THE PROPOSED DETROIT CREMATORIUM.
THE PROPOSED DETROIT CREMATORIUM.
THE PROPOSED DETROIT CREMATORIUM.
Within a quite recent period at least two graveyards in Montreal have been torn up to make public squares; and it is not likely that any more respect will be shown to cemeteries in the future than there has been in the past.
Dr. Wm. Porter says: “I well remember, when a boy, seeing our old sexton exhume a body buried for several years,—that of a strong man called away in the prime of life. The rotting coffin was slowly lifted from its damp bed, and the lid being broken, we saw within a horrible mass of putrefaction. Matted hair and decomposing grave-clothes but poorly covered the blackened skeleton as it lay in the once handsome casket, now reeking with the emanation of its loathsome contents. Yet this had been a beautiful grave; roses had blossomed upon it, and the arbor vitæ had whispered to it. There would be but little plea for the grave on the ground of sentiment could we see the changes there taking place; there would be few, if any, who would not choose that the body, after faithful service, should be purified by fire, rather than rot in such a grave.”
We are accustomed to consider sacred the venerable remains of our dead, and the simplest memorial of a departed friend makes us, if but for moments, sad. Therefore, all who lay any claim to civilization or humanity must be vehemently opposed to the profane exhibition of the bones of the deceased in bone-houses, where they lie pell-mell in a heap, or catacombs, where they stand braced against the wall, lie in their coffins, or are put away in niches,i.e., on the shelf, and where any dawdling fool may inspect them for a small sum of money.
The Rev. H. R. Haweis states: “Where are the thousandswho were laid in the heart of Paris, and who slept for centuries in the graveyards of the Innocents, St. Eustache, St. Etienne de Prés? Every tourist who takes a return ticket to Paris may gaze upon their bones, speculate upon their skulls, and finger their dust. By order of the minister of police they were all dug up in 1787 and carted off to the catacombs. The bones were cleaned and arranged in grim and picturesque symmetry. In one gallery are the arms, legs, and thighs intersected by rows of skulls; the small bones are thrown in heaps behind them. Whose dust is separate there? whose ashes are sacred? And yet they were borne to this grotesque sepulchre with priests and tapers.”
As regards disrespect and insult to the dead, a correspondent of theMedical Times and Gazette, writing from Bordeaux, says:—
“The earth around one of the oldest churches in Bordeaux seems to have something peculiarly antiseptic in its nature, so that the bodies buried during ages were converted into mummies. During some alterations at the beginning of this century these bodies were laid bare, and instead of being decently buried again, they were taken out of their resting-place and ranged upright in a row around a crypt under the bell-tower of St. Michael. Here they constitute a disgusting and demoralizing show, which is visited by crowds of people, and I am afraid that the clergy of the church are not ashamed to pocket the profits. A rough fellow, a candle on the end of a stick, such as they have in wine-cellars, goes round as showman. He taps and thumps the bodies to show that they are perfectly sound, tough like leather trunks, and not the least brittle.‘See here, gentlemen, is a very tall man; see how powerful his muscles must have been, and what excellent calves he has now! The next is the body of a young woman. Remark the excellent preservation of her chemise, though it was buried 400 years ago; and see, it is trimmed with lace. The next, gentlemen, is a priest; you can see his soutane with the buttons on it. There is a woman with a dreadful chasm in her breast; she had a cancer. The next four are a family poisoned with mushrooms; observe the contortions of their faces from thecoliquesthey suffered. See, next, a very old man with his wig still awry upon his pate. The next is a poormisérablethat was buried alive. See how his head is turned to one side and the body half turned round, in the frantic effort to get out of the coffin, with his mouth open and gasping.’ (It is quite true that the attitude is singular, but it does not warrant the inference which the showman draws.) But enough of this disgusting mercenary exhibition of the human body in its lowest state of humiliation. If the guardians of consecrated sepulchres, in which people have paid an honest fee to be buried, are to dig them up and cart them off as in England, or make a show of them as here, why, I can only say that cremation will gain a good many converts. Any one would prefer urn burial to the chance of being thus made a spectacle. So good, too, it must be for the rising population to take off the edge of any salutary horror they may feel at death and decay, or of reverence for the dead.”
