Cremation urn

“ This is a condition often met with in the case of urn cemeteries of later times. In burials by inhumation the grave was frequently marked by a standing stone, or a circle of earth or stones. As inhumation and cremation were practised simultaneously, both methods may be found in the same mound.
When the body was burnt the incinerated remains were carefully collected and usually placed in an urn, and then buried, either in the earth, or in a prepared grave. A common practice was to bury an urn in a more ancient tumulus or barrow, and hence these are known as secondary interments. ”

“ It has been also a subject of regret to me that their remains lie so far off. I care little for the fate which happens to their bodies; and yet, had such a practice as cremation 220been in use, it would sometimes have been a comfort to feel that I had their ashes with me. Collected in an urn, they might either repose in columbaria, like those at Rome, or in a mortuary chapel in my own house. ”

“ The small urn containing the parental ashes may be taken by migratory man into the new world or the old, always preserved as the most sacred relic of the family.
How much more beautiful and better would it not be to have the remains of our kin near at hand, in the house. Only then we would be reminded of them every day. Every building could be made to contain a mortuary chamber. Then we would know our dead shielded from the elements. ”

“ There is nothing repulsive in the idea of cremation. People’s prejudice is the only opponent it has. If they could be awakened to a sense of the horror of crowding thousands of bodies under the ground, to pollute in many instances the air we breathe and the water we drink, their prejudice would be overcome; cremation would be taken for what it truly is—a beautiful method of disposing of the body. The friends of the departed can do as they please with the remains. Take the ashes of a wife or daughter and put them in an urn ”

“ The ashes could afterwards be collected, and reverentially placed in an urn, [204] or other suitable receptacle, and conveyed to their last resting-place. Plate III. represents a view of a mortuary chapel, such as would probably be required in a Christian cemetery; and the scene there represented will serve to show how completely decorous the procedure would be. [205] And one may here remark that the great advances made by science can nowhere better be evidenced than by a comparison [119] between the modern and ancient systems of cremation. ”

“ The autochthonous population of Attica naturally adhered in the main to the old Pelasgian rite of inhumation. Yet at Eleusis, even according to Philios who strangely belittles the importance of his own discoveries [1246] , there was one certain case of cremation; and in the Dipylon cemetery also was found one urn which could be dated with equal certainty. One or two other probable cases have also been recorded by others [1247] . Clearly then as early as the eighth century B.C. cremation was sometimes used, side by side with inhumation, as the effective means of disintegrating the dead body. ”

“ The cremationists of to-day, who propose to substitute a decent æsthetic and sanitary mode of disposal of the dead for the present harmful and loathsome custom of inhumation, are repulsed, met by sentimental objections, are even called monsters without religion, without reverence for the dead.
But the apostles of incineration are as far removed from striving to suppress and murder such sacred feelings as is Dan from Beersheba. On the contrary, they believe that cremation is far more conducive to a pious veneration for the dead than interment. ”

“ Most powerful of all in its favor is the prevention of premature burial. All these are on the side of cremation, and against it is but one—sentiment. It seems more beautiful to lay our friends to rest, softly pillowed, shrouded in satin, inclosed in rose-wood, covered with flowers, and of anything beyond we refuse to think. We erect the imposing marble, set out the blossoming plant, and carry flowers to the spot. The cemetery appeals more strongly to the sentiment than does the crematory. ”

“ At a burial there is but darkness, at a cremation rosy light unaccompanied by fustiness; the dead is really reduced to ashes, and with him the time-honored saying, “Peace to his ashes,” is not a hollow phrase, as it is with those who are interred.
Those who do not wish to miss religious and other ceremonies at incinerations may use any form of burial service they like, and those who desire to dispense with them may do so. And those who already have beloved dead in the cemeteries may rest by their side when the end is come, for the ashes can be interred as well as the body. ”

“ We, the undersigned members of the British Medical Association, assembled at Cambridge, 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 may render the remains absolutely innocuous. Until some better mode is devised we desire to promote that usually known as cremation. ”

“ It is an established fact that there is no certain sign of death, none but the beginning of decomposition. To prevent premature burial the body must be retained until the commencement of decay is visible. Incineration protects from the horrors of burial alive. Even if a person in a trance should be introduced into a cremation furnace, the intense heat to which the body would be subjected would extinguish life immediately and painlessly. ”

“ The Fourth Medical Congress held at Milan on the 5th of September, 1877, endorsed cremation, stating that it is a veritable scientific progress which has the advantage over inhumation in corresponding to the exigencies of hygiene. It also expressed its conviction that incineration in no way offends against the affection of families for their defunct, the respect and veneration for human remains, and the religions principles of the surviving. ”

“ As the widow often leaps from the pile, and is chased back again, into the flames, by the benevolent Bramins, the fagots, which are not heaped around the pile, but “laid on the bodies,” cannot be a very oppressive load; and the quantity, thus employed in the suttee, is for the cremation of two bodies, at least, the dead husband, and the living widow.
There can be no doubt of the superior economy of cremation, over earth-burial. ”

