BURIAL ALIVE.—CREMATION FROM AN ÆSTHETIC AND RELIGIOUS POINT OF VIEW.
Our great American poet, Edgar Allan Poe, says: “To be buried alive is
beyond question the most terrific of all extremes which have ever fallen
to the lot of mere mortality.”
Is any death more horrible than this? To be embraced, unprepared, down
in the deep dark grave! To awake again with the greatest longing for
life, suffering the most severe bodily tortures, in the coffin! To
realize that there is no escape from inevitable death! Who can conceive
the feeling of finding one’s self in the grave, the blood rushing to the
head, the body trembling convulsively in the vain endeavors of casting
off the oppressing weight, the organs of respiration laboring without
avail for air, the muscles of the whole body working without result, and
above all, being mindful of certain death near at hand?
From time to time anti-crematists, advocates of earth burial, of course,
assert that cases of burial alive are exceedingly rare and occur very
seldom. This is very erroneous. Our newspapers teem with the reports of
such cases, and one must be a careless reader indeed not to observe
them. As I am a daily peruser of some specimen of the secular press, and
hardly anything of importance escapes my notice, I succeeded in making a
collection of cases of burial alive, from which I will cite some
striking examples. A Wheeling, W. Va., special despatch to the _Chicago
Tribune_ relates the terrible fate of a young married lady as follows:—
“One of those ghastly stories of interment before life has become
extinct, which cause an involuntary shudder of horror to pass through
the reader, is current in this city to-night. The victim, so the story
goes, is a young married lady of 20 years. In May of last year, three
months after her marriage, the lady was taken violently ill, and after
lingering for ten days, apparently died. There were certain
peculiarities about the appearance of the supposed corpse, however,
which caused a suspicion in the mind of the attending physician that his
patient might be in a trance, but after keeping the body for four days
with no signs of returning life, the remains were consigned to the
grave, temporary interment being made in the family lot in an abandoned
graveyard. A day or two ago the body was disinterred prior to removal to
another cemetery. To the surprise of the sexton the coffin-lid showed
signs of displacement, and on its being removed the grave-digger was
horrified to find the remains turned face downward, the hand filled with
long tufts of hair torn from the head, and the face, neck, and bosom
deeply scratched and scarred, while the lining of the coffin had been
torn into fragments in the desperate efforts of the entombed victim to
escape from her horrible fate. Since the discovery the young husband has
been prostrated, and his life is despaired of. The names are withheld.”
The sequent curious case of premature interment occurred at Leipsic, a
small town in the state of Ohio. A lady who was pregnant died suddenly.
She was put in a coffin and placed, temporarily, to await the
burial-day, in a vault. Some of her relatives, however, thought that she
had been disposed of too hastily and caused her coffin to be opened.
When the air struck her body, she revived. She was taken home and
recovered entirely, being soon after delivered of female twins.
A despatch from Woodstock, Ont., dated Jan. 18, 1886, to the _Detroit
Evening News_ states:—
“One year ago a girl named Collins died, as was supposed, while playing
on the street. The body was moved last week from where it had been
buried in the family plot, and the parents wishing to view the remains,
had the coffin opened, when to their horror they discovered that a
dreadful struggle must have taken place after burial. The shroud had
been torn to shreds, the knees were drawn up to the chin, one arm was
twisted under the head, and the features bore evidence of dreadful
torture,—all unmistakable proofs that the girl had been buried alive.”
The celebrated English anatomist, Winslow, is said to have been twice
nearly interred alive.
The Marquis D’Ourches, courageous in all other respects, had the
greatest fear of premature burial. He recorded all the stories of burial
alive; he believed in them, and even asserted that one of his uncles had
awaked under ground.
“I have seen death in every aspect,” said a general to Dr. Josat, a
gentleman rewarded for a book on mortuary houses, “and it has never had
any terrors for me; but I own that I shudder at the notion of finding it
at the bottom of a ditch in the cemetery.”
Incomplete death, or trance, as it is called, stands midway between
death and life. During this state the senses cannot receive impressions;
they are inactive, paralyzed, as it were. Yet the spark of life is still
there and can, under proper care, be retained until the natural
condition is restored. Yet almost always trance ends through ignorance
and carelessness in complete death.
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.
It is alleged by some who are more impressed by prejudice than reason,
that cremation is heathenish, brutish, pagan, atheistic,—in short,
contrary to Christian practice.
This I deny! To be sure the heathen did practice it,—the ancient
Asiatics (Oriental peoples in general), Romans, Greeks, Teutons, and
Etruscans,—but at the same time they executed grave-burial; and yet I
have never heard anybody decry the latter as abominable, disgusting, and
heathenish. It must be kept in mind, that the first Christians were
compelled by their heathen persecutors to adopt burial. They were forced
to inter their dead secretly in the catacombs; they could not, even if
they had chosen to, burn their dead, as the smoke from the cremation
pyre would have betrayed them.
Why inhumation should have become so universal among the Christians,
that it is looked upon as a necessary part of the religion, and all
other means of disposal of the dead as heathenish, is not entirely
plain. There is no condemnation of cremation in any of the dogmatic
teachings of the apostles. The early Christians, whether in Judæa,
Greece, or Rome, were mainly of the poorer classes, who had to bury
their dead. The mere fact that the richer and more educated classes, who
were the most difficult to proselytize, universally practiced cremation
would probably cause that custom to be associated with their other
heathenish practices.
The Romans regarded the early Christians as a new sect of the Jews and
called them “Nazarenes.” And, in fact, Christianity was born of Judaism;
for Jesus, the founder, himself says (Matthew v. 17): “Think not that I
am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy,
but to fulfil.” It is easy to understand how, being an offspring of
Judaism, Christianity should adopt that method of disposing of the dead
then prevalent among the Jews. At first, as Dean Stanley avers, the
breach between the heathens and Christians was not an utter one.
According to this great divine the early Christians inhumed in the same
places as the heathens, and even painted and engraved upon the catacombs
representations of the pagan gods. Later on the breach widened, however,
and the Christians, as intimated above, were forced to bury their dead
in seclusion.
It is alleged by some eminent writers on theological subjects that in
the beginning Christians were even cremated.
Merivale, the historian, holds that letters inscribed on many of the
Christian tombs in the catacombs imply that the early Christians
sometimes burned their dead. Nevertheless, at the end of the fourth
century Christians heard of burning with horror, and finally becoming
inimical to the practice, although it was nowhere forbidden in the New
Testament, made haste to abolish it in Europe.
[Illustration:
THE BLACK AND WHITE JASPER URN.
(Barlow Collection.)
]
At the time of Pope and Dryden a classical reaction set in, and now
again may be seen in every churchyard the broken shaft, the inverted
torches, and innumerable marble urns which “in pride of place” rest upon
the monuments in our cemeteries.
