The Cremation Society keeps very careful statistics of the number of times each of the crematoria in the UK are used, and publishes them on its website. The very first cremation in the UK was in Woking in March 1885, and between then and 1899 there were a total of 1,976, a tiny fraction of the over 8 million deaths in England and Wales in that period, just 0.024 per cent, or one in every 4,100 deaths.
Since then, however, the number of cremations has increased steadily, as has the number of crematoria, from four in 1900 to 13 by 1914. Over the next 15 years to 1914, the rate of cremations increased to 0.14 per cent, or one in every 700 deaths, and over the 15 years 1915 to 1929 to 0.46 per cent or one in every 200.
Today, in 2017, the latest year for data, four-fifths, 80 per cent of all deaths in England and Wales are cremated, spread across 291 crematoria.
The numbers began to increase very rapidly in the 20 years after the end of World War Two….
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