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Further information: Secondary cremation Bronze container of ancient cremated human remains, complete with votive offering Cremation dates to at least 20,000 years ago in the archaeological record with the Mungo Lady, the remains of a partly cremated body found at Lake Mungo, Australia. Alternative death rituals emphasizing one method of disposal of a body—inhumation (burial), cremation, and exposure—have gone through periods of preference throughout history. In the Middle East and Europe, both burial and cremation are evident in the archaeological record in the Neolithic. Cultural groups had their own preference and prohibitions. The ancient Egyptians developed an intricate transmigration of soul theology, which prohibited cremation, and this was adopted widely among other Semitic peoples. The Babylonians, according to Herodotus, embalmed their dead. Early Persians practiced cremation, but this became prohibited during the Zoroastrian Period. Phoenicians practiced both cremation and burial. From the Cycladic civilisation in 3000 BC until the Sub-Mycenaean era in 1200–1100 B.C., Greeks practiced inhumation. Cremation appearing around the 12th century B.C. constitutes a new practice of burial and is probably an influence from Minor Asia. Until the Christian era, when the inhumation becomes again the only burial practice, both combustion and inhumation had been practiced depending on the era, and area.[2] Romans practiced both, with cremation generally associated with military honors. In Europe, there are traces of cremation dating to the Early Bronze Age (c. 2000 B.C.) in the Pannonian Plain and along the middle Danube. The custom becomes dominant throughout Bronze Age Europe with the Urnfield culture (from ca. 1300 B.C.). In the Iron Age, inhumation becomes again more common, but cremation persisted in the Villanovan culture and elsewhere. Homer's account of Patroclus' burial describes cremation with subsequent burial in a tumulus similar to Urnfield burials, qualifying as the earliest description of cremation rites. This is mostly an anachronism, as during Mycenaean times burial was generally preferred, and Homer may have been reflecting more common use of cremation in the period in which the Iliad was written centuries later. Criticism of burial rites is a common aspersion in competing religions and cultures, and one is the association of cremation with fire sacrifice or human sacrifice. Hinduism and Jainism are notable for not only allowing but prescribing cremation. Cremation in India is first attested in the Cemetery H culture (from ca. 1900 B.C.), considered the formative stage of Vedic civilization. The Rigveda contains a reference to the emerging practice, in RV 10.15.14, where the forefathers "both cremated (agnidagdhá-) and uncremated (ánagnidagdha-)" are invoked.[3][4] Cremation remained common, but not universal, in both Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome. According to Cicero, in Rome, inhumation was considered the more archaic rite, while the most honoured citizens were most typically cremated—especially upper classes and members of imperial families. Christianity frowned upon cremation, both influenced by the tenets of Judaism, and in an attempt to abolish Graeco-Roman pagan rituals. By the 5th century, the practice of cremation had practically disappeared from Europe. In early Roman Britain, cremation was usual but diminished by the fourth century. It then reappeared in the fifth and sixth centuries during the migration era, when sacrificed animals were sometimes included with the human bodies on the pyre, and the deceased were dressed in costume and with ornaments for the burning. That custom was also very widespread among the Germanic peoples of the northern continental lands from which the Anglo-Saxon migrants are supposed to have been derived, during the same period. These ashes were usually thereafter deposited in a vessel of clay or bronze in an "urn cemetery." The custom again died out with the Christian conversion among the Anglo-Saxons or Early English during the seventh century, when inhumation of the corpse became general.[5] Middle Ages Throughout parts of Europe, cremation was forbidden by law, and even punishable by death if combined with Heathen rites.[6] Cremation was sometimes used by authorities as part of punishment for heretics, and this did not only include burning at the stake. For example, the body of John Wycliff was exhumed years after his death and cremated, with the ashes thrown in a river,[7] explicitly as a posthumous punishment for his denial of the Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation.[8] On the other hand, mass cremations were often performed out of fear[9] of contagious diseases, such as after a battle, pestilence, or famine. Retributory cremation continued into modern times. For example, after World War II, the bodies of the 12 men convicted of crimes against humanity at the Nuremberg Trials were not returned to their families, but were instead cremated, then disposed of at a secret location as a specific part of a legal process intended to deny their use as a location for any sort of memorial.