When you think you’ve seen everything on facebook

[julianf]

I'm sure they have trialed boiling in caustic and then flushing down the sewer. Maybe not in this country but somewhere in the developed world.

Again, for me, it's just a bunch of molecules in a decaying structure, so it makes no odds. Once they've had the good bits out for someone else, I guess I'd find most comfort in being left out for the birds. Not that that's going to happen here. And burying seems a bit selfish - bagsing that patch of ground for the foreseeable future.

 

[cheb]

I'm sure they have trialed boiling in caustic and then flushing down the sewer. Maybe not in this country but somewhere in the developed world.

Again, for me, it's just a bunch of molecules in a decaying structure, so it makes no odds. Once they've had the good bits out for someone else, I guess I'd find most comfort in being left out for the birds. Not that that's going to happen here. And burying seems a bit selfish - bagsing that patch of ground for the foreseeable future.

They have, Archbishop Tutu went that way, the process is called aquamation.

Another book recommendation: Stiff by Mary Roach.

 

[Wedg1e]

I'm sure they have trialed boiling in caustic and then flushing down the sewer. Maybe not in this country but somewhere in the developed world.

Again, for me, it's just a bunch of molecules in a decaying structure, so it makes no odds. Once they've had the good bits out for someone else, I guess I'd find most comfort in being left out for the birds. Not that that's going to happen here. And burying seems a bit selfish - bagsing that patch of ground for the foreseeable future.

Yep, it's called Resomation - I think there's one place in the UK equipped to do it.

 

[Wedg1e]

Im sure I've read both ways as to if gold teeth are removed prior to incineration or from the ash after.

I'm sure someone will tell me here also, but that still won't change the fact that I've been told both before!

I don't have any gold teeth (only got one filling) so they'd be disappointed with me whatever way it is!

Can't interfere with a corpse. For the same reason jewellery is not removed (at least in the UK). Fishing the bits out afterwards must be accepted, but as to what happens to the gold and stones, that's the bit I never got an answer on.
For the same reason, bodies aren't removed from the coffin prior to cremation (which seems a bit anti-environment but rules, for the present, are rules).
Obviously things have happened over the years that shouldn't, it takes dishonest practice in any field to get legislation introduced.
Theoretically, titanium joint repairs COULD be cleaned up and reused but I can see how that might meet with resistance.

You can thank WW1 for the acceptance of cremation in the UK: with so many lads having no known resting place there were lots of grieving people badgering the clergy over whether they'd get to heaven or not; the formulated response became that it wasn't necessary to be intact in body to get through the gates (of either destination ). I seem to think there was a guy who cremated his wife on a Welsh hillside around that time that caused a ruckus (I nearly said a stink...) - but last I heard, it had overtaken burial by a long way (and probably a good thing too given the population and area of this small island).

 

[More Amps]

Can't interfere with a corpse. For the same reason jewellery is not removed (at least in the UK). Fishing the bits out afterwards must be accepted, but as to what happens to the gold and stones, that's the bit I never got an answer on.
For the same reason, bodies aren't removed from the coffin prior to cremation (which seems a bit anti-environment but rules, for the present, are rules).
Obviously things have happened over the years that shouldn't, it takes dishonest practice in any field to get legislation introduced.
Theoretically, titanium joint repairs COULD be cleaned up and reused but I can see how that might meet with resistance.

When my Mum died, we received her jewellery in an envelope from the undertakers in an envelope. She was buried not cremated though I can't see as it would make any difference.

 

[Wedg1e]

When my Mum died, we received her jewellery in an envelope from the undertakers in an envelope. She was buried not cremated though I can't see as it would make any difference.

That might answer the question then; maybe standard practice is to remove it before closing the coffin - or maybe someone asked for it to be returned. I'm sure I recall jewellery being left in-situ for burials (I have screwed a few coffin lids on myself, including that of a mate who was killed in a bike crash - I drove the hearse).
It's entirely possible things have changed in the 30 years since I last did the job - in fact the last few funerals I've attended, the pallbearers didn't even 'bear', they used a trolley, or would have, unless the family stepped in and did it themselves.

 

[Farside]

When a gliding club member died and his family wanted nothing to do with the " disposal" we decided to scatter his ashes from the tug plane over the airfield. We didn't recon with the slipstream blowing the ashes back into the plane . The two doing the disposal were chewing bits for days and we never got it all out of the plane.

It's a pity the traditional day for washing and hanging out the knickers to dry has long gone.
I wanted my ashes to be spread from a small plane over the town on washday... but that's gone down the pan.

 

[Wedg1e]

It's a pity the traditional day for washing and hanging out the knickers to dry has long gone.
I wanted my ashes to be spread from a small plane over the town on washday... but that's gone down the pan.

When we consigned my dad to a Cumbrian fell, I got a bit enthusiastic with my 'turn' and some of the ashes settled on the tarn next to us. My mother was aghast: dad never learned to swim and would have been most miffed

 

[Wedg1e]

OK, the christmas rum is working, so before I go to bed here's just a few things I recall going wrong at funerals... you think Dave Allen made all those sketches up...? Not a bit of it.

