Cremation or Burial ?

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 709, 8 July 1929, Page 8

Cremation or Burial ?

GROWING PROBLEM OF THE DEAD AROUND Canton the graves extend over hill and dale for nearly ten miles. In London cemeteries bodies are buried deep so that room for more can be found in the same plot. It is the growing problem of the dead. In Benares funeral fires flare at night and the ashes are scattered to the winds or consigned to the sacred river. Must the funeral rites of the Hindu become our own

Fortunately the problem of Canton or London is not yet the problem of Auckland, although time was when many Aucklanders little thought they would live to see Grafton Cemetery fully occupied, or graves disturbed to make room for city improvements. In Sydney even now an old cemetery is being dug up in the very heart of the city. From Benares, Waikumete Cemetery is far removed, and so also are the funeral customs of the people, and yet, in part, the rites of the Hindu have already been adopted. At Waikumete corpses are also reduced to ashes, but in a manner more in keeping with our traditions and ashes are reverently treasured. Under Hindu influence the custom was practised by several Mongoloid peoples, but it really came from an unknown cradleland in Eurasia, the practice seeming to have passed to the early Aryans. In ancient Rome it was also adopted, but later was prohibited by the Roman Catholic Church, a prohibition which exists today in that church. Although in England and other countries cremation is steadily increasing, at Waikumete no great increase in the annual number of cremations is being registered. The crematorium was erected in August, 1923, at a capital cost of £3,619, and in the remaining months of that year there were 23 cremations. There were 35 in each of the two following years, 33 in 1926 and in 1927 the number dropped again to 35. Last year there were 49, and during the first six months of the present year there have been 21, approximately the average of the previous year. An increase of 14 in four years is certainly not very large. According to one of the City’s leading undertakers; many approve of cremation, but in arranging for funerals, relatives or friends would hesitate about selecting that form unless a specific viHsh had

been expressed. In many instances where bodies had been cremated ;n Auckland it bad been in accordance with wishes explicitly expressed in wills. Old customs die hard, and to this Is largely attributed the comparatively small number of cremations, approximately 250 to date. Time will come, however, when burial ground will become more and more costly. ... At present there is no great difference in the cost of cremation and burial, the same funeral expenses being involved in each instance, but the tendency is for burial plots to increase considerably in price. In 1921 the price of land in one Auckland cemetery was increased from £3 to £l2 and digging from £2 12s 6d to £4 2s 6d. As time goes on it is obvious that the cost of burial must far exceed that of cremation, and as cemeteries are placed farther away from the cities, as they must, funeral expenses will also increase. Until recently two medical certificates and a medical referee’s certificate were required by the author! ties, hut an amendment to the by-laws has now made necessary only one medical certificate and one from a medical referee, bringing about a reduction in those fees amounting to £1 Is. Principal charges are: Cremation, £4 4s, and for niche in crematorium (if required) to contain urn, £1 Is. The process is a simple one, to which little exception could be taken. The chapel is provided with e. curtained altar, and through this the coffin passes after the burial service. After a reasonable lapse of time it passes on again to another compartment, where it is reduced to ashes. In England the custom is stronglysponsored by' a Cremation Society, which was founded in 1874 by Sir H. Thompson, Bart., as a means to avoiding misuse of valuable land and danger to the public health.