departmentofeternaloperations

The official communications terminal of the Department of Eternal Operations. Managed by Charon’s Intern. Mythology. Bureaucracy. Coffee. Death.

[charonsintern]

My E-Book

Hey guys my published Book (physical copy) was banned as an ebook on Amazon for whatever reason.

You can now buy it on Patreon, without needing to subscribe

How America’s Funeral Industry Lost Its Soul (and Why the Dead Deserve Better Systems) | Charon´s Intern

Get more from Charon´s Intern on Patreon

[charonsintern]

back from the underworld ferrying souls to share this link to join our discord.

it is to discuss the Podcast, website, potential theories and everything going on in the Underworld Offices. Join, we dont bite (except Cerberus if he doesnt get honey cakes )

[charonsintern]

Podcast

Just listen to it, it is awesome

If you need a good option for a will & Trust (which btw you dont need to be richy richt o get a trust set up), check out trust&will.

[charonsintern]

social media person sadly cant keep entertaining my many accounts. Sadly, i might post LESS (because my brain forgets i have this account)

new podcast episodes are coming, website is live, moved and now am getting full into my thesis so ill see you later (in about 3 mins, because i might have adhd )

[talesfromthemorgue]

When Cerberus Fell Asleep by Charon’s Intern Review

4.5/5 ⭐️

Let me start off by saying this, the only reason this, the only reason I didn’t give this book a full 5/5 was because it needs some revisions, which I need to stress, THOSE REVISIONS ARE COMING! When the revised book comes out I will reread and more than likely give a full 5/5 ⭐️ to because this book was incredible.

I want people to read this book, and my hope is not that it’ll create fear of the industry but rather that it’ll incite the very change the book hopes to achieve. I want you to read this book because it’s inspirational. It’s saddening, yes, but very inspirational. So much so that I spoke with Charon’s Intern and told them they have my 100% support in their mission.

So, to @charonsintern, well done, and best of luck to you. You are what we always needed to see in the heart of this industry. I’ll be buying a physical copy of your book as soon as I have the opportunity.

[talesfromthemorgue]

Chapter 7 - Blueprint for Accountability

When Cerberus Fell Asleep by Charon’s Intern

First of all let me say how much I love the style this chapter is written in.

This is opinion, sure, but I love it when books are written in a personal investigative style, or personal experience style if you will. Up until now the book was written off research, but in this chapter? It was the actual effort and experience of the author. What they did to speak with people, what they did to create change, and I love that. It vaguely reminds me of the book Stiff, but in a way? Better. Because Charon’s Intern wasn’t just interviewing people to learn, as beneficial as education is, they were interviewing to write physical change into the industry. That’s always been my mentality on things. If you’re going to point out the problem in something, you might as well aid in the improvement to the problem, and that’s exactly what they’re doing.

I wish this was talked about when I took my legal classes in school.

I personally spoke to the head of my school, who told me it was ok that I struggled with my legal classes, it was normal, the class was meant to be difficult. He chuckled slightly, saying he felt he didn’t need to say it because he was sure I had seen all the crimes committed in the industry, especially this last year alone. I told him I had, and he expressed that’s why they made the classes difficult. So people “wouldn’t make those mistakes”. I fell silent. But in a later discussion with Charon’s Intern, I argued his point, and a lot of it was thanks to their book.

Just because you educate someone on legality doesn’t stop them from making these mistakes. It does one of two things.

It teaches them how to get around the law if they mean ill intent, like what happened at Sunset Mesa, or, for those who mean well, burn out takes hold, mistakes are made, there are oversights, and soon the overworked are labeled monsters and convicted criminals.

Psychologically speaking, exhaustion will almost always eventually lead to a mistake. I shouldn’t have to state that, we should all know the effects of being overworked or a lack of sleep.

But had something like Pantheon Platforms been in place years ago? I can see this story going differently.

