Carried to the other side

"The Burial Customs of the Ancient Greeks"

Frank Pierrepont Graves


1891
 

Project Gutenburg

As soon as death had laid hands upon the victim, the relatives or friends, after gently closing the eyes of their loved one, inserted, in the dead man’s mouth, the obol, a coin valued at about three half pence, or about three cents of our money, which was to serve as passage money over the Styx. They were very careful not to overlook this duty, since it was believed that, if old Charon could not collect his ferriage, the unlucky shade would be sent back to life.

They also examined the coin closely, to see whether it would pass current among the inhabitants of the lower world.

An admirable verification of this custom was, in this century, excavated in the town of Samos in Cephallenia. A tile coffin dug up at that place was found to contain the bones of an initiate of the Bacchic mysteries and between the back teeth of the skull, thedanake, a coin, somewhat more in value than an obol, was still firmly lodged. The late excavations in Italy, Greece and Asia have revealed numerous coins in the tombs. The[22] painting on a vase, which is described by Pottier, shows a small coin held between the thumb and fore finger of the figure which represents the deceased. In the “Frogs” of Aristophanes, Dionysus is told by Heracles, who has returned from the lower regions, that he will be obliged to pay two obols as ferriage, since his servant, Xanthias, is with him.

Killed by lightning

"The Burial Customs of the Ancient Greeks"

Frank Pierrepont Graves


1891

"....  burial was denied, or at least entombment with others was refused, to those who had been killed by lightning. This, from the modern point of view, seems more extraordinary than the other cases of forbidden sepulture that have been mentioned, but the ancients considered any one who was killed in that manner as struck by a god, who knew of some crime that had been hidden from mortal eye. Theseus, who was renowned for his piety, in speaking of those slain at Thebes, declared that he would burn the corpse of Capaneus apart, because he was struck by the flame hurled from Zeus’s own hand, but that he would burn all the others on a single funeral pyre. Plutarch declares that the bodies of those who have been killed by that means never putrefy, and that “many people never burn nor bury such bodies, but let them lie above ground with a fence about them, so that every one may see that they remain uncorrupted.” In some cases, on the other hand, the remains of these wretched beings were cremated and then interred. We must bear in mind, however, that the prohibition of burial or a separate entombment in the case of a man struck by lightning, did not necessarily signify disgrace, but was,[16] in a certain sense, indicative of distinction. His corpse was considered “sacred” or appropriated to the gods, and, as such, could not be dealt with in the conventional way."

Suicides

"The Burial Customs of the Ancient Greeks"

Frank Pierrepont Graves


1891
 

Project Gutenburg

"Those who destroyed their own lives became felons, but were not so hardly dealt with as those who had been executed for crime. Interment was allowed the suicide, but the hand which committed the deed was chopped off and buried apart from the body. A modern scholar attributes this treatment to the fear which the Greeks had that the corpse might become a vampire; but the sentimental reason of Josephus, that the felonious hand was considered alien to the body, appears much more like the ancient manner of thought. As an additional degradation to the corpses of suicides, Plato recommends that they be buried without honor apart from the other dead in an uncultivated and nameless region, and that their place of interment be unmarked by any pillar or name, From this suggestion and the fact that burials sometimes did take place after dark, as when Cassandra prophesied to Agamemnon that “being a base fellow, basely shall you be buried at night, and not in the day,” Becker has concluded that “the witching time of night” might have furnished the occasion for the entombment of self-destroyers. That is certainly reasonable".

"The Burial Customs of the Ancient Greeks"

"The Burial Customs of the Ancient Greeks"

Frank Pierrepont Graves

1891

Project Gutenburg

"So stringent was the law concerning the duty of burial among the ancient Greeks. Yet there were extreme cases where burial was forbidden. It was the severest aggravation of the penalty of execution for a crime that the body of the criminal was denied interment. Such corpses, both at Athens and Sparta, were cast with the halter and their garments into a pit in an allotted quarter of the city, where the flesh might decay or be eaten by carrion birds. At Athens this barathrum, as it was usually called, was situated in the quarter called Melita, very near the house of Themistocles, and the temple which he had erected to Artemis Aristobule. Sparta also had a pit or underground cavern, called Caeadas, to which were consigned the corpses of malefactors. After the Lacedemonians had kept Pausanias confined till he was starved to death, they first meditated throwing his remains into this disgraceful place, but afterwards, changing their minds, they buried him in the ground somewhere thereabouts."

