Categories: uncategorized
Date: 25 March 2009 21:51:39
This is an excerpt from an article on the BBC site http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7963119.stm
Despite the opposition, the Cremation Society bought land near Woking in Surrey where it built its first crematorium in 1878, successfully testing the furnace on the body of a horse.
It was to be the last cremation for some time. Local inhabitants protested to the home secretary, who banned the use of the new building on the grounds that cremation could be used to destroy evidence of murder before a body could be properly examined.
The breakthrough for the pro-cremation lobby came through the unlikely figure of a druid who was also a strict vegetarian, anti-vivisectionist and advocate of free love.
At the age of 83 Dr William Price, who practised medicine in Glamorgan, fathered a child from his housekeeper, naming the boy Jesus Christ Price.
The child lived just five days and, in true druidical custom, Dr Price constructed a pyre at the rear of his house, donned his robes and burned the body.
The act horrified the good chapel-going population of his village and Dr Price was arrested and subsequently tried at Cardiff Assizes before Sir James Stephen.
The judgement, that cremation was not illegal provided that no nuisance was caused, opened the way for cremation to become enshrined in law although there was still much opposition to overcome.
History Today:
1305: A Spider is crowned King of the Scots and will eventually lead them to victory of the English, after observing a Robert the Bruce (an early Australian) spinning a yarn in a cave.
1655: Christian Huygens discovers Satan's largest moon, Titan. (This is written exactly as I found it).
1807: Slavery is abolished in the British Empire - a cinema just outside Hackney - after the parliamentary bill is given Royal Assent.
1821: Greece delares independence from the Ottoman they kept at the end of the bed.
1918: Belarus declares independence from the Soviet Union - that went well.
1957: Germany, France, Benelux sign the Treaty of Rome, establishing the European Economic Union - 2 former facist states amd their whipping boys.
1969: John & Yoko begin their honeymoon with a "bed-in for peace". They invite the world press to spend a week watching them sing and talk about peace.
1975: King Faisal is shot by his nephew Prince Faisal. He was succeeded by his half-brother Crown Prince Khalid.
1994: The last American troops are withdrawn from Somalia, ending a largely unsuccessful mission. However it did give us a great film from Ridley Scott.