There are many such shows where the human corpse is used for the purpose of eliciting money from a public loving horrible and sensational sights. I need but mention the catacombs of Rome, or the Bleikeller of Bremen,to conjure up before your mind all the terrible scenes which the clerical and medical gentlemen whom I have just cited have pictured.
There is another way in which the dead are insulted, another mode by which their graves are desecrated. The monuments which are erected upon the last resting-place of the deceased to perpetuate their memory are sometimes moved about till they no longer mark the spot where the person whose name they bear was interred. Here, then, all the good intentions of friends are set at naught; their expense, their attention, is all in vain. The tombstones are moved, and when they become yellow with age they are broken up to act as headstones for some public highway. That this does not hold good of European countries only, but also of American ones, is proven by our honored and beloved “autocrat of the breakfast table,” Oliver Wendell Holmes, who declares: “The most accursed act of vandalism ever committed within my knowledge was the uprooting of the ancient gravestones in three at least of our city burial-grounds, and one at least just outside the city, and planting them in rows to suit the taste for symmetry of the perpetrators. The stones have been shuffled about like chessmen, and nothing short of the Day of Judgment will tell whose dust lies beneath any of those records meant by affection to mark one small spot as sacred to some cherished memory. Shame! shame! shame! That is all I can say. It was on public thoroughfares, under the eye of authority, that this infamy was enacted. I should like to see the gravestones which have been disturbed or removed and the ground levelled, leaving the flat tombstones. Epitaphs were never famous for truth, but the old reproach of‘Herelies’ never had such a wholesale illustration as in these outraged burial-places, where the stone does lie above, and the bones do not lie beneath.”
Now be candid! Do you not think that facts like these go a good way to endorse cremation? There would be no need of disturbing the dead, there would be no vulgar exhibition of the deceased, after incineration would have been introduced. There would, in fact, be nothing to do violence to that most sacred and deep-rooted feeling of humanity,—respect for the dead.
Among all the outrages on the dead, that committed by the hand of ghoulish desecration is, by far, the worst. Body-snatching, for providing anatomical institutions with material, has become a business in the United States; love of gain being, as usual, the cause. And not only are bodies abducted to supply medical colleges, but persons are liable to be murdered for the same reason. In February of 1884 two negroes were arrested at Cincinnati, who, after a severe examination, confessed to having killed an old man, his wife, and his adopted daughter; after which they sold the corpses to the Ohio Medical College, receiving $15 for each.
But some grave-robberies are perpetrated simply for revenge, or else for pure deviltry. A special despatch to theDetroit Free Press, from Point Pleasant, W. Va., relates an instance of this kind as follows:—
“Salt Creek, a small stream, empties into the Ohio River three miles south of this. Two miles from the mouth is a church called Pisgah, attached to which is a burying-ground. This morning when the sexton went to dig a grave, he was horrified to find half a dozen graves open and the bodies taken from their coffins andstretched on the ground. In one or two instances the limbs were severed from the bodies. The graves had been opened without regard to family. The bodies lay in one place arranged in the shape of a Greek cross. There is no clue to the perpetrators of the sacrilegious offense, and no reason can be imagined. The bodies evidently had been exposed for a day or two.”
The funeral car of the late A. T. Stewart was followed by six carriages laden with gorgeous floral offerings; yet in spite of the more than regal magnificence of his funeral, and of his great wealth, only a few days later his body was stolen by sacrilegious robbers, and has never been recovered. Need I remind you of the mortification our nation felt on hearing that guards had to be set to watch over the graves of our lamented presidents, Lincoln and Garfield.
Not only in our country is body-snatching a frequent offense, but also in England, as will be seen by the sequent quotation from Mr. Walker (p. 202):—
“An undertaker who had charge of a funeral went with a friend into the vault of a chapel. A coffin recently deposited was taken under his arm with the greatest ease. His friend, doubting, poised the coffin, and was affected to tears from the conviction that the body had been removed. Several other coffins were in the same condition.”
The corpse of the late Earl of Crawford was stolen from the Dun Echt mortuary chapel in Aberdeen.
There is one case of outrage on the dead on record that, for hideousness and devilishness, surpasses all others. I refer to that grave-digger of Koenigsberg, Prussia, who fed his swine with human bodies.
