cremation

A day of reckoning for our crematoria?

17 June 2014
Charles
3 Comments
Categories: cremation, crematoria

The Bonomy report is published today in Scotland. Its 64 recommendations will address cremation practice in that country and, by extension, throughout Britain. They will impact the NHS, funeral directors and cremation authorities, especially the ICCM and the FBCA.

Shockwaves are expected.

Lord Bonomy’s brief was to “examine the policies, practice and legislation related to the cremation of infants in Scotland and provide recommendations for the future which will ensure that no-one in Scotland ever again has to suffer the distresses that were highlighted by the Mortonhall Investigation Report.”

Reminder: from 1967 until 2011 parents of babies who had died antenatally or perinatally in Edinburgh were informed, on the authority of Mortonhall crematorium, that there would be no ashes after cremation. Hundreds of families were affected.

This is not just a Scottish problem. For a medley of muddled reasons there seems to be no mandated practice nationwide for the cremation of infant remains nor any general awareness that ashes can be recovered from foetuses as young as 17 weeks. As a result, there are probably vastly varying outcomes from crematoria everywhere. Here’s just one (Scottish) example. Until very recently ashes had not been returned in any of Aberdeen’s baby cremations since 2008, while in Inverness 100% were returned. In Fife, ashes were recovered in 45 out of 87 cremations of stillborn babies and those aged up to one year.

What would the picture look like if we had figures for the whole of the UK?

George Bell, manager in charge of Mortonhall for 30 years until 2011, has distanced himself from criticism and blamed funeral directors for giving the wrong advice to parents:

“I feel for them and apologise if [parents] have been given wrong advice which led them to choose cremation and not have the option of burial …  I tried my best to make sure that the message got out that there might not be the opportunity of recovering ashes after the cremation and we provided alternatives but unfortunately relied on frontline professionals. I must emphasise the crematorium staff didn’t make funeral arrangements.”

Bell also blames politicians:

“Sadly there’s no legal status for non-viable foetuses and as an industry we have worked hard to try and raise standards but to raise standards we need the legislation to go with that. I think the industry needs clear legislation as to what the procedures are. There’s no legal definition as to what ashes are – I think this needs to be addressed.”

The record shows that there is no agreement among cremation authorities about what ashes are, either:

“The FBCA (Federation of Burial and Cremation Authorities) consider that ashes consist of cremulated bone to the exclusion of any other source of ash obtained from the burned coffin, clothing or soft toys cremated along with the baby. The ICCM (Institute of Cemetery and Crematorium Management) considers ashes to include all ashes from the cremation, both cremulated bone as well as ash from
items which were mementos or part of the fabric of the baby’s last resting place. Tim Morris, Chief Executive of the ICCM, was interviewed on camera about this distinction by Mark Daly of the BBC in a broadcast in April 2013 when he indicated that: “I have only heard about this distinction in the last few months.” “[Source]

Things have subsequently gone from bad to worse in Aberdeen, where it is now alleged that babies were cremated together with adults — playing to the direst public misgivings about what really goes on in crematoria.

In England only one case has been reported so far but you wonder how many others might have been and may yet be. The culprit is Emstrey crematorium in Shrewsbury where only 1 in 30 sets of ashes have been given to babies’ families since 2004. The fact that it is run by Co-operative Funeralcare is at best semi-relevant. The verdict of a former Emstrey manager, Ken West, is devastating:

“I see absolutely no reason why cremated remains were not produced. The issue for me is they were not captured. They were either in the flue system or workers didn’t take the trouble to check whether there were any ashes before introducing the next cremation. So it’s very possible those babies’ ashes got mixed in with the next cremation.”

On this blog Ken West has written:

“I was a cremator operator in the 1960′s and ashes were always returned for baby or infant cremations … At no time have I ever accepted that no ashes exist. Had I accepted that then I would have considered cremation unacceptable and advised burial as the better option.”

If it has been demonstrated that ashes can always be retrieved, why does the ICCM continue to advise: “The hospital must inform parent(s) that ashes may not be recovered from cremation.”? And why does the FBCA advise: “In cases where bereaved parents desire the cremation of an infant or of foetal remains, they should be warned that there are occasions when no tangible remains are left after the cremation process has been completed.”

Elish Angiolini’s Mortonhall Investigation report expresses impatience with this muddled thinking: “The existence or otherwise of ashes following the cremation of foetal remains ought to be a matter of fact; either there is some residue from the human tissue or there is not.”

