Surrey: Painted by Sutton Palmer; Described by A.R. Hope MoncrieffMoncrieff, A. R. Hope (Ascott Robert Hope)
History
Surrey: Painted by Sutton Palmer; Described by A.R. Hope Moncrieff
Moncrieff, A. R. Hope (Ascott Robert Hope)
Surrey (England) -- Description and travel
That prejudice has been so far broken down that several other
Crematoriums are now open over the country, two close to London,
welcomed by the Cremation Society as taking away much of its business,
one by no means worked on commercial principles. In the course of twenty
years, over twenty-five hundred bodies were consumed at Woking, many of
them names of eminence: travellers like Sir Samuel Baker and Sir Henry
Layard; physicians like Sir Benjamin Richardson and Sir Spencer Wells;
authors like George Macdonald and W. E. Henley, Eliza Lynn Linton and
"Edna Lyall"; artists like Watts and Burne-Jones; philanthropists like
Sir Isaac Pitman and Dr. Barnardo; clergymen like H. R. Haweis and
Brooke Lambert, all concerned in their last dispositions to set such a
good example. Two dukes have been cremated here, with a due proportion
of duchesses and other members of the peerage; a judge or two can be
counted; and a crowning triumph of the Society would be to get a bishop
among its clients. At the outset of the movement one bishop came forward
to denounce it, but he was put to silence by a reminder how certain
distinguished prelates had been cremated alive, so far back as Queen
Mary's time, with no presumable damage to their souls' welfare.
[Illustration: THE GREAT POND, FRENSHAM.]
As an original supporter of an enterprise that never sought to make
money, I need not shrink from giving it bold advertisement. The one
valid objection to cremation, that death by poisoning might be
undetected, is obviated by the precautions all along insisted upon by
the Cremation Society, which, along with its own aims, has advocated
such more stringent examination into the cause of death as itself
requires in every case. The proceedings are facilitated when, in
lifetime, one has expressed a disposition for this kind of funeral. The
cost of cremation has now been reduced to a few pounds, becoming lowered
as the apparatus was more often used. The Golder's Green Crematorium has
almost extinguished the Society's, which stands below the Knap Hill
Barracks, and above the canal bank, a mile or two out of Woking, just
beyond the church of St. John's Hill. The building includes a chapel,
where any religious service desired may be held, this and the final
disposal of the remains being left to the friends of the deceased. The
body, shrivelled up by a blast of hot air, is turned into a small
handful of ashes, which can be preserved in an urn or buried in the
ground, when its life is scattered through this world in the undying
good or evil a man has helped to do. The Crematorium enclosure has a
close-packed show of tiny tombstones and dwarf crosses, that give a
strange effect, as of a dolls' cemetery, so inveterate is the desire for
some visible memorial of our loved ones. For my part, I should wish what
is not my real self to be thrown out on any of the breezy commons about
Woking--
That from his ashes may be made
The _heather_ of his native land.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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