Apologs to the sensitive, maybe stop reading now... locals may well recognise the places mentioned.

1. Running late so hoofing it to make up time, a hearse slid off a country lane bend and into a field; coffin exited the side window.

2. Seven-car cortege in Darlington; car pulls out of a sideroad, hearse loses speed gently, car 1 does the same, car 2 touches the brakes, car 3 does the same... car 6 came over the brow of a railway bridge, saw car 5 braking just as he drove into the back of it. Three of the mourners off to Darlington Memorial (arrived at A&E in the limo) with assorted leg cuts and concussion. To this day, people still don't wear seatbelts in limousines.

3. Grave not long enough for the coffin; we tried 3 times but were in danger of getting the coffin stuck (and once below the surface, technically it needs an exhumation order to lift it back out). The Director put his arm around the widow's shoulders and took her and most of the party for a lap of the church (Wolviston, near Billingham) while Chris the gravedigger whipped off his jacket, grabbed his shovel, jumped in the hole and started hacking away at one end.
By the time the party came back round Chris was back leaning on his shovel, jacket on, puffing like Ivor the engine through his nose.
Went in OK that time.

4. At my mate Andy's funeral, I parked the hearse outside the church, helped carry him in and then joined the congregation. Apparently, although I was unaware of it, on several occasions the other drivers tried to attract my attention as I still had the hearse key with me, which meant they couldn't turn the cortege around. So we had to take a very circuitous route to the crem and were 20 minutes late for our slot. Some time later I was accused of having done it on purpose as apparently Andy had always said he'd be late for his own funeral. I genuinely didn't know.

5. Sedgefield cemetery: funeral in the tossing rain after it had been lashing down for days. It was (and still is) a long walk, and when we got to the grave Chris the spade was waiting for us. To mask the fact that the place looked like the Somme he'd rolled astroturf out around the grave, the sides of which were shored up with old house doors. He warned us not to get too close to the edge. We started to lower in but the coffin got wedged against the doors, so Chris knelt down while we held the coffin in the air and tried to fish the doors out. That didn't work, so we shuffled a few paces backwards to give him room, while he laid on the plastic grass and reached down for the first door. Predictably, the door was heavy and as it started to come up the astroturf overcame the resistance of the mud, slid over the edge and tipped him in.
Even the mourners were tittering.

6. Another branch famously (as in, it made the national press) got two bodies mixed up, only realising when the crew went to collect the second bod from the chapel of rest. Perhaps from a corporate point of view, the safest option would have been to say nothing and hope that nobody read the plaque on the coffin lid. Instead they confessed to he second family, who could hardly be expected to attend the funeral for someone who wasn't theirs... but then get the first family back from the wake they were already holding, to attend another funeral. The first body, of course, had been cremated.

7. Yet another branch upset a lot of residents of an old folk's home, the lounge of which overlooked the back doors of the funeral home. After an out-of-hours collection, the undertakers got the stretcher out of the back of the car, unlocked the building and went in. Then, apparently, forgot all about the deceased who lay on the pavement for (it was alleged) half an hour while the home residents looked on.

8. Funeral at St. Cuthberts on Billingham green was interrupted by a stolen vehicle being chased by police. Realising thair way was blocked, the two scumbags jumped out of the still-moving car and legged it. The funeral Director chased and caught one of them, who apparently needed hospital treatment for having carelessly allowed his face to repeatedly contact something hard. When the mourners exited the church they found the stolen car planted in the back of their limo.

9. Stillington: two stories from the church there. First a grave had to be reopened in order to allow a second coffin to be interred. The gravedigger(s) had carelessly deposited the spoil on an adjacent grave. Unbeknown to them the family of that incumbent lived in the village, saw the pile of soil and kicked off.
By the time phone calls had been made and people chased, it was into the evening and dark. The only way to resolve the situation involved two undertakers, a shovel and a torch. Must have been unnerving to anyone driving past.
The second incident involved a mourner's car. That church is on a hill. We'd parked the cortege facing downhill and the mourners parked their cars a little further up, there being no car park. We'd been stood outside counting the hymns and were just about to go back in when something moved: we realised that the lead private car had slipped its handbrake and was rolling down, in the general direction of the limo. Three of us ran to try and slow it down, tried the driver's door but it was locked. Someone shouted 'leave it' and to be fair we didn't slow it at all. Miraculously (maybe the big fella himself had something to do with it - or maybe the steering lock was on) the car climbed the camber of the road, missed the limo by a midgie's todger and carried on its merry way down the hill. There's a housing estate on the other side now, but back then it was just a field. The car finally stopped about 150 yards away. We retrieved the coffin and were loading up when someone wailed "Where's my car?". "It's down there, madam..."

Just remembered..

