Journal of the Society of Arts and Official Organ of the Royal Commission for the Chicago Exhibition.
- Society of Arts (Great Britain)
- Date:
- 1892
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Journal of the Society of Arts and Official Organ of the Royal Commission for the Chicago Exhibition. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.
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![iournal of Wu ^mt\\\, at No. 2,088. Vol. XLI. FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 1892. All communt'calioits for the Society should be addressed to the Secretary^ John-street, Adelphi, London, W.C. Notices. ♦ CANTOR LECTURES. On Monday evening, 21st inst., Professor Vivian Lewes delivered the first lecture of his course on the Generation of Light from Coal Gas. The lectures will be printed in the Journal during the Christmas recess. Chicago Exhibition, 1893. ELECTRICITY COMMITTEE. A meeting of the Committee on Electricity was held on Friday, 17th inst. Present: Professor W. E. Ayrton, F.R.S., in the chair; R. E. B. Crompton, Professor D. E. Hughes, F.R.S., James Paxman, W. H. Preece, F.R.S., Mark Robinson, Alexander Siemens, Silvanus P. Thompson, F.R.S., Major-General Webber, C.B., with Sir Henry Trueman Wood, M.A., Secretary to the Royal Commission. Proceedings of the Society. SECOND ORDINARY MEETING. Wednesday, November 23, 1892; GEORGE Vivian Poore, M.D., F.R.C.P., in the chair. The following candidates were proposed for election as members of the Society: — Barlow, H. Dudley, care of Messrs. J. and P. Coats and Co., Paisley, N.B. Benson, Walter, Stoneleigh, St, George's-avcnuc, Weybridgc, Surrey. Edwards, Stanley, 24, Fenchurch-street, E.G., and Kidbrook-lodge, Blackheath, S.E. Parker, Hon. Cecil Thomas, The Paddocks, Eccle- ston, Chester, Thompson, Bernard fl., Royal Engineers'-oflice, Windsor. j>;* . • White, William, 58, Bread-stfe|i, E.G. Young, Robert G., The pO]0df Asylum, Colney>^ hatch, N. The paper read wa CREMATION AS AN' INCENTIVE CRIME.-. . - x By F, Seymour HAden,'E,R. The object of the present papeSos.: I. To contrast burial as it is with it ought to be ; and, again, burial as it ought to be, with cremation as a proposed substitute for it. II. To test the validity of a statement made by Sir Henry Thompson at the late Congress of Hygiene and Demography, to the eifect that Burial, by spreading infection, is a cause of increase in the zymotic death-rate. III. To prove that, as the practice of cre- mation would render the clearing up of any doubts which might subsequently arise as to the cause of death in any given case impos- sible, such a practice cannot fail to operate as a direct incentive to crime, especially to murder by poisons known by the criminal to be difficult of detection without prolonged, and possibly repeated, methods of investigation. Before attempting to deal with these several propositions, I cannot do otherwise than refer with regret to two or three circum- stances which, though insufficient to turn me from the task I have undertaken, are yet of a nature to render that task anything but an easy one. It is not easy, for instance, to deal single - handed with any movement which has acquired the dimensions and character of an agitation; with a portion of the Press, which has so far identified itself with that movement as to publish unwillingly, and frequently to suppress altogether, anything which tells seriously against it; with a sani- tary authority which persists on issuing in- structions, not for the resolution, but the preservation of the bodies of the dead. An agitation, again, is not always exactly scrupulous as to the methods it employs, and the Cremation Society, by heading its appeals Cremation v. Burial, instead of Cremation z/. the Abuses of Burial, is no exception to this. Again, though I refer to it with the greatest reluctance, no adequate idea can he had of the difficulties of the question with which I have undertaken to cope without some pre-](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21354935_0005.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
