Not many people have heard of Sir Henry Thompson, and fewer will have seen his bust in the West Chapel at Golders Green Crematorium. Even those who do pause in front of it may well ask themselves what it is doing there – it’s very unusual to have busts of people in such places. But in the world of cremation he is a very important figure.

As Physician to Queen Victoria he was an influential figure, which doubtless helped him to see through the founding of the Cremation Society of Great Britain in 1874. Ideas had started to circulate in Europe during the French Revolution and were taken up in the nineteenth century as a more hygienic alternative to burial by many doctors and others concerned about public health, particularly in Italy where practical experiments were conducted in the 1860s. Sir Henry reportedly saw a model of apparatus built by Professor Brunetti of Padua at the Great Exhibition in Vienna in 1873.

The Society’s campaign to change the legislation to allow for cremation as well as burial faced an enormous amount of opposition. Burial had been the norm since time immemorial and for many Christians it was associated with the promise of resurrection.

Through the efforts of the Society, cremation was finally made legal in 1885, and the first official cremation in the UK took place at the newly built Woking Crematorium on 26 March that year. But it wasn’t until 1902 that Sir Henry was to open the first one in London, which was, of course, Golders Green.

For a bit more about the history of cremation, see the Guardian article by Thomas Laqueur, author of The Work of the Dead: A Cultural History of Mortal Remains