CREMATION.

Te Aroha News, Volume XXVII, Issue 43213, 10 August 1907, Page 4

CREMATION.

As stated in our columns the other day, Christchurch is taking l steps to establish a crematorium, for the disf posal of the dead. At a meeting of the Physical Culture Society, who are mainly responsible for the agitation, the president, Mrs Page, in expressing her sympathy with the movement, said she only hoped that she would live long enough to be cremated. She said that there was no proposal to force everybody to be cremated. The advocates of cremation asked only that those who wished to be cremated should be able to provide for the disposal of their bndioo in the way they thought best She thought it would be much more horrible to become an object of repugnance in the grave than to be reduced to good) wholesome ashes. Everybody had a horror of •being buried alive. Her own: family possessed a death certificate of one member who was still alive and well. Another speaker, Mr Bryen O’Hoare, denounced the process of earth burial as disgusting. There were many agencies that went to distribute putrescent earth, and every cemetery and churchyard was a hotbed of disease. Opposition to cremation was met at almost every step from the learned professions, yeti no system had so such danger in it as earth burial. Ohe of the greatest reproaches to civilisation w r as the prevalence and persistence of certain dit.n.noo« which were to be attributed to a large extent, to tbe prevailing form of burial. There were only three objections to cremar t-ion. The first was that in populous places, where there Were two or three, crematoria, burning would hie going on every day, and the atmosphere would become laden possibly with poisonous germs. The air would be loaded with certain fumes and exhalations which would be recognised, and would become disagreeable, as Well as causing a large amount of smoke. The) ideal of germs was almost impossible, and all smoke should ho consumed 1 . The City Council was not wideawake enough to realise that, but the change j would have to come. The second objection was the possibilty of 'being burned alive. For himself, however, he would rather he burned alive than buried alive. who advocated cremation, however, made it a condition) that the bodies should l ' be examined by medical men to satisfy themselves that death had taken, place. The third objection, and the only one which required notice, was that creimtr tiom would do away with the detection of murder by poisoning. Fori that. matter, exhumation would be j set) off by the fact that additional j medical inspection would detect anything suspicious, and the stomach, if necessary, could be taken from a body , and preserved for any length of time. ;