Burial

Burial, a word of Teutonic origin (A.S. byrgan, 'to bury'), is applied to the prevalent method among civilised nations of disposing of the dead by committing them to the earth. The general tendency of mankind has always been to bury the dead out of sight of the living; and various as the methods of accomplishing this end have been, they have resolved themselves into three great classifications: (1) The simple closing up of the body in earth or stone; (2) the burning of the body, and the entombing of the cinders; and (3) the embalming of the body. The first of these is the earliest form of which we have any knowledge. The palæolithic cave-dwellers of France and Belgium buried their dead in natural grottos and crevices of the rocks similar to those in which they lived. The later stone-age people throughout Europe buried in chambered barrows and cairns. The bronze-age people buried in unchambered barrows, or in cemeteries of stone cists set in the ground, often in natural eminences of sand or gravel, or surrounded by circles of standing stones. Cremation was practised side by side with simple inhumation throughout the prehistoric period. It was also a general characteristic of burial in pagan times that the dead, whether cremated or not, were provided with grave-goods, such as urns or vessels of clay, bronze, gold, or glass, clothing and personal ornaments, implements, and weapons. Christianity abolished cremation, and restricted the provision of grave-goods to the burial of kings and priests, who continued to be interred in their royal and sacerdotal robes, and with their insignia of office. The stone cist became the stone-lined grave of the early Christian cemeteries, and the stone sarcophagus, which can be traced back to the time of the Egyptian kings who built the Pyramids, continued throughout the middle ages. In the first four centuries of the Christian era the Christians at Rome had buried their dead in the Catacombs, a series of subterranean excavations, consisting of long horizontal passages, with recesses on either side, arranged in tiers, for the reception of the bodies, closed in by slabs bearing inscribed memorials and emblems of the faith. During the persecutions of the 2d century the Catacombs were used as places of assembly for worship; and the association of the church and the cemetery thus established has continued ever since. It was not till the 9th century, however, that the formal consecration of churchyards became customary. In Egypt, and perhaps also in Palestine, the Christian church inherited the practice of embalming, to which there is frequent allusion in the Scriptures. The Israelites may have learned the art from the Egyptians, among whom it was so extensively practised, that Egyptian corpses, as inoffensive as any article of wood or stone, are scattered over Europe in museums, and are even to be found as curiosities in private houses. The soil and climate of Upper Egypt seem to have afforded facilities for embalming unmatched in any other part of the world; and in other places the vestiges of the practice are comparatively rare, though it is not unusual even yet to embalm royal corpses, and in some places to preserve a series of desiccated bodies, as in the vault of the monastery of Kreuzberg, at Bonn, where the monks have been successively preserved in their costume for centuries. Cremation is described in the Homeric poems as an honourable mode of sepulture practised in the heroic ages of Greece. The Romans, who in the time of the Republic had interred their dead, adopted the Grecian usage in the days of Sulla. It is mentioned in the Sagas as the older custom of the early Norsemen, who used occasionally to place the viking in his ship, and 'send him flaming out to sea,' instead of entombing him beneath the mound of earth, with all his belongings, in his vessel set on even keel, which was the more usual method. The Estonians also practised cremation; and the custom was retained till the 10th century among the tribes along the Volga, along with the horrible accompaniment of human sacrifice in honour of the dead, as we learn from the narrative of Ahmed Ibn Fozlan, who states that he was an eye-witness of the whole ceremonies. It was prohibited among the conquered Saxons, under pain of death, by Charlemagne. It is still practised in India, but without the suttee, or burning of the living widow with the corpse of the husband. Until quite recently cremation was a common custom in Japan, and was practised side by side with unburned interment. The latter has been the universal custom in Europe from the several dates of the introduction of Christianity into the different countries.

Some of the grandest buildings in the world have been tombs; such are the Pyramids, the castle of St Angelo, the tomb of Cæcilia Metella, and many temples in eastern countries. The notion that the dead may require the things they have been fond of in life has also preserved to the existing world many relics of the customs of past ages; the tombs of Egypt have supplied an immense quantity of them, which have taught the present age more of the manners of ancient nations than all the learned books that have been written. Herodotus tells us of favourite horses and slaves sacrificed at the holocaust of the dead chief. The same thing has been done in our own day in Ashanti.

Amongst the ancients an unburned or unburied body was held to be disgraced, and the spirit was unhappy till a kindly stranger at least threw a few handfuls of earth on the corpse. In the Christian countries, too, the denial of the rite of Christian burial involved a judgment on the life of the deceased; this sad fate was usually or frequently reserved for the unbaptised, including unbaptised infants, non-Catholics, excommunicated persons, notorious mockers at religion and evil livers, unrepentant sinners, persons who did not take the

Eucharist at least once a year, executed criminals, suicides, persons who fell in duels; and till the Revolution every French stage-player had to be content with burial in unconsecrated ground. Thus in 1730 the brilliant actress, Adrienne Lecouvreur, had for this reason alone to be buried in unconsecrated ground without the semblance of a religious rite, in spite of strong pressure brought to bear on the Archbishop of Paris.

