PARKLAND CEMETERIES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 24 February 1940, Page 3

PARKLAND CEMETERIES

ABOLITION OF HEADSTONES. CREMATION BECOMING MORE POPULAR. Parkland cemeteries were described by Mr E. P. Norman. Town Clerk. Wellington, in an address given at the annual conference of the New Zealand branch of the Royal Sanitary Institute. He said that cemeteries, as they were generally conducted, were a blot on the landscape and some of them a competition in ostentation. Mr Norman showed excellent views of some 01. the parkland cemeteries, notably, Forest Lawn at Los Angeles and Sunset at Minneapolis and also several in Italy. In the first two, the plots were kept at ground level and simply marked by a bronze tablet flat in the grass, which was kept mown, and people were at liberty to walk over the graves. The grounds were well laid out with excellent trees and statuary and appeared to have an air of hope and not of despair which made for spiritual and mental healthiness.

Dr P. P. Lynch, pathologist, delivered an address on the "Medico-legal Aspect of Cremation." Dr Lynch stated cremation was more and more used. The physical problem was the application of sufficient heal to evaporate the water content of the body, about 72 per cent of its weight. A 1401 b man would contain 981bs of water about 10 gallons. In the Wellington Crematorium coke was used. Cremation became important in England owing to urbanisation and in 1874 the first society to further this end was formed. In England today 10 per cent were cremated. In Wellington the percentage had risen from 5 per cent in 1909 to 33 per cent today and this year 500 bodies would be cremated. The lecturer dealt exhaustively on the law to prevent crime in connection with cremation. Today in New Zealand there are four crematoriums —three municipal and one private. No pollution of surrounding air toolplace as combustion was complete. There would be more air pollution from a private chimney than from a crematorium. The cost was about .CIO per body.