ABSTRACT
This chapter examines some of the ways in which advocacy of cremation as a method of disposing of the dead reflected changing attitudes towards death and the human corpse during the Victorian era. Cremation, that is, the destruction of the human corpse through burning, had not been practised in Europe since the early Christian era, when it had acquired the seemingly ineradicable taint of paganism. Cremation had been practised only in exceptional circumstances: in times of pestilence, and as a form of execution. Centuries of religious practice and local custom condemned cremation as a method of disposing of the human corpse when, in the 1770s, its reintroduction was first suggested by Italian scientists. Little serious consideration was given to the practical reintroduction of cremation as a means of disposing of the dead until the early nineteenth century, when the problem of burial in the crowded European capitals became so acute that alternate methods of disposal were, of necessity, examined.