We wouldn’t have to beat students into the ground with one class and expect a different outcome. Being told it’s the class that most students fail tells me what I need to know. Either they don’t know how to teach it or, what my guess is, they’re trying to cram information into 3 months that a law student would normally learn over the course of years, and expect a positive outcome. It doesn’t work like that. That only deters students in a dying industry. But with Charon’s Intern’s proposed platform, I can see that things can relax, not for students, but for the whole industry. Everyone can just breathe for a second.

It reminds me of the various different businesses in the industry that keep track of bodies as they go through their chain of custody, only difference is this keeps track of everything.

I love the proposed idea, I think it would be very beneficial. Anything to make the lives of our morticians just a little more relaxed, just a little easier. It’s perfect, at least in my eyes.

My only critique about this chapter isn’t really about the chapter itself. Hell it’s barely a critique, more of a suggestion. I’d love to see a book written by Charon’s Intern that is in the style of this chapter, where they talk about their personal experiences and investigations into the industry.

[img-dumpstrr]

[charonsintern]

now thats the spirit

[charonsintern]

your friend Cerberus

we have a new kid focuses YouTube channel where we explain grief, loss and death age appropriately and easy. Here is the profile pic, what do you all think ? Too scary ? As a former child o find it cute, but I don’t own living kids.

[talesfromthemorgue]

Pennsylvania Man Robs Over a Hundred Human Remains

Death News With Karner January 9th 2026

Good evening everyone, new death related crime case just dropped, here’s what you need to know!

34 year old Pennsylvania man by the name of Jonathan Gerlach is currently facing more then 500 criminal charges after DNA evidence was found at several break in sites in Mount Moriah Cemetery. These break in sites were found to have had several remains stolen, primarily bones and skulls. These remains were then later found to be sold online.

Mausoleums and underground burial vaults were broken into dating back to early November, with the first reported robbery taking place on November 7th. The bodies that went missing were then tied to Gerlach’s Internet history, which linked him to selling human remains in an online group dedicated specifically to that purpose, where a buyer had thanked Gerlach for what was implied to be a teenager’s remains.

Gerlach was then arrested following the combination of DNA evidence, anonymous tips, surveillance footage, and the identification of human remains in his vehicle.

His storage unit was later invaded, where over 100 skulls, bones, mummified parts, ashes and jewelry were discovered.

Police are now working to identify victims to notify their families.

I know I recently discussed the LEGAL owning of human remains, its situations like these that are exactly why I stress legality. As stated before in my previous discussion, if you’re desperate to own human remains, do your research on local and state laws, and buy them from reputable sources. I don’t mean reputable sources as in people you know will deliver, I mean people who are selling RETIRED MEDICAL AND SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH SKELETONS. These were bodies donated to science, and often the sales of retired remains go back to science and medical research. Please, do the right thing.

Situations like this absolutely sicken me as someone who works in the industry of death care, like one of the people interviewed on this case stated, how would you feel if this was your loved one? Human compassion goes a long way.

As stated by William Gladstone “Show me the manner in which a nation cares for its dead and I will measure with mathematical exactness the tender mercies of its people, their respect for the laws of the land, and their loyalty to high ideals.”

When we lose respect for the dead we lose our sense of humanity. When a society loses their humanity, they lose their society.

[charonsintern]

Scribblersnest do your best

I was blocked during a factual disagreement, so I’m clarifying my position here rather than continuing the exchange.

My concern was not with anyone’s personal choices around death care. It was with the repeated blending of opinion, moral judgement, and selective history presented as established fact. Especially causality and causation.

Topics like funerary practice, mortuary history, and environmental impact require precision and context. Collapsing different cultures, time periods, and practices into a single moral narrative — or treating historical association as causal explanation — leads to distortion rather than understanding. Either they deleted their blog, or blocked me but this is no way to have a good or productive conversation. Here is an archival link https://www.tumgik.com/scribblesnest

now y’all can see for themselves.

