The History of Cremation
Quick Answer
The history of cremation goes back thousands of years, but modern cremation started in 1873 when Professor Ludovico Brunetti exhibited a cremating furnace at the Vienna Exposition. Sir Henry Thompson saw it and founded the Cremation Society of England in 1874. Cremation was not explicitly illegal in Britain, only untested, until a Welsh druid named William Price burned his dead infant son on a hillside in 1884, was arrested, and won in court. The judge ruled no law forbade it. Britain passed the Cremation Act in 1902. The United States built its first crematory in 1876, and the American cremation rate passed the burial rate in 2015.
The history of cremation in Britain turns on one man who named his son Jesus Christ and then set him on fire. William Price was 81 years old when he married a 21-year-old in a druid ceremony at a rocking stone in Pontypridd. He wore emerald green clothes and a fox fur hat. He had a son in 1883 and named him Iesu Grist, which is Welsh for Jesus Christ. The baby died five months later.
The druid who burned his son on a hill
On January 13, 1884, Price hauled wood, coal and pitch to the top of Caerlan hill outside Llantrisant. He put on white robes, carried the body up, laid it down facing west, lit the pyre and started chanting.
Locals walking home from church saw the fire. When they worked out what was burning, a Sergeant Tamblyn shoved through the crowd, pulled the baby out of the flames, kicked the pyre apart and arrested Price.
The trial happened in Cardiff. Price argued that no statute in England or Wales actually prohibited cremation. Burial was custom, not law. Mr. Justice Stephen agreed and acquitted him. Price went home and cremated his son again on March 14, properly this time.
Price died in 1893 at 92. His last words were a request for a glass of champagne. He drank it and died. Twenty thousand people came to watch his body burn on the same hill, on a pyre of timber and two tons of coal, and he left instructions that his ashes not be kept.
Rome burned its dead for eight centuries
You would think cremation is the modern option and burial is the ancient one. Turns out no. Cremation was the standard Roman rite through the Republic and into the Empire. The Twelve Tables, written around 450 BC, include a line forbidding anyone to bury or burn a body inside the city, which tells you burning was common enough to legislate.
Rome switched to burial around the second and third centuries AD, and Christianity locked it in. Bodily resurrection was the argument. The West spent roughly the next sixteen hundred years putting people in the ground, and by the 1800s nobody remembered it had ever been done differently.
A machine at the Vienna world's fair
Professor Ludovico Brunetti built a cremating furnace and displayed it at the 1873 Vienna Exposition, along with the ashes it produced. His motto was Vermibus erepti, puro consumimur igni. Snatched from the worms, consumed by cleansing fire.
Sir Henry Thompson, surgeon to Queen Victoria, saw the exhibit. On January 13, 1874, he gathered a group at his house on Wimpole Street and they signed a declaration against existing burial customs. The signatories included Anthony Trollope, John Everett Millais, and John Tenniel, the man who drew the illustrations for Alice in Wonderland.
The Society built a crematorium at Woking and tested it on March 17, 1879, using the body of a horse. Neighbors protested. Home Secretary Sir Richard Cross shut the operation down. It sat idle until Price won his case in Cardiff, and the first proper cremation there happened in 1885. The Victorians who were turning grief into a full-time industry at the exact same moment were not universally thrilled.
Two hundred people watched a baron burn
America got there first. Dr. Francis Julius LeMoyne, an abolitionist physician in Washington, Pennsylvania, built the country's first crematory in 1876 because he believed decomposing bodies were poisoning the groundwater.
Henry Steel Olcott, a New York lawyer who co-founded the Theosophical Society, talked LeMoyne into using it. On December 5, 1876, the body of Baron Joseph Henry Louis Charles De Palm went into the furnace in front of more than two hundred health officials, reporters and gawkers. A correspondent from the New York Sun filed copy describing the glow as roseate. Afterward everyone walked into town and held a public meeting about the merits of cremation.
The LeMoyne crematory performed 41 cremations total before the family closed it in 1901. LeMoyne himself was the third.
Seventy-seven years of no
The Catholic Church banned it on December 15, 1886. Anyone who arranged to be cremated was denied a church burial. In 1892 the Holy Office went further and cut off last sacraments. Leo XIII called it the detestable practice of burning human corpses.