One of the most abominable modes of outrage on thedead is that where men (beasts is the proper designation for them) have gratified their animal passions by outraging the fresh corpses of young and pretty women. It seems incredible, but this violation was known in the most ancient times, and is not yet extinct in the present age.
Herodotusalready reports in the 89th chapter of his second book, that the Egyptians of old did not deliver up the bodies of ladies of quality or the remains of young and beautiful women to the embalmers until decomposition had set in, so that these men could not have coition with them. For it was said that an embalmer had once surprised a colleague in the act of outraging the corpse of a youthful woman, and had reported the case to the authorities, who punished the inhuman offender promptly.
The evening edition of theNational Zeitung(published at Berlin) of Nov. 21, 1874 (No. 544), relates that in Lichtenberg, which is situated near the capital of the German Empire, in the night from the 4th to 5th of November, two children, recently buried, were disinterred and removed from their coffins. On the morning of November the 5th the corpses were found on the ground near the graves,—the shrouds were torn,—and one body, that of a little two-year-old girl, bore all the signs of a recent outrage.
All these sacrilegious outrages on the dead could be obviated by incineration. The avaricious would not be tempted by a small quantity of ashes in a plain urn. There would be no valuable clothing and no costly jewelry, ordinarily inhumed with some bodies, to excite rapacity.
Furthermore, cremation promises the greatest possiblesecurity from vandalism. When the urn containing the remains,i.e., ashes, of our friends or relatives is placed in a niche in the columbarium, it can be easily guarded. One watchman, in communication (by electrical alarm) with the police department of the city, will suffice to protect the urn-hall of a columbarium. The same cannot be said of a cemetery; it would take at least a company of watchmen to properly guard the grounds of a medium-sized graveyard.
Some day we will have Westminster Abbeys on a small scale, where, amid grand monuments and costly urns, the simple tablet of wood shall have its place, its inscription remaining legible, not being blotted out by the elements, as it is to-day. Each church could have its own urn-hall, and the burial ceremonies could be conducted according to the belief of the deceased.
The greatest foe incineration has to contend with is the widespread antipathy against it, entertained and nursed by people who are governed more by sentiment than by reason. Which is the most poetical mode of disposal of the dead, cremation or burial? Think! think!! think!!! and you cannot fail to find out.
Mr. W. Robinson, F.L.S., says:—
“The simplest urn ever made for the ashes of a Roman soldier is far more beautiful than the costly funeral trappings used in the most imposing burial pageant of modern times. Of urns of a more ambitious kind, the variety and beauty are often remarkable, as may be seen in our national and various private collections. It would be a gain to art if some of the money spent on coffins, which rot unseen in the earth, were devoted to such urns, which do not decay, and which might beplaced in the light of day, and perhaps teach a lesson in art as well as bear a record.”
And theMedical Heralddeclares:—
“An urn of granite, alabaster, malachite, or one of the precious metals, with the life-sized statue of great men placed in the halls of state, would much more befittingly express the state’s regard, and preserve and perpetuate the grateful tribute a Christian people would pay their memories, than any number of columns and shafts reared in cemeteries, which must in time be demolished.”
Which is the more æsthetic, a small heap of pure, pearl-white ashes, or a grim skeleton? Certainly those who have seen a decomposing body, or human remains in the state of adipocere, would not call them æsthetic. Contrast with the ghastly skeleton, now commonly employed as an illustration of death, the representation of death by the ancients,—the boy with the inverted torch. Which is the more refined?
The strong tombs, of such a grandeur and beauty—proof against the gnawing teeth of time—mortuary monuments,—as we shall not be able to leave to our offspring, testify to the pious veneration for the dead of the ancients. I need but remind you of the grand pyramids, the extensive necropolis at Thebes, the mausoleums and columbaria of the Via Appia in Rome, to cause you to perceive the truth of my statement.
The ancients thought of the dead as being turned into shades; when we think of them we imagine rattling skeletons. The stupid and disgusting glorification of the skeleton did not originate with Christ; it is a product of the Middle Ages, as are the many tales of witchesand ghosts that are related, especially in connection with churchyards, and still cling to them to-day.
The cremationists of to-day, who propose to substitute a decent æsthetic and sanitary mode of disposal of the dead for the present harmful and loathsome custom of inhumation, are repulsed, met by sentimental objections, are even called monsters without religion, without reverence for the dead.