[sictransitgloriamvndi]

Monument to Cardinal Cinzio Aldobrandini, San Pietro in Vincoli (1705–07)

[scribblesnest]

Just Rot! Natural Burial in the West

Natural burial is a personal passion of mine, as in I will be buried that way for only £650! That’s a bargain in funeral terms, considering it is usually a total of nearly £6000… but natural burial is so much more than just cost effective, it also fills my deep desire to rot. Natural burial is burying an unembalmed body three feet deep in a biodegradable coffin or shroud. Now, this is practised by Jews and Muslims already, minus the three feet deep. Zoroastrians use a Tower of Silence to expose their dead to necrophages creatures (animals and insects that feed on the dead) and the sun. Due to their belief that the earth, water, and fire are sacred, burying the dead body in the soil is polluting the sacred. Very cool!

The main sticking point for natural burial in the Victorian era was the belief that the dead body is unsafe. Prior to the Victorians, the complaint was being buried in a coffin that could rot so easily. Natural burial has been practiced globally for at most 82,000 years if we look at modern Kenya. Obviously before embalming, the best way to bury someone was in the ground and no chemical interventions could be used. This is putting mummification aside, which doesn’t always involve burial. In Peru, however, a 1000-ish year old mummified body was found buried in the roots of a huarango tree. I thought I’d mention this because it is very interesting, and Peru has an amazing relationship with the dead. All this to say, putting bodies in the ground without embalming is the way a lot of peoples have done death for tens of thousands of years. We know, if you’ve read my other posts, that embalming was used to preserve the dead for transportation, then for fear of the perceived danger of the dead. However, the dead aren’t that dangerous. The dead are less likely to spread disease than the living. There is no health reason to embalm a body. There is no health reason to use metal caskets or concrete lined vaults. You are a human being. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, right?

Natural burial became a thought in the West in the late-Victorian era. It was, for many involved in the movement, a response to the lack of space in London cemeteries. Once again, death planning is urban planning! The issue was that if people took longer to decompose, then you couldn’t disinter them and cemeteries would fill up sooner… I’m sorry, disinter? Yes! That was what Sir Francis Seymour Haden proposed in his The disposal of the dead: a plea for legislation, and a protest against cremation. Now, Haden wasn’t that much of a freak, from what I can tell. This is unusual for the history of death care in the West. Every step towards cremation and/ or embalming is met with oddities of people who are as nasty as they are unusual. But there we go. Haden was a surgeon and a printmaker. He did focus on obstetrics and gynaecology, which has a very horrendous history in terms of the abuse and mutilation of Black women and girls, both dead and alive. He was against cremation because it could encourage crime. I would say that a quickly decomposing body could also encourage crime then, and the Hindu community in modern India doesn’t seem to have that issue. But there we are! He was also against cremation because the main argument for it was this idea that it would stop the spread of disease, or “germs” as they called micro-organisms back then. Thanks Louis Pasture. Haden found this ridiculous because dead bodies didn’t spread germs, and, by the Cremation Society’s logic, who’s to say that the smoke of cremation wouldn’t spread disease too? The smoke can’t spread disease, by the way. I imagine you probably already thought that.

So why did Haden want natural burial. Well, as previously mentioned, it was to clear out the cemeteries. With, according to Haden, 2000 deaths occurring every week in London, burial space was in short supply. The Holborn burial ground disinterred many bodies, and finding them to be skeletons, just put them in a plague pit. Lovely… This prompted the idea: why not just do that for all dead? Bury them in a natural coffin, Haden recommended a paper-mache coffin, and bury them three to four feet deep. He estimated that it would take three years for the body to decompose to the skeleton due to the rainwater, oxygenation, and microorganisms and bugs that live at that level of soil. He was kind of right! I don’t know about the “three years” claim (why is it so hard to find out about shallow graves?), but everything else is accurate. That’s how natural burial, and human composting works today! It’s unusual to find a forward-thinking Victorian. They’re usually awful.

So what’s the issue with embalming when it comes to natural burial. Well, formaldehyde is the main issue. It breaks down as the body does and leeches into the ground (if the body is put straight into the soil). This kills the microorganisms responsible for decomposition. If the body is in a chip-board coffin (tapered shape) or casket (rectangular shape), glue will be used to create that chip-board. Some of the glue used has formaldehyde in. There’s really no reason for this that I can think of, aside from slowing the decomposition juices that may penetrate the wood. It may also be part of making the glue, but other chemicals can be used in its place. Chip-board containers are used for cremation as well. Burning formaldehyde doesn’t seem like a great idea, whether it’s in a body or a container.

