Sharp rise in Pauper’s funerals
Posted by Vale You’d be forgiven for thinking that Oliver Twist is in a workhouse somewhere asking for more. It seems extraordinary in 2012 that there are headlines like this in the Daily Telegraph this week, followed by the stark (and slightly ludicrous) quote from Kate Woodthorpe of the University of Bath that it is: […]
The Deciphering
Posted by Vale The Deciphering How busy we are with the dead in their infancy, who are still damp with the sweat of their passing, whose hair falls back to reveal a scar. We think of wiping their skin, attending them in the old way, but are timid, ignorant. We walk from the high table […]
Library of dust
Posted by Vale Oregon State Insane Asylum closed in the 1970s after operating for nearly a hundred years. Over that time inmates died, were cremated and their remains, stored in copper canisters, were stored uncollected. The photographer David Maisel has made a photographic record of them. He writes: The approximately 3,500 copper canisters have a […]
No stripping of the altars here
By Richard Rawlinson The row at Haycombe crematorium in Bath over the replacement of the cross-etched 1960s window with a clear pane – offering a neutral blank canvas for visitors of different faiths and none – is contextualised by this example of tolerance and diversity. The pictures here are of North London’s New Southgate Cemetery and Crematorium, […]