The phrase “ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” which occurs in almost every
funeral sermon preached by modern clergymen, is but an allegory which
was derived from the ancient custom of cineration. It is impossible to
imagine ashes without the act of burning.
The inscription “peace to his ashes” which so often is found, in black
or golden letters, on the tombstones of the present time, preaches
incineration in our burial-grounds.
When the Romans embraced Christianity, it was transformed completely,
and represented a strange commixture of rites partly of pagan and partly
of Hebrew origin. The dalmatica of priests, utensils for celebrating
mass, frankincense, etc., were derived from the Jews; whereas many other
things, as for instance the worship of images, sprung from heathenism.
The papal tiara has a remarkable resemblance to the historical conical
cap of the Roman Pontifex Maximus; and to this day the Latin appellation
of the Pope is identical with that of his pagan predecessor. The
derivation of the crosier, the pastoral staff of the bishops, from the
crook of the augurs is undeniable.
The mummy graves and representations upon the vessels of clay which were
deposited in the sepulchres with the mummies testify that the cross (and
indeed the upright cross) was one of the oldest and pre-Christian
ornaments in the hands of the gods of ancient Egypt. It was not before
the twelfth century that it was erroneously made a specific Christian
symbol, ostensibly to demonstrate that although the cross was most
contemptible, yet Christ himself had elevated it into dignity. Thus the
sign of the cross became the symbol of Christianity. Such wooden
crosses, history tells us, were also placed as a memorial upon the
mounds of heathen graves.
If we would not want to imitate heathenism any more, we would have to
quit eating with knives and forks, stop wearing boots and pantaloons,
and do away with surcoats and rings. With the exception of steel pens
and matches, but little would be left of our daily necessities of life
that would not be an imitation of paganism.
The perpetual lamp burning at the ideal grave of the Saviour on the
altars of Catholic churches is an imitation of the lamps which were lit
on the memorial days of the deceased in the columbaria of ancient Rome,
and by whose maintenance slaves, according to testamentary directions,
attained the position of freedmen.
The decoration of our burial-grounds with flowers on the memorial days
of the dead is copied from the analogous usage of the heathenish Romans.
The enemies of incineration say that every Christian is bound to
practice interment because the Bible (I. Moses iii. 19) prescribes:—
“In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return into
the ground; for out of it wast thou taken; for dust thou art, and unto
dust thou shalt return.”
The above has no value whatever as evidence for inhumation; since at the
times when the books of Moses were written the inurned ashes were also
deposited in the dust, _i.e._, the earth. The preservation of urns above
ground is a much later custom. The above citation has no reference to
the destruction of a body by fire or decay, but directs simply that the
final remains of man, the dust, be placed in the earth. At least, this
Bible passage might be urged against columbaria, but it has no bearing
whatever on cremation.
If we should have to follow the Bible in all things, we would have to
give up most of our modern inventions. For instance, the day of
agricultural machines would be over, and we would have to tread out corn
with oxen as of yore.
It must be remembered that the early Christians practiced many things
which Christians now do not practice; and they abominated some things
which Christians now universally practice. For instance, the early
Christians did not worship in temples or churches: they abominated
temples as either pagan or Jewish; they hated art and condemned statuary
and painting, especially in connection with religion; they destroyed
many masterpieces of ancient art which were not religious, besides some
that were; and they burned all books save the Bible. But these notions
are no longer a part of Christianity, and were never part of its true
faith.
When the Romans and Greeks knew better than we know, we exercise no
compunction in adopting their practices. Our boys are taught from the
classics; artists study the models of Greek, that is, pagan, art; much
of our philosophy is heathen, and more of our jurisprudence. The
ancients were wiser than we in practicing incineration. Why not, then,
imitate them in this respect? Granted even that cremation were a “pagan
custom,” not to adopt it when it has been conclusively demonstrated to
be superior to burial, simply because it is of heathenish origin, shows
nothing but miserable narrow-mindedness.
If cremation is a “pagan custom,” how about interment? Earth-burial
to-day is practiced by more heathens than Christians. Or are not those
whom we choose to style pagans in the majority? Would it not, therefore,
be far more correct to denominate inhumation a pagan custom?
Dr. Neil declares:—
“It was once considered an eminently Christian virtue, entitling him who
practiced it to the honors of canonization, to discard the use of soap
and water; and this kind of mediæval piety prevails a good deal yet,
notwithstanding the good old Roman practice of ablution. I do not find,
however, that even Christian sanitarians object to the more frequent use
of the bath because it was the pagan practice.”
Inhumation is claimed to be the Christian method of disposal of the dead
_par excellence_ because Christ was so disposed of.
“By the same sort of reasoning,” says the _Medical Times and Gazette_ of
London, England, “might it not be held that crucifixion has been so
consecrated that it ought to be the mode of capital punishment in
Christian countries?” Moreover, as the Rev. H. R. Haweis informs us,
“Christ is no example to us, for according to Christian belief he rose
from the dead and saw no corruption.”
It is exceedingly interesting to read what Christ himself said about
burial.
Jesus, being a Jew, like the Hebrews in general had little regard for
burial and the grave. Among the Jews contact with the dead was
considered an act of defilement that had to be soon atoned for.
From the following passage (Matthew viii. 21, 22) it is plain that
Christ was no friend of interment:—
“And another of his disciples said unto him, Lord, suffer me first to go
and bury my father. But Jesus said unto him, Follow me; and let the dead
bury the dead.”
By the dead (_i.e._, spiritually dead) the Saviour, according to the
best exegesis, meant the outside world, and he wanted to intimate that
burial was fit work for them, but not for the Christian or disciple.
See also St. Luke ix. 59.
Christ disparaged the importance of burial more than once. Indeed, it
seems that he paid little attention to the disposal of the dead. We find
him, during his ministrations on earth, healing the sick, turning water
into wine to make glad the hearts of guests at a wedding feast,
administering to the wants of the indigent, and cheering the
down-trodden; but never at funeral ceremonies. It was he who declared:—
“God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.”
Dr. Le Moyne says:—
“So far as we have knowledge of New Testament history, we find no
command given anywhere which was a ‘thus saith the Lord’ for any mode of
burial. The Christian world was left to choose a mode of burial.”
When Jesus distinguished between cave and earth burial, he considered
the latter the most despicable mode of burial, to which he compared the
scribes and Pharisees; for when he reproved them by rebuke and
disparagement, he said (Matthew xxii. 27):—
“Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for ye are like unto
whited sepulchres, which, indeed, appear beautiful outward, but are
within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness.”
The above shows in what estimation the founder of Christianity held
inhumation.
It seems Christ himself gave the preference to cave-burial, for so he
was disposed of. He was placed (_vide_ Matthew xxvii. 57–60) in the
rock-hewn tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, which was open in front, and the
door of which was closed with a stone.
