HPB-SB-4-29

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vol. 4, p. 29

H. P. Blavatsky Scrapbooks

from Adyar archives of the International Theosophical Society

vol. 4 (1875-1878)

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< Baron de Palm Cremated (continued from page 4-28) >

Objectionable as this whole proceeding was, it should, in justice to those who were concerned with it, be understood that it was a purely scientific experiment. As such it was successful. It ought not to have been attempted under the conditions, and Colonel Olcott’s idea is that if cremation should ever be accepted and adopted by any religious or other body of the people, it should be surrounded with proper ceremonies, and the cremation itself should be unobserved.

In addresses delivered this afternoon at the Town Hall in Washington by Colonel Olcott, Dr. Hayes, Dr. King, Dr. Le Moyne and Mr. Nicholas Wade, the scientific, practical, sanitary and religious aspects of cremation were exploited at great length with much eloquence and a good deal of vehemence. J. B. S.

_______ THE NEW YORK TIMES WITH SUPPLEMENT. NEW YORK, THURSDAY, DEC. 7, 1876.

<Untitled> (The ghastly ceremony)

The ghastly ceremony of incinerating the remains of the late Bavarian Ваron Palm was concluded at Washington, Penn., yesterday. The wide notoriety of this performance was due to the fact that the original funeral ceremonies were a curious mixture of paganism and religion, that the preparations for the cremation were made a matter for newspaper comment, and that the pilgrimage to the “ crematory” was in the nature of a theatrical procession. Nothing is proved by the final performance in Pennsylvania, except that the burning of a corpse may be lawfully conducted. That there should have been any doubts to the “ success” of the operation implies an ignorance of the simplest principles which regulate combustion, or a possible failure on the part of the furnace-builder. The managers of the affair need not grieve that the people of the region made themselves coarsely merry over the incineration. They would have behaved similarly if the occasion had been the hanging of a murderer, instead of the burning of a theosophist of hight degree.

De Palm's Incineration

Cremation of the Late Baron at Washington, Penn

PREPARING THE BODY FOR THE FURNACE–HOW THE REMAINS LOOKED AFTER SEVERAL MONTHS' EMBALMMENT–BEHAVIOR OF A VULGAR CROWD–SCENES AT THE CREMATORY–REMARKABLE INCIDENTS OF THE INCINERATION–THE WORK COMPLETED–THE ASHES TO BE BROUGHT TO THIS CITY. Special Dispatch to the New-York Times.

Washington, Dec. 6.–This little town of Washington, In Pennsylvania, with its 5,000 inhabitants, boasts a railroad station, a town hall, a State University, a soldiers’ monument, and some minor advantages ; nevertheless, so far as I can learn, local history does not record that it has hitherto had the opportunity of boasting of an extraordinary public excitement. But incineration and the late Baron De Palm have come to the rescue, and Washington can now hold its head as high as any of it’s neighbors. The nineteenth century march of progress has swept on wings over the Alleghany Mountains, and has alighted on this favored spot–for favored spot it is, lying on some of the lower spurs of the Laurel Range of the Alleghanies, some thirty miles south-west of smoky Pittsburg, on the Chartiers Branch of the Pittsburg, Cincinnati and St. Louis Railroad. On one side of a partially wooden hill, commanding a splendid view of the town and surrounding country, Dr. Le Moyne has erected his crematory or cremating furnace. The splendid hills, the deep vales and fine wood-lands, the happy faces trudging along the rough country road, the sweep of snow sparkling cheerily in the bright sunlight, and the keen invigorating air, were a bad preparation this morning for encountering a reception-room for the dead, its silent occupant, and the curiously sad ceremony of reducing to dust, by means of the fiery furnace, was what so lately a fellow human being. But at he end of the mile and a half drive the brightness of the scene vanished in a moment, and all was hushed; for there, half hidden in the trees, stood the sombre-looking little building which is henceforth to be devoted to a form of burial at once ancient and modern, and in it lay the body which had been brought on the night before for the purpose of inaugurating the special uses to which the building had been devoted, and for which it was purposely erected.

SCENE AT THE CREMATORY.

Around the building was a noisy, pushing crowd of the young women and men of the place, some of whom had been hopelessly (for Dr. Le Moyne only issued thirty invitations) pressing for a place for hours. They were passably orderly but coarse in their ideas and conduct and many a brutal joke concerning the dead man went through the crowd, to the disgust of the more respectable visitors. The scene was as repulsive, though on a smaller scale, as that to be witnessed before an execution or a prize fight. This was just what Col. Olcott and Mr. Newton, the two executors of the Baron, wished of all things to avoid. But they were powerless : the civil authorities had taken no stops to keep order, so far as I can learn, though I did hear that two policemen were expected during the day.

THE BUILDING AND THE FURNACE.

The crematory is a small brick building as unpretentious as a village meeting-house, and about thirty feet square. Its total cost, including the furnace, was only 81,600. This I learn from Dr. Le Moyne himself. It consists of only two chambers—the reception-room and the furnace-room. The reception-room is twenty feet square, and is furnished with a few wooden chairs, a movable wooden catafalque, and a columbarium, very like a modern book-case, for the temporary deposition of urns containing the remains of those who may hereafter be cremated there. I have little ambition to occupy a place on one of the statues or ever to go through the process of cremation amid such surroundings as were the fate of Baron De Palm. The crematory furnace is constructed on the Martin Siemens principle, and consists of a brick and fire brick structure, ten feet long, six feet wide, and six feet high, inclosing a fire-clay retort of semi-cylindrical shape, seven feet long, twenty-four inches wide, and twenty inches high, into which the body to be cremated is thrust after the retort is properly heated by the fire below. An escape flue carries off the carbon gases, and also the gases generated from the body during cremation, into a chimney, The furnace heat can be raised by means of a small hand-worked fan-blast. The whole arrangement is simple to a degree, though as the events of to-day have shown, perfectly and amply adapted for the work it is intended to perform. It can be operated by any one who knows how to build a fire.