[10] In Japan, however, erection of a memorial building for many executed war criminals, who were also cremated, was allowed for their remains.[11] The modern era The Woking Crematorium, built in 1878 as the first facility in England after a long campaign led by the Cremation Society of Great Britain. The first to advocate for the use of cremation was the physician Sir Thomas Browne in 1658. Honoretta Brooks Pratt became was the first recorded cremated individual in modern times when she died on 26 September 1769 and was illegally cremated at the burial ground on Hanover Square in London. [12] The organized movement to reinstate cremation as a viable method for body disposal began in the 1870s. In 1869 the idea was presented to the Medical International Congress of Florence by Professors Coletti and Castiglioni "in the name of public health and civilization". In 1873 Professor Gorini of Lodi and Professor Brunetti of Padua published reports or practical work they had conducted. A model of Professor Brunetti's cremating apparatus, together with the resulting ashes, was exhibited at the Vienna Exposition in 1873 and attracted great attention, including that of Sir Henry Thompson, 1st Baronet, a surgeon and Physician to the Queen Victoria, who returned home to become the first and chief promoter of cremation in England.[13] Sir Henry Thompson's main reason for supporting cremation was that "it was becoming a necessary sanitary precaution against the propagation of disease among a population daily growing larger in relation to the area it occupied". In addition, he believed, cremation would prevent premature burial, reduce the expense of funerals, spare mourners the necessity of standing exposed to the weather during interment, and urns would be safe from vandalism.[13] On 13 January 1874, some advocates of cremation, including Anthony Trollope, John Everett Millais, George du Maurier, Thomas Spencer Wells, John Tenniel and Shirley Brooks,[14] held a meeting at Thompson's house in London and formally founded the "Cremation Society of Great Britain" which was "organised expressly for the purpose of obtaining and disseminating information on the subject and for adopting the best method of performing the process, as soon as this could be determined, provided that the act was not contrary to Law".[13] William Price helped to legalize cremation and was himself cremated after his death in 1893. The first duty of the Cremation Society was to ascertain whether cremation could be legally performed in the country, and then to construct a first crematorium.[13] In 1878, a piece of land in Woking on which the crematorium was to be established was bought by Sir Henry Thompson.[15] Professor Gorini was invited to visit Woking and supervise the erection of his cremation apparatus there. It was first tested on 17 March 1879, when the body of a horse was cremated. However, the inhabitants of Woking showed strong antipathy to the crematorium and appealed to the Home Secretary, Sir Richard Cross, to prohibit the use of the building. The legalization of cremation came about through the eccentric activities of Welsh Neo-Druidic priest, William Price. After his first child died in 1884, and believing that it was wrong to bury a corpse, thereby polluting the earth, Price decided to cremate his son’s body.[16] He was arrested by the police for the illegal disposal of a corpse. Price successfully argued in court that while the law did not state that cremation was legal, it also did not state that it was illegal. The case set a precedent which, together with the activities of the newly founded Cremation Society of Great Britain, led to the Cremation Act of 1902.[17] The Act imposed procedural requirements before a cremation could occur and restricted the practice to authorised places.[18] Advertisement for woolen envelopes to wrap the body in for cremation, appearing in the Undertaker's Journal, 1889. In 1885, the first official cremation in the UK took place in Woking. The deceased was Mrs Jeannette C. Pickersgill, a well-known figure in literary and scientific circles.[19] By the end of the year, the Cremation Society of Great Britain had overseen two more cremations, a total of 3 out of 597,357 deaths in the UK that year.[15] In 1886 ten bodies were cremated at Woking Crematorium. During 1888, in which 28 cremations took place, the Cremation Society planned to provide a chapel, waiting rooms and other amenities there. In 1892 a crematorium opened in Manchester, followed by one in Glasgow in 1895, Liverpool in 1896 and Birmingham Crematorium in 1903.[20] Crematoria in Europe were built in 1878 in the town of Gotha in Germany and later in Heidelberg in 1891. The first modern crematory in the U.S. was built in 1876 by Francis Julius LeMoyne after hearing about its use in Europe. During that time it was thought that people were getting sick by attending funerals of those recently deceased and that decomposing bodies were leaking into the water systems.