Christ was not buried in the earth, but was placed in a sepulchre
because he was a Jew. Had he been an Egyptian, he would have been
embalmed after the fashion of a mummy. It was merely a matter of custom,
and is not necessarily a precedent to be followed. It is evident that to
be buried as Christ was, Christians would have to be deposited in
rock-hewn tombs.
The assertion of certain religious fanatics, that cremation interferes
with the Christian doctrine of the resurrection, proves untenable enough
when one but remembers that both interment and incineration lead to the
same result; namely, to the total destruction of the body. In the case
of cremation this takes place within an hour; in earth burial the
process may last for centuries until completed.
Professor Max Müller, the famous linguist, in his biographical essays,
writes:—
“I often regret that the Jews buried and did not burn the dead, for in
that case the Christian idea of the resurrection would have remained far
more spiritual.”
Cannon Liddon believes that:—
“The resurrection of the body from its ashes is not a greater miracle
than the resurrection of an unburnt body. Each must be purely
miraculous. Faith in the resurrection would have been as clear and
strong if the Jews had burnt their dead, as it is when, as a matter of
fact, they buried them.”
Dr. Le Moyne says:—
“Some religionists object to cremation because it might possibly throw
obstacles in God’s way of collecting the particles which once formed the
body. They seem to forget that the dispersion of the atoms which compose
the human body is just as wide and perfect by inhumation as by
cremation.”
Napoleon I., the Great, was a firm believer in cremation. On Dec. 14,
1816, five years before his death, he conversed freely with his surgeon,
Barry O’Meara, on various topics.
Mr. O’Meara (“Napoleon in Exile; or, A Voice from St. Helena.” By Barry
E. O’Meara. W. Gowans, New York, 1853, Vol. I. p. 277) says:—
“He afterwards spoke about funeral rites, and added, that when he died,
he would wish that his body might be burned. ‘It is the best mode,’ said
he, ‘as then the corpse does not produce any inconvenience; and _as to
the resurrection, that must be accomplished by a miracle, and it is easy
to the Being who has it in his power to perform such a miracle as
bringing the remains of the bodies together, to also form again the
ashes of the dead_.’”
During another talk with his medical adviser the ex-emperor said, “that
he had ordered the slain burnt after the battle at Wagram.”
I clip the following from the _Medical Herald_, and commend it to the
notice of opposers of cremation on the ground of religion:—
“The most prejudiced religionist cannot offer one valid objection, for
if God is to call up the scattered remains of the dead from both land
and sea on the day of final resurrection, the ashes shall be as easily
resolved from the urn as from the débris of a building in which bodies
may have been accidentally consumed by fire.”
I should like to see the Christian who believes that God will not take
unto himself the soul of the brave fireman, who rushes courageously into
a burning building to rescue his fellow-beings, and has the misfortune
to fall and perish in the flames, while an indolent crowd is looking on
below. Nay, nay! I believe that he will be twice as welcome in the
kingdom of heaven.
At the opening of the Bolton cemetery in 1874, Bishop Fraser combated
the anti-cremation movement, based upon the doctrine of the
resurrection, with the sequent vigorous language:—
“The ancient Romans believed in immortality, and yet they believed in
burning the bodies of their dead. Urn burial was certainly quite as
decent as the practice of interment; and urns containing the ashes of
the dead were more picturesque than coffins. Can any one suppose that it
would be more impossible for God to raise up a body at the resurrection,
if needs be, out of elementary particles which had been liberated by the
burning, than it would be to raise up a body from dust, and from the
elements of bodies which had passed into the structure of worms? The
omnipotence of God is not limited, and he would raise the dead whether
he had to raise our bodies out of churchyards or whether he had to call
our remains, like the remains of some ancient Romans, out of an urn in
which they were deposited 2000 years ago.”
It is a clerical duty to dispel superstitions. “Superstition,” well says
Sprengel, “is the grave of science.” But it is not only the grave of
science, but of all progress. The clergy should aid the latter and not
place obstacles in its way.
Colonel Olcott says:—
“I am too firm a believer in the immortality of the soul, to view with
patience the inconsistency of those who behave over the dead bodies of
their friends as if the immortal part were being laid away in the
ground. The more I might love my dead, the less willing I should be to
leave the fair form that had once held an immortal spirit to turn into
putrid carrion under ground, and breed a myriad of loathsome creatures
out of its own rottenness. The attempt to substitute the scientific,
poetical, and rational system of cremation has my earnest sympathy. I
pray heaven that it may be possible to commit my body or that of any of
my beloved to the pure flame, that in one short hour will purge them of
dross as gold is refined in the furnace seven times heated.”
Even the organ of the Mormon hierarchy, _The Deseret News_, that
believes in an absolutely literal interpretation of the Bible, reasons
thus:—
“Some object to cremation on the ground of its inconsistency with the
Christian doctrine of the resurrection. We do not see any force in that.
No particle of matter is destroyed by fire; it is merely changed in form
and reduced to primitive elements, or in their direction, for it is not
clear that the action of fire extends so far as to resolve organized
matter into its primal atoms. The same power that can call forth from
the tomb a body that has decayed and gone to dust can quicken the dried
ashes and draw from the elements the gases that have been dispersed by
the flames of the crematory. How much of the actual particles that are
seen now by the natural eye is necessary to the reformation of the human
frame into a spiritual body with flesh and bones does not at present
appear. But this is certain: the power that can resurrect the body from
the grave or from the sea can bring it forth from any place or condition
in the universe. Belief in the resurrection implies belief in God, and
with him all things are possible.”
Kate Field, who of all Americans probably is best acquainted with Mormon
life and doctrines, points out that when the literal Mormon abjures
literalness, it is high time for orthodox Christians to cast away the
above-mentioned sacrilegious objection.
How, by the way, about those who fall overboard and are swallowed by the
fishes, or those who are blown up by an explosion? Are they to be
consigned to eternal damnation simply because they happened to meet with
an accident? Are they not to be raised hereafter?
The absurdity and unreasonableness of this erroneous notion was tersely
and happily expressed by the Earl of Shaftesbury during a conversation
with an eminent (Sir T. Spencer Wells, I believe) promoter of the
present cremation movement. He said:—
“What would in such a case become of the blessed martyrs?”
Many of them have been reduced to ashes, and still these are held
sacred.
I would advise the person who holds the opinion that the resurrection
cannot take place after cremation to seek quickly the nearest physician
who makes a speciality of insanity. I wonder if such persons are
conscious that they commit a sacrilege in doubting that God is
omnipotent.
From a purely catholic point of view it is urged that incineration would
destroy the relics of individuals who might afterward be canonized.
This is the most ridiculous objection of the whole lot! Are not the
ashes of a saint as venerable as his bones? When such ashes are kept in
a sealed urn, we may be certain of the genuineness of the relics. Today,
there is no guarantee whatever of their genuineness—many cities claiming
to possess the only real relics of this or that saint.
[Illustration:
THE PORTLAND VASE.