But the apostles of incineration are as far removed from striving to suppress and murder such sacred feelings as is Dan from Beersheba. On the contrary, they believe that cremation is far more conducive to a pious veneration for the dead than interment.
What would you rather look upon, that horrible remnant of mortality, for which, as Bossuet says, “there has been found no name in any human language,” or the innocuous, pearly ash in the memorial urn of marble, alabaster, or one of the precious metals?
Cremation is humane, healthful, and, most of all methods, consonant to the natural impulse of Christianized veneration for the dead; serving and honoring that impulse by preventing the exposure of the dead to those visible elemental and chemical conditions and operations which breed a revolt of the feelings, and tend to surround the subject with an atmosphere of abhorrence.
Undoubtedly, one result of adopting generally the in-cinerative burial, will be a disassociation in our ideas from that existing and shocking conception of horrible bodily decay, in which almost every thought bestowed upon the dead is necessarily enveloped, and we will learn to contemplate the body with the cheerful philosophy of the Persian poet, Omar Khayyam:—
“‘Tis but a tent where takes his one day’s restA Sultan to the realms of death addrest;The Sultan rises, and the dark FerrashStrikes and prepares it for another guest.”
“‘Tis but a tent where takes his one day’s restA Sultan to the realms of death addrest;The Sultan rises, and the dark FerrashStrikes and prepares it for another guest.”
“‘Tis but a tent where takes his one day’s restA Sultan to the realms of death addrest;The Sultan rises, and the dark FerrashStrikes and prepares it for another guest.”
“‘Tis but a tent where takes his one day’s rest
A Sultan to the realms of death addrest;
The Sultan rises, and the dark Ferrash
Strikes and prepares it for another guest.”
At a burial there is but darkness, at a cremation rosy light unaccompanied by fustiness; the dead is really reduced to ashes, and with him the time-honored saying, “Peace to his ashes,” is not a hollow phrase, as it is with those who are interred.
Those who do not wish to miss religious and other ceremonies at incinerations may use any form of burial service they like, and those who desire to dispense with them may do so. And those who already have beloved dead in the cemeteries may rest by their side when the end is come, for the ashes can be interred as well as the body.
A Sicilian poet suggested that along with the ashes thus buried might be deposited the seeds of some flower,—such as heart’s-ease, violets, or forget-me-nots,—so that when it sprung up, the friends and relatives might gather the blossoms from year to year as a dear memorial of the life that lasts beyond the tomb; and Tennyson’s (“In Memoriam”) poetic verses would be realized:—
“And from his ashes may be madeThe violet of his native land.”
“And from his ashes may be madeThe violet of his native land.”
“And from his ashes may be madeThe violet of his native land.”
“And from his ashes may be made
The violet of his native land.”
Only when cremation is practiced, can a family obtain the remains (ashes, of course) of its friends and relatives who have died in a foreign land; only then it is possible to deposit such remains with those of the ancestors.
With the Chinese it is customary to always inter thedead in their native land; when they are far away from home they inhume their deceased temporarily, but at the earliest opportunity remove them to China,—a usage that deserves to be imitated.
The small urn containing the parental ashes may be taken by migratory man into the new world or the old, always preserved as the most sacred relic of the family.
How much more beautiful and better would it not be to have the remains of our kin near at hand, in the house. Only then we would be reminded of them every day. Every building could be made to contain a mortuary chamber. Then we would know our dead shielded from the elements. Now, when the storm rages and the rain pours down in torrents, we imagine that he or she whom we have recently buried is yet subject to the inclemency of the weather. Maxime du Camp relates a touching example of the power of illusion. On one of his walks in the Paris cemeteries he discovered a young lady kneeling before a tombstone, who was singing (interrupted frequently by her sobs) an aria from an opera. When she observed him, after she had finished she said, excusing herself involuntarily: “There my dear mother lies buried! She loved to hear this aria!”
That these questions which I have just briefly considered are of considerable moment is demonstrated by the experience of the Rev. Brooke Lambert, who says:—
“It has been my misfortune to lose four of my nearest relations in different parts of the world. It has been also a subject of regret to me that their remains lie so far off. I care little for the fate which happens to their bodies; and yet, had such a practice as cremationbeen in use, it would sometimes have been a comfort to feel that I had their ashes with me. Collected in an urn, they might either repose in columbaria, like those at Rome, or in a mortuary chapel in my own house.”
