EXCLUSIVE: It’s going to be one wacky sendoff for Downton’s Matthew
The GFG can exclusively reveal that Downton star Matthew Crawley will be cremated in a way-out guerilla funeral on the ancestral estate in a ritual created by the grief-stricken family. Devotees of toff-soap Downton Abbey were left dazed and heartbroken at the end of the 2012 Christmas special when heir Matthew Crawley was violently killed […]
Baby ashes scandal hits Edinburgh
From 1967 until last year, when a new manager was appointed and instituted a cleanup, Mortonhall crematorium, Edinburgh, has been telling parents that children who die antenatally or neonatally do not yield ashes when they are cremated. For an untold period the crematorium has been burying their ashes secretly in cardboard boxes in an unmarked, […]
Crems on wheels
The handsome chariot pictured above is a mobile crematorium. It is reckoned to have been developed for FEMA in case of disaster. Would it not serve just as well for scattered rural populations in Wales and Scotland? Full mobile crem patent here
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 […]
Oh yes we would
Denouncing plans for a new crematorium in Surrey which, if it is built, will be no more than 205m from the nearest house, East Grinstead resident David says: “You wouldn’t want to sit in your garden and overlook a funeral.” Oh no? How very different you are, David, from the readership of the GFG. Footnotes: […]
Muriel’s ashes
It was the Jubilee weekend and a year since we had all gathered around Muriel’s hospital bed as she told the Doctors that she wanted no more treatment, no interventions, no resuscitation. She told us she had had a wonderful life, she was ready to go, that she wanted to be cremated and she wanted her […]
The order is rapidly fadin’
Blog reader Kathryn Edwards has drawn our attention to an interesting article in the Guardian. Thanks, Kathryn. In it, Rosanna Greenstreet tells how her aunt Molly donated her body for medical education or research, thereby denying everyone the benefit of a funeral. Greenstreet tells us what family and friends did instead: Molly didn’t believe in […]
Different cultures, different customs
Very interesting photo-essay here about the ghats at Varanasi. Good text, too. Sometimes poorer people cannot afford enough wood to completely burn a body. In this case charred body parts are simply flung into the river with the ashes. Certain people, such as small children, pregnant women and holy men, are not cremated at all, but […]
Pyre appeal, Ghana
In Ghana the famous xylophonist Bernard Woma is appealing for money for a new funeral pyre for the people of his village. Here’s what he says: Due to centuries held traditional practice, the Dagara people perform funerals in a public setting. This public funeral ritual means that the deceased is displayed in a pyre mounted […]
What does it cost to run a crematorium?
Here’s an extract from a feasibility review conducted by Rugby Borough Council Jan 2010, which plans to build a new crematorium. The review gives us useful info about how these things are costed: Staffing: “It is proposed that the number of staff recommended would be: 1 Manager, 1 Administration Officer, 1 Operative “With on-costs this […]
