PARK AND CEMETERY. 
395 
such parlor ornament can be seen in a Long Island village much 
frequented by summer boarders, and the writer of this para- 
graph has seen dozens of them in parts of Maine that pretend to 
be, and for that matter are, fairly well civilized. 
Cremation. 
Cremation in the United Kingdom, in the 
hands of the Cremation Society of England, is gain- 
ing ground according to the report for 1895. The 
society’s council includes many distinguished names, 
the president being Sir Henry Thompson, F. R. 
C. S. At the Woking Crematory there were 150 
cremations in 1895, as compared with 125 in 1894; 
while at Manchester there were 58 in 1895. At the 
time of the issuing of this report these were the only 
crematories in operation in England, but at Glas- 
gow a fine plant had been recently opened and 
progress was being rapidly made in relation to one 
at Liverpool. The society has been actively at work 
to secure proper amendments to the laws regarding 
records of causes of death, with a view to removing 
one of the great objections to the process from a 
legal standpoint, the concealment of crime, or the 
possibilities of the necessity of gathering evidence 
by exhuming bodies. The matter will be agitated 
by the society until the laws are satisfactory on the 
question. At the present time the society will not 
carry out a cremation except upon the strictest in- 
quiry and upon the properly attested death certifi- 
cate devised by the society. 
The importance of this question was early ap- 
preciated by Sir Henry Thompson, as will be seen 
from the following extract from a paper read by him 
on the subject of cremation: 
“This being so, I venture to affirm that this 
important question demands solution before we are 
permitted to undertake the practical resort to cre- 
mation of human bodies on a large scale. Up to 
the present time I have myself in every instance 
been responsible for the careful investigation of the 
papers connected with every case sent to Woking 
for cremation, having drawn up a special short se- 
ries of questions constituting the death certificate 
on which we rely as the initial step in the process. 
Then, having considered the evidence thus brought 
before me, I have declined every case not free from 
doubt or objection, and demanded an adequate 
necropsy sufficing to solve it as an indispensable con- 
dition of ere mation. This is not a matter of diffi- 
culty with small numbers, but with large numbers 
it is obvious that some such stringent method must 
be made legally binding in all cases.” 
“Advocate as I am and long have been of cre- 
mation as one among the most important and neces- 
sary reforms, I would discourage (as I have, indeed, 
for years persisted in doing) a wide and general ap- 
plication of the process until the law demands a 
proper examination of the circumstances of death 
in every case. The present method of certifying 
the cause of death throughout Great Britain is 
grossly inadequate, and is now widely known to be 
so. When first advocating cremation twenty years 
ago (if I may be forgiven for once more alluding to 
the effort then made), I did not dare to do so with- 
out then prominently stating that the authorized 
precautions in the matter of the death certificate 
* * * are defective and inadequate to the end pro- 
posed, and much less efficient than those adopted 
by foreign governments, adding that if the public is 
earnest in its endeavor to render difficult or impos- 
sible the crime of secret poisoning, the sooner some 
measures are taken to this end the better, whether 
burial in earth or cremation be the future method 
of treating our dead.” 
Extracts from a discourse of Dr. W. R. Burr of 
Auburn, Ky., given in The Casket for November, 
will serve to show how thinking over the subject is 
weakening the objections. He says: 
“But, notwithstanding the general disapproval 
of cremation by the religious world, quite a number 
of the leading theologians of the age have signified 
their approval of the method. Among them may be 
mentioned such men as Phillips Brooks, Edward 
Everett Hale, Robert Collyer, H. C. Potter and 
Heber Newton. 
“Another objection that has been urged against 
cremation is that it destroys all the tender feelings 
and memories associated with friends who have de- 
parted life. This, too, is morbid sentimentality 
and not reason. The memory of departed friends 
and relatives and the pleasant associations we had 
with them when they ‘lived, moved and had being’ 
can be affectionately and tenderly cherished, no 
matter what disposition was made of their lifeless 
bodies. Besides memory of the dead usually lasts 
but for a generation and they are forgotten, and 
their names and resting places are blotted out. Love, 
aflection, sentiment and tender memorie.s of de- 
parted loved ones should abide in us, and, indeed, 
this would be a cold and pulseless world without 
such feelings, but we should have sufficient love for 
science and regard' for the living not to allow our 
dead to be the cause of disease and destruction. 
“The day will come, although this generation 
may not see it, when cremation will be the univer- 
sal practice, and a potent source of infection and 
death will be wiped out. Cremation has been grow- 
ing fast in favor since Sir Henry Thompson brought 
it prominently before the public in 1874 and formed 
the Cremation Society of London. He proposed to 
‘resolve a dead body into carbonic acid, water and 
ammonia rapidly and unpleasantly.’ That cremation 
does this no one can deny.” 
