From Dust to Ashes Also by Peter C. Jupp MORTALITY (quarterly journal; co-editor with Glennys Howarth) CONTEMPORARY ISSUES IN THE SOCIOLOGY OF DEATH, DYING AND DISPOSAL (co-editor with Glennys Howarth) THE CHANGING FACE OF DEATH: Historical Accounts of Death and Disposal (co-editor with Glennys Howarth) INTERPRETING DEATH: Christian Theology and Pastoral Practice (co-editor with Tony Rogers) DEATH IN ENGLAND: An Illustrated History (co-editor with Clare Gittings) GOLDERS GREEN CREMATORIUM 1902–2002: A London Centenary in Context (co-editor with Hilary J. Grainger) POSTMODERNITY, SOCIOLOGY AND RELIGION (co-editor with Kieran Flanagan) VIRTUE ETHICS AND SOCIOLOGY: Issues of Modernity and Religion (co-editor with Kieran Flanagan) Forthcoming A SOCIOLOGY OF SPIRITUALITY (co-editor with Kieran Flanagan) From Dust to Ashes Cremation and the British Way of Death Peter C. Jupp University of Bristol and United Reformed Church Minister © Peter C. Jupp 2006 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2006 978-0-333-69298-1 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2006 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-40155-0 ISBN 978-0-230-51108-8 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9780230511088 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Jupp, Peter C. From dust to ashes : cremation and the British way of death / Peter C. Jupp. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Cremation—Great Britain—History. 2. Funeral rites and ceremonies—Great Britain—History. I. Title. GT3331.G7J87 2005 393′.2′0941—dc22 2005051551 10987654321 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 This book is dedicated to my wife Elisabeth and our sons Edmund and Miles and to the memory of my father Ernest Victor Jupp (1904–1995) and my mother Jessie Frances Jupp (1899–1968). This page intentionally left blank Contents List of Abbreviations viii Preface ix Acknowledgements xvii 1 Introduction 1 2 How the Church Lost Its Monopoly of Burial, 1820–1852 19 3 Cremation Legalised, 1852–1884 46 4 The Early Years of Cremation, 1884–1914 70 5 The Development of Cremation, 1914–1939 98 6 The Advance of Cremation: Wartime and Reconstruction, 1939–1952 125 7 The Popularisation of Cremation in England, 1952–2000 156 8 Conclusion 185 Notes 203 Bibliography 205 Index 224 vii List of Abbreviations ABBA Association of British Burial Authorities AGM Annual General Meeting BUA British Undertakers Association CBA Confederation of Burial Authorities CWS Cooperative Wholesale Society FBCA Federation of British Cremation Authorities FSC Funeral Standards Council HC House of Commons HL House of Lords IBCA Institute of Burial and Cremation Administration ICCM Institute of Cemetery and Crematorium Management ICF International Cremation Federation LCC London County Council LCC London Cremation Company LH Lower House (of the Convocation of Canterbury) NACCS National Association of Cemetery and Crematorium Superintendents NAFD National Association of Funeral Directors PP Parliamentary Papers QQ Questions SAIF Society of Allied and Independent Funeral Directors SCI Service Corporation International UK United Kingdom UH Upper House (of the Convocation of Canterbury) viii Preface This book is the first account of a fundamental change in death customs in British society: the replacement of burial by cremation. Britain was the first modern European country to popularise cremation and thus it has a unique place in the sociology of death. Cremation was first promoted in 1874 and enshrined in the Cremation Act 1902. By 1939, 4% of funerals in the UK involved cremation, 50% by 1968, climbing to 71% by 2000. The reasons for the emergence of cremation as the dominant form of disposal of the dead in British society are part of a complex story of overcrowded churchyards and cemeteries, changing social and theological attitudes to death, and the secularisation of the custody of the dead body from ecclesial authority to civic. Cremation, placing funerals in an economic, hygienic and rational frame, overlaps with this process. The present accept- ance of cremation as the dominant form of disposal covers a long time period but this book focuses on the period 1820–2000. This study, despite its sub-title, does not focus on Scotland where there are consid- erable differences in the history of the churches since the reformation and in the development of burial law, nor on Northern Ireland (whose first crematorium opened in 1961). Many