Burning issue
There was much excitement when Davender Ghai won his case for open-air cremation at the Court of Appeal in February 2010. It established the legality of the principle of open-air cremation but, as Rupert Callender noted at the time: “this is only a battle that has been won, not the war. The next impenetrable ring […]
The feminine touch
According to Hindu custom it has always been the duty of the eldest son or senior male relative to light a funeral pyre. Here in Britain, it is very rare indeed for a female to be one of the small group to witness a dead person being loaded into the cremator. But, I was interested […]
Something else for the weekend
Here’s a lovely story about how they did things in a braver and more beautiful age. The occasion is the unveiling of a memorial on Patcham Down to the 53 Indian soldiers who died in the first world war. It stands just yards (metres for younger readers) from the Chattri Memorial, which stands on the […]
Not just for the skint
Nice home funeral story here: When Cathleen, a registered nurse, passed away at Hinds Hospice in Fresno, no mortuary was called due to previous planning. The Fresno County Coroner’s Office transported her to their facility and kept her until her funeral Jan. 26. The morning of her funeral, she was placed in a silk-lined pine […]
Open air funerals are go!
In the light of yesterday’s Court of Appeal judgement in favour of Davender Ghai and anyone else who wants to be cremated on a funeral pyre, Rupert Callender of the Green Funeral Company, and a Trustee of the Natural Death Centre, has this to say: The verdict this Wednesday from the High Court accepting the […]
Conspicuous combustion
No new technology devised for the improved disposal of dead bodies has managed to achieve both efficiency and spectacle. There’s a perfectly good reason for this: the brains behind cremation and cryomation and resomation never reckoned spectacle to be a selling point. After all, funerals in the UK are private events, most of them. When […]
Earth, wind and pyre
The be-wigged hair-splitters are having a sprightly time of it in the Appeal Court, where Davender Ghai is demanding the right to be burned, when he’s dead, on an open air funeral pyre. This is a matter of concern not just to those Hindus who want what Baba Ghai wants, but to anyone who […]
Finding Valhalla
A friend writes. She is to be interviewed for the talking wireless. They’re going to want her take on Viking funerals. What, she wonders, are my views on Viking funerals? Can you, I wonder, help? Interesting territory. We think of the classic Viking funeral as a blazing longship, bearing the corpse of a chieftain, […]
This is a burning issue. Please act now!
http://www.lifeandlove.tv/video.cfm/cid/2003/vid/1190/preview/true The video above (I’m sorry, I can’t embed it) shows, or purports to show, an open-air cremation in Colorado. I am indebted to m’learned friend, the humane, wise and scholarly Pat McNally, for putting me onto it. It is the subject of his latest blog post. If you are not a regular reader of […]
No match for m’lud
M’learned friends have spoken. Davender Ghai’s appeal to the high court to overturn Newcastle City Council’s ban on open-air cremation has been turned down like a bedspread. The 1902 Cremation Act was used in evidence against him. Funny, that. I thought the Act applied only to cremations in a crematorium. Well, that was the thinking […]
