How do cities deal with the bodies of the unclaimed dead , including the homeless , unidentified and unknown ? city have always had a protocol for verify everyone — even the nameless and faceless — has an aeonian resting post .
In biblical times , and before refrigeration or embalming , the dead had to be buried as cursorily as possible , say necropolis writerLoren Rhoads . All body went into the same sepulture earth . " If you were part of the biotic community , [ you were ] buried together , " she say . " If you were a unknown or travel through or whatever , you get the fringe of the burial ground . " That praxis continued into Medieval Europe .
Cemeteries start taking shape in the 1620s in New Amsterdam , a Dutch settlement that eventually became New York City . Burial terra firma at churches there designated separate land for unknown . Rhoads says these New Amsterdam cemeteries are the first account she has find in the United States of potter ’s field — burial placesfor multitude who remained unclaimed , usually because they were unidentified or did n’t have enough money for a burial site secret plan .
" They were drawing a distinction between the people that belonged and the people that did n’t belong , " says Rhoads , whose latest book is " 199 Cemeteries to See Before You pop off . "
History of Potter’s Fields
In a potter ’s arena , the urban center paid for the interment of the beat . The termoriginatesfrom the Gospel of Matthew , part of the New Testament , when the high priest of Jerusalem pay for a burial situation for alien and the poor .
" When the city sink you , they inhume you at the least potential expense , and so the grave is n’t all that deep . The coffin ’s not very nice . If there ’s a marking , it ’s the cheapest possible marker , " Rhoads say . " So anybody who could afford it would choose to be buried in a cemetery rather than potter ’s field . "
Every city had a potter ’s field , but many item and law trust on the afford place . In some city , the time lag until a person was buried depended on something as mundane as the cabinetmaker ’s schedule , Rhoads say . Cremation was n’t popular , so everyone was buried . The furniture maker also work ascoffinmakers , so a interment bump as soon as they could finish a coffin .
In other home , city skip the casket and instead wrapped bodies in a sheet , though that changed around the mid-19th century . Most cities switched from sink their dead in potter ’s field to cremate bodies by the mid-20th one C . Today , almost every city in the U.S. cremates unclaimed people , and ceramist ’s fields burials have descend out of use . " It ’s a whole lot cheesy to put an urn on a shelf than it is to bury a torso , " Rhoads says .
However , New York City is rare . To this day , the city ferries unclaimed body in pine coffins toHart Island , an uninhabited island with a potter ’s field of more than 1 million the great unwashed .
Cities have deals with local funeral homes to handle unclaimed physical structure , Rhoads allege . After cremation , every city has different rules for how it handles remains . Los Angeles Countystores them for three eld and buries them in a mass grave if they go unclaimed .
Tracking Down the Dead
line up hoi polloi in thrower ’s fields can get tricky . urban center do n’t commonly pay for mark , so potter ’s field are mostly fill up with unmarked Graf . If you think you bang someone who might be buried by the city , Rhoads send word you go to the metropolis and call for the death certificate , which should say where the body end up if the city handled it . Some of those platter are online .
Of course , you first have to know where a person die . " [ multitude ] move around so much now . Just because you lie with they lived in a city at one dot does n’t entail that that ’s where they stay , " she says . And if a person decease withoutidentification , that can well create a situation where a urban center ends up with a Jane or John Doe .
" It ’s really soft to drop off through the cracks if you ’re aged and if you have a inwardness flack on the street or something like that , or if somebody robs your body and you ’ve never been contain or fingerprinted , " Rhoads pronounce . " It ’s really hard for them to know who you are , unless somebody can recognize you . "
At the ceramicist ’s arena in New York City , the Hart Island Projectstrives to produce a function and listing of the 67,004 people sink there since 1980 .
Cemeteries On Shaky Ground
Not unlike other cemeteries across the country , potter ’s fields also speak to the precarious ground that graveyard are establish on — literally . Many potters ' fields have been motivate or have had other bodily structure built on top of them in the name of progress , Rhoads suppose . Even cemeteries full of mark have met this fate . InNew Orleans , two of the Mercedes - Benz Superdome ’s parking garage sit atop an honest-to-goodness Protestant cemetery , the clay remove and relocated . Steffi Graf and remains were also moved inFremont , California , in the San Francisco Bay Area , for a new housing tract .
" We think of memorial park as lasting and monumental , and they ’re not , " Rhoads says . " They ’re really fragile , and all it takes is an quake or a hurricane , and the monument are all damaged and they ’re really expensive to amend . It ’s well-off to take them down than to ready them , and that account is just lost . "