(Originally a Cinerary Urn.)
]
There is no relation between cremation and religion. They are
independent of each other. No passage in the Holy Bible prohibits
incineration. The Christian religion does not oppose it, nor does the
Jewish, as I learnt from an article in the _Jewish Chronicle_.
Some newspapers seem to think that cremation is contrary to the Jewish
doctrines. Our brethren at Gibraltar and in the north of Africa bury
their dead in quicklime. No one can deny the orthodoxy of the Jews on
the shores of the Mediterranean, yet more than once have some of their
number been disposed of in the manner related above; the method being
carried out but lately at Mile-end. Among the Jews at London, instances
of cremation are not unknown.
A Swiss clergyman, the Rev. Mr. Lange, declares that our Saviour never
spoke a single word in condemnation of incineration. Dr. Altherr,
_Religious Journal for the People_ (No. 11, 1874), also entertains the
same opinion.
An English Catholic pointed out that cremation would once more enable us
to bury our dead in the churches, not only in the crypts of the sacred
edifices, but also along the sides of the body of the churches.
Rev. Henry Ward Beecher had a word to say about cremation in a recent
sermon of his. He thought that the universal Christian teaching of the
resurrection of the body would prevent any general acceptance of it
while that teaching prevails. Of course, a man of a “classical”
education cannot reject incineration altogether, especially when he
considers it from a hygienic point of view.
I have always been of the opinion that a great many clergymen fear to
state their real views concerning cremation, lest their congregation
might discharge them and engage the services of some other theologian;
and I still have the same impression.
The so-called religious objection to cremation is wholly unsound, as
even a great many anti-cremationists admit; it is therefore not
surprising that “religious” opposition is fast weakening and waning
wherever it has existed at all.
A late writer in the _Church Review_ advises us to take care that
incineration does not fall into infidel hands, and so become at last a
symbol of irreligion.
The cemetery is regarded, in general, as a permanent resting-place of
the dead, where they may sleep undisturbed. Man of the present time puts
his beloved into the dirty, dark ground, and hands them over to the foul
putrefaction; he places upon their graves large, heavy monuments, as if
to keep them down and prevent them from finding their way back again
into this sinful world. But he thinks not of the festering mass of
corruption hid away under the tombstone; to him the departed is more
like one asleep, like he or she was when death claimed the mortal body.
He fondly imagines that his dear ones shall remain there forever, that
their quiet rest shall be unbroken. From year to year, however, bodies
are added to those already buried, the disgusting state of overcrowding
which I described minutely, with all its evils, shows itself, and then
one of two things happens: either the remains of those buried before are
ruthlessly dug up by the sexton’s spade and thrown into the mud whenever
a new grave is made, or all of the bodies are exhumed and taken away;
the soil is parcelled, and the new generation takes possession of the
“city of the dead.”
In some cemeteries corpses are allowed to remain in a grave only a
stipulated time; in English burial-grounds, where a freehold right is
not secured, the remains may rest undisturbed but seven, in France five,
years.
The sentiment of the public is expressed in the sequent extract from a
lecture by the Rev. Brooke Lambert:—
“There is no subject on which people feel more deeply than the
disturbance of the remains of their ancestors, and even the displacement
of effete memorials of them. I find that the prevailing feeling is that
the dead ought never to be removed, nor the position of their monuments
changed even by a hair’s breadth. Now _whilst our present system of
burial remains, such changes in their places of interment must occur_.”
When Mr. Walker, the surgeon, inspected the Portugal Street Cemetery at
London, England, on April 27, 1839, he discovered that two graves had
been opened, the bones of the remains exposed to view; and a lot of
coffin-wood, some quite fresh, intended (as he was informed) for
firewood.
A gentleman who visited the same burial-ground some time before (_vide_
_Times_, June 25, 1838) wrote: “I was shocked to see two men employed in
carrying baskets of human bones to the back of the ground through a
small gate. I have 12 of my nearest and dearest relatives consigned to
the grave in that ground, and I felt that I might perhaps at that moment
be viewing, in the basket of skulls which passed before me, those of my
own family thus brutally exhumed.”
A correspondent to the _Weekly Despatch_, of September 30, 1838, thus
describes St. Giles’ Churchyard, where he had just been:—
“What a horrid place! It is full of coffins up to the surface. Coffins
are broken up before they are decayed; and bodies removed to the
bone-house before they are sufficiently decayed to make their removal
decent!... The bone-house is a large, round pit. Into this had been shot
from a wheelbarrow the but partly decayed inmates of the smashed
coffins. On the north side was a man digging a grave. He was quite
drunk. So, indeed, were all the grave-diggers we saw.”
Walker saw the tin plates removed from the coffins broken up, and
witnessed how many wagon-loads of bones were taken to the
charnel-houses.
Lord Ronald Gower writes in _Vanity Fair_:—
“The other day I came across a somewhat rare little brochure,—an account
of the violation of the royal sepulchres of St. Denis, during the first
French Revolution. The work of destruction and sacrilege commenced early
in October, 1793, and lasted all the month. The first corpse found was
that of Henry IV, the once beloved Henri de Navarre. Some curiosity, if
not affection, still seems to have lingered even among those patriots
who have constituted themselves body-snatchers, and the bearnais was
propped up against the church wall in his shroud, and became quite an
attraction for the crowd. One of the republican guards even condescended
to cut off the king’s gray, upturned moustache, and place it on his lip;
another removed the beard, which he declared he would keep as a relic.
After these marks of attention were exhausted, the body was thrown into
a huge pit filled with quicklime, into which successively followed those
of its ancestors and descendants.
“On the next day the corpses of Henry IV’s wife, Maria de Medicis, that
of his son, Louis XIII, and that of his grandson, Louis XIV, were added
to this. The body of the sun-king (as Louis XIV’s courtiers loved to
call him) was as ‘black as ink.’ What a contrast to that majestic,
bewigged head, as we see it on the canvas of Le Brun and Rigault, must
not that poor blackened skull have been! The body of the Grand Monarch’s
wife and that of his son, the Dauphin (father of Louis XV) followed; all
these, and especially the latter, were in a state of shocking decay.
