Author: THOMPSON, Sir H.
Title: Modern Cremation. Its history and practice .. recently improved arrangements made by the Cremation Society of England.
Description: London, Kegan Paul 1889. Octavo half gilt morocco; viii,95pp & publisher's list, frontispiece. Ex parliamentary library with their gilt crest on the front board and incorporated into the spine, no other markings. Some foxing at the ends, one signature sprung but a handsome enough copy. ¶ First edition, a second appeared in 1891. By the funereal reformer, founder and president of the Society. Cremation, for the modern westerner, is a materialistic, utilitarian question. Public health is the main spur for the cremationist and the spiritual barely touched upon - the body is being desanctified; which may or may not explain why Italy was the pioneer of modern cremation. There the subject was first raised in the 1860's and by the mid 1880's several hundred people had been burnt. In England Thompson caused the first storm with an article in the Contemporary Review in 1874, the year his Society was founded. The first human cremations to occur in England, and test the law, were private affairs in privately built crematoria and it is only now (ie 1889) that laws and codes were being formulated.

Keywords: death cremation reform medicine c19th England public health burial social sciences progress