Funerals

Funerals

Canon B38 deals with the ‘Burial of the Dead’, and there are a number of helpful papers published by the Legal Advisory Commission in its Legal Opinions Concerning the Church of England.

Respect for the dead and protecting public health make burial or cremation an urgent task when someone dies. Certain aspects are heavily regulated – such as the minimum depth of graves, the siting and management of burial grounds and crematoria – but there are comparatively few laws governing actual bodily disposal. For example, there are no set time limits for disposing of the dead.

Burial in a churchyard or cemetery is not the only option. Natural burial in fields or woodland areas, burial at sea, and even burial in private land (a family farm, or even the deceased’s own back yard) are permissible options. Cremation, however, can only take place in a licensed crematorium. The law has changed to allow funeral pyres – but only in an enclosed building – after lobbying by Hindu and Sikh religious communities.

There is no legal requirement to use a funeral director, and English law does not insist on embalming unless, for example, a corpse is being repatriated or moved between countries. A corpse must be “decently covered” but the use of a coffin is not mandatory: a shroud, cardboard box or wicker basket are suitable options unless the deceased is being buried at sea, or individual crematoria insist on a coffin to facilitate handling the body.

Although burial and cremation are the most common ways of disposing of bodies, two new methods are emerging. Resomation – already available in parts of the US and Australia – is a liquefaction process which uses alkaline hydrolysis to dissolve the body’s organic matter inside a steel container. The result is a sterile liquid and bones which can be crushed and given to the deceased’s family (similar to post-cremation ashes).

Promession is at a more developmental stage and uses liquid nitrogen to super-cool the body before the brittle remains are shattered using ultrasonic vibration. The result is an odourless, organic residue which becomes a dry powder when the water content is evaporated off, and turns to compost when buried in a small bio-degradable container. Neither method is commercially available yet in the UK, but would be a perfectly legal alternative to burial or cremation. However neither resomation nor promession are yet recognised by the Church of England in any formal advice or guidance.