This citation brings to my mind a beautiful epigram of Count Platen, who, as you undoubtedly know, was called the favorite of the ladies. It is impossible to translate it, and therefore I will content myself with mentioning the contents. It entreats the sacred flames to return, and to purify the air which death has contaminated; it requests those about to bury to reduce to ashes the body of their friend; and it rejoices that the remains of our beloved will again rest in a clean and decent urn near our abodes.
There are many authors who, in their works, have expressed themselves in favor of cremation. Among the first to do this was A. F. Ferdinand von Kotzebue, a German writer of note, who glorified incineration in his novel “Die Leiden der Ortenberg’schen Familie.”
There are those who are afraid that cremation will do away with all that is mortuary in poetry and song. For instance, they say: “What will become of Gray’s Elegy in a Country Churchyard? Allusion to burial runs so inseparably through its verses that nothing would be left of them were it eliminated.” As a work of art Gray’s masterpiece will live forever; but if reason or common sense is applied to it, I doubt whether it has a right to exist, even now. I admit that the poem is beautiful, that it is grand; but it is all sentiment—nothing more.
There is now already a new literature, prose as wellas poetry, accumulating. The “Cremazione dei cadaveri” already has its poets—principally in Italy. Professor Giambattista Polizzi of Girgenti dedicated (in March, 1873) a poem on cineration to Signora Emilia Salsi when her husband, Doctor Giuseppi Salsi, died and was cremated. He praised incineration as the best mode to dispose of the dead, and to preserve the remains of the departed. In January, 1874, Civelli’s printing house at Milan, Italy, turned out 22 stanzas on incineration, in the Milanese dialect. The anonymous author is a patron of cremation. Dr. Moretti of Cannero published an excellent poem on cremation in theAnnali di Chimicaof 1872. A German author, writing under the pseudonym of “Dranmor,” sent forth some very good verses on the same subject, as did also the celebrated Dr. Justinus Kerner.
Mr. William Eassie laments:—
“It is a matter of regret that those of our own poets who have been in favor of burning the dead did not enshrine their proclivities in verse. Southey, for instance, wrote that the custom of interment ‘makes the idea of a dead friend more unpleasant. We think of the grave, corruption, and worms; burning would be better.’ But he left us no poetry on the subject.”
The objections to cineration put forward by the sentimentalists are really of no consequence at all; they are far too trivial to be worth even only superficial consideration. I have only mentioned them, because I am aware of the strong hold that sentiment has on most people, and because they allowed of a comparison between burial and cremation, which is decidedly in favor of the latter.
Dr. E. J. Bermingham of New York City hits the nail on the head by saying:—
“We believe the abhorrence entertained by many, of cremation, depends to a very great extent on the universal tendency of individuals and nations to resent any interference with established customs, to reject any innovation simply because it is an innovation.”
Sentimental objection to incineration resolves into this: We are the slaves of custom. We love to walk in the old wornout paths, and when some one discovers a new way that is much shorter, and by which the destination is reached much sooner, we are loathe to use it. First only a few adopt it, then more and more travel over its surface, until finally the old path becomes obsolete.
To what an extent people are governed by their time-honored customs was illustrated by the ancient historian Herodotus (see Muses, Book III, chap. 88), as follows:—
“If all people were to choose the most beautiful among the customs, they would after close examination select their own, because every nation believes that its own customs are the best and the most beautiful. One therefore cannot imagine that anybody but a madman would ridicule such matters. When Darius reigned he summoned the Greeks then in his land, and when they came, he requested them to name the price they would take to eat their deceased parents. They replied they would not commit such a crime for all the gold in his empire. Then he caused the Kalatians (natives of India), who were in the habit of eating their parental dead, to appear before him; when they arrived, he questioned them (in presence of the Greeks, to whomevery word was interpreted) how much remuneration they would want to burn their dead. They cried aloud, and bade him not to think of such a sacrilege. Thus custom rules. I believe Pindar to be right when he asserts in one of his poems that custom is the king of all.”