Aldborough - St Andrew, Boroughbridge. Anglican dissolution

© Godric Godricson

© Godric Godricson

© Godric Godricson

© Godric Godricson

© Godric Godricson

© Godric Godricson

© Godric Godricson

© Godric Godricson

© Godric Godricson

© Godric Godricson

© Godric Godricson

© Godric Godricson

© Godric Godricson

© Godric Godricson

© Godric Godricson

Familial and Common Graves

From : Omertaa.org

"Familial and Common Graves When a person dies in Malta they end up either in a family or a communal grave. Family graves are seen as more respectable. Common graves (qabar komuni) are for people of a lower socio-economy class (it costs 200 euro/1000 Maltese pounds for a family grave), or for those who are not religious (Galea 2011). A family grave will normally have compartments for four or five coffins, but it can hold up to six bodies. There is space below for bones, which are put into plastic bags during “cleaning” by cemetery workers (Sean 2011). In the past flour bags were used instead. Each set of bones is then put into a box which is stored in the family grave. The boxes used to be wooden or tin, but now they use plastic (Victor 2011; and Vincent 2011). From the Hypogeum to the catacombs, communal graves have been a part of Maltese history. Graves of this nature seem to make the most sense in urbanized areas where space creates an issue. Although this is the case in cities such as Valetta, it does not apply to all of Malta, and is even less relevant in Gozo. It must therefore hold importance in the collective conscious of the people. One explanation is that a burial of this nature delivers the dead from “the isolation in which he was plunged since his death, and reunites his body with those of his ancestors” (Hertz 1960:54). Hertz is referring to a body’s transition from a temporary to a final burial place, but I believe that this is also relevant when discussing communal, at least familial, burials. Common graves may not be as respected as family graves because they contain the bodies of the poor and secular, but it may also be a result of the subconscious idea that the dead buried there are alone. This may be why, after two years, the bones from common graves may be removed and stored in crypts, or thrown down wells located on the cemetery grounds, while the bones from family graves cannot. "

Malta - Graves

"Times of Malta"
2004

"Owning a grave does not mean that problems could not arise and is not a guarantee that a person will definitely be buried there. Mr Attard Kingswell explained that if a grave is not separated in sections, then a year has to pass between one burial and another. However, he said, most private graves have three compartments. The lower compartment is usually used as an ossuary - where the bones are put after the grave is cleaned - but could take up to one coffin. He explained that this compartment is sealed with stone slabs and burials usually take place in the middle compartment, which can take up to two coffins. The second level is also sealed with stone slabs so that the top level can be used if the necessary time frame to open the main compartment has not passed. He said that as long as the section was sealed off, and there were no coffins in the section being opened, a burial could take place at any time.

"Negroes, Indians"

"The Clergyman's Hand-book of Law"

Charles M. Scanlan

1909

Project Gutenburg

456. Negroes, Indians.—The fact that a man is a negro, Indian, or other racial human being, is not good ground to prevent his burial in a cemetery.

Nuisance, Public Health, Disease.

434. Nuisance, Public Health, Disease.—A cemetery is not a nuisance per se, but if it is proved that the burial of dead bodies in a certain cemetery does injure the public health and is a fruitful source of transmission of disease, the State may prohibit such burial at certain places within cities or adjacent to dwellings. But unless authorized by the Legislature a council has no right by ordinance to provide that no one shall be buried within half a mile of any habitation or public thoroughfare. And where the Legislature authorized a city to remove the bodies interred and allow streets through the land, it had authority to do so.

Well Pollution

"The Clergyman's Hand-book of Law"

Charles M. Scanlan

1909

Project Gutenburg

431. Well, Pollution.—And where a man had built a dwelling near a cemetery, it was not good ground for him to prevent the enlargement of the cemetery by showing that it might destroy his well. The court questions whether there is any legal ground for complaint for the pollution of subterranean waters when caused by the proper use without negligence of the adjacent premises. Additional lands may be obtained under the law of eminent domain by condemnation.