The FBCA states that there may be no tangible remains left after cremation because of “the cartilaginous nature of the bone structure.”  This sounds scientific, but is it? Compare it with this:

Experimental research has been undertaken to quantify the percentage of bone (bone ash or calcined bone) remaining in human skeletons following cremation. Trotter and Hixon (1974) studied skeletons from an early foetal period through to old age. This included 124 male and female foetuses of American Caucasoid and Negroid ancestry, which ranged in age from 16 to 44 weeks gestational age. It was possible to record the ash in even the youngest and lightest skeletons, the lightest being a white male of 16 weeks gestation which weighed 3.4 g pre-cremation. [Source 2.8]

Note: the above research is all of forty years old.

Compare the FBCA statement also with this. In a photograph of the cremated remains of a 17-week-old foetus at Seafield crematorium:

Bones [are] identifiable on the image include the femur, humerus, mandible, ilium (pelvic bone), the pars lateralis and possibly basilaris of the occipital bone (skull), radius, ulna, clavicle and a minimum number of 12 ribs. It is likely that the fibula is also present but it is difficult to distinguish clearly. [Source 2.8]

Given the extraordinary sensitivity of this issue, the recommendations of the Bonomy report are going to make for very interesting reading. We can’t give you a link because we are without an internet connection today. We believe this will take you to it.

All blood runs red

4 June 2014
Charles
2 Comments
Categories: cemeteries, Christian belief, cremation, memorialisation

“By all means have memorials. Make them out of Government stone if you like. Make them uniform. But you have no right to employ, in making these memorials, the bodies of other people’s relatives. It is not decent, it is not reasonable, it is not right.”

“When the widows and mothers of our dead go out to France to visit the graves they will expect to find that equal honour has been paid to all who have made the same sacrifice and this result cannot be attained if differences … are allowed in the character and design of the memorials.”

The words in the first quote were spoken by Viscount Woolmer in a parliamentary debate in 1920. He spoke for many  — but by no means all — parents of dead soldiers who either wanted their sons home, buried in the village churchyard, or commemorated more fittingly, in accordance with their beliefs and values, where they lay. By what right did the British Army commandeer their bodies and prescribe their memorials?

The words in the second quote were issued by the Trades Union Congress and reflect the growing democratic values of the time.

Today, most people, probably, regard the cemeteries for the dead of World War 1 as oases of peace and serenity, the antithesis of the horror and brutality that spawned them — beauty born of ugliness, a marvellous creation. Far from being impersonal in their uniformity and scale, you may feel, they are poignantly respectful of each and every person they commemorate.

But you can see what brought Woolmer to his feet.  And he had a case. The dead, in law, belong to their families, not the state.

The story of what we now know as the Commonwealth War Graves  is told in the book Empires of the Dead by David Crane – a good read.  The British Empire war cemeteries were the achievement of one man, Fabian Ware, pictured below, whose name, today, is almost entirely forgotten. For a man who dedicated his life to ensuring that the dead would be forever remembered, that’s quite an irony.

Ware was an imperialist. Today, his political philosophy looks as authoritarian as it does democratic. The life of man, he believed, is a constant struggle between the pursuit of individualism and submission to the needs of the collective. But when push comes to shove “the individual is submerged in the family … the family in the nation … and so the nation … in the highest attainment of human collectivity the world has yet seen … the empire … So long as patriotism … is the controlling force … no sacrifice will be thought too great in the cause of unity.”

Freedom of the individual must be subordinated to the need for national unity.

For all his democratic values and dedication to the collective, Ware was never a committee man. This explains how he was able to get so much done. The Imperial War Graves Commission — now the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) — was his creation and his fiefdom. His achievement was the product of a combination of tireless high-handedness and nimble diplomacy. Today, standing as his legacy, there are 23,000 CWGC cemeteries in 153 countries commemorating 1,700,000 men and women.

Repatriation of British soldiers was banned in 1915 because it was reckoned discriminatory – only the wealthy could afford to have their sons brought back. At the end of the war the French and Americans brought numbers of their dead home, but ne’er a Brit. Repatriation had never been the practice of the British, and indeed only became official policy in 2003.

British Army soldiers were buried as close as possible to where they fell, side by side, regardless of rank, generals next to privates, beneath identical headstones modelled not on Christian but on classical lines because, explained the guiding architect, Edwin Lutyens, “besides Christians of all denominations there will be Jews, Musselmens, Hindus and men of other creeds, their glorious names and their mortal bodies all equally deserving enduring record and seemly sepulture.”

Most people picture masses of crosses when asked to recall a 1st WW war cemetery. That would be the French and the Americans. There is, though, one cross in every Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemetery with more than 40 graves. Fabian Ware opposed this because he wanted the cemeteries to be inclusive of all faiths and none, but he was overruled on the grounds that the British Empire was a Christian empire. Hence the Cross of Sacrifice (below) often found together with Lutyens’ faith-neutral symbol, the Stone of Remembrance (above).

