“ But there is little to recommend the practice, even if the idea were not revolting to a people who exist largely upon fish and crustaceans. When a flight of locusts was some years ago swept by a storm into the Bay of Smyrna, many people there would not feed upon fish for a considerable time afterwards, and what would the feeling be if only the dwellers in our littoral towns and villages followed out burial in the sea? Even the sinking of the bodies with heavy weights down to the ocean's depths would be hazardous. ”

“ It is likely enough that whenever cremation is again practised, urns will form the chosen receptacles of the ashes. Vases or urns have always been associated with sepulture in classical times. The finest vases which have come down to us from antiquity were not originally intended for sepultural purposes, but for the adornment of the mansion. Frequently, however, these were deposited in the tombs along with the unburnt body, [206] as being the objects most valued by the deceased when living. ”

“ The current of combined air and gas simply plays upon the body with a transparent flame, until the whole becomes incandescent. There is not even the least effluvium. In a late experiment, when nearly a quarter of a ton of animal matter underwent cinerary treatment at Dresden, the gases between the flue and the chimney proper were intercepted by an aspirator, and found perfectly inodorous. [190] Once incandescent, the body soon assumes a hue of translucent white, and then speedily crumbles into ashes. ”

“ A considerable quantity of gas is now evolved, and the moveable shutters come into operation. The body then burns freely, and, if the pile of wood have been deftly arranged, complete carbonisation ensues at the end of a couple of hours. The shutters are then opened, another sheet of metal is lowered over the carbonised mass to concentrate the heat still more, and the wood is renewed. By means of this apparatus, and at the cost of 160 or 180 lbs. of wood, complete cremation is achieved in two hours more. When the furnace is cold, the residue is collected and placed in a funereal urn. ”

“ During the time occupied in these last farewells, the men attached to the burning-ground had been busily employed in erecting the funeral-pyre; and the corpse was at length lifted off the bier, and placed on the pile. Officiating Brahmins then anointed the body with a mixture of which the principal constituent was ghee. Hard by was piled a heap of fragrant sandal-wood, split into thin faggots, and these the relatives of the deceased laid one by one upon the body, the priests all the while reciting prayers for the dead. ”