What about the coffins and caskets? Why so anti-container? A lot of containers that are used are made out of fancy woods like oak, mahogany or rose wood. Oak is a slow-growing and important tree for the fight against the climate crisis. Cutting oaks down is not only a loss for our natural heritage, but also releases sequestered carbon. Mature oaks can also increase their carbon trapping in response to increased levels. This makes cutting down mature trees, but particularly mature oaks, even more damaging. Mahogany is very common, but because of trans-Atlantic enslavement. This is why you see so much mahogany furniture in historic homes. The planting of mahogany destroyed the eco-system of Jamaica in the 18th and 19th centuries. The impact of the deforestation and enslavement are obviously both being felt to this day. Rose wood is endangered. Efforts are being made to prevent illegal logging in Madagascar, Africa. Demand for it in China has overridden the environmental protections put in place. The deprivation felt in Madagascar is leading to the destruction of natural rainforests, accelerating the climate crisis and the damage from cyclones. Why is Madagascar so deprived? Because of the French invading and colonising it from 1897 to 1960, where Madagascar gained their independence. All of this goes against the spirit of natural burial. They are all linked to human and environmental suffering in one way or another. When I die, I don’t want to contribute to that, which is why I’ve opted for a woven willow casket, and a natural fibre shroud.

Most people support or want a natural burial. People are becoming a lot more eco-conscious and they enjoy the idea of being dropped in the ground and left there to rot. At least, in Britain we do. There are many options around the world for this, so have a look, if not for yourself, just for the sake of it.

Bibliography

Arnold, Catharine, with Internet Archive, Necropolis : London and Its Dead (London : Pocket Books, 2007) <http://archive.org/details/necropolislondon0000arno> [accessed 8 January 2026]

Eisenman, Caroline Costello, Joshua, ‘China’s Appetite for Rosewood Is Causing Chaos in Africa’, Foreign Policy, 19 January 2026 <https://foreignpolicy.com/2025/09/09/rosewood-timber-africa-china-illegal/> [accessed 8 January 2026]

Haden, Francis Seymour and Royal College of Surgeons of England, with Royal College of Surgeons of England, The Disposal of the Dead : A Plea for Legislation, and a Protest against Cremation (London : Bemrose, 1888) <http://archive.org/details/b22321020> [accessed 8 January 2026]

Martinon-Torres, Maria and et al., ‘Earliest Known Human Burial in Africa | Nature’, 5 May 2021 <https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03457-8> [accessed 8 January 2026]

Natural Death Centre, ‘Natural Death Centre .Org - The Natural Death Centre’, n.d. <http://www.naturaldeath.org.uk/> [accessed 8 January 2026]

Osborne, Dr. Désha, ‘Facing Our Past: The Difficult History of Mahogany’, National Trust for Scotland, n.d. <https://www.nts.org.uk/stories/facing-our-past-the-difficult-history-of-mahogany> [accessed 8 January 2026]

Radley, Dario, ‘1,000-Year-Old Pre-Inca Mummy Linked to Chancay Culture Unearthed during Gas Work in Lima’, Archaeology News Online Magazine, 23 June 2025 <https://archaeologymag.com/2025/06/pre-inca-mummy-unearthed-during-gas-work-in-lima/> [accessed 8 January 2026]

Royal College of Surgeons, ‘Haden, Sir Francis Seymour (1818 - 1910)’, n.d. <https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/lives/search/detailnonmodal/ent:$002f$002fSD_ASSET$002f0$002fSD_ASSET:374263/one?qu=%22rcs%3A+E002080%22&rt=false%7C%7C%7CIDENTIFIER%7C%7C%7CResource+Identifier> [accessed 8 January 2026]

StallardClimate, ByEsme, and Science Reporter, ‘Mature Trees Offer Hope in World of Rising Emissions’, BBC News, 12 August 2024 <https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1d7p0n1e3ro> [accessed 8 January 2026]

UK Health Security Agency, ‘Formaldehyde: General Information’, GOV.UK, n.d. <https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/formaldehyde-properties-incident-management-and-toxicology/formaldehyde-general-information> [accessed 8 January 2026]

[charonsintern]

this is mostly bullshit

“Natural burial” is not an ancient tradition. It’s a modern label for the fact that people used to bury bodies unembalmed because there was no alternative.

