THE UNCLAIMED DEAD
By Stephen Wilson
'Some people never talk about death. They don't like to think about what happens to the homeless when they die. Are they given decent funerals ? How do you register a homeless person's death? Do they get their name recorded? It is all very sad. Does anyone care about their poor souls? Who will attend their funerals? Do they just disappear into the ether? Are they just another statistic? ' laments and asks Mary Hamilton, a 50 year old carer from Campeltown, Argyll, in Scotland.
The sad truth is that so many unclaimed homeless people who can't be named or are claimed will be buried in special graves in Russia in 'kladbishchi dlya neopoznannikh lits' or 'cemeteries for unknown persons.' The description of their clothes and remains are recorded in a special file as well as the location of their graves under a particular number. Their bodies are kept in a morgue for 14 days to allow any potential relative or friend to claim them. After this period finishes and nobody turns up to claim them they are buried in reserved plots in graveyards separate from the identifiable graves. In other countries and states they can be cremated.
In New York, the unclaimed dead have been buried on Hart's Island since 1869. This island contains well over a million miscellaneous graves. American civil war soldiers, the homeless, paupers, the abandoned, the lonely, abandoned babies, victims of Covid 19 and orphans all lie buried on this island which is known as 'The Potter's Field.' On this island lie the 'people of no property' ! Such people are often the neglected or rejected who have been pushed to the very margins of society. They are the forgotten people. It could be the destitute, the homeless, and so many orphans or old without family or friends. They have been cut adrift. Many were atomized and alone. And the number of those unidentified and unclaimed dead have soared in recent years due to the pandemic.
Of course, unclaimed does not mean unwanted, as Melinda Hunt of Hart's Island Project strongly emphasizes. But why are an increasing number of people lying in unclaimed and at times, unidentified graves? Sociologists point out that for the past few centuries people have become more and more isolated from each other as the rise of a relentless and ruthless industrial system and town planning break former communal ties and connections. People have become more mobile and some don't get around to establishing firm roots in any town or city. Many forms of work demand that people work around anti-social schedules where it is not possible to even meet up or socialize with family or friends. Many people are just too fatigued to even go out and see people. Durkheim conjured up the term 'anomie' to suggest the absence of a common morality which served to unite people into a cohesive community. The nature of a person's work cut them off from even socializing with other people. People were becoming islands. It is not only the imbalance between work and family but also the mushrooming of social networks. You notice that a person who has just becomes acquainted with another person asks "Are you on Facebook ?" If they are not, they just forget about any potential contact. Social networks have led to less face to face connections and more isolation.
There are some people who for many reasons shun social contact. Why is this the case? With some homeless people it is clear. Being wary is a survival tactic. They may be orphans who have been constantly abused in children's homes or on the streets. They don't wish to relive this experience again. I have noticed this deep distrustful attitude of "I want to be left alone " among many homeless I have encountered. When they sometimes open up and tell you their stories you quickly grasp why they are so reticent with strangers. Life on the streets is so dangerous they don't want to turn themselves into 'sitting ducks' for con artists. Now if some of those homeless have become habitual lone wolves it comes as no striking revelation that should they die nobody will claim them. What makes it more difficult is that those people have no papers or documents which can identify them. One of the most common phrases I encountered while working with the homeless in Moscow is "My passport has been stolen." As a character in a Maxim Gorky play once stated 'A person without a passport is a nobody or 'suspect.' I found as a homeless advocate that many of the homeless had disappeared and not kept in touch with their families. They had not made a single phone call back home. When some homeless advocates phoned up the family of a homeless man in Moscow they said "We have not heard of him for years. We thought he was dead!" Now if this person without any proper documents died on the streets how could this family ever get round to claiming his body?
I found that some people shun company for all kinds of reasons. They might have lost the art of socializing or they consider 'Other people as hell'. In other words they find meeting up with people too painful. This goes against the accepted wisdom that the more your meet and socialize with people the happier and more fulfilled you feel. Other people prefer their own company and limit loneliness with the sound of the radio or reading a book. You can meet people who prefer books to people. They claim "Books don't hurt you but people do." Some of those people can lock their doors, close their curtains during the day and avoid other people. They retreat into a cocoon christened 'Splendid isolation.' They genuinely want to be alone. Such people undermine the claim by Greek philosophers that a person is 'a social animal.'
I recall an incident in 2004 when a kindly old woman had lost her husband. She did not want company and felt fatigued following his death. That Summer, everyone had left Moscow for the dacha and I stayed in Scotland for two long months. During this time the poor woman died. Her body lay dead all Summer during a heat wave. Eventually when people returned they noticed a terrible stench from her home. The door had to be broken down. We later heard that this woman had previously fallen out with her family and no one called her up or checked up on her. Those isolated people are no longer an anomaly or exception but are becoming a widespread trend.
It is sad that so many isolated people are lost and forgotten. They don't receive a decent farewell to the next world or a decent grave. Nobody comes to their burial or funeral. Perhaps the digger or a priest might say a prayer for them. This need not be. In Russia I found that ceremonies for the dead don't finish with their funeral. People continue to visit their graves on the specific anniversary of their birth or death. And it does not matter how many years have passed. They might hold a commemoration party where people gather at parties to light candles, tell stories about the dead person, drink, eat and give special toasts in homage to the dead. For example, the relatives and friends still gather every year to remember the late storyteller Olga Aprelskaya on the anniversary of her death. They sing songs, tell her stories and make speeches. Friends still hold special remembrance services for homeless activist Namrud Negash. There is nothing morbid about this. On the contrary, what is ghoulish is when people deem death a taboo topic and abandon customs of visiting their dead relatives and friends at graveyards. Failing to acknowledge the special relationship between the living and the dead is really unhealthy. And the attitude to death In Britain strikes you as odd. They don't like to mention the word 'death'. Death might as well be a dirty word. It is as if you death is an indecent act. They might as well tell people "How dare you die at an inconvenient time or place!" They might repeat crass euphemisms like 'He passed away', 'hit the bucket' and 'fell asleep' but never 'died.' Given this attitude then you might ask whether even the named and claimed dead can be remembered never mind the unclaimed dead.
Cas Torres was once a prisoner who undertook cemetery duty on Hart's Island. He felt sorry for all the people he was burying and felt an affinity with the difficult lives they had underwent. He has won a hard battle against addiction and now currently works as a superintendent for the Fortune Society. This non-profit organization helps former prisoners. He stated "The people who are unclaimed, I think would want somebody to remember them. It is as simple as that. I think they would want somebody to come and see them. I think they would want somebody to care where they are at. And I think would want somebody to mourn them. At least one person in this world you want them to love you. And I think everyone wants that."
Acknowledged sources
The moving story of Cas Torres can be found in the internet in Story Copy, July 16, 2021 by Jo Corona and Ligna Amwar.
2. See Washington Post article about 'Burials on Hart Island' by Jada Yuan.
3. For finding out about Durkheim's views on 'Anomie' it is worth reading the concise and straightforward classic of sociology 'Classical Sociological Theory' by George Ritzer, Second edition, McGraw International editions, Singapore ,1996.
4. On traditional Russian views of death you can read Andrei Sinyavsky's Ivan the Fool , Russian folk belief, Glas, Moscow, 2007. and Orando Figes , Natasha's Dance, A cultural History of Russia, Penguin Books, London, New York, 2003.