At the beginning of the war, no one had any inkling  of the scale of sacrifice of human life that was about to ensue. So gigantic did the task of interring the dead become, together with marking their graves and registering them, that the French briefly considered cremating their dead on a chain of funeral pyres. The British Army went into the war with no preparations for the decent burial of its dead. What resulted  owes everything to the vision and the hard work of one whose name also deserves to live for evermore: the forgotten Fabian Ware.

British Empire dead:
Buried in named graves : 587,989
Buried but not identifiable by name : 187,861
No known graves: 526,816,
Not buried at all : 338,955 (includes Royal Navy lost at sea)

In the words of an Armistice Day broadcast: “Imagine them moving in one long continuous column, four abreast. As the head of that column reaches the Cenotaph, the last four men would be at Durham.”

No-win

4 May 2014
Charles
3 Comments
Categories: cremation, crematoria

“In the UK, the size and number of cremators at a crematorium are selected to enable the ‘duty’ to be accomplished within a normal working day and so the cremator is used for about 8 hours per day and then shut down until the next day. This is not an energy-efficient way of working, and cultural practices have been allowed to dominate at the expense of efficiency.”

Mortonhall Investigation Report 30 April 2014

The many lessons to be learned from Mortonhall

1 May 2014
Charles
9 Comments
Categories: cremation, crematoria

The report into the Mortonhall ashes scandal was released yesterday.

To refresh your memory: from 1967 until 2011 parents of babies who had died antenatally or perinatally in Edinburgh were informed, on the authority of Mortonhall crematorium, that there would be no ashes after cremation.

All the while (since 1934, actually) two privately-owned Edinburgh crematoria, Seafield and Wariston, had been managing to achieve ashes from foetuses as young as 17 weeks.

There’s a useful summary of the findings of Dame Elish Angiolini’s report here.

You can find the full report here.

Here are some extracts of the report that interested us:

*  Most meetings between managers at the crematorium and with their line managers appeared to focus on budgets and finance rather than policy or practice. The issue of the cremation of foetuses and babies and whether or not remains were recovered and returned to parents does not seem to have been discussed even though Mortonhall was operating so differently to the other crematoria in Edinburgh over so many years.

*  There was little by way of formal training at Mortonhall other than in general cremation practice. When it came to the cremation of foetuses and babies, staff learned from their more experienced peers or supervisor. Likewise, notions of policy and practice were derived by word of mouth with very little other than operators’ manuals committed to writing.

*  Despite the complexities and difficulties of this particular aspect of cremation operations, there has been little by way of any local or national written guidance for Cremator Operators at Mortonhall. The absence of any practical formal training to attempt to support staff in recovering remains from infants or foetuses is a significant concern given the misgivings expressed by some of the staff involved. The absence of such training is all the more surprising since the difficulties have been recognized within the professional organisations and discussed by senior members of the profession over many years.

*  The official ICCM direction: “The hospital must inform parent(s) that ashes may not be recovered from cremation.”

*  The official FBCA direction: “In cases where bereaved parents desire the cremation of an infant or of foetal remains, they should be warned that there are occasions when no tangible remains are left after the cremation process has been completed. This is due to the cartilaginous nature of the bone structure.”

*  Dr James Dunlop, witness: “Crematoria are occasionally asked to cremate non-viable foetuses. Many doctors, especially those associated with crematoria, believe that there will be no cremated residue. However, if the cremation technique is modified, cremated remains are produced. These remains can form a focal point for the parent’s grief. Crematoria are urged to ensure their technique yields a residue … [When cremated gently] the outline of a foetal skeleton (it has been described as resembling the skeleton of a bird) can be discerned quite clearly on the base of the tray amid the ashes of the coffin.”

*  It is not whether ashes can be recovered from foetuses but the degree of care and modification of the adult processes applied to the cremation of the baby which profoundly affects the outcome.

*  Anne Grannum told the Investigation she had always believed there were no ashes from babies. She was not alone in that belief. This understanding was, until very recently, also held by the Chief Medical Officer, pathologists, midwives, medical referees, senior members of the professional associations and Funeral Directors. Her belief was based on the assertion that ashes were the calcined bones of the cremated individual and nothing else. Any residual remains from the process were simply refractory dust and coffin ash.

Mrs. Grannum’s failure over many years to make any enquiry about what was happening at Seafield, where she understood it was said ashes were being recovered, is also very difficult to understand. As business competitors it may have been seen as inappropriate to make a direct approach to Seafield but the matter could have been referred to her senior managers or to one of the professional organisations to pursue. She was not alone in this apparent inertia. NHS staff and Funeral Directors, amongst others, were all aware of the assertions by the staff at Seafield Crematorium of recovering ashes yet no one investigated these claims until the writer Lesley Winton visited Seafield in 2012. 