The reason was not theology alone. Cremation in Europe was being pushed hard by Freemasons, anticlericals and materialists who said out loud that it undermined belief in the resurrection. The Church took them at their word. The 1917 Code of Canon Law made it official: bodies must be buried, cremation is reprobated.
The ban held until 1963, when the Holy Office allowed cremation as long as it was not chosen for anti-Christian reasons. The 1983 Code made it permanent. In 2016 the Vatican issued Ad resurgendum cum Christo, which permits cremation and then forbids scattering ashes, dividing them among relatives, or keeping the urn at home. In 2023 it softened again and allowed families to keep a minimal part.
Sixty-three percent
December 5, 2026 is the 150th anniversary of the day they burned Baron De Palm in front of a crowd. The American cremation rate passed the burial rate in 2015, at roughly 49 percent against 45 percent, and crossed 50 percent the following year. It hit 63.4 percent in 2025. The National Funeral Directors Association projects 82.3 percent by 2045, and expects every state plus Washington DC to clear 50 percent by 2035.
Japan runs above 99 percent, the highest in the world. Orthodox Judaism and Islam still prohibit cremation. Hindu tradition has required it for thousands of years and the pyres at Manikarnika ghat in Varanasi have reportedly never gone out.
Washington, Nevada and Oregon are already pushing 80 percent. The thing a Welsh druid got arrested for is now what most Americans do by default, and the people who fought hardest against it lost so completely that the same century that paid men to dig up fresh corpses now sends nearly two thirds of its dead to a furnace.
The furnace does not check anybody's credentials. That is the entire premise of All Men Are Cremated Equal, which also comes as a mug if you want to say it every morning. The rest of the gothic collection is there for the days you want to be less direct about it.
Murder Apparel is an independent, husband-and-wife brand making spooky, political gear for people who give a damn. We donate to fight injustice and support communities in need. 500,000+ weirdos on Instagram. Come find your people.
Frequently Asked Questions
When did cremation start?
Thousands of years ago. Archaeological evidence puts it in the Bronze Age, and it was the standard funeral rite in ancient Greece and Rome. Modern cremation is much younger. It starts in 1873, when Professor Ludovico Brunetti exhibited a working cremation furnace at the Vienna Exposition.
When did cremation become legal?
In Britain, cremation was never explicitly illegal, it was just assumed to be. William Price's 1884 acquittal in Cardiff established that no law forbade it, and the Cremation Act of 1902 put it on a formal footing. In the United States there was no national ban to overturn. Dr. Francis Julius LeMoyne simply built a crematory in Pennsylvania in 1876 and started using it.
Why was cremation banned by the Catholic Church?
The Holy Office banned it on December 15, 1886, because European cremation advocates were largely Freemasons, anticlericals and materialists who promoted the practice specifically as a rejection of bodily resurrection. The Church took them at their word and treated cremation as a declaration of unbelief. The 1917 Code of Canon Law made it binding. The ban lifted in 1963, and today cremation is permitted, though the 2016 instruction Ad resurgendum cum Christo still requires ashes be kept in a cemetery or other sacred place rather than scattered, divided among relatives, or kept at home.
What are cremation ashes made of?
Not ash. The furnace runs around 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit and burns off everything soft, which leaves the skeleton. Bone fragments are then run through a machine called a cremulator and ground to a uniform grit. What comes back is bone mineral, roughly half phosphate and a quarter calcium. An adult yields about four to eight pounds, somewhere near three and a half percent of body weight.
What percentage of Americans are cremated?
63.4 percent as of 2025, up from under 50 percent a decade earlier. Washington, Nevada and Oregon are approaching 80 percent. The National Funeral Directors Association projects the national rate will reach 82.3 percent by 2045, and expects every state to clear 50 percent by 2035.
Which religions do not allow cremation?
Orthodox Judaism and Islam both prohibit it. Eastern Orthodox Christianity generally forbids it as well. Hinduism, Sikhism, Jainism and Buddhism have practiced or permitted cremation for millennia, and it is the standard rite across most of South and East Asia.
