LONDON — So you think London, population 8 million, is crowded with the living? There are many millions more under the soil of a city that has been inhabited for 2,000 years. And London is rapidly running out of places to put them.
Now the city’s largest cemetery is trying to persuade Londoners to share a grave with a stranger.
“A lot of people say, ‘I’m not putting my dad in a secondhand grave,’ ” said Gary Burks, superintendent and registrar of the City of London Cemetery, final resting place of close to 1 million Londoners. “You have to deal with that mindset.”
Many other European countries regularly reuse old graves after a couple of decades. Britain does not, as a result of Victorian hygiene obsession, piecemeal regulation and national tradition.
Many Britons have an instinctive resistance to the idea of grave-sharing.
“I don’t even want to think about it,” said 29-year-old London receptionist Temi Oshinowo. “It’s not showing respect. It doesn’t matter whether or not the person has been buried for 25 years or 100 years, that is their space and you should give them respect.”
Law loophole
In much of Britain, reusing old graves remains illegal, but the City of London Cemetery is exploiting a legal loophole that allows graves in the capital with remaining space in them to be reclaimed after 75 years.
