Posted on 06/05/2007 7:24:27 PM PDT by blam
Bodies to be stacked double in old graves
By Jonathan Petre, Religion Correspondent
Last Updated: 2:33am BST 06/06/2007
Graves are to be reopened to allow bodies to be stacked one on top of another in a controversial move announced by the Government yesterday.
A consultation last year found that most people would accept 'double-decker' graves
Bodies buried for as little as 75 years could be dug up and re-buried in deeper ground to allow another coffin to be interred above.
The name of the newly-buried person could even be added to the headstone.
This follows Government research which found that cemeteries and graveyards will be full within 30 years.
The decision is likely to unsettle religious groups concerned about the sanctity of burial grounds and charities for the bereaved.
Under the scheme, remains will be exhumed and re-interred at a deeper level in a smaller container or casket. A new coffin could then be lowered into the original space and the names of the newly buried added to the existing tombstone or to new plaques.
Permission to dig up the remains would be given only if there were no objections from descendants of the dead, if they can be tracked down.
Families who object to a relative's grave being re-used will be allowed to defer the exhumation for "at least" a generation.
Councils would normally only select graves that were untended, suggesting that they were not visited, and were 100 years old or more.
But the Ministry of Justice said there could be case for 75-year-old graves being used where the pressure of space was very great.
Under the present laws, graves can be re-used so long as the original coffin is left undisturbed. Experts have warned that, without urgent action, the country will soon face a serious problems burying its dead, but ministers see the issue as a "political taboo".
In a written statement yesterday, Harriet Harman, the justice minister, said: "The Government is now satisfied that it would be right to enable graves to be re-used, subject to appropriate safeguards."
Council officials welcomed the plan, saying it would make cemeteries "sustainable".
While there are about 350,000 cremations a year, there are still 150,000 burials.
Three inner-London cemeteries have already closed their gates and 16 boroughs in the capital will be at capacity within five to 15 years. Many others across the country are almost full
It is expected that councils will be required to place advertisements in local newspapers, put notices at cemeteries and write to relatives' last known addresses.
A consultation last year found that most people would accept "double-decker" graves, though a significant minority remained opposed.
The Church of England said yesterday that it had no theological objections so long as the process was carried out sensitively and after consultation with relatives.
A similar view is taken by the Roman Catholic Church, and the Muslim Council of Britain has said such burials would not conflict with Islam.
Rabbi Jonathan Romain, of the Maidenhead Synagogue, Berks, said that in the Jewish community there was "a general reluctance" to disturb the dead. "But if there is nowhere else to be bury the newly dead then space must be maximised for succeeding generations."
Why not a herring bone pattern?
OK, all joking aside...I'm done.
This is not new and was common in the Middle Ages. They should be glad they are not going to dig them up and make chandeliers out of the bones like they used to do.
Like in the Paris Catacombs?
What if the person you want under you isn’t dead yet? LOL
At least they don’t suggest “recycling” like in the novel “Brave New World!”
Joseph Bonanno of the Bonanno Crime Family invented this.
Bonnano also created the "double coffin," a contraption where two bodies could be stored in one coffin -- one, a loved one, and underneath, a second body that needed to be disposed of. The number of times this method of disposing bodies was used is unclear, but police are sure the number is up in the hundreds.
See, now some folks are going to be placing restrictions on who can be buried above them. "No Kelvins or Paines please - Mitchells preferred". Or clauses regarding "top bunk".
Why dig them up until they need the space then do the coffin switch, bury the present occupant deeper and bury the newly deceased on top of that? This doesn't sound cost effective at all.
This proposal requires double digging which may never be needed for some gravesites.
I guess once you're dead it doesn't matter, but I wouldn't want some stranger (or some of my relatives even) buried on top of me.
It will only be Christians who have been forgotten whose graves will be disturbed. Muslims won't stand for it and will get their way, I'll wager.
Do the families of these new "deceased unions" have to arbitrate visitation rights/rites at the gravesite?
What if a Christian is buried with a Wiccan? What happens if a memorial service for one is "offensive" to the practices of the other? How can we ensure that the religious rites only affect the one and not the other in the same grave?
What if a Jew is buried with a Muslim? What if a Muslim is buried with a hog farmer? The questions are endless.
