CREMATION

Hokitika Guardian, 13 October 1927, Page 4

CREMATION

INCREASE IN SYDNEY. SYDNEY, Sept. 29. The fact that cremation in Sydney is becoming increasingly popular, ii oho may fittingly use that expression, and that, in two years, more people have been cremated in the metropolis of New South Wales loan in the older-established crematoria in the other big Australian cities, taking the whole period of existence of those establishments, recalls the conlrvorsial storm which has been raging in a section of the Gross round the statement of a doctor that it is practically impossible nowadays to make nil error regarding death. Not a. lew people, disagreeing with the d :cl«ir. believe that- even Lo-ilay. as in the days wli.n Roe, basing his story on fact, wrote “The Premature Durial,” burial alive is still a distinct and ghastly possibility. It is possibly in a measure because of this, apart froui other grounds, that cremation is c.lining into favour in Sydney. Mi the case of cremation, it is staled, two medical men must view the bod;, alter death before it is converted into its primary constituents, leaving simply a pure white ash. That burial alh '0 is still a bogey in the minds ol many people is clear from the fre-quently-recurring provision in wills

that, after death is supposed to have occurred, certain stringent measures should bo taken to make quite sure that life is altogether extinct be lore the body is consigned to the grave. That errors can be made regarding death is proved according to one correspondent, by a case,'of which details are given, in Now South Wales, only a year or two ago. This man, it was alleged, took an epileptic fit the night before bis death. A doctor pronounced him dead, but a quarter of an hour alter the doctor bad gone, the man staggered the bereaved relatives by sitting up and talking to them. Ho survived tho next day, but in Ihe night bad another seizure, which proved fatal. CERTIFIED AS DEAD. 4hat is only one case cited to show that even doctors are not infallible. That it is authentic is clear from the fact that the name of the man ami of tlio town is given. Another case which the doctors are asked to ponder over is that of a man working in Sydney at tho present time. It is claimed that he, too, was once certified by a doctor to ho dead. As a boy lie fell a victim to black measles. One night bo was left for dead by a

doctor, who said he would furnish a death eoiTifieato the next morning. The doctor got the shock of his life the next day when he. produced the document. The boy was alive, having recovered during the night. One correspondent asks, if there he any doubt about a. person being dead, why tho authorities do not insist on the application of Dr Ice.qrd’s test. It is explained that this French scientist’s discovery was made Ln 1911, and that when injected into a living subject colours the skin, but leaves no trace when injected into a corpse. NEGLECTED GR AVES. Even if many people will continue to liann it on religious grounds, and to identify it with pagan ritual, crcmaton, on grounds purely of sanitation, must inevitably tie practised far more largely in the metropolis of Sydney before many years. Great tracts of land, abutting populous residential areas, are already converted into vast, and sad to say, ugly cities of the dead. Everywhere, one see shockingly neglected graves, vases and other ornaments, rotted and rusted with ago, and decrepit tombstones. That , there is this tragic neglect is not always the fault of relatives. The good souls who visited these graves, perhaps every week, have in many eases long since passed away. One of the latest cremations in Sydney was that of a little school girl. In the office of the Cremation Society, b'v tho way, is a simple but dignified urn, containing the ashes of a man who died in Germany. His widow, who proposes to live in Sydney permanentnly. has left, the ashes in the Society’s care until she arrives.