A PLEA FOR CREMATION.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3173, 30 August 1881, Page 4

A PLEA FOR CREMATION.

Before the New York Cremation Society recently, Mrs Isabella Grunt Meredith res, 1 a paper on " Bow to Bury Our Dead." The lady opened by referring to the opponents of cremation as these who were opposed to any departure from established methods. She declared that the class that is represented by the undertakers, who have " mad*.the pomp of death more terrible than deat'i itself'," need fear no falling off in their profits, since caskets may be exchanged for urns to gratify man's love for show, and palls and plumes will still supply sufficient items for their sustenance. Of theobjeotio that cramatiwn wmild be calculated tv obliterate evidence of crime by poisoning, the lady remarked that only one body in each 27,800 cases of death is exhumed, atri argued that if incineration was practise:! physicians would mako a more careful diagnosis before giving certificates. She also referred to the horrors of burial befj.-j death and disea-sed the question from >± sanitary point of view as well. :-he cr 11 '- 1 attention to the facts that with the memory of man the northern end of City Hall Pari was ft graveyard, that more recent y Washington quare was a potter's fiel'. that Now Bowery is now a receptacle for rubbis.i, and that the little graveyard there will gradually disappear as buildings encroach up-n it. VVoodlawn Cemetery is rifw within the city's limits, as Careen wood and Evergreen cemeteries are within those of Brooklyn. The paper was placed in the archives of the society for future publication,