[21][22] LeMoyne built the crematory to cremate bodies in a controlled environment primarily for sanitary reasons. Cremation was used to destroy any organic matter that could cause illness and give families a better way to preserve ashes. Before LeMoyne’s crematory closed in 1901, it had performed 42 cremations.[23] Some of the various Protestant churches came to accept cremation, with the rationale being, "God can resurrect a bowl of ashes just as conveniently as he can resurrect a bowl of dust." The 1908 Catholic Encyclopedia was critical about these efforts, referring to them as a "sinister movement" and associating them with Freemasonry, although it said that "there is nothing directly opposed to any dogma of the Church in the practice of cremation."[24] In 1963, Pope Paul VI lifted the ban on cremation,[25] and in 1966 allowed Catholic priests to officiate at cremation ceremonies. In the U.S. only about one crematory per year were built in the late 19th century. As embalming became more widely accepted and used, crematories lost their sanitary edge. To not be left behind, crematories had an idea of making cremation beautiful. They started building crematories with stained-glass windows and marble floors with frescoed walls. By 2008, the cremation rate was 36.2% and was growing about 1 percentage point a year, according to CANA. CANA is the largest organization representing crematories and funeral homes in the U.S. and Canada.[23] Australia also started to establish modern cremation movements and societies. Australians had their first purpose-built modern crematorium and chapel in the West Terrace Cemetery in the South Australian capital of Adelaide in 1901. This small building, resembling the buildings at Woking, remained largely unchanged from its 19th-century style and was in full operation until the late 1950s. The oldest operating crematorium in Australia is at Rookwood Cemetery, in Sydney. It opened in 1925. In the Netherlands, the foundation of the Association for Optional Cremation[26] in 1874 ushered in a long debate about the merits and demerits of cremation. Laws against cremation were challenged and invalidated in 1915 (two years after the construction of the first crematorium in the Netherlands), though cremation did not become legally recognised until 1955.[27] World War II Crematorium at Dachau concentration camp During World War II (1939–45) Nazi Germany used specially built furnaces in at least six extermination camps throughout occupied Poland including at Auschwitz-Birkenau, Chełmno, Belzec, Majdanek, Sobibor and Treblinka, where the bodies of those murdered by gassing were disposed of using incineration. The efficiency of industrialised killing of Operation Reinhard during the most deadly phase of the Holocaust produced too many corpses, therefore the crematoria manufactured to SS specifications were put into use in all of them to handle the disposals around the clock, day and night.[28][29] The Vrba–Wetzler report offers the following description. At present there are four crematoria in operation at BIRKENAU, two large ones, I and II, and two smaller ones, III and IV. Those of type I and II consist of 3 parts, i.e.,: (A) the furnace room; (B) the large halls; and (C) the gas chamber. A huge chimney rises from the furnace room around which are grouped nine furnaces, each having four openings. Each opening can take three normal corpses at once and after an hour and a half the bodies are completely burned. This corresponds to a daily capacity of about 2,000 bodies... Crematoria III and IV work on nearly the same principle, but their capacity is only half as large. Thus the total capacity of the four cremating and gassing plants at BIRKENAU amounts to about 6,000 daily.[30] diagram A sketch from the Vrba–Wetzler report, showing the rough layout of the crematoria used at Auschwitz, one of the several Nazi German extermination camps in occupied Poland The Holocaust furnaces were supplied by a number of manufacturers, with the best known and most common being Topf and Sons as well as Kori Company of Berlin,[31] whose ovens were elongated to accommodate two bodies, slid inside from the back side. The ashes were taken out from the front side.[32] The furnaces were also unique, in that they were of a "stand alone" type. Meaning that there was no visible duct work for the exhaust gasses. These furnaces, based around a design commonly used for hospital incinerators, instead vented the gasses down through a series of ducts embedded in the floor, with the help of a draft fan located at the far end of the structure. Once outside, the gasses then rose through a free standing chimney, most notable for the fact that it was not directly attached to the structure of the building itself, nor had a visible duct leading into it. Modern cremation process The cremation occurs in a crematory that is housed within a crematorium and comprises one or more furnaces. A cremator is an industrial furnace that is able to generate temperatures of 870–980 °C (1,600–1,800 °F) to ensure disintegration of the corpse. A crematorium may be part of a chapel or a funeral home or may be an independent facility or a service offered by a cemetery. The Assumption Catholic Cemetery and Crematory in Mississauga, Canada, with chimney visible Modern cremator fuels include oil,[33] natural gas, propane, and, in some areas like Hong Kong, coal gas.