*  The contrast in the working practices and the approach to the cremation of babies at Mortonhall with the approach at Seafield and Warriston is stark. The obvious care taken at Seafield and Warriston to provide the very best possible outcome for the parents of the foetus or baby is exceptional. As a consequence of misunderstanding and poor advice in the NHS leaflets, many parents were led to believe that there would be a charge made for a funeral at these private crematoria where ashes were being recovered for parents. Neither of these crematoria have ever charged for such cremations.

Stonehenge and sky burial

21 February 2014
Charles
5 Comments
Categories: Archaeology, cremation, funeral customs, funeral pyres, funerals in other cultures, open-air cremation

 Posted by Ken West

The archaeology at Stonehenge is all about digging up funerary artefacts so is it possible to consider how those funerals occurred? Stonehenge is unique, the only certain stone circle in Britain aligned to the solstices. Forget the Druids, as they did not exist in the Neolithic period and never had any involvement with Stonehenge.

The people, a loose federation of tribes called the Durotriges when the Romans arrived, were initially hunter gatherers. The first date we have is 8,000BC when three posts, totem poles, perhaps, were erected at Stonehenge. We have no burials from that period so we might assume, as with most early mobile societies, that bodies were exposed to birds and/or animals. The people could retain the large bones and then carry them back to a homeland location, perhaps the sacred River Avon. Burial had little to commend it, the graves being scattered over a wide area and requiring the digging of a shallow grave with antler picks, which would then be dug up by foraging wolves and bears. We then jump 4,000 years to when these people built communal stone chambered tombs. Early assumptions were that bodies were placed in the chamber and allowed to decompose. This was never feasible as decomposition would be slow, neither are full skeletons found, nor are there sufficient chambers. The chambers were probably used for the storage of the bones of the elite. Around 3,700BC, they built causewayed enclosures, which are banked and ditched circles broken by paths, or causeways, leading inside. Sometime between 4,000 – 3,000BC, the use of the chambered tombs ceased, or at least was infrequent, and cremation/burial began, which neatly brings us to Stonehenge.

Archaeologist Mike Parker Pearson’s book “Stonehenge,” summarises the Stonehenge Riverside Project 2003 – 2009, in which he theorised that Stonehenge was part of a much wider ritual area, with Durrington Walls, a nearby henge, suggested as the Stonehenge builder’s camp, and the River Avon linking this henge downriver to the avenue from Stonehenge. The project proved that this was the case, but these ritual components were put in place over 500 years, so let’s consider the sequence of construction.

Both Durrington Walls and the sarsen Stonehenge we see today, date to 2,500BC, and are about two miles apart. The project proved Durrington Walls to be the largest Neolithic encampment in Europe and that it was the builder’s camp, over a 40 year period. No human remains were found but their cattle bones suggested that some of the builders travelled from Devon, West Wales and Scotland. It appears that between 2,000 – 4,000 people met each autumn, and, say, hauled two sarsens from near Avebury, to Stonehenge, dressed them on site, and erected them together with a couple of bluestones. In just 40 years they erected the 82 sarsens with the pre-existing 80 bluestones in four concentric rings, with no human burials involved. The project suggested that 56 of these bluestones had previously formed a larger, outer circle built 500 years earlier, around 3,000BC, these stones hauled from Preseli, in Pembrokeshire. The circle was entered at the Heel Stone, a natural sarsen erected to mark the sunrise. Each of the bluestones sat on human cremated remains, which the project referred to as the Chieftains Cemetery, with 63 bodies, mostly identified through small ear bones. Some were women and children, and if these were double or triple funerals, as it were, it may be that precisely 56 inhumations took place under the 56 bluestones. The remains were placed beneath each stone, and crushed into the chalk that formed the socket. The burials took place over 200 years, from 3,000 BC to 2,800 BC. 

The only grave goods found were one mace head, which implied a warrior, and an incense burner, which implied a religious leader or shaman. But the presence of women and children’s bones denied the circle as a warrior or religious burial area, as women did not participate in either, as far as we know. Mike Parker Pearson’s conclusion was that they were an elite, perhaps an aristocracy.

The project also confirmed the existence of a second bluestone circle at the end of the avenue from Stonehenge, where it meets the River Avon. This was constructed at the same time as the Stonehenge bluestone circle, using 25 stones, none with cremated remains. The ritual importance of this second circle is its riverside location. Upon disembarking from a boat, one was immediately into the bluestone circle, which was banked and ditched in glaring white chalk. The mile long avenue headed north, then west on the 450 metre straight stretch to Stonehenge, entering at the Heel Stone. The avenue is 22 metres wide, and had a glistening white chalk bank and external ditch on either side, but little can now be seen. The straight section of the avenue follows three parallel natural chalk ridges, which always marked the sunrise from Stonehenge. Some consider that this is the reason why Stonehenge is where it is; that the Gods put in place this natural feature marking the sunrise. The bluestones in the riverside circle were removed around 2,400BC, the same date as the present sarsen circle and Durrington Walls were constructed. The henge was retained so the ritual possibilities remained in place. Was the funeral ritual to carry the ashes for the 63 bodies by boat to the riverside circle, then create a cortege up the avenue to the Stonehenge bluestone circle, and then inter the remains under a bluestone?