“ I rejoice at the thought that most writers on the momentous subject of incineration were medical men. Who, indeed, would be better qualified for such a task than the man who may daily witness the pernicious effect which the dead exercise over the living.
Those who are friends of the reform should come out openly in its favor. Crematists who are on the fence, or who, perhaps, hide back of it, might just as well keep out of the combat between cremation and interment altogether; we have no use for them. If you believe in cremation, candidly say so, and tell your friends why you believe in it. ”

“ If the relatives are too poor to afford the expenses incident to cremation, they bury the body, but exhume it for burning when their financial condition permits. On the day of the cremation, which is usually fixed by an astrologer, the remains are transferred from the jar to a wooden coffin and carried with much pomp to the meru, or place of cremation. When the deceased is of royal or noble blood the meru is frequently a magnificent structure, sometimes costing many thousands of dollars, built for the purpose and torn down when that purpose has been served. ”

“ Some have advocated burial at sea; others, and among them Sir Seymour Haden, have pressed forward the advantages of using perishable coffins, wicker baskets, and the like—a suggestion as excellent as it is economical, for the sooner the earth and the body meet the better it is. Perhaps, in this scientific generation, some one may invent a totally new method of disposing of the dead, which will commend itself both to those who advocate cremation and to those who dislike it. ”

“ The people of Burmah cremate their rich dead, and inhume the poor or consign them to a stream. Persons of rank are embalmed before incineration, and placed on exhibition in a convent or temple for six weeks. At the funeral, the body is borne in a coffin on the shoulders of men, who are preceded by female mourners chanting an epicede. The corpse is followed by the relatives. When the slowly moving train arrives at the pyre, which is commonly six or eight feet high, the remains are placed upon it; the wood of the funeral pile is generally laid crosswise, to bring about a stronger draught of air. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Over our own islands also, cremation seems to have been common. Urns are still unearthed from time to time in England, and in [36] parts of Ireland—one part of Antrim especially—the ground is almost studded with burial sites of this character. In Scotland, too, many similar remains have been discovered. In Hindoostan the system is all but universal, and in Siam, where the ashes are frequently placed in urns of great value, [74] it doubtless existed from the first peopling of the country. The people of Pegu and Laos also burn their dead ”

“ But if we are to follow the prototype so closely, why do we practise burial in the earth? And why do we not lay our dead in roomy sepulchres? [14] I have perused most, if not all, of the religious objections which have been urged against cremation, and I humbly say that they appear to me to be outside the pale of argument altogether. They rank only as very respectable crotchets, and never rise above mere sentiment. The truth is, that the question of burying the dead or of burning them ought never to have been made, if ever it has seriously been made, a religious question. ”

“ There will be a long and warm controversy before the people will generally abandon a custom of such antiquity as earth-burial; but cremation will supersede it in the end. The present style of burial does not do any one any good. On the contrary, it destroys hundreds, perhaps thousands, of lives every year. A good many deaths due to graveyard gases or water contamination by cemetery effluvia escape observation, since the real cause of the decease is seldom suspected. Incineration, however, does nobody any harm, and is in accord with the humane and progressive spirit of the age. ”

“ Incineration destroys all disease germs and at once removes all possibility of the contamination of air and water by the dead.
Then why not introduce cremation and do away with all the evils described in this chapter? It is of no consequence to the dead, whether they rot in the earth and originate miasma, or are transformed by fire into pure white ashes. They feel as little of the process of decay as they do of the flame; their eye is surrounded by the same darkness, whether they are down in the deep grave or in the glowing light of the crematory furnace. ”

“ It is the beginning of a chemical process—a process which ends finally in the total dissolution of the corpse. The chemical constituents of our body are returned to nature. Burial and cremation are in a sense the same; in either case the body oxydates. The great distinction between the two lies in the fact, that the burning in the grave requires years for its completion, and is fraught with danger to the living, whilst in case of incineration the body is reduced to its primitive elements in the brief space of a few hours, and is unaccompanied by anything that may do harm. ”

“ When the corpse has been cremated the funeral party returns to the house and the next two days are spent in feasting and dancing. After this, the widow bedecked with the trappings of woe proceeds to the cremation ground. All groan loudly and weep as they pick up the bones left by the flames. As a sign of mourning they merely get their hair cut. ”

“ Besides human and animal remains, I think all garbage should be destroyed by fire.
The idea of cremation which, carried by the wings of enthusiasm, traversed the whole civilized world in the spring of 1874, is really naught but a demand of hygiene in favor of our own health. Not only physicians, but also laymen, should enter the arena where the great fight between earth-burial and cremation is going on, and combat for glorious incineration. ”

“ In a country like ours, where many of the cadavers which are dissected in our medical schools are stolen from the graveyards, the proposed introduction of cremation must, no doubt, raise a storm among teachers of anatomy, who are fearful that the supply of corpses will be cut short by the reform. ”

“ We throw the earth aside and finally lay bare a coffin. A coffin? Something that must have been one in the remote past. A sickening odor greets us. We step back to draw a breath of pure air. At last we muster up sufficient courage to return to the grave. A touch of the spade causes the top-board of the box to fall to pieces, and there is revealed to the sight a spectacle that is horrible. The ground around the body has been moist and non-porous; what has remained of the corpse is only a mass of foul flesh in a state of putrefaction. ”