-PJ
I’d hate to be buried underneath someone with excessive body odor or bowel control problems. That would really suck.
Or anywhere downstream of Jimmy Carters future resting place. Lots and lots of bladders waiting to unload on that worthless bass-turd
This is quite common in the rest of Europe. In fact, the guy who played Sgt Schultz in Hogan’s Heroes (John Banner) had his grave reused a few years ago in Austria. My family back in Kupno, Poland is pretty much gone - graves all reused, no headstones to commemorate where they were buried or anything. The only place I can think of in the USA whee this kind of practice is done is New Orleans.
Living in an early-settled part of Pennsylvania I became aware of these European practices through noting the amazement of European visitors when they see American cemeteries with stones predating the Revolution. In Switzerland, for example, it is customary to "recycle" a grave (including removing the old stone) after 40 years; the logic being that by then hardly anyone cares as two generations have passed. The visitors are quite impressed that we continue to care for the burial sites of eight generations of ancestors.
The SF Bay Area, by one projection, will be out of burial space in about 20 years. There’s simply no flat land left to convert to cemeteries, and the few hills that aren’t too steep to build on are far too expensive to “waste” on burials. The environuts say it’s not an issue and that everyone will just have to be cremated, but many people have no interest in that. Even here in the Central Valley, where land is far more available, attempts by groups ranging from the Catholic Church to investment companies have run up against stiff and organized opposition.
Here’s a bigger question. What if the grave has a cross on the headstone, and some bureaucrat from “the state” decides to bury a Muslim on top of the original occupant? Will they destroy the original headstone to be PC?
The best solution would be to bore holes with a power auger and pound them in like nails - straight down. That way, you’d get 20 people into the same space it takes for one body, casket, vault and headstone. Put a totem in the center of the cluster or corpses and carve a new name with every internment. The newbies would go on the bottom and the senior stiff would be on top.
Ouch! \\ nice pun // Anyway... cremation is coming into vogue, but damn I want a nice big monument. No sealed casket though. I do not want to become soup.
They have been doing it for many years at Forest Lawn Cemetary in Glendale.
Nah, no cremation for me. I want to be buried in a marble tomb with a 50’ tall carved marble spire on top. I plan on leaving 5 pages of “final words” behind, and want them etched VERY SHALLOWLY onto the surface of the spire. Why? Posterity!
I may be anonymous in life, but I’ll damned well gurantee that researchers a thousand years from now will be poring over their records trying to figure out who this “obviosuly important and powerful person” was. If I cannot achieve fame and power in this life, at least I can fake it and confuse the heck out of those who will follow me!
I don’t understand why no one would want to have a cemetery for a next-door neighbor. At least the neighbors are quiet. :-)
Better have your ‘last words’ written on gold or platinum foil. Our soil here is so acidic that 150 year old burials here are empty...the acid has eaten every thing, nothing there what-so-ever.
Who would you like to be stacked on?
ROTFLMAO!
I saw a study (done in the UK) about the well water of users downhill from cemeteries. All wells tested contained human protein.
"Ah! I know something about that," said the undertaker. "Calkilations have been made which proves that the average life of us poor weak humans creeturs is thirty-five years; so, if London contains a million and a half of people, a million and a half of persons dies, and is buried in the course of every thirty-five years. Isn't that a fine thing for them that's in the undertaking line? cause it's quite clear that there's a million and a half of funerals in every thirty-five years in this blessed city."
"And a million and a half of graves or waults rekvired," said Jones. "Well, then, who the deuce can blame us for burning up the old 'uns to make room for the new 'uns?"
"Who, indeed?" echoed Mr. Banks. "T'other day I had an undertaking, which was buried in Enon Chapel, Saint Clement's Lane, - down there by Lincoln's Inn, you know. The chapel's surrounded by houses, all okkipied by poor people, and the stench is horrid. The fact is, that the chapel's divided into two storeys: the upper one is the preaching place; and the underneath one is the burial place. There's only a common boarded floor to separate 'em. You go down by a trap-door in the floor; and pits is dug below for the coffins. Why at one end the place is so full, that the coffins is piled up till they touch the ceiling - that is, the floor of the chapel itself, and there's only a few inches of earth over 'em. The common sewer runs through the place; so, what with that and the coffins and carkisses, it's a nice hole."