Dropping “82,000 years” because of one early burial is bad archaeology. One grave is not a global practice.

Jewish, Muslim, and Zoroastrian death practices are not eco-aesthetic examples. They are religious systems. Reducing them to “natural burial” is inaccurate and lazy.

Victorians were not worried that coffins rotted too fast. They were worried about overcrowding, sanitation, and groundwater. This is well documented.

“The dead aren’t dangerous” is an oversimplification. Low risk is not no risk. Public health rules exist for reasons.

Saying there is “no health reason” for embalming is just false. You can oppose embalming without lying about why it exists.

Comparing Victorian burial debates to modern Hindu cremation is a false equivalence across culture, law, and infrastructure.

The decomposition timeline stuff is vibes. The post admits it doesn’t know and asserts it anyway.

Natural burial and human composting are not the same thing. Treating them as such is ignorance.

The formaldehyde section is overconfident and sloppy. Context matters. The post ignores it.

The coffin-wood rant is moral theatre. Funerals are not driving global deforestation.

Personal desire to “rot” is not an argument. It’s a preference.

This is not history or death care analysis. It’s aesthetic ideology with footnotes.

[scribblesnest]

Water Cremation and a History of Cremation in Britain

Water cremation will be discussed in 2026 in the Scottish parliament! How exciting! But what is water cremation, and what does it have to do with you?

Water cremation, or alkaline hydrolysis, is basically a way to deflesh a body down to its bones. You can do this with fire, which is normal cremation, or you can do it with an alkaline and some water, which is water cremation. 5% of the solution used to immerse the body is potassium hydroxide. You can use sodium hydroxide as well! The rest of the solution is just water. The solution is then heated to 160 degrees Celsius, but this is done under pressure to stop any boiling. Potassium/ sodium hydroxide is also known as lye, as in the stuff used to make soft soaps. Potassium hydroxide is more commonly used for this. The alkaline nature of the mixture breaks down the “meat” of a body into amino acids, peptides, sugar and salt and soft, crumbly bones. The bones will then be broken down into ashes using a cremulator (body crushing machine). This happens with fire cremation as well. So what’s the reason to choose water cremation over fire cremation?

Water cremation is more environmentally friendly. The water usage is a lot, but the used water is put back into the sewage system, cleaned and reused (same as used toilet water!). This is the theory anyway. But! When Sandwell metropolitan borough tried to build a water cremation centre, Severn Trent Water shot down the proposal due to a perceived lack of information and real lack of U.K. guidance on how to process liquified human remains. This is frustrating because all but three states in the U.S.A., South Africa, Mexico, Ireland, three of ten provinces in Canada, New Zealand, and Australia have all legalised and practise water cremation. The infrastructure planning has been done and could be adapted to the U.K. if people wanted to. The earliest area to legalise water cremation was Minnesota in 2003, being available in the Mayo Clinic for medical bodies since 2005. It’s been around twenty years, so there’s little excuse not to adapt plans for managing liquified human remains in the water system. Alkaline hydrolysis can be used for pet cremations. This was introduced to help stop the spread of prion diseases (mad cow disease), foot and mouth, and bird flu.

The Co-Operative Funeralcare has been actively looking into Resomation (the more corporate name for water cremation)  since 2023. They plan to make it available to everyone in the U.K. once the central parliament legalises and regulates it. In Scotland, the Co-Operative may have an easier time fulfilling this promise along with Kindly Earth. There are currently no up-and-ready water cremation facilities in the U.K.. New legislation to be discussed next year simply adds the term “water cremation” or “alkaloid hydrolysis” to existing 2016 legislation about fire cremation. This would expand all regulations on cremated remains to water cremation. But what about cremation in the U.K.? Where does that come from?

