Cremation Records and Tracing Your Family History

To those familiar with the idea of Vikings having funeral pyres for their dead, or the practice in India, it might come as a shock to learn that the first crematorium in England didn't open until 1885 (it was in Woking). What spurred it was an 1884 trial, following the cremation of a Welshman by his father. He was tried for it and acquitted; because there was actually no law stating that cremation was illegal (actually the Cremation Society had already been running for 10 years at this point).

By the end of the 19th century, there were three crematoria in England, although that figure quickly rose, and since the late Sixties more than half the people dying in England and Wales have been cremated.

The ashes are the property of the family, who can dispose of them as they wish - which can be anything from scattering in the country to being kept at home in an urn. It was only in 1944 that the Anglican Church allowed ashes to be buried in a churchyard (although the 1902 Cremation Act gave clergymen the right to refuse a funeral service for those being cremated unless the ashes were to be buried in consecrated ground). In that case it was entered in the church burial register. There have even been rare instances of ashes being scattered on football pitches, although clubs don't publicise this.

Cremation Records and Burial Register

The cremation records give the same information as a burial register. Permission to cremate has to be given by a medical authority attached to the crematorium (some crematoria are private, others under the control of the local authority).

However, you're not going to be able to see those records. Because they might contain information about people still alive, access is restricted to those appointed by the Home Secretary, the Environment Minister or the top police officer. That said, you can still get the information: it will simply be provided orally, at the discretion of the registrar of the crematorium, although it will be probably only be given in the case of records old enough that confidentiality isn't a factor.

Obituaries and Death Notices

Given that you might not be able to obtain cremation records, then another route to your answers is through obituaries. They may not be as common now as they once were, but they still exist for people of note at local, regional, and national levels, and death notices can still be widely found.

Obituaries have appeared in print for the best part of 300 years (the oldest are from The Times and The Gentleman's Magazine). In some cases they can prove to be the only surviving notice of burial or cremation, at least that you can access. However, it wasn't until the latter part of the 19th century that death notices became very common. Check with a central library close to where your ancestor lived to determine the local paper of the period, and to discover where you can browse old copies. A death notice will probably include time and place of death and interment or cremation, as well as naming survivors. If there's an obituary, it's an excellent way to learn much more about your ancestor - their civic and family lives. If you know the year of death (or an even closer range), then you should be able to find an obituary (if it exists) without too much trouble. If your ancestor was in a specific trade (a butcher, for example) you might try old trade journals, and parish magazines sometimes also carry obituaries of ardent parishioners.