“The following day poor harmless Marie Leczinska’s body was torn from
its resting-place, as also were those of the ‘Grand Dauphin,’ the Duke
of Burgundy and his wife, and several other princes and princesses of
the same race, including three daughters of Louis XV. All these were in
a state of terrible decomposition, and in spite of the use of gunpowder
and vinegar, the stench was so great that many of the workmen were
seized with fever, and others had to continue the grewsome work. By a
strange chance, on the very morning that Marie Antoinette’s sufferings
came to an end on the Place de la Revolution, the body of another
unfortunate queen saw the light of day,—it was on the 16th of October
that the body of our Queen Henrietta Maria, who had died in 1669, was
taken from its coffin and added to the ghastly heap in the ‘Ditch of the
Valois,’ as the pit into which these royal remains were hurled was
called; that of her daughter the once ‘Belle Henriette’ came next, and
then in quick succession the bodies of Philippe D’Orleans; that of his
son, the notorious regent; of his daughter, the no less notorious
Duchesse de Berri; of her husband; and half a dozen infants of the same
family. On the same day a coffin was cautiously opened. This was found
at the entrance of the royal vault (the customary position for that
containing the latest deceased king), and contained the remains of Louis
‘le bien aimé.’ No wonder that the body-snatchers hesitated before
withdrawing the corpse from its enclosure, for it was remembered that
Louis had perished of a most terrible illness, and that an undertaker
had died in consequence of placing the already pestilent corpse in its
coffin. Consequently it was only on the brink of the ditch that the body
was removed and hastily rolled over the edge, but not without the
precaution of discharging guns and burning much powder, and even then
the air was terribly tainted far and near.
“I turn the page and find that we are only in the thick of all these
dead men’s bones and uncleanness, for the republican resurrectionists
began by the Bourbons and had still to disentomb all the Valois, and
further back, up to the Capetian line, and are not content until the
almost legendary remains of Dagobert and Madame Dagobert reappear.
Suffice it to add, that after Louis the Well-beloved had been disposed
of, came in succession, like the line of royal ghosts seen by Macbeth,
Charles V, who died in 1380, whose body was one of the few
well-preserved, and was arrayed in royal robes, with a gilt crown and
sceptre, still bright; that of his wife, Jeanne de Bourbon, who still
held in her bony hand a decayed distaff of wood; Charles VI with his
queen, Isabeau de Bavière; Charles VII and his wife, Marie D’Anjou; and
then Blanche de Navarre, who died in 1391. Charles VIII, of whom nothing
but dust remained, Henry II, Catherine de Medicis, Charles IX, and Henry
III, were disinterred on the morning of the 18th; ‘after the workmen’s
dinner,’ Louis XII and his queen, and among other less interesting royal
remains, the bones of Hugh, Comte de Paris, father of Hugh Capet; and so
on the work went, till one tires even of the details of the preservation
of this or that king or queen. Can anything be more shocking than to
know that all the horrors of decay and decomposition will remain even
after two or three centuries have passed over the lifeless form, and
that, supposing one has the ill luck to be thus coffined and one’s body
removed, ‘a black fluid, emitting a noxious smell,’ will run from out
our last home, as was the case with those royal remains during that hot
summer month at St. Denis in 1793?”
The Rev. H. R. Haweis says:—
“You cannot preserve the buried dead securely from the outrages of the
living. The people who dig graves, or are employed to remove bones, are
not as a rule scrupulous, but they are very often drunk. The other day
only a number of wild Irish were so employed at New York; the bodies
were offered for sale on the ground to a party of medical students.
These young fellows had the grace to shrink from the horrors they then
witnessed. One coffin was found full of a heavy decomposed mass, like
spermaceti; it was used to grease the axle-tree of the cart. Another
coffin contained the body of a woman, aged 20, as the inscription
announced. She had rested for 107 years—laid there with what tears, what
tender regrets of husband, or lover, or mother! But now her head was
rudely seized and kicked like a football from one ruffian to the other.”
But the “sweet sleep and calm rest” of the dead was not only broken by
the ruthless hand of man, but was even disturbed by the elements.
On the 26th of August, 1854, at Herrnlauersitz (Guhrauer Kreis) more
than 100 corpses were washed out of their graves by an inundation. Many
of them remained in their coffins. They were found afterward in gardens,
yards, fields, in the woods, and even in houses, whither they had
floated. Sixteen days passed before the bodies were all collected; some
were recovered whole, others in parts; then they were buried in one
large pit forever (?), as the officiating clergyman announced.
“I was long since cured of a belief in earth burial,” says a very
intelligent army officer, “by an appalling sight I witnessed when going
down the Mississippi. There had been a great freshet, during which the
river had so changed its course as to invade a cemetery and dislodge its
occupants, who, in various stages of decomposition—the coffins having
rotted or been torn asunder by the torrent—were floating down the
stream. It was a ghastly spectacle.”
I don’t think that the people along the banks of the mighty river were
particularly edified with the sight. And if, at the time, they would
have known of some other mode of disposing of the dead, I am sure they
would have adopted it without hesitation.
A similar occurrence happened at Kansas City, Mo., in February, 1886.
The Missouri River being blocked by ice, caused the channel to rise and
sweep the lower part of an island away that lies opposite the city, and
upon which is the small-pox hospital. About 20 graves were in this part
of the island; they were opened by the flood and the corpses that had
been interred in them swam down the river in their coffins. These bodies
had been buried only since one year. The people on both sides of the
Missouri, from which the city derives its water-supply, were quite
agitated over this affair.
At the same time the cemetery at Copiano, Chili, was inundated; many of
the vaults were full of water and the coffins were floating around,
while many of the common graves had been completely cleared of their
contents.
The most horrible feature of the situation was that the water which
flows from the cemetery goes into the river which supplies the
inhabitants with water for domestic purposes.
The _Quarterly Review_ (No. XLII, p. 380) states:—
“Many tons of human bones every year are sent from London to the North,
where they are crushed in mills constructed for the purpose, and used as
manure!”
And a correspondent of the _Times_ writes to his journal from
Alexandria:—
“The other day at Sakhara, I saw nine camels pacing down from the mummy
pits to the bank of the river, laden with nets in which were femora,
tibia, and other bony bits of the human form, some two hundred-weight in
each net, on each side of the camel. Among the pits there were people
busily engaged in searching out, sifting, and sorting the bones which
almost crust the ground. On inquiry, I learned that the cargoes with
which the camels were laden would be sent down to Alexandria, and thence
be shipped to English manufacturers. They make excellent manure, I am
told, particularly for Swedes and other turnips. The trade is brisk and
has been for years, and may go on for many more. It is a strange fate to
preserve one’s skeleton for thousands of years, in order that there may
be fine southdowns and cheviots in a distant land!”
Gen. W. T. Sherman once visited the catacombs under ancient Syracuse.
His guide informed him that there were a million interments, but that
the contents of every chamber had been sold for manure. The general
asked him if a single grave had been spared; not one.
Only a short time ago a London florist bought two cart-loads of mould,
and found it full of legs, arms, skulls, and other human bones. He
brought an action against the person from whom he purchased the soil for
misrepresenting his “goods.”
On Feb. 9, 1874, the railroad tunnel under the cemetery of Père la
Chaise at Paris, France, caved in with a thundering crash, forming a
pell-mell mass of coffins and bodies, earth and débris.
In our own country the rest of the dead is fast becoming from year to
year more insecure.
The _Medical Herald_ affirms: “As the increasing necessities of man
create new demands for space, graveyards are demolished and converted to
other uses. In Louisville, Ky., within the past fifteen years, two
extensive cemeteries have thus been transformed,—one on Portland Avenue
into a common, and one in Jefferson Street into a park, called Baxter
Square.