Anglo-Saxon’s had cremations as well as burial. Anglo-Saxon cremations declined around the seventh century due to the influence of Christianity. There is no real known reason for the cremation, but it has been speculated that it was done to release the spirit of the deceased or to publicly view the dead. The funeral pyres were likely a criss-cross of wood with the gaps being filled with brushwood (twigs essentially). Today spruce wood is used on an open-air pyre due to the quality and heat of its burning. We don’t know which type of wood was used on Anglo-Saxon pyres (from what I can tell). It was likely locally sourced and chosen for its burning ability. Cremated remains, mainly charcoal and bone fragments, were put into urns and kept above ground. After a while, they were buried. We’re not exactly sure for how long they were kept above ground, or why.

From the 7th century onwards, cremation became less and less used, even being banned by the medieval Catholic church. It was used as a form of punishment for heretics. Most notably, John Wycliffe was dug up after his death and cremated years after as punishment for being a heretic. He denounced the Papacy, was a critic of indulgences, and is considered a forefather of Protestantism. Cremation has been linked with political radicalism for a while. Wycliffe was burnt to stop him from resurrecting on the day of judgement. However, this is a little silly as G-d probably can build you a new body. During the witch-trials in Scotland, mainly women were burnt alive for being heretics, Joan of Arc was burnt alive for being a heretic. You will see more of the radical nature of those who support cremation as we progress.

Sir Thomas Browne wrote a discourse on an Anglo-Saxon cremation urn that was discovered in Norfolk. In this discourse, he supports cremation, saying ‘Life is a pure flame, and we live by an invisible Sun within us.’ I bet that he felt so proud of himself after writing that amazing line. It’s a good one. This was quite radical for the time. 1658 is the year Oliver Cromwell died. Britain was deeply religious at the time, and the idea of burning people, dead or alive, was still linked to punishing heretics. Yet, Browne argued for cremation in the context of Christian theology. If the holy spirit is a flame, why not use a flame to burn the dead?

Though, Christianity has not always been staunchly against all types of cremation. Percy Bysshe Shelley was cremated on an open-air pyre after his body washed ashore. In Tuscany at the time, decayed corpses were burnt to prevent the spread of disease. Now, disease can be spread by dead bodies. But! It’s diseases like HIV, hepatitis, and Ebola that last on the body a while after death. The time limit for these survivals are varied, but HIV can last sixteen days on the body if it is refrigerated. Is it likely that Shelley’s body could have spread disease? Perhaps, if you ate the rotting flesh, so, yknow, don’t do that. Asides from that, there really isn’t much of an issue. However, because of the attitudes towards corpses, they burnt him anyway. This link between cremation and the prevention of the spread of disease would pick up even more speed during the Victorian era…

The Medical International Congress of Florence was one of the first in Europe to recommend cremation for the protection of public health in 1869. France followed soon after. Padua in Veneto, Italy held experiments about cremation, published in 1873. I bring this up to highlight the fact that it wasn’t just Victorian Britain that grew concerned with hygiene. It was a Western European concern that grew across the continent like mould. In 1874, Sir Charles Wentworth Dilke took his wife, Maria Walker, to be cremated in Dresden. Dilke was a political radical, very forward thinking. His father came into contact with none other than Leigh Hunt! Dilke also knew John Keats, who stayed with their mutual friend, Charles Armitage Brown. Wentworth Place, now a museum to Keats was fully owned by Dilke from 1822, after Brown sold his share to his friend as he was moving to Italy. Cremation was associated with scientific and secular thinking in Victorian Western Europe. Following miasma theory, the erroneous belief that bad smells spread disease, it makes sense as to why you might want to cremate someone. Bodies smell bad. But, we obviously know better now… or at least, we should. Sir Henry Thompson, 1st Baronet and physician to Queen Victoria was an advocate for cremation. After seeing Gorini’s cremator in the Vienna Exhibition, he began promoting cremation in Britain. He did this because of the perceived sanitary nature of cremation versus burial. He also believed that it would prevent burying people alive (something that was rare back then, but not as rare as it should have been), reduce the cost of funerals, and spare mourners from the horrid weather during burial. Don’t forget! They also used to believed that being exposed to bad weather could cause disease as well.

