The Church of England has refused a family’s pleas to have their late father exhumed from a “bleak and dangerous” cemetery and reunited in death with his wife in a more peaceful setting.
Geoffrey Tattersall QC, an eclestiastical judge, said that while he had sympathy with the request, it was not exceptional enough to depart from the principle that a Christian burial should be final.
Sylvia Hill and her two brothers Carl and Andrew Corry wanted to have their father John Corry’s remains exhumed from Southern Cemetery in Manchester after 19 years and re-interred in Mill Lane Cemetery, Stockport, in a joint grave with their mother, Elizabeth Corry….
It’s hard to agree with the judge’s decision, and I hope that it can be overruled by another court.
I can think of another situation which occurred well over a century ago in which Private Robert Jones, a VC recipient for his heroic actions at the Battle of Rorke’s Drift in Natal, was denied burial in the usual fashion.
According to his family, since he committed suicide by shotgun (the action for which he received the VC having affected his mental state), his casket had to be brought over the cemetery wall instead of entering through the cemetery gate, and he was buried facing backward from the rest of the graves, since it was then considered a disgrace to have committed suicide. Whether or not the family succeeded in convincing the coroner to reverse the decision, I don’t know.
It does seem to me that this judge should not have taken this decision, and I hope that it will be reversed. I will pray for the family.
I don’t know the facts involved in this case but, having walked through this cemetery while a student in Manchester, I did not find it “bleak and dangerous.” That is, no more bleak and dangerous than other cemeteries I have visited.
That may very well be, but I believe that compassion on the part of that judge should reign supreme here, and I hope the decision will be reversed.
It’s the decent thing to do.
Rather peculiar. Must be a quirk of English law.