“Now the youth stroll along the graded walks and sit in the shaded
nooks, upon the very ground in which the bodies of their ancestry have
decayed. The sacred spot of last repose of grandparents is now the
mirthful scene of the nocturnal orgies of irreverent grandchildren.
Cremation would render this impossible, and place any profanation of the
sacred memorials of the dead beyond the public eye.”
Recently two burial-grounds,—one in New England, the other in
Pennsylvania,—caved in, and the thickly crowded bones of many
generations were exposed to view.
In my native city, Detroit, four cemeteries, to my knowledge, were
closed and given up to the living. In every case save one these
burial-grounds were excavated, the coffins, bones, semi-decomposed
bodies, etc., carted away, and business blocks erected in their stead.
In one of these cemeteries a brother of mine was buried; what became of
his last remains I know not. Possibly they were used to fertilize a
field; or perhaps cupidity tempted men to steal his body for the purpose
of dissection; or an unscrupulous grave-digger may have sent his bones
to a bone-mill, vended his coffin-plate, and used his coffin for
firewood. Who knows? I would give a great deal if the relics of my
brother, decently inurned, could be with me; but alas! I must give up
expectations of ever finding any trace of him again.
[Illustration: THE PROPOSED DETROIT CREMATORIUM.]
Within a quite recent period at least two graveyards in Montreal have
been torn up to make public squares; and it is not likely that any more
respect will be shown to cemeteries in the future than there has been in
the past.
Dr. Wm. Porter says: “I well remember, when a boy, seeing our old sexton
exhume a body buried for several years,—that of a strong man called away
in the prime of life. The rotting coffin was slowly lifted from its damp
bed, and the lid being broken, we saw within a horrible mass of
putrefaction. Matted hair and decomposing grave-clothes but poorly
covered the blackened skeleton as it lay in the once handsome casket,
now reeking with the emanation of its loathsome contents. Yet this had
been a beautiful grave; roses had blossomed upon it, and the arbor vitæ
had whispered to it. There would be but little plea for the grave on the
ground of sentiment could we see the changes there taking place; there
would be few, if any, who would not choose that the body, after faithful
service, should be purified by fire, rather than rot in such a grave.”
We are accustomed to consider sacred the venerable remains of our dead,
and the simplest memorial of a departed friend makes us, if but for
moments, sad. Therefore, all who lay any claim to civilization or
humanity must be vehemently opposed to the profane exhibition of the
bones of the deceased in bone-houses, where they lie pell-mell in a
heap, or catacombs, where they stand braced against the wall, lie in
their coffins, or are put away in niches, _i.e._, on the shelf, and
where any dawdling fool may inspect them for a small sum of money.
The Rev. H. R. Haweis states: “Where are the thousands who were laid in
the heart of Paris, and who slept for centuries in the graveyards of the
Innocents, St. Eustache, St. Etienne de Prés? Every tourist who takes a
return ticket to Paris may gaze upon their bones, speculate upon their
skulls, and finger their dust. By order of the minister of police they
were all dug up in 1787 and carted off to the catacombs. The bones were
cleaned and arranged in grim and picturesque symmetry. In one gallery
are the arms, legs, and thighs intersected by rows of skulls; the small
bones are thrown in heaps behind them. Whose dust is separate there?
whose ashes are sacred? And yet they were borne to this grotesque
sepulchre with priests and tapers.”
As regards disrespect and insult to the dead, a correspondent of the
_Medical Times and Gazette_, writing from Bordeaux, says:—
“The earth around one of the oldest churches in Bordeaux seems to have
something peculiarly antiseptic in its nature, so that the bodies buried
during ages were converted into mummies. During some alterations at the
beginning of this century these bodies were laid bare, and instead of
being decently buried again, they were taken out of their resting-place
and ranged upright in a row around a crypt under the bell-tower of St.
Michael. Here they constitute a disgusting and demoralizing show, which
is visited by crowds of people, and I am afraid that the clergy of the
church are not ashamed to pocket the profits. A rough fellow, a candle
on the end of a stick, such as they have in wine-cellars, goes round as
showman. He taps and thumps the bodies to show that they are perfectly
sound, tough like leather trunks, and not the least brittle. ‘See here,
gentlemen, is a very tall man; see how powerful his muscles must have
been, and what excellent calves he has now! The next is the body of a
young woman. Remark the excellent preservation of her chemise, though it
was buried 400 years ago; and see, it is trimmed with lace. The next,
gentlemen, is a priest; you can see his soutane with the buttons on it.
There is a woman with a dreadful chasm in her breast; she had a cancer.
The next four are a family poisoned with mushrooms; observe the
contortions of their faces from the coliques they suffered. See, next, a
very old man with his wig still awry upon his pate. The next is a poor
misérable that was buried alive. See how his head is turned to one side
and the body half turned round, in the frantic effort to get out of the
coffin, with his mouth open and gasping.’ (It is quite true that the
attitude is singular, but it does not warrant the inference which the
showman draws.) But enough of this disgusting mercenary exhibition of
the human body in its lowest state of humiliation. If the guardians of
consecrated sepulchres, in which people have paid an honest fee to be
buried, are to dig them up and cart them off as in England, or make a
show of them as here, why, I can only say that cremation will gain a
good many converts. Any one would prefer urn burial to the chance of
being thus made a spectacle. So good, too, it must be for the rising
population to take off the edge of any salutary horror they may feel at
death and decay, or of reverence for the dead.”
There are many such shows where the human corpse is used for the purpose
of eliciting money from a public loving horrible and sensational sights.
I need but mention the catacombs of Rome, or the Bleikeller of Bremen,
to conjure up before your mind all the terrible scenes which the
clerical and medical gentlemen whom I have just cited have pictured.
There is another way in which the dead are insulted, another mode by
which their graves are desecrated. The monuments which are erected upon
the last resting-place of the deceased to perpetuate their memory are
sometimes moved about till they no longer mark the spot where the person
whose name they bear was interred. Here, then, all the good intentions
of friends are set at naught; their expense, their attention, is all in
vain. The tombstones are moved, and when they become yellow with age
they are broken up to act as headstones for some public highway. That
this does not hold good of European countries only, but also of American
ones, is proven by our honored and beloved “autocrat of the breakfast
table,” Oliver Wendell Holmes, who declares: “The most accursed act of
vandalism ever committed within my knowledge was the uprooting of the
ancient gravestones in three at least of our city burial-grounds, and
one at least just outside the city, and planting them in rows to suit
the taste for symmetry of the perpetrators. The stones have been
shuffled about like chessmen, and nothing short of the Day of Judgment
will tell whose dust lies beneath any of those records meant by
affection to mark one small spot as sacred to some cherished memory.