So what’s up with the focus on disease here? Illness has been with living things for as long as there have been living things. As the population increased in Victorian Britain, so too did disease. Cholera, consumption (tuberculosis), typhoid, typhus, and many more illness reached epidemic levels in London and other major cities. Without proper sanitation and understanding of disease, there was no real way to fight it. So, people did the best with the information they had. There was a genuine want to help people from some individuals, but they just got it wrong. Now we live with the legacy of keeping the dead separate from us. We mustn’t let the forgotten demographic of the dead stay lonely. In Judaism, corpses are seen as unclean for the priestly caste. A Cohen shouldn’t be near the dead as they will become unclean and lack a Temple to ritually purify themselves in. I understand the fear of the dead. It’s a little creepy and weird to be around something that is no longer living. To see something as complicated as you are reduced to a permanent stillness. But that’s no reason not to be around the dead. Doing so can bring you an appreciation of life and an acceptance of death.

So now, we move onto the first modern man who attempted a cremation: William Price. Similar to John Hunter and Martin van Butchell, this guy was kinda weird. William Price was a Welsh nationalist, a neo-druid, and an advocate for free love, vegetarianism, and democracy. He was part of the Newport Rising in 1839, which was a chartist (a Welsh, pro-democracy for men movement) riot that saw the British army kill up to 24 people and injure around 50. Leaders of the rising were convicted of treason and were originally sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered. They changed the sentencing to transportation. To avoid prosecution, Price, then 39 years old, fled to France. He came back to Wales in 1866. The daughter he had abandoned had gotten on well after he left and her Mother died. Price is not winning a “Dad of the year” award. When he was 81 years-old, he married his wife, Gwenllian, who was only 21 years-old at the time. Yikes! The pair gave birth to a son, Iesu Grist (the Welsh for Jesus Christ) who passed in infancy at 5 months old. Price decided to cremate his son, believing that burial would pollute the earth. Local people pulled the corpse from the fire and Price was brought to Cardiff court for doing a cremation instead of a burial. There was an assumption that it was illegal. It wasn’t, technically. There was absolutely no law about cremation, either for or against. The judge agreed and freed Price. Price, himself, was cremated in 1893 with a crowd of 20,000 people watching.

Jeanette Pickergill was the first full, modern cremation. Because of William Price’s legal argument, Pickergill’s cremation went ahead with the Anglican Church helping out with the storing of remains on consecrated grounds. She was an artist and writer from Amsterdam. Her husband, Henry Hall Pickergill, was also an artist, but died in 1861. Jeanette was well known in literary and scientific circles at the time of her death. That is what makes it all the more unusual that we don’t know that much about her. She was popular in intellectual spaces. I couldn’t find many paintings by her, nor her literary work in an easily accessible space. Quite often in the history of death, marginalised people are reduced down to their corpses and what happened to them. There is a long and horrible history of this, particularly for women of colour, disabled people, and indigenous people. It’s odd how the thing she is most known for is being cremated. She was cremated at Woking Crematorium in Surrey in 1885. This was the first legal, completed cremation in modern British history. Nearly one thousand years later, cremation made a comeback. The immortality of the flame.

[charonsintern]

this post is confident, but wrong in a lot of places

“Water cremation” is alkaline hydrolysis. It is not “defleshing a body down to its bones.” That phrasing is sensationalist and inaccurate.

The chemistry is sloppy. Human alkaline hydrolysis systems do not normally run at 160 °C, and bodies do not break down into “sugar.” The liquid contains amino acids, peptides, soaps, and salts. “Sugar” is not a meaningful description.

Bones are not “soft and crumbly.” They are demineralised, dried, and mechanically processed, much like flame-cremation remains.

Calling it “alkaloid hydrolysis” is simply wrong. Alkaloids are things like caffeine and morphine. The process is alkaline hydrolysis.

