FREE CREMATION

Evening Star, Issue 23382, 27 September 1939, Page 7

FREE CREMATION

ENGLISH COUNCIL'S OFFER FOR A YEAR There is something ironical about the decision of the Hull City Council to cremate people for nothing in order to make it popular, for only 54 years ago a Welsh doctor was prosecuted in a case which roused nation-wide interest for trying to incinerate the remains of his infant son, says the ‘ Observer,’ London. Hull has found this method of disposal of the dead so much cheaper than burial that for a year the council will make no charge for cremation of those who die in the city. Almost simultaneously, it was being announced in London that Hammersmith Borough Council, unable to .find ground for a new cemetery nearer than 30 or 40 miles, had built a crematorium instead. It was on Sunday, January 30, 1884, that people returning from chapel were astonished to see a great fire burning on the summit of a kill:at the side of Llautrisant, near Pontypridd (Glam.),Beside the blaze was eighty-five-year-old Dr William Price, wearing a long white robe and chanting a hymn in Welsh, and in the middle of the flames was a casket containing the body of his child. Dr Price was tried at the Cardiff Assizes. “It is true I burned the child,” he said. “ I had a right to do it.” _ ■ Mr Justice Stephen told the grand Jury that by burning instead of burying a child a person didl not commit a criminal act unless ho created a public nuisance. Dr Price was acquitted. From that day the movement for cremation began, and when Dr Price died, at the age of 95, bis body was burned and his ashes “ cast to the winds.”'

During the last year 16.312 persons were cremated in Britain, compared with 3,436 in 1926.