10. There's a church on a hill overlooking Yarm, it used to have (and maybe still does) box pews and a very narrow aisle, which made carrying coffins down it a bit of a contortionist act. One day, we'd exited the church and walked round to see where the grave was, so we could pick an appropriate route through the headstones. We found Chris the spade, leaning on his shovel and disposing of a crafty fag. I'm sure that would have different connotations now, but anyway... we looked into the grave; it was about 2 feet deep.
"Bloody hell Chris, you'll have to get a move on, they've already started!", said the Director.
Chris finished his fag, took hold of his spade and lowered it in to the grave. There was a hollow sound when it hit the bottom. About an inch of soil covered the previous incumbent. Turns out that hill is notoriously rocky and many of the graves are extremely shallow.
Out of curiosity, after a swift shandy in the adjacent pub (locals will know the one, it's looking for a new landlord) a few months ago I thought I'd see if I could find that grave. It wasn't hard: I know it had to be about 1991, roughly where it was and that it was a double. There were flowers on it, so someone still cares.

 

[Keith 66]

These great stories remind me of one i was told in the yacht club one saturday night some years back by an old boy name of Bill sadly passed away. He had been a paratrooper on D Day jumping out of a DC3 Dakota, destination the Pegasus bridge. Unfortunately his plane had got lost & they jumped miles from where they were supposed to.
And so they landed on the edge of a SS panzer unit & after a firefight he was captured with some of his mates & more being killed. He was sent to a Pow camp in Germany.
Some months before the end of the war the nearby town was bombed, several bombs landed in the churchyard & excavated big craters, Bill & a detail of prisoners were dispatched under armed guard to pick up all the scattered bones & carry them respectfully to a corner for storage prior to reburial.
In one of the craters were a lot of bones & bits of coffin, the guards pointed to them & ordered Bill & his mates to retrieve them, the bottom of the crater was wet & muddy & they floundered about picking up what they could. As he was climbing up the side of the crater with an armful of bones part of it slipped down & a coffin came sliding out of the earthen wall, It stopped but the lid came off sideways. As it did so it revealed the body of a lady its face black with age & decay still wearing a deep red evening dress & long black hair. This dreadful sight had him scurrying out of the crater like a rabbit but he slid back to it, & had to climb out again, Nothing was said by the guards as they had run away as well!
Bill reckoned nothing he saw in the war compared to the terror of that moment.
He was one of the few men i have met who would tell of his experiences.

 

[Wedg1e]

One of my biking mates is an ex-Para. He said that one day he and another guy were delegated to go with a Landrover and retrieve the 'chutes from a string of jumpers.
They watched as the guys jumped out of the plane and chutes opened... until one didn't.
Steve said they were yelling up at him to pull his reserve but the guy just kept going.
What made it worse was that when the guy hit the ground, he didn't just stop, he bounced back up and fell again.
'Kinell, this is cheerful for a new year's eve... - I'm off round my mother's with a few bottles of homebrew to help get rid of '22.

 

[ajlelectronics]

I can see how that might meet with resistance

As long as the workers don't take them Ohm.

 

[Morrisman]

Can't interfere with a corpse. For the same reason jewellery is not removed (at least in the UK). Fishing the bits out afterwards must be accepted, but as to what happens to the gold and stones, that's the bit I never got an answer on.
For the same reason, bodies aren't removed from the coffin prior to cremation (which seems a bit anti-environment but rules, for the present, are rules).
Obviously things have happened over the years that shouldn't, it takes dishonest practice in any field to get legislation introduced.
Theoretically, titanium joint repairs COULD be cleaned up and reused but I can see how that might meet with resistance.

You can thank WW1 for the acceptance of cremation in the UK: with so many lads having no known resting place there were lots of grieving people badgering the clergy over whether they'd get to heaven or not; the formulated response became that it wasn't necessary to be intact in body to get through the gates (of either destination ). I seem to think there was a guy who cremated his wife on a Welsh hillside around that time that caused a ruckus (I nearly said a stink...) - but last I heard, it had overtaken burial by a long way (and probably a good thing too given the population and area of this small island).

I have a few 'pre-owned' titanium joints, bought from the US. Some still have bits of glue on where they were once inserted in various bones... They are dup out from crematorium residue.

One was used to make a gear shift in my hot rod, the others are somewhere in the shed. It was only $100 for the box, including shipping.

 

[Keith 66]

Those ball joints make good "Priests" for dispatching fish & game, Wooden handle & away you go!

 

[James1979]

I have a few 'pre-owned' titanium joints, bought from the US. Some still have bits of glue on where they were once inserted in various bones... They are dup out from crematorium residue.

One was used to make a gear shift in my hot rod, the others are somewhere in the shed. It was only $100 for the box, including shipping.

View attachment 378795

View attachment 378799

Ebay?

 

[Morrisman]

Ebay?

Yup. Late at night.....

 

[James1979]

Yup. Late at night.....

I shall look. They’re cool.

Any issues with customs / imports etc?

 

[ajlelectronics]

I shall look. They’re cool.

Any issues with customs / imports etc?

I believe that Customs will treat importing them with grave concern.

 

[Welderpaul]

I believe that Customs will treat importing them with grave concern.

You’ll be coffin up for the import duty on them

 

[Cobbler]

I believe that Customs will treat importing them with grave concern.

And duty might be an arm & a leg