Why did they choose cremation? Was it because the solstice orientation was a form of Sun God worship, which supports the use of fire? Or was it a means of purifying the dead? If so, it is unlikely that burying the ashes, and effectively de-purifying them has any merit. Was the cremation a sacrifice, perhaps related to fertility rites, with the ashes scattered on fields, yet no bone fragments are found in soil? Perhaps the most obvious reason, not suggested by the project, is that cremation reduces a body to a small, peripatetic, pile of bones, which are readily placed under a stone.

The chalk downs were never heavily wooded so creating a pyre would be onerous. None have been found at Stonehenge or anywhere nearby. Currently, a modern cremator would produce about two kilos of bone ash. Although Neolithic people might be smaller than ourselves, they would possess higher bone density due to heavy labour, walking, even running, and the opposite of modern people experiencing an epidemic of osteoporosis. Yet the archaeologists find only one kilo of cremated bone so were the smaller bones left in the pyre ash? Even now, many cultures are quite content to collect only the larger bones after cremation and ignore the smaller.

The project concluded that Durrington Walls was the place of the living, and Stonehenge the place of the dead, but is 63 burials sufficient to reach this conclusion? Clearly, these burials took place at Stonehenge but I would suggest that watching one would be like watching a burial at Westminster Abbey or Princess Diana’s funeral: yes, it’s happening but how representative is it? Isn’t Stonehenge identical to the earlier chambered tombs, all about Stone Age grandiosity; a place for the elite. If we reckon that archaeology has located less than one percent of deaths in the area and no cemeteries have been found, we might ask where the anticipated 12,000 other bodies are? The project used the term cremation/burial to suggest that the cremation and burial were integrated; that the word cremation on its own is not sufficient. Was cremation/burial, like chamber burial, only permitted to chieftains or others of rank because of the massive labour it requires to create the pyres? That sounds remarkably similar to Tibet and Mongolia, where cremation is reserved for high lamas and dignitaries because the ground is rocky or frozen, or there is little wood. 

So what happened to the common people? The conclusion is simple, the one in which nature does all the hard work instead of the exhausted humans; sky burial. The excess of Stonehenge blinds us to reality. Life was hard, many children died, people lived short lives, proven by the arthritis found in the bones of the spine, even of some of the elite interred at Stonehenge. Seasonal work meant that the period March to September was a struggle to find food, care for the young animals born each spring, store food, cut wood for fuel, and have enough excess to survive the winter. The work parties building Stonehenge clearly did so in the quiet autumn period, when the people were at their healthiest and strongest. In the summer, there was no possibility of building funeral pyres, week in, week out? 

What evidence is there for sky burial? On the banks of the River Avon near Durrington Walls, project excavations found three sets of postholes, each of four posts forming a square, the whole surrounded by a palisade. The biggest posts were 50 centimetres across, and estimated at over 5 metres high. The conclusion is that they were towers, looking out over the river, and presumed to be holding platforms. This is not such a surprise because there have been suggestions that the earlier causewayed enclosures could have been designed to expose bodies to birds or animals. Perhaps they progressed to towers as they created more efficient flint axes to cut timber, or did not want animals feeding on the body.

If you think sky towers a flight of fancy, consider that in Tibet, where it may have persisted from the Stone Age, they revere the vulture as a form of angel. This fact reminds me that few, if any, bird bones are found in UK excavations. Is that because the Neolithic people and birds had a spiritual relationship? Imagine, eagles, buzzards, kites, ravens and carrion crows could have fed on the bodies, and probably European vultures, at least in summer. Even in 2013 over one hundred vulture sitings were made over the south of Britain. It is evident that the larger eagles and vultures swallow small fleshed bones so feet, hands and ribs would disappear as well as all the soft tissue. That fits with the overall finding that full skeletons are rare and disarticulated skull fragments and large bones are found scattered about sites. Once the bones were cleaned off, they could be deposited in the sacred Avon. Sky burial is also faster than modern cremation based on an incident in 2013 when a female walker in the Pyrenees fell to her death. Two friends, walking with her, called the police and they took 50 minutes to locate her body. Initially the rescuers could not see the body from their helicopter until they realised that it was covered by gorging Griffon vultures. By the time they got to her the birds had stripped her body of all flesh and only a few bones remained; and she had been clothed.