THE PRELIMINARY PREPARATIONS.

The furnace was fired up at 7 o'clock yesterday morning, and at the same hour this morning was declared by the fireman to be ready for operations. Toward 8 o'clock the invited guests began to arrive, and much to the disgust of the uninvited crowd were quickly admitted into the reception room, where the body of the Baron lay in its iron cradle. Among the visitors were Dr. Le Moyne, the proprietor of the crematory ; Mr. John A. Wills, his son-in-law ; Col. Olcott and William Henry Newton, the two executors having charge of the remains ; Dr. Folsom, Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Health ; Dr. Asdale, Secretary of the Pittsburg Board of Health ; Dr. Otterson, President of the Brooklyn Board of Health ; Dr. Hupp, of Wheeling, Va.; Dr. Clemmen, of Brownsville; Mr. V. Harding, of Washington ; Mr. N. K. Wade, of Columbus, Ohio; Mr. M. D. Evans, of Philadelphia; Dr. King, of Pittsburg;. Dr. MeCord, of Pittsburg; Dr. Beard, of Wheeling, Va.; Dr. Ulrich, of Wheeling; Rev. G. B. Hayes, of Washington; Dr. Johnson, of Pittsburg, and a large delegation of newspaper correspondents from all parts, even from England, France, and Germany.

VIEWING THE BODY.

Every one, after a hasty glance at the shrouded corpse, paid a visit to the furnace-room, and then, as by common consent, returned to the reception-room, and joined in a possibly-interesting, but very unpleasant discussion as to the condition of the body. In the momentary glance which we caught of the body yesterday, before Col. Olcott hurriedly ordered the coffin to be reclosed, it was impossible to arrive at any very accurate conclusion as to its state of preservation; but this morning, when the body lay in its winding-sheet in the iron cradle, ready for being placed in the crematory, an excellent opportunity for forming a judgment presented itself. On raising the cloth from the head the entire face was exposed to view. The features gave me the idea of having in life possessed refined lineaments. The forehead was high and broad ; the nose straight, and of the Grecian type; the jaw broad and narrowing slightly toward the chin. The lips were so shrunken, however, as to destroy the characteristics of the mouth, and the sockets of the eyes were utterly tenantless, the eyelids having completely sunk back on the brain, leaving no space. The flesh was far from being thoroughly dried by the embalming powder, though the process had made considerable progress; still it was to a certain extent, pliable, somewhat like sodened leather. I should think that the mummyfying process was about half completed, that it would have required at least six months more to have carried it out thoroughly. The color of the flesh added greatly to the painful appearance of the face. The best impression that I can give of it is that it resembled very much the shape of a pink plum that has become decayed without losing all the bloom. Although artificial desiccation was undoubtedly going on, the flesh seemed still to be full of the virus of decomposition. The body was generally very, emaciated, and, as all fluids had long ago been removed from he intestines, it was very light. It gave one the impression of being that of a very tall man. I should think the Baron could not have been less than six feet in height, and yet yesterday evening the body only weighed ninety-two pounds. The plate, which had been removed from the coffin and placed on the window-sill at the back of the body, read thus :

Joseph Henry Lewis Charles, Baron De Palm, Died May 20, 1876, aged sixty-seven years.

I was painfully struck by the apparent levity, not only of the crowd outside, but of some of the limited number of invited guests, who were in the reception-room where the body lay. They seemed to regard the remains of the dead Baron with as little feeling as ordinary wedding parties regard the bridegroom, as a very secondary consideration, compared with the scientific form of burial to which they were about to be subjected, and possibly a little de trop, if their presence had not been absolutely necessary on the occasion. However others, led by Col. Olcott and his friends, displayed all proper respect for the dead. The Colonel had lovingly showered the corpse with choice roses, primroses, smilax, palm, and also some evergreens, as an emblem of immortality. The winding sheet was also thoroughly saturated with alum, to prevent it from blazing the moment the body was placed in the crematory.

BURNING THE BODY.

While the final preparations were being made, the furnace men were busy with their blowing-fan. I looked into the furnace a few moments before the actual cremation began, and thought that it was not nearly hot enough. The further end of the clay retort was only at what is called a “ cherry red heat,” while toward the mouth there were no signs of even that amount of heat. I stood within three or four feet of the open mouth without any inconvenience I believe, in the recent cases of cremation of Keller, at Milan, and of Lady Dilke, that a white heat was obtained, and this I should deem necessary; otherwise the body would be slowly baked to a crisp instead of being properly incinerated. It is evident that Dr. Le Moyne himself thought the same, for, as soon as the body was in the retort, they worked up the heat from 1,000 degrees to nearly 2,000 degrees by firing and the use of the fan-blast. When all was ready the body was quietly and reverently slid into the retort. There were no religious services, no addresses, no music, no climax, such as would have thrown great solemnity over the occasion. There was not one iota of ceremony. Everything was as business-like as possible. At 8:20 o'clock Dr. LeMoyne, Col. Olcott, Mr. Newton, and Dr. Asdale quietly took their stations on either side of the body, and raising the cradle from the catafalque bore it at once to the cemetery retort, and slid it in with its unearthly burden head foremost.

A CROWN OF GLORY FOR THE DEAD.

As the cradle reached the further and hottest end of the furnace, the evergreens round the head burst into a blaze and were quickly consumed, but the flowers and evergreens on the other part of the body remained untouched. The flames formed, as it were, a crown of glory for the dead man. The <... continues on page 4-30 >

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