MB Civic

I just spotted the following – rather mournful - article in today’s Daily Telegraph (UK). I know that you Americans are supposed to be fatter on average than we Brits and certainly your airline seats, which are much larger than ours, pay tribute to this – but what about your crematoria? Do you suppose they are generally larger than ours too or do you have normal ones and then special, ‘outsize’ ones for the circumferentially challenged customer?  You would have thought that the late Mrs Stapleton’s family, with a little lateral thinking, could have avoided this contretemps by dint of using a mechanical digger and an enormous hole in some pretty churchyard, bypassing the cremation process altogether or perhaps – my mind is running on a little as a vista of possibilities opens before me – they should have sawed her in two and had a double cremation. Alright, I am sorry  – that is enough.

Al B

Too big for crematorium
By David Sapsted
(Filed: 29/05/2006)

 

A daughter expressed outrage yesterday after a crematorium told her that it would not cremate her mother because she was too large.

Staff said the coffin of Penelope Anne Stapleton, who weighed 22st (308 lbs) when she died earlier this month, was too big to fit into the incinerator at Earlham Crematorium, in Norwich.

Mrs Stapleton, 61, had told her family that she wanted to be cremated at the crematorium, where the funeral of her only son, Mark, had taken place four years ago after he died of a brain aneurysm aged 29.

Her daughters were horrified to hear that the crematorium could not cater for someone of their mother’s size. They were told that her body would have to be taken more than 100 miles to Watford for cremation.

The crematorium, which is run by Norwich and Norfolk Crematoria, apologised but said that it could only accommodate coffins up to 28in wide or 23in deep.

Michelle Franklin, 31, one of Mrs Stapleton’s daughters, said: “It’s a disgrace. She’s my mum and I want her to be cremated where she wanted.”