Shame! shame! shame! That is all I can say. It was on public
thoroughfares, under the eye of authority, that this infamy was enacted.
I should like to see the gravestones which have been disturbed or
removed and the ground levelled, leaving the flat tombstones. Epitaphs
were never famous for truth, but the old reproach of ‘Here _lies_’ never
had such a wholesale illustration as in these outraged burial-places,
where the stone does lie above, and the bones do not lie beneath.”
Now be candid! Do you not think that facts like these go a good way to
endorse cremation? There would be no need of disturbing the dead, there
would be no vulgar exhibition of the deceased, after incineration would
have been introduced. There would, in fact, be nothing to do violence to
that most sacred and deep-rooted feeling of humanity,—respect for the
dead.
Among all the outrages on the dead, that committed by the hand of
ghoulish desecration is, by far, the worst. Body-snatching, for
providing anatomical institutions with material, has become a business
in the United States; love of gain being, as usual, the cause. And not
only are bodies abducted to supply medical colleges, but persons are
liable to be murdered for the same reason. In February of 1884 two
negroes were arrested at Cincinnati, who, after a severe examination,
confessed to having killed an old man, his wife, and his adopted
daughter; after which they sold the corpses to the Ohio Medical College,
receiving $15 for each.
But some grave-robberies are perpetrated simply for revenge, or else for
pure deviltry. A special despatch to the _Detroit Free Press_, from
Point Pleasant, W. Va., relates an instance of this kind as follows:—
“Salt Creek, a small stream, empties into the Ohio River three miles
south of this. Two miles from the mouth is a church called Pisgah,
attached to which is a burying-ground. This morning when the sexton went
to dig a grave, he was horrified to find half a dozen graves open and
the bodies taken from their coffins and stretched on the ground. In one
or two instances the limbs were severed from the bodies. The graves had
been opened without regard to family. The bodies lay in one place
arranged in the shape of a Greek cross. There is no clue to the
perpetrators of the sacrilegious offense, and no reason can be imagined.
The bodies evidently had been exposed for a day or two.”
The funeral car of the late A. T. Stewart was followed by six carriages
laden with gorgeous floral offerings; yet in spite of the more than
regal magnificence of his funeral, and of his great wealth, only a few
days later his body was stolen by sacrilegious robbers, and has never
been recovered. Need I remind you of the mortification our nation felt
on hearing that guards had to be set to watch over the graves of our
lamented presidents, Lincoln and Garfield.
Not only in our country is body-snatching a frequent offense, but also
in England, as will be seen by the sequent quotation from Mr. Walker (p.
202):—
“An undertaker who had charge of a funeral went with a friend into the
vault of a chapel. A coffin recently deposited was taken under his arm
with the greatest ease. His friend, doubting, poised the coffin, and was
affected to tears from the conviction that the body had been removed.
Several other coffins were in the same condition.”
The corpse of the late Earl of Crawford was stolen from the Dun Echt
mortuary chapel in Aberdeen.
There is one case of outrage on the dead on record that, for hideousness
and devilishness, surpasses all others. I refer to that grave-digger of
Koenigsberg, Prussia, who fed his swine with human bodies.
One of the most abominable modes of outrage on the dead is that where
men (beasts is the proper designation for them) have gratified their
animal passions by outraging the fresh corpses of young and pretty
women. It seems incredible, but this violation was known in the most
ancient times, and is not yet extinct in the present age.
_Herodotus_ already reports in the 89th chapter of his second book, that
the Egyptians of old did not deliver up the bodies of ladies of quality
or the remains of young and beautiful women to the embalmers until
decomposition had set in, so that these men could not have coition with
them. For it was said that an embalmer had once surprised a colleague in
the act of outraging the corpse of a youthful woman, and had reported
the case to the authorities, who punished the inhuman offender promptly.
The evening edition of the _National Zeitung_ (published at Berlin) of
Nov. 21, 1874 (No. 544), relates that in Lichtenberg, which is situated
near the capital of the German Empire, in the night from the 4th to 5th
of November, two children, recently buried, were disinterred and removed
from their coffins. On the morning of November the 5th the corpses were
found on the ground near the graves,—the shrouds were torn,—and one
body, that of a little two-year-old girl, bore all the signs of a recent
outrage.
All these sacrilegious outrages on the dead could be obviated by
incineration. The avaricious would not be tempted by a small quantity of
ashes in a plain urn. There would be no valuable clothing and no costly
jewelry, ordinarily inhumed with some bodies, to excite rapacity.
Furthermore, cremation promises the greatest possible security from
vandalism. When the urn containing the remains, _i.e._, ashes, of our
friends or relatives is placed in a niche in the columbarium, it can be
easily guarded. One watchman, in communication (by electrical alarm)
with the police department of the city, will suffice to protect the
urn-hall of a columbarium. The same cannot be said of a cemetery; it
would take at least a company of watchmen to properly guard the grounds
of a medium-sized graveyard.
Some day we will have Westminster Abbeys on a small scale, where, amid
grand monuments and costly urns, the simple tablet of wood shall have
its place, its inscription remaining legible, not being blotted out by
the elements, as it is to-day. Each church could have its own urn-hall,
and the burial ceremonies could be conducted according to the belief of
the deceased.
The greatest foe incineration has to contend with is the widespread
antipathy against it, entertained and nursed by people who are governed
more by sentiment than by reason. Which is the most poetical mode of
disposal of the dead, cremation or burial? Think! think!! think!!! and
you cannot fail to find out.
Mr. W. Robinson, F.L.S., says:—
“The simplest urn ever made for the ashes of a Roman soldier is far more
beautiful than the costly funeral trappings used in the most imposing
burial pageant of modern times. Of urns of a more ambitious kind, the
variety and beauty are often remarkable, as may be seen in our national
and various private collections. It would be a gain to art if some of
the money spent on coffins, which rot unseen in the earth, were devoted
to such urns, which do not decay, and which might be placed in the light
of day, and perhaps teach a lesson in art as well as bear a record.”
And the _Medical Herald_ declares:—
“An urn of granite, alabaster, malachite, or one of the precious metals,
with the life-sized statue of great men placed in the halls of state,
would much more befittingly express the state’s regard, and preserve and
perpetuate the grateful tribute a Christian people would pay their
memories, than any number of columns and shafts reared in cemeteries,
which must in time be demolished.”
Which is the more æsthetic, a small heap of pure, pearl-white ashes, or
a grim skeleton? Certainly those who have seen a decomposing body, or
human remains in the state of adipocere, would not call them æsthetic.
Contrast with the ghastly skeleton, now commonly employed as an
illustration of death, the representation of death by the ancients,—the
boy with the inverted torch. Which is the more refined?
The strong tombs, of such a grandeur and beauty—proof against the
gnawing teeth of time—mortuary monuments,—as we shall not be able to
leave to our offspring, testify to the pious veneration for the dead of
the ancients. I need but remind you of the grand pyramids, the extensive
necropolis at Thebes, the mausoleums and columbaria of the Via Appia in
Rome, to cause you to perceive the truth of my statement.