The birds strip the flesh, free the spirit, remove the potential for infection and reduce the weight to a handful of bones; a peripatetic body, just like cremation. Perhaps it was these bones, of the elect, that were cremated, and not full bodies, which would reduce the need for huge pyres. Perhaps a bone or two from every body, whether sky burial or cremated, was carried to Stonehenge, at some point, for a ceremony, and then deposited in the sacred Avon. 

It might be concluded that Stonehenge is neither a cemetery nor the abode of the dead; that the burials were more a form of dedication for each bluestone placement. Stonehenge is more a theatre of dreams, a ritual space; a stage, cathedral and town hall, in which they could ritualise everything in society. Even the solstice celebrations, just two each year, sounds reasonable in that one imagines that they could create the necessary resources whilst also providing for their own needs. The enigma continues.

See the full article as a download on my website www.naturalburialcreator.co.uk

Caitlin Moran offers posthumous advice to her daughter

1 January 2014
Charles
11 Comments
Categories: Attitudes to death, cremation, Humour, music

Here’s one we missed earlier: journalist Caitlin Moran’s draft last letter to her daughter published in The Times in July of last year (remember 2013?). You can find the entire article (£) here. 

My daughter is about to turn 13 and I’ve been smoking a lot recently, and so – in the wee small hours, when my lungs feel like there’s a small mouse inside them, scratching to get out – I’ve thought about writing her one of those “Now I’m Dead, Here’s My Letter Of Advice For You To Consult As You Continue Your Now Motherless Life” letters. Here’s the first draft. Might tweak it a bit later. When I’ve had another fag.

“Dear Lizzie. Hello, it’s Mummy. I’m dead. Sorry about that. I hope the funeral was good – did Daddy play Don’t Stop Me Now by Queen when my coffin went into the cremator? I hope everyone sang along and did air guitar, as I stipulated. And wore the stick-on Freddie Mercury moustaches, as I ordered in the ‘My Funeral Plan’ document that’s been pinned on the fridge since 2008, when I had that extremely self-pitying cold.

“Look – here are a couple of things I’ve learnt on the way that you might find useful in the coming years. It’s not an exhaustive list, but it’s a good start… The main thing is just to try to be nice … Just resolve to shine, constantly and steadily, like a warm lamp in the corner, and people will want to move towards you in order to feel happy, and to read things more clearly. You will be bright and constant in a world of dark and flux, and this will save you the anxiety of other, ultimately less satisfying things like ‘being cool’, ‘being more successful than everyone else’ and ‘being very thin’.

“Second, always remember that, nine times out of ten, you probably aren’t having a full-on nervous breakdown – you just need a cup of tea and a biscuit. You’d be amazed how easily and repeatedly you can confuse the two. Get a big biscuit tin.

“Three – always pick up worms off the pavement and put them on the grass. They’re having a bad day, and they’re good for… the earth or something (ask Daddy more about this; am a bit sketchy).

“Four: choose your friends because you feel most like yourself around them, because the jokes are easy and you feel like you’re in your best outfit when you’re with them, even though you’re just in a T-shirt. Never love someone whom you think you need to mend – or who makes you feel like you should be mended. There are boys out there who look for shining girls; they will stand next to you and say quiet things in your ear that only you can hear and that will slowly drain the joy out of your heart. The books about vampires are true, baby. Drive a stake through their hearts and run away.

“This segues into the next tip: life divides into AMAZING ENJOYABLE TIMES and APPALLING EXPERIENCES THAT WILL MAKE FUTURE AMAZING ANECDOTES. However awful, you can get through any experience if you imagine yourself, in the future, telling your friends about it as they scream, with increasing disbelief, ‘NO! NO!’ Even when Jesus was on the cross, I bet He was thinking, ‘When I rise in three days, the disciples aren’t going to believe this when I tell them about it.’

“Babyiest, see as many sunrises and sunsets as you can. Run across roads to smell fat roses. Always believe you can change the world – even if it’s only a tiny bit, because every tiny bit needed someone who changed it. Think of yourself as a silver rocket – use loud music as your fuel; books like maps and co-ordinates for how to get there. Host extravagantly, love constantly, dance in comfortable shoes, talk to Daddy and Nancy about me every day and never, ever start smoking. It’s like buying a fun baby dragon that will grow and eventually burn down your f***ing house.

“Love, Mummy.”

Be smart – follow the money

16 October 2013
Charles
4 Comments
Categories: cremation, crematoria, funeral cost

In all so-called advanced cultures, funeral practices are becoming less elaborate. All this talk of baby boomers reinventing funerals as bespoke, themed, accessorised, more or less lavish performance events can seem to make good sense — but baby boomers, who by now have buried and cremated many thousands of parents, ain’t, experience now tells us, buying in to all that. Recession or no recession, the dying express the wish to keep it cheap and simple; and those left behind seem content to fall in with that. When people fall into conversations about funerals, the proudest boasts are made by those who spent least. 