"Wuss than this?" said Jones.
"Of course it is," returned Banks; "'cause at all ewents this is out in the open air, while t'other's shut up and close. But I'll tell you what it is, Jones," continued the undertaker, sinking his voice as if he were afraid of being overheard by a stranger, "the people that lives in that densely-populated quarter about Saint Clement's Lane, exists in the midst of a pestilence. Why they breathe nothing but the putrid stench of the Enon burial-place, the Green Ground in Portugal Street, and the Alms-House burying ground down at the bottom of the Lane."
"All that'll breed a plague von o'these days in the werry middle of London," observed Jones.
"Not a doubt of it," said the undertaker. "But I haven't done yet all I had to say about that quarter. Wery soon after a burial takes place at Enon Chapel, a queer-looking, long, narrow, black fly crawls out of the coffin. It is a production of the putrefaction of the dead body. But what do you think? Next season this fly is succeeded by another kind of insect just like the common bug, and with wings. The children that go to Sunday-school at the Chapel calls 'em 'body bugs.' Them insects is seen all through the summer flying or crawling about the Chapel. All the houses that overlooks the Chapel is infested with rats; and if a poor creetur only hangs a bit of meat out of his window in the summer time, in a few hours it grows putrid."
- The Mysteries of London by George W.M. Reynolds, 1844-46
Ping
On the other hand, you might be onto something here. That's 3D thinking.
-PJ
When going through some old family papers I found a deed for a large family plot at a well-known cemetery in NYC. IIRC the papers dated from the late 1800’s, though it could have been a little later. There was an accompanying diagram that indicated that there was space for about 12 burials of which only 9 or 10 were occupied. I’ve been thinking it might be interesting to visit there sometime, although deed or no deed, my expectation would be that none of these spaces have contained my relatives for a long time.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't people buy deeds to cemetary lots? Isn't that land bought and paid for by the person whose remains are interred there? Isn't this just another government "takings" of that private property in order to bury a future deceased person? How is this different from taking the property of one in order to benefit the private interests of others?
Why can't the other choose cremation, or finding another site, instead of taking the "final resting place" of the current occupant?
-PJ
-PJ
-PJ
It ain't just the headstones in that scenario. Muslims will want to "re-orient" the cemetary so that it faces Mecca in a certain way (nope, I'm not joking). I reckon that given enough time, all the old Christian graves will be dug up and the remains piled in a mass grave (if they bother to re-bury them at all).
Not being a lawyer I'm not sure about that. One thing I wonder about is that typically there are no maintenance fees or property taxes paid by the relatives of the deceased after the plot is purchased. Yet the cemetery must maintain the grounds in perpetuity if they are to continue burials partly because it just wouldn't look right to have part of the cemetery unmaintained. As a practical matter they have to find new revenue streams just to keep up the grounds and re-using plots would be a way to do that if they could get away with it.
BTW several years before I found the NYC deed I found another deed to an older family plot in a farming area of New York State. Included in the deed was a perpetual right-of-way to cross other land to reach the cemetery. We visited the location and right in the middle of a plowed field there still existed a small fenced-off cemetery that looked like no one had visited it for many decades. There were tall trees whose roots had upset some of the stones. It must have been a drag for farmers to plow around the cemetery but the deed had been honored.
I suppose a deed is much more likely to be honored if it is recorded with the county government. Perhaps these deeds from Forest Lawn are not the same as the deed one normally receives upon purchase of other types of land.
o m g. . .
There lie some of my relatives: my great-aunt, who died in 1943, below her mother, who died in 1956, then above her, my grandmother, who died in 1968. My mother preferred to be cremated rather than see anyone go to the expense of shipping her remains back to the old country just to be on top of the others, close family though they were. HF
What happens to these triple-deckers? And, if there are no claimants, why not bury the headstones with the bodies?
At least they use the same persuasive logic as the GW gloomsayers; make sure anyone who might complain will be dead by the time the deed is done.
Of course, in 75 years all these new graves will be floated up and away as the sea level rises and floods all the mainland areas.
At the rate the USA is growing? Just bury me on an Alakan mountainside close to Canada .... no one will be there for a thousand years.
“Bodies to be stacked double...”
Does that include dead muslims, or will they be catered to?
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