|
Welcome
Taphophilia (dot) Com...
A repository of morbid curiosities:
Thanatology and Taphophile Issues, Cemetery,
Funeral Industry and Death Related News.
A Taphophilia Thank You...
Taphophilia (dot) Com would not be possible without the knowledge, experience and talent of DarkestWeb. From its conception and early development, DarkestWeb was faced with many challenges; from inspiring and motivating, to providing guidance and direction. The continued dedication and support has produced results greater than ever expected, and for this, I owe a huge debt of gratitude.
Announcements
Graveyards of Chicago:
The People, History, Art, and Lore of Cook County Cemeteries
By Matt Hucke And Ursula Bielski. Discover a Chicago That Exists Just Beneath the Surface - About Six Feet Under! Take a tour of Chicago's permanent residents! Please visit the Lake Claremont Press website to purchase your copy of Graveyards of Chicago today!
Green-Wood Cemetery Arcadia Publishing announces the release of Alexandra Mosca's historic account of one of New York's most famous cemeteries. Aracdia Publishing's Images of America series has an extensive catalog of many cemetery publications! Please visit Arcadia Publishing to purchase your copy of Green-Wood Cemetery and to browse other available titles!
Men of Mortuaries Calendar
To purchase your 2008 calendar, learn more about the KAMMCARES Foundation, or to be featured in the 2009 calendar, please visit Men of Mortuaries.
Epitaphs: The Magazine for Cemetery Lovers By Cemetery Lovers
For information regarding subscriptions, single issues, submission guidelines, deadlines, classifieds or advertising for future issues, please visit The Cemetery Club.
Guardians of the Soul: Angels and Innocents, Mourners and Saints, Indiana's remarkable cemetery sculpture
with photography by John Bower and foreword by Claude Cookman is now
available. Please visit
Studio Indiana for more information.
West Springfield Massachusetts: Stories Carved in Stone by Rusty Clark features information on early New England gravestone carvers with more than two hundred photos and illustrations. Please visit the Dog Pond Press website.
|
|
More than 6,000 remains stored by county -- dating back to 1935 |
|
|
|
|
Written by DeadGirl
|
|
Wednesday, 05 May 2004 |
By Les Mahler
San Joaquin News Service
There are no headstones, graves or flowers to mark the resting spot for many of the county's older indigents. The only way they're identified is with a number on a brass box in the back room of the coroner's morgue.
More than 6,000 remains of people who died and who couldn't afford to be buried -- or whose loved ones couldn't pay the cost -- line nine rows in the morgue, where they are stored with the idea that perhaps someday someone would return and retrieve the remains.
Each row holds 720 brass boxes, with the oldest ones dating to 1935, the year the county began its cremation policy, said Reggie Martin, lab assistant superintendent at San Joaquin General Hospital.
Martin was a nursing assistant at the county hospital during the 1970s. He said he could always tell when someone was being cremated.
"There was a musky odor in the air, and it depended on the direction of the wind," he said.
Before 1935, indigents were buried behind the hospital in a potter's field, he said. That was before the county realized it was cheaper to cremate the remains than bury them.
Cremations of most indigents at the hospital continued until March 1988, Martin said. The cremations stopped when the county needed the land for the county jail, said Margaret Sanderson, former pathology clerk at the hospital and now legislative aide to county Supervisor Victor Mow.
"They dug up the bones and stored them in Lodi," she said.
At Rocha's Mortuary in Lodi, the remains were cremated and stored in cardboard boxes, Martin said.
Rocha's continued the cremation until the owners decided to stop, he said.
Thereafter, cremation was moved to Park View Cemetery and Mortuary in Manteca, where they're held until someone claims them.
If they're not claimed, then Park View buries them with others in the community inurnment site, which is off-limits to the public, said Dave Massey, president of Park View.
The only cremations done today at the hospital are stillborns and newborns whose parents can't afford to pay, Sanderson said.
While most of the remains in the county morgue have names, some don't, a holdover from the days before Social Security numbers, credit cards and driver's licenses, Sanderson said.
"The hoboes at that time came to find a job in Stockton and didn't have identification," she said, so they became another in a long line of John Does.
Other remains were stillborn infants or those who died a few days after birth, many of them nameless because the parents didn't give them names, said Martin. They're listed by last names and identified only as a boy or girl.
While many relatives wanted to claim the remains, many couldn't afford the $12 fee in the 1930s, said Jerry Sexton, a medical technician and former worker at the crematorium.
While the county now cremates about 60 to 70 persons a year, Sexton said in the mid-1930s, infants, stillborn or dead soon after birth, made up most of the cremations.
"The parents just couldn't afford to bury them," he said.
As with the indigents, there were also cremations of transients who died in an accident -- often related to alcohol -- and ended up nameless in the morgue, Martin said. They often couldn't provide hospital officials with any identification.
Other cremations were of migrant farmworkers. Martin said he thinks about possible relatives of those workers who are in Mexico and unaware that they can track a relative who worked in the fields.
Nellie Stone, spokeswoman for the county Sheriff's Department, said the coroner's office keeps the remains as a holding place for the hospital's former patients.
Doing so, Martin and Sexton said, gives loved ones a chance to find their lost relatives -- even if it's years later.
That's what happened in 2001, when a woman picked up the remains of her grandmother, who was cremated in 1956.
"That was 45 years ago," Martin said. "It was wonderful that the county was able to put this together."
A similar event happened last year, when a woman picked up the remains of her two sisters cremated in 1949.
Martin said an interest in genealogy leads people like those to the county's doorstep, looking for information on their relatives -- even if a brass box of ashes is all that's left of them.
http://www.lodinews.com/articles/2004/05/03/news/03_cremains_hist_040503.txt |
|
Taphophilia?
taphophilia (taf′ō-fil′ē-ă)
ORIGIN:
From the Greek words taphos, meaning "tomb" or "sepulcher" and philia, meaning "attraction or affinity to something, in particular the love or obsession with something"
DEFINITION: 1. An excessive interest in graves and cemeteries. 2. A love or fondness for funerals, graves, and cemeteries. 3. In psychiatry, a morbid attraction to graves and cemeteries
Quote Repository
“Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind; Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave. I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.” Edna St. Vincent Millay
Shirtless and Sculpted
The Men of Mortuaries 2008 Calendar is now available! All sale proceeds benefit KAMMCARES, a breast cancer foundation.
|