In England, burial in some part of the parish churchyard is a common-law rite, which may be enforced by mandamus—that is, every person may be buried in the parish where he dies. But the body of a parishioner cannot be interred in a metal coffin or vault, or even in any particular part of a churchyard, as, for instance, the family vault, without an additional fee. By the canons of the Church of England, clergymen cannot refuse or delay to bury any corpse that is brought to the church or churchyard; on the other hand, a conspiracy to prevent a burial is an indictable offence. It is a popular error that a creditor can arrest or detain the body of a deceased debtor; and the doing such an act is indictable as a misdemeanour. It is also an error that permitting a funeral procession to pass over private grounds creates a public right of way. By Acts of 1823, the inhabitants of any parish, township, or place, when going to or returning from attending funerals of persons in England who have died and are to be buried there, were exempted from any toll within these limits; and in 1824 the same regulation was extended to Scotland; the only difference being, that in the latter case the limitation of the district is described by the word parish alone. Not till 1823 was the barbarous mode of burying suicides at cross roads, with a stake driven through the body, abolished. It was then enacted that their burial should take place, without any marks of ignominy, privately in the parish churchyard, between the hours of nine and twelve at night, under the direction of the coroner. In Scotland, the right of burial in a churchyard is an incident of property in the parish; but it is a mere right of burial, and there is not necessarily any corresponding ownership in the solum or ground of the churchyard. Registration (q.v.) of death should precede burial. The solemn rites of burial at sea are regulated by the necessities of the case. Usually the dead body is sewn up in a hammock, with a weight attached to the feet, and a modified form of the English burial service is read before the body is committed to the deep.

At various times, and in various places, there has been much popular excitement as to the possibility or probability of persons being buried in a state of suspended animation, but still really alive. Few of the many stories of cases of this kind have been authenticated; if any such occurs, it must be the result of inexcusable haste and carelessness. A competent medical man can easily decide by auscultation whether the heart has ceased to beat. (For the other signs of death, see DEATH, CATALEPSY.) In some places the dead are kept for a time in mortuary houses specially fitted up for the purpose—a bell-pull being attached to the extremities of the corpse, so as to give a summons on the smallest motion of the body. But these precautions have always proved needless; a corpse has never revived under such circumstances.

In Christian countries, if the remains of the saint to whom a church was dedicated could be obtained, they were buried near the altar in the choir. It became a prevalent desire to be buried near these saints, and the bodies of men eminent for their piety, or high in rank, came thus to be buried in churches. It can scarcely be said that a practice so detrimental to the public health as the burial within churches, was checked in this country until the whole system of intramural interment, including the practice of pit burial, as it was called, was attacked by Southwood Smith, Walker, Chadwick, and other sanitary reformers. Measures were afterwards carried for shutting graveyards in crowded cities, and placing interments in open cemeteries under sanitary control. The first great measure was passed in 1850, when the Board of Health was made a Burial Board for the metropolis, and power was given to the Privy-council to close the city graveyards. The act was extended to the English provinces in 1853, and to Scotland in 1855, and has been repeatedly amended.

The main features of burial legislation are these: The Privy-council may, on the representation of the Home Secretary, order the discontinuance of burial in any graveyard, and may interfere to prevent any vault or place of burial becoming dangerous to health. They may also regulate burials in cemeteries established under statute. Licenses may be got for the continued use of private vaults and graves. The Privy-council may also require the vestry in an English parish to meet and consider whether a new burial-ground shall be provided. If they proceed, a burial board of from three to nine persons is appointed by the vestry. Town-councils in boroughs, and local boards of health, may be constituted burial boards by order in council. Parishes may combine for this purpose, and the burial-ground need not be within the parish. It must not be within 100 yards of any dwelling-house, without the consent of the owner in writing. Part of the burial-ground must be consecrated, part unconsecrated; but the fees, which are subject to public control, must be the same in both parts. The boards are authorised to arrange for the conveyance of the dead, and to provide reception-houses. They are also bound to keep accurate registers of interments. Any expenses beyond receipts are charged on the poor-rate. In 1872 very valuable suggestions for providing and managing burial-grounds were issued by the Home Secretary. These deal with situation, soil and drainage, paths, fencing and planting, size of grave spaces (which should be 9 feet by 4 feet, or 4 square yards, with a depth of from 4 to 6 feet), reopening of graves, which is permitted after 14 years, &c. The controlling authority in such matters in England as in Scotland is the Parish Council. The burial boards in England have expended millions on cemeteries; thousands of churchyards have been closed. There is also a very large number of cemeteries conducted by companies for profit. The administrative arrangements in Scotland are very similar; the ratepayers are entitled to raise the question of closing an old, or providing a new burial-ground by petition before the sheriff. (For Disinterment, see EXHUMATION, POST-MORTEM EXAMINATION, RESURRECTIONISTS.)

In the United States, neglect to bury a dead body by any one whose duty it is to bury it, and having sufficient means to do so, is a misdemeanour. It is also a misdemeanour to fail to notify a coroner that a body on which an inquest ought to be held is lying unburied, or to bury or otherwise dispose of such body without giving notice to the coroner.

For other matters connected with the subject of burial, see CEMETERIES, CHURCHYARDS; CREMATION, EMBALMING; TOMB, COFFIN, CATACOMBS, BARROWS, CAIRNS, PARISH, PYRAMIDS, STONE AGE, TOPE. And for the law of the subject, see Glen, Law relating to Burial of the Dead (1881); Baker, Laws relating to Burials (1882).