Tombstones - soldiers

"The Clergyman's Hand-book of Law"

Charles M. Scanlan

1909

Project Gutenburg

423.. Tombstones, Soldiers.—The United States will erect tombstones at the graves of soldiers who served in the Civil War, in all cemeteries where their graves are unmarked. Wherever the United States has jurisdiction over cemeteries, it has made it a criminal offense punishable by fine or imprisonment to deface a tombstone.757

[pg 223]

424. Indigent Soldiers, Tombstones.—Most of the States have statutes providing for the burial of indigent soldiers and for putting tombstones at their graves. The attention of relatives of deceased soldiers should be called to it.

The Clergyman's Hand-book of Law 1909

"The Clergyman's Hand-book of Law"

Charles M. Scanlan

1909

Project Gutenburg

421. Statutes, Land.—There are sufficient statutory provisions on cemeteries to make a large book, and the frequent changes made in such laws render a full statement of the law impossible. The statutes against locating cemeteries near cities, dwellings, etc., should be carefully examined before buying land therefor.

Venetian Life in 1867





VENETIAN LIFE

 William Dean Howells

1867

"Anciently there was great show of mourning in Venice for the dead, when, according to Mutinelli, the friends and kinsmen of the deceased, having seen his body deposited in the church, "fell to weeping and howling, tore their hair and rent their clothes, and withdrew forever from that church, thenceforth become for them a place of abomination." Decenter customs prevailed in after-times, and there was a pathetic dignity in the ceremony of condolence among patricians: the mourners, on the day following the interment, repaired to the porticos of Rialto and the court of the Ducal Palace, and their friends came, one after one, and expressed their sympathy by a mute pressure of the hand.

   

Death, however, is hushed up as much as possible in modern Venice. The corpse is hurried from the house of mourning to the parish church, where the friends, after the funeral service, take leave of it. Then it is placed in a boat and carried to the burial-ground, where it is quickly interred. I was fortunate, therefore, in witnessing a cheerful funeral at which I one day casually assisted at San Michele. There was a church on this island as early as the tenth century, and in the thirteenth century it fell into the possession of the Comandulensen Friars. They built a monastery on it, which became famous as a seat of learning, and gave much erudite scholarship to the world. In later times Pope Gregory XVI. carried his profound learning from San Michele to the Vatican. The present church is in the Renaissance style, but not very offensively so, and has some indifferent paintings. The arcades and the courts around which it is built contain funeral monuments as unutterably ugly and tasteless as any thing of the kind I ever saw at home; but the dead, for the most part, lie in graves marked merely by little iron crosses in the narrow and roofless space walled in from the lagoon, which laps sluggishly at the foot of the masonry with the impulses of the tide. The old monastery was abolished in 1810, and there is now a convent of Reformed Benedictines on the island, who perform the last service for the dead.

   
On the day of which I speak, I was taking a friend to see the objects of interest at San Michele, which I had seen before, and the funeral procession touched at the riva of the church just as we arrived. The procession was of one gondola only, and the pallbearers were four pleasant ruffians in scarlet robes of cotton, hooded, and girdled at the waist. They were accompanied by a priest of a broad and jolly countenance, two grinning boys, and finally the corpse itself, severely habited in an under-dress of black box, but wearing an outer garment of red velvet, bordered and tasseled gayly. The pleasant ruffians (who all wore smoking-caps with some other name) placed this holiday corpse upon a bier, and after a lively dispute with our gondolier, in which the compliments of the day were passed in the usual terms of Venetian chaff, lifted the bier on shore and set it down. The priest followed with the two boys, whom he rebuked for levity, simultaneously tripping over the Latin of a prayer, with his eyes fixed on our harmless little party as if we were a funeral, and the dead in the black box an indifferent spectator Then he popped down upon his knees, and made us a lively little supplication, while a blind beggar scuffled for a lost soldo about his feet, and the gondoliers quarreled volubly. After which, he threw off his surplice with the air of one who should say his day's work was done, and preceded the coffin into the church.
   
We had hardly deposited the bier upon the floor in the centre of the nave, when two pale young friars appeared, throwing off their hooded cloaks of coarse brown, as they passed to the sacristy, and reappearing in their rope-girdled gowns. One of them bore a lighted taper in his right hand and a book in his left; the other had also a taper, but a pot of holy water instead of the book.
   