The UK issue is not people being squeamish. It is wastewater regulation. Utilities need national standards before allowing effluent discharge. That is why projects stalled.

“All but three US states have legalised it” is false. Roughly half have, not almost all.

Scotland is not just “discussing” this in the future. It has already moved further on regulation than England and Wales.

Alkaline hydrolysis was not introduced in pet cremation primarily to stop prion disease. That is one benefit, not its origin story.

The HIV-on-corpses section is irrelevant fear-mongering and has nothing to do with funerary practice or historical cremation policy.

Cremation is not modern, radical, or fringe. Humans have been burning their dead for thousands of years, across unrelated cultures.

The Iliad describes full heroic cremations as normal practice. Archaeology shows cremation in prehistoric Europe, ancient Greece, Rome, South Asia, and East Asia. Burial and cremation have always co-existed.

Medieval Christian opposition did not exist because cremation was unknown. It was theological and symbolic, specific to that context.

Burning heretics and witches was execution, not cremation. Conflating punishment with funerary practice distorts history.

John Wycliffe’s posthumous burning was symbolic condemnation, not because medieval people thought God couldn’t resurrect ashes.

Sir Thomas Browne did not write about Anglo-Saxon urns. Hydriotaphia was inspired by Roman funerary finds.

Percy Bysshe Shelley was cremated because Tuscan law required burning bodies recovered from the sea, not because of Victorian hygiene theory.

Victorian disease arguments are being retroactively imposed where they do not belong.

William Price’s story is mostly right but embellished.

“Iesu Grist” is not “Welsh” in origin. Iesu is the Welsh form of the Latin Iesus, via Greek and Hebrew. The provocation was naming a child Jesus Christ, not using a native Welsh divine name.

Jeanette Pickersgill was not Dutch, not from Amsterdam, and her biography here is muddled. She was the first officially sanctioned modern cremation in Britain, not the first modern cremation ever.

Overall problem: this post swaps evidence for vibes, collapses wildly different historical contexts into one narrative, and sounds authoritative while being wrong across chemistry, law, linguistics, and history.

Additionally the post is hard to read, has multiple issues rolled into one and makes factual ( not emotional ) education harder and even more confusing. As a historian this really really irks me. F for effort but oversimplifications and misrepresenting of facts.

[charonsintern]

An alle die deutsch verstehen

was sagt ihr zu einer deutschen Version des Podcast Konzeptes?

Tod, Begräbniskultur und Geschichte

Klingt spannend

Neee lass mal

Voting ended onJan 13

[charonsintern]

When Is a Museum Not a Museum?

This might be a cultural difference, but it keeps bothering me.

In Germany (and much of Europe), a museum is not just a room with objects and labels. It is an institution with a public mandate. It is expected to preserve, contextualize, and take responsibility for what it shows. Commerce and collection are usually kept separate. Human remains, in particular, are treated as something held in trust, not owned.

In the U.S., the word “museum” is used much more loosely. It can describe private collections, for-profit spaces, or even retail operations with an educational layer added on top. That may be legal, but it is not the same thing.

What feels off to me is when exhibition, storytelling, and selling happen side by side under the same label. Education becomes part of the branding. Provenance becomes something to talk about rather than something that limits what can be displayed. The authority of the word “museum” is used, but the obligations behind it are thinner.

This is not about judging individuals or saying these spaces shouldn’t exist. It’s about clarity.

Calling something a museum carries weight. It signals care, restraint, and responsibility toward the public and toward the dead. When that word is applied to a private collection or a marketplace with wall text, it blurs important lines.

Maybe the better question isn’t “Is this allowed?” It’s “What do we mean when we say museum, and what do we expect that word to guarantee?”

[motherfuckerunleashed]

X

[kyidyl]

Me reading the notes on the JonsBones post trying not to reblog everyone who is like "JonsBones is so good and pure uwu" and correct them:

That idiot is not an anatomist, professionally trained, involved in education, or an osteologist. He's a dude who profits off of human suffering without even *acknowledging* the ethical concerns involved in the trade of human remains. He's a fucking *artist*, not a scientist, and he is a charlatan.