Where a funeral dwindles to its essentials — the body of a dead person and the body of people who cared about him/her —  there’s not much margin for an undertaker. But where the expanding market is the one for cheap funerals, that’s where an undertaker needs to hang out. You need to do more funerals for less to make your business pay, of course – if you can get em in the first place. 

So the earnings ceiling for an undertaker is getting lower and lower. This is especially evident in the US, where once comfortably-off morticians have been banjaxed by the rush to cremation. Growing impoverishment ought to act as a disincentive to new entrants. But the market in Britain remains saturated with undertakers because they are motivated by vocation rather than acquisitiveness. Altruistic people thrive on adversity; it strengthens their humanitarian resolve and enhances their sense sainthood.

Which is why the smart money is now increasingly going into crematoria and natural burial grounds of 20 acres+. Here profits remain fattening. Dignity and the Co-op are moving in bigtime. Bibby, the corp behind GreenAcres, is showing no interest in buying out undertakers. 

There’s a race on to buy out council-owned crematoria and build new ones – they’re going up everywhere. Here’s a bubble that’s going to end in rubble. Where low cost scores highest with consumers, and at a time when funeral poverty is stalking the land, it won’t be long before people wise up to the fact that the cheapest cremation provider is the one who cremates most economically by blazing round the clock 365 days a year (not 250 as at present) in a standalone plant with a viewing gallery set in a very few nicely appointed acres. There’s nothing to stop anyone from building one of these now. In the US they’re called crematories. That’s what we need: crematories, not more crematoria. 

By how much would efficient cremation bring down funeral costs? The US gives us some idea. You can arrange a direct cremation in New York for £860 including all undertaker’s fees. The cremation part of that comes to just £265. In Florida you can buy the complete direct cremation package for £525. In Maryland, using a particularly nice-looking crematory, you can buy the complete package for £618. And in San Diego you can do the whole thing for just £416 all in. 

Go figure, Bibby. You read it here first. Send us a bung when it all comes good. 

Vanishing point – what’s the best method?

1 August 2013
Charles
13 Comments
Categories: Committal, cremation, crematoria
Guest post by Steve
 
Every funeral at a crematorium will have a point at which the coffin is removed from the sight of the mourners, usually during the committal. 
 
To start off with, is there an optimal speed of removing the coffin from view? Some curtains close in just 10 seconds, which may be too fast for some. Yet a slow 90 second curtain closure may allow time to contemplate for some, or too long to suffer for others. 
 
Curtains – this is the most common form of the coffin “vanishing point”, especially in newer crematoria. The fact that the coffin does not move may make this method more acceptable, but it could also be seen as a rather boring or sterile method saying goodbye. Some European crematoria have moving screens instead of curtains, in some cases with colour changing lighting!
 
Conveyer/doors – this method is common in older UK crematoria (such as Golders Green and Woking), but rare in new builds. The coffin moves along a conveyer or rollers through a wooden or metallic door into a curtain lined receiving room. Since the infamous James Bond crematorium scene, many mourners probably think that coffin is moving straight into the cremator! Opinions may vary as to whether this method is more dignified that curtains. Certainly the “conveyer belt” method of 30 minute funeral slots at crematoria would not be in keeping with conveyers for the “vanishing point”. Some European crematoria use a combination of a moving catafalque on a floor track and curtains or screen. 
 
Lowering catafalque – this was also common in older crematoria, especially if the crematory was below the chapel. The catafalque lowers at the committal, in keeping with a burial. This may be seen as traditional or tacky. In some cases the coffin can be moved half-way down for flowers to be placed on the coffin, before it is lowered further to a receiving room (or even conveyer belt) below. In a few cases, it is just for show, and the coffin is raised back up again after the mourners have left the chapel. 
 
Do nothing – this is common in European crematoria. The coffin is not removed from sight, but mourners must remove themselves from the coffin at the end of the chapel service. Turning your back on a loved one may be harder than having them removed from you. 
 
Straight into the cremator – in Japan where the cremation rate is 99%, and many other cultures, it is traditional to view the coffin going into the cremator. This may be a bit traumatic for UK audiences, but it may be a more “final” way of saying goodbye. In Singapore, mourners view from a balcony as what can only be described as a robotic forklift moves slowly along a floor track, and places the coffin into the cremator. A You Tube video of this is shown below.  

 
Given that all mourners will likely have a different idea of what is an acceptable method of removing the coffin from view, is there a perfect method of the “vanishing point” to suit everyone?

Thinking the unsinkable

3 June 2013
Charles
21 Comments
Categories: cremation, direct cremation, funeral customs, funeral directors, funeral trends

In October 2008, in a piece about direct cremation, I wrote this: In the UK we are culturally conditioned to believe that a funeral for a body is indispensable. Could that change? In July 2009 I wrote: I never thought [direct cremation] would jump the Atlantic, but it has. We now have our first direct cremation service over here and it’s busy. Simplicity Cremations*, it’s called.