vested interest groups are involved in this radical shift from burial to cremation, from dust to ashes. Academic studies, both of burial and of cremation, are in their infancy. Death scholars today have benefited from the taboo upon discussions about death in the twentieth century, just as much as we have sought to combat it. This story of cremation has had to be constructed from journals, archives, conference reports, government reports and from interviews. In 1976, Kenneth Prevette wrote a thirty- page history to mark the centenary of the Cremation Society of Great Britain (Prevette, 1974). He was the then Secretary of the Society founded in 1874 to promote cremation. Studies of the disposal of the dead are like a jigsaw puzzle where both the lid with the overall picture and several major pieces are missing. There is, as yet, no history of the Cremation Society, nor comparable accounts of the Society’s two sister societies: the Institute of Cemetery and Crematorium Management (ICCM), formerly the National Association of Cemetery and Crematorium Superintendents (NACCS) and successively the Institute of Burial and Cremation Administration (IBCA); and the Federation of British Cremation Authorities (FBCA). There is no history of either the ix x Preface Proprietary Crematoria Association (PCA) or the International Cremation Federation (ICF). There are very few histories of specific crematoria save Manchester (Makepeace, 1990) and Golders Green (Jupp and Grainger, 2002). In 2005, the first full-length account was published about the first British crematorium at Woking (Parsons, 2005e). Stephen White, a specialist in cremation and ecclesiastical law, has written valuable papers on key events and issues in British cremation history: these stemmed from his first research into the Price trial of 1884. Both Parsons and White have uncovered a considerable amount of material that has greatly helped the earlier sections of this study. At the time of writing, both Douglas Davies’ Encyclopaedia of Cremation and Hilary J. Grainger’s Death Redesigned: History, Architecture and Landscape are imminent. There are no English- language full-length accounts of the growth of cremation in mainland Europe. Only in the last three years have there appeared histories of cremation in the United States, by Prothero (2001) and in Australia by Nicol (2003). Studies of burial practice have fared a little better. James Stevens Curl has been writing about cemeteries and the architecture of disposal for thirty years: his Death and Architecture (third edition, Curl, 2002) has, with Colvin’s Architecture and the After-life (Colvin, 1991), assessed the built environments with which death is marked. Curl’s recent Kensal Green Cemetery (Curl, 2001) and John Clarke’s London’s Necropolis on Woking (Clarke, 2004) are leaders in this genre. In the last fifteen years, Julie Rugg has developed the work and influence of her Cemetery Research Group at York University, and her annual seminar has brought together a young generation of cemetery scholars. A vital and steady flow of papers has followed her doctoral thesis on the private cemetery movement in Britain during 1820–1850 (Rugg, 1992). Douglas Davies founded a Cremation Research Project at the University of Nottingham, now at the University of Durham. The rise of cemetery Friends’ Groups has encouraged studies of a number of individual burial grounds. There are very few scholars for whom the study of death can be a full-time research interest. The long-standing MA courses in death at the University of Wales Lampeter and, until recently, at the University of Reading, have utilised their interdisciplinary resources. The organisa- tion of university departments has not allowed full-time courses; and only in the last ten years has UK Government research money been favour- ably directed towards the history and sociology of death practices. Death studies have been a sub-discipline or a side interest for scholars whose major responsibilities have lain – and been reimbursed – elsewhere. Preface xi Death studies have been more central for the disciplines of archaeology, anthropology and medicine. The sociology of medicine has made a sustained contribution to death, with scholars like David Clark, David Field and Neil Small. Despite the immense importance of Durkheim and the retention of suicide in a central place in sociological theory, the sociology of death has yet to find its place in the mainstream of British sociology.