They are very handsome young men, these monks, with heavy, sad eyes, and graceful, slender figures, which their monastic life will presently overload with gross humanity full of coarse appetites. They go and stand beside the bier, giving a curious touch of solemnity to a scene composed of the four pleasant ruffians in the loaferish postures which they have learned as facchini waiting for jobs; of the two boys with inattentive grins, and of the priest with wandering eyes, kneeling behind them.
A weak, thin-voiced organ pipes huskily from its damp loft: the monk hurries rapidly over the Latin text of the service, while
   

    "His breath to heaven like vapor goes"

on the chilly, humid air; and the other monk makes the responses, giving and taking the sprinkler, which his chief shakes vaguely in the direction of the coffin. They both bow their heads—shaven down to the temples, to simulate His crown of thorns. Silence. The organ is still, the priest has vanished; the tapers are blown out; the pall-bearers lay hold of the bier, and raise it to their shoulders; the boys slouch into procession behind them; the monks glide softly and dispiritedly away. The soul is prepared for eternal life, and the body for the grave".

Protestant Bethany Homes babies ignored - Irish Examiner

Protestant Bethany Homes babies ignored 
Irish Examiner

"The Dublin Foundling Hospital which was established by Royal Charter had a death rate of over 90% in the 19th century, as Joseph Robins records in his brilliant study of Irish children living on charity, The Lost Children: a Study of Charity Children in Ireland, 1700-1900 (Institute of Public Administration). If this book were reissued now we might begin to get some perspective and some historical context to the Tuam babies episode.

At the Dublin Foundling Hospital, the gate porter had the duty of disposing of the bodies of the dead infants, as Joseph Robins writes:

“For the sake of convenience burials were confined to three days a week. Between burial days, the dead infants accumulated and the porter stated that he had buried as many as thirteen at one time. Wrapped in grey blankets, the bodies were taken to a field at the back of the hospital and interred there. So frequent were the burials that the field was completely bare of grass.”

By Victoria White (Irish Examiner)

Tuam and the British Press

The Daily Mail
(UK Paper)

"An expert survey of what is thought to be the burial site of 796 babies in Tuam has uncovered two areas of interest where anomalies in the soil indicate likely human activity beneath the surface. The survey recommends further investigation and experts say if we are to find out anything more a dig would be necessary. The Irish Mail on Sunday can also reveal that the Sisters of Bon Secours, who are at the centre of the scandal, had the remains of 12 members of the order exhumed and re-buried in a cemetery in Knock before they abandoned their base in Galway in 2001 – after selling property to the Western Health Board for a reported €4m."

"Milltown archaeologist to advise on Tuam baby burials"

"Milltown archaeologist to advise on Tuam baby burials"

(Irish Mirror)

"A Northern Ireland archaeologist who helped find thousands of children buried on unconsecrated ground at Milltown Cemetery is to advise campaigners at the Tuam babies site. Toni Maguire, who spent several years carrying out excavations and detailed research at the well known West Belfast graveyard, will travel to Galway next month to help try and establish the full extent of burials at the former mother-and-baby home. Ms Maguire told the Mirror a meticulous trawl of state and holy order records would have to be undertaken alongside any excavation. The excavation, she added, could eventually see ground penetrating radar like that being used in the ongoing Madeleine McCann search being deployed. The bodies of hundreds of children and babies born to unmarried mothers were buried in unmarked graves at the home between 1925 and 1961".

No Church records for Tuam

Tuam and Amnesty International

Amnesty International
(Read More)

"Disturbing revelations about an unmarked “mass grave” of up to 800 babies and children found in Tuam, a town in the west of Ireland, must prompt urgent answers from the Irish Government about the wider issue of past child abuse in religious-run institutions, said Amnesty International today".

Ta' Braixa - Pick 'n' mix

Richard Cornwall Legh
Late Auditor General
Died 10 January 1876 Aged 56 Years




Peter Paul Eynaud
Died 12th August 1840 Aged 54 Years
Also to
Ann Eynaud his widow
who departed this life
on the 2nd May 1863
aged 73 years
Erected by their
affectionate children



Ta' Braixa