I seem not to have been wholly persuaded, however, for in March 2010 I wrote: It seems unthinkable that the practice of direct cremation … could land on our shores. In May 2010, in response to a very valuable analysis by Nick Gandon, Jonathan, a sagacious and valued commenter on this blog, wrote: Funeral directors aren’t set up to cater for direct cremation because the demand is almost nil. 

Seems like ancient history now.

The growth of direct cremation marks a cultural shift that, so far as I know, has gone unremarked by the British media. So far as the media is concerned, direct cremation doesn’t mark a cultural shift at all, it’s simply a branch of the cheaper funerals market, and we all want cheaper funerals, don’t we? The Dismal Trade seems mostly to share this analysis. Direct cremation is for poor people who can’t afford a full fig funeral, for a few well-off middle class people who want a ‘fuss-free’ funeral, and for the I’m-not-worth-it brigade who don’t reckon they’re worth funeralling anyway. It’s a niche market. 

So far as we can tell from their responses, funeral directors experience the impact of direct cremation as a commercial, not a cultural phenomenon, and certainly not as an existential threat. Most people still want a trad funeral, but direct cremation has affected the trad funerals market by making stripped-down respectable.  It has empowered funeral shoppers to say no to stuff they don’t actually really want. The days of one limo or two have been succeeded by one limo or none — oh, and no flowers, either, thanks. We are witnessing a watering down of the Big Black Funeral. How much more dilution can it take? 

Culturally, until the last five years or so, we supposed there to be a crucial, indispensable emotional and spiritual value in holding a funeral in the presence of a dead body.  Now, we’re not so sure. A combination of all manner of factors may be responsible, longevity in particular — when death is merely the postscript to a long and beastly illness, there doesn’t seem to be much more grief work to do. On the other hand, the deaths of young people remain not just as momentous as ever, but more so. 

There is, arguably, a perfectly good rationale for direct cremation. Reducing a body to ‘ash’ and rendering it, thereby, portable, durable and divisible, is a very effective way of preparing it for a funeral. There is remarkably little understanding of this among funeral directors; most of them simply do not get it, probably because they scent no commercial opportunity. 

So here are the big questions:

Is it preferable, in the interest of emotional and spiritual health, to hold a funeral in the presence of a dead body? Or do ashes actually serve perfectly well?

Biggest question of all: 

  • Is it perilous to your emotional health not to hold a funeral at all? After all, we get to carry on without the benefit of a formal ceremony or other ritual observance after near-bereavement experiences like the breakdown of a relationship, or redundancy, or a child leaving home. We resolve those privately. 

It seems extraordinary that the funeral industry has mounted no concerted defence of the funeral. Nor, so far as I know, have any academics responded to what’s going on and debated the question: Is your funeral really necessary? 

Because if pragmatic Brits cotton on to the idea that a funeral serves no purpose, does them absolutely no good at at all, is all just a lot of hollow show and hot air, they’ll be only too pleased to say goodbye to a tradition they never had much time for anyway. 

And that’ll be curtains for an industry thought to be unsinkable. 

*Simplicity Cremations is now Simplicita Cremations. I’ll leave it to Nick to explain why.

‘Eager yet kindly’ flames

23 April 2013
Charles
10 Comments
Categories: cremation, crematoria

Posted by Richard Rawlinson

After her funeral service at St Paul’s Cathedral last week, Margaret Thatcher was driven to Mortlake Crematorium in west London before the committal of her ashes alongside her beloved Denis at the Royal Hospital Chelsea.

Mortlake is a pleasant 1930s building surrounded by peaceful, landscaped gardens. HG Wells, who cremated his wife here, wrote this of its ‘rear of house’ facilities:

I should have made no attempt to follow the coffin had not Bernard Shaw, who was standing next to me, said: ‘Take the boys and go behind. It’s beautiful’. When I seemed to hesitate he whispered: ‘I saw my mother burnt there. You’ll be glad if you go’. That was wise counsel and I am very grateful for it. I beckoned to my two sons and we went together to the furnace room. The little coffin lay on a carriage outside the furnace doors. These opened. Inside one saw an oblong chamber whose fire-brick walls glowed with a dull red heat. The coffin was pushed slowly into the chamber and then in a moment or so a fringe of tongues of flame began to dance along its further edges and spread very rapidly. Then in another second the whole coffin was pouring out white fire. The doors of the furnace closed slowly upon that incandescence. It was indeed very beautiful. I wished she could have known of those quivering bright first flames, so clear they were and so like eager yet kindly living things.

For a virtual tour, click here.