The ancients thought of the dead as being turned into shades; when we
think of them we imagine rattling skeletons. The stupid and disgusting
glorification of the skeleton did not originate with Christ; it is a
product of the Middle Ages, as are the many tales of witches and ghosts
that are related, especially in connection with churchyards, and still
cling to them to-day.
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.
What would you rather look upon, that horrible remnant of mortality, for
which, as Bossuet says, “there has been found no name in any human
language,” or the innocuous, pearly ash in the memorial urn of marble,
alabaster, or one of the precious metals?
Cremation is humane, healthful, and, most of all methods, consonant to
the natural impulse of Christianized veneration for the dead; serving
and honoring that impulse by preventing the exposure of the dead to
those visible elemental and chemical conditions and operations which
breed a revolt of the feelings, and tend to surround the subject with an
atmosphere of abhorrence.
Undoubtedly, one result of adopting generally the in-cinerative burial,
will be a disassociation in our ideas from that existing and shocking
conception of horrible bodily decay, in which almost every thought
bestowed upon the dead is necessarily enveloped, and we will learn to
contemplate the body with the cheerful philosophy of the Persian poet,
Omar Khayyam:—
“‘Tis but a tent where takes his one day’s rest
A Sultan to the realms of death addrest;
The Sultan rises, and the dark Ferrash
Strikes and prepares it for another guest.”
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.
A Sicilian poet suggested that along with the ashes thus buried might be
deposited the seeds of some flower,—such as heart’s-ease, violets, or
forget-me-nots,—so that when it sprung up, the friends and relatives
might gather the blossoms from year to year as a dear memorial of the
life that lasts beyond the tomb; and Tennyson’s (“In Memoriam”) poetic
verses would be realized:—
“And from his ashes may be made
The violet of his native land.”
Only when cremation is practiced, can a family obtain the remains
(ashes, of course) of its friends and relatives who have died in a
foreign land; only then it is possible to deposit such remains with
those of the ancestors.
With the Chinese it is customary to always inter the dead in their
native land; when they are far away from home they inhume their deceased
temporarily, but at the earliest opportunity remove them to China,—a
usage that deserves to be imitated.
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. Now,
when the storm rages and the rain pours down in torrents, we imagine
that he or she whom we have recently buried is yet subject to the
inclemency of the weather. Maxime du Camp relates a touching example of
the power of illusion. On one of his walks in the Paris cemeteries he
discovered a young lady kneeling before a tombstone, who was singing
(interrupted frequently by her sobs) an aria from an opera. When she
observed him, after she had finished she said, excusing herself
involuntarily: “There my dear mother lies buried! She loved to hear this
aria!”
That these questions which I have just briefly considered are of
considerable moment is demonstrated by the experience of the Rev. Brooke
Lambert, who says:—
“It has been my misfortune to lose four of my nearest relations in
different parts of the world. 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 been
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.”
This citation brings to my mind a beautiful epigram of Count Platen,
who, as you undoubtedly know, was called the favorite of the ladies. It
is impossible to translate it, and therefore I will content myself with
mentioning the contents. It entreats the sacred flames to return, and to
purify the air which death has contaminated; it requests those about to
bury to reduce to ashes the body of their friend; and it rejoices that
the remains of our beloved will again rest in a clean and decent urn
near our abodes.
There are many authors who, in their works, have expressed themselves in
favor of cremation. Among the first to do this was A. F. Ferdinand von
Kotzebue, a German writer of note, who glorified incineration in his
novel “Die Leiden der Ortenberg’schen Familie.”
There are those who are afraid that cremation will do away with all that
is mortuary in poetry and song. For instance, they say: “What will
become of Gray’s Elegy in a Country Churchyard? Allusion to burial runs
so inseparably through its verses that nothing would be left of them
were it eliminated.” As a work of art Gray’s masterpiece will live
forever; but if reason or common sense is applied to it, I doubt whether
it has a right to exist, even now. I admit that the poem is beautiful,
that it is grand; but it is all sentiment—nothing more.
There is now already a new literature, prose as well as poetry,
accumulating. The “Cremazione dei cadaveri” already has its
poets—principally in Italy. Professor Giambattista Polizzi of Girgenti
dedicated (in March, 1873) a poem on cineration to Signora Emilia Salsi
when her husband, Doctor Giuseppi Salsi, died and was cremated. He
praised incineration as the best mode to dispose of the dead, and to
preserve the remains of the departed. In January, 1874, Civelli’s
printing house at Milan, Italy, turned out 22 stanzas on incineration,
in the Milanese dialect. The anonymous author is a patron of cremation.
Dr. Moretti of Cannero published an excellent poem on cremation in the
_Annali di Chimica_ of 1872. A German author, writing under the
pseudonym of “Dranmor,” sent forth some very good verses on the same
subject, as did also the celebrated Dr. Justinus Kerner.
Mr. William Eassie laments:—
“It is a matter of regret that those of our own poets who have been in
favor 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.”
The objections to cineration put forward by the sentimentalists are
really of no consequence at all; they are far too trivial to be worth
even only superficial consideration. I have only mentioned them, because
I am aware of the strong hold that sentiment has on most people, and
because they allowed of a comparison between burial and cremation, which
is decidedly in favor of the latter.
Dr. E. J. Bermingham of New York City hits the nail on the head by
saying:—
“We believe the abhorrence entertained by many, of cremation, depends to
a very great extent on the universal tendency of individuals and nations
to resent any interference with established customs, to reject any
innovation simply because it is an innovation.”
Sentimental objection to incineration resolves into this: We are the
slaves of custom. We love to walk in the old wornout paths, and when
some one discovers a new way that is much shorter, and by which the
destination is reached much sooner, we are loathe to use it. First only
a few adopt it, then more and more travel over its surface, until
finally the old path becomes obsolete.
To what an extent people are governed by their time-honored customs was
illustrated by the ancient historian Herodotus (see Muses, Book III,
chap. 88), as follows:—
“If all people were to choose the most beautiful among the customs, they
would after close examination select their own, because every nation
believes that its own customs are the best and the most beautiful. One
therefore cannot imagine that anybody but a madman would ridicule such
matters. When Darius reigned he summoned the Greeks then in his land,
and when they came, he requested them to name the price they would take
to eat their deceased parents. They replied they would not commit such a
crime for all the gold in his empire. Then he caused the Kalatians
(natives of India), who were in the habit of eating their parental dead,
to appear before him; when they arrived, he questioned them (in presence
of the Greeks, to whom every word was interpreted) how much remuneration
they would want to burn their dead. They cried aloud, and bade him not
to think of such a sacrilege. Thus custom rules. I believe Pindar to be
right when he asserts in one of his poems that custom is the king of
all.”