Author: THOMPSON, Sir H.
Title: Modern Cremation. Its history and practice .. recently improved arrangements made by the Cremation Society of England. Second edition revised and greatly enlarged.
Description: London, Kegan Paul 1891. Octavo publisher's cloth; xii,163pp and publisher's catalogue; frontispiece and 11 illustrations (five being full page plans or elevations). A nice copy. ¶ 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. His improvements to this edition include reprinting this 1874 paper and a subsequent answer to the critics. The first human cremations to occur in England, and test the law, were private affairs in privately built crematoria and this book was first published two years earlier as laws and codes were being formulated. This edition includes instructions for arranging cremation at the Society's crematorium (the only one in use in England) near Woking and descriptions of the crematorium, the furnace, and offers suggestions for cinerary urns. The frontispiece is the architect's rendering of their chapel and crematoria, a fine bit of 13th century English church architecture, unremarkable in any tasteful parish - except for the 13th century industrial chimney sprouting from the middle of the building.

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