A big undertaking

[Boac]

The gruesome discoveries at the undertakers in Hull (UK) where 35 bodies appear to have been 'mishandled' has caused great understandable distress amongst the families. It does, of course, beg the worrying question - which bodies were actually being 'disposed' of?

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/202 ... ce-believe

[tango15]

The gruesome discoveries at the undertakers in Hull (UK) where 35 bodies appear to have been 'mishandled' has caused great understandable distress amongst the families. It does, of course, beg the worrying question - which bodies were actually being 'disposed' of?

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/202 ... ce-believe

This struck me as a very strange story indeed, and I'm struggling to understand what has happened here. From all too recent personal experience, my impression was that the whole death-to-cremation/burial process was (quite rightly) strictly controlled. Obviously not the case here.

[1DC]

This is fairly local to me and has caused great distress and appears that in some cases people have received the ashes of loved ones who they thought had been cremated but the body had since been found at the undertakers. The police have recovered 35 bodies which they have now identified and a quantity of ashes which they may not be able to identify. It also appears that the undertaking business may not be as well regulated as people thought.The villains involved are father and daughter.

[Ex-Ascot]

It seems that there is no governing body! What has happened here is that the funeral directors have been cremating one body and splitting the ashes between two urns. They stockpile the second body and save on one cremation whilst getting paid for two. This is why there were 35 bodies at the establishment instead of the usual about 5. The question is what they were intending to do with the 'spare' bodies.

The family are not always present at the cremation. The funeral directors take the body away after a church service and return the ashes. This happened to both my parents at their request. Goodness knows whose ashes we buried.

The charges seem fairly minor compared to the crime. I hope that the judge takes into account the grief caused.

[G-CPTN]

Cremation funeral services that I have attended have involved a coffin, which may or may not have contained a body.
The local crematorium has two chapels a short distance apart, but only one 'active' with an underground 'railway' to transport coffins from one to the other.
I believe that bodies (in coffins) are stockpiled (not necessarily for long) before being loaded into the cremation 'oven'.
At no stage can the public observe the cremation (whereas a burial is usually witnessed by the mourners).

ERGO mourners can not confirm that bodies are actually cremated.

[G~Man]

When I flew for a Sheriff department in the SF bay area many years ago, we were called to a hangar at the Byron airport, (uncontrrolled) that the doors were buldging out due to something inside against the door.... we discovered thousands of boxes of ashes that a local company had collected---they were charging people for scattering their loved one's ashes in the Pacific ocean but never actually flying them out there and scattering them. Upon investigation we found some storage units full of ashes also.