[34] However, coal and coke were used until the early 1960s. Modern cremators have adjustable-control systems that monitor the furnace during cremation. These systems automatically monitor the interior to tell when the cremation process is complete (this can only be assessed by a cremator operator: the controls can indicate that the process has progressed to an advanced stage but only an operator with experience can say a cremation is complete due to issues such as stubborn cancerous tissues remaining unfinished for example)[citation needed], after which the furnace automatically shuts down. The time required for cremation varies from body to body, and, in modern furnaces, the process may be as fast as one hour per 50 kg (100 lb) of body weight. A cremator is not designed to cremate more than one human body at a time; cremation of multiple bodies is illegal in the United States and many other countries. Exceptions may be made in special cases, such as with still-born twins or with a still-born baby and a mother who died during childbirth. In such cases, the bodies must be cremated in the same container. The chamber where the body is placed is called a retort and is lined with heat-resistant refractory bricks. Refractory bricks are designed in several layers. The outermost layer is usually simply an insulation material, e.g., mineral wool. Inside is typically a layer of insulation brick, mostly calcium silicate in nature. Heavy duty cremators are usually designed with two layers of fire bricks inside the insulation layer. The layer of fire bricks in contact with the combustion process protects the outer layer and is required to be replaced from time to time.[35] The coffin or container is inserted (charged) into the retort as quickly as possible to avoid heat loss through the top door. The container may be mounted on a charger (motorised trolley) that can quickly insert it, or on a fixed or movable hopper that allows the container to slide into the cremator. Modern cremators are computer-controlled to ensure legal and safe use. For example, the retort door cannot be opened until the cremator has reached its operating temperature, and United States federal regulations[36] require that newly constructed cremators feature dual electrical and mechanical heat-shutoff switches and door releases that are accessible from inside the retort. Refractory bricks are typically replaced every five years, because thermal fatigue gradually introduces fissures that reduce the insulating strength. For heavy duty cremators having an inner sacrificial layer of refractory material, often cracks, slagging, bulging and dislocation can be seen on this layer shortly after the cremator is put into use. Such cracks and fracture need not be disastrous, as this lining is sacrificial in nature — it may just result in the development of a crack pattern in the lining. Those crack surfaces may be held together and closed by the lining compressive stresses that develop from thermal expansion when the cremator is heated to operating temperatures.[35] However, the inner sacrificial lining needs to be replaced on a regular basis to offer proper protection to the outer layers. Some crematoria allow relatives to view the charging. This is sometimes done for religious reasons, such as in traditional Hindu and Jain funerals.[37] The size of most cremators is standardized.[citation needed]Typically, larger cities have access to an oversized cremator that can handle corpse in the 200 kilograms (440 lb)+ range.[citation needed] Most large crematoria have small cremators installed for the cremation of fetal and infant remains. Cremation is the use of high-temperature burning, vaporization, and oxidation to reduce dead animal or human bodies to basic chemical compounds, such as gases and mineral fragments retaining the appearance of dry bone.[1] Cremation may serve as a funeral or post-funeral rite that is an alternative to the interment of an intact dead body in a coffin or casket. Cremated remains, which do not constitute a health risk, may be buried or interred in memorial sites or cemeteries, or they may be retained by relatives and dispersed in various ways. Cremation is not an alternative to a funeral, but rather an alternative to burial or other forms of disposal. In many countries, cremation is usually done in a crematorium. Some countries prefer different methods, such as open-air cremation in India and in Nepal. |
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