Exhumations

The issue was as to whether refusal to grant an application to exhume and move a dead body would breach the applicant's human rights under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). The court decided that, although the refusal to exhume may interfere with the applicant's human rights, such an interference could be valid under the terms of the ECHR

Cyril Jones was buried in the churchyard of St. Margaret Orford in 1990. His widow, Esther, who died in 2015, was buried in Fox Covert Cemetery. Mrs. Jones, during her lifetime, realised that there would be no room for her to be buried with her husband, and she had expressed a strong wish to her family that she should be buried in the cemetery and that the family should arrange for her husband's remains to be moved and buried with her. The Chancellor granted a faculty for exhumation on the basis that "Mrs. Jones widow made a mistake in interring her late husband's remains in a full garden, a mistake which she regretted almost from the outset; secondly, that Mrs Jones delayed seeking exhumation on the grounds of her own personal belief that she felt that such would be inappropriate in her lifetime; and thirdly, there is now a desire to create a family grave."

This was an interim judgment relating to a petition whereby the petitioner sought authority to have the remains of her father, who died in 1976, exhumed and cremated, and then interred with the cremated remains of her mother, who died in 2016. It was proposed that the remains of the petitioner's parents should be taken and buried in a cemetery in Scotland

This judgment should be read in conjunction with In the matter of David Bell deceased [2016] ECC She 3, which was an interim judgment, where the Chancellor requested further evidence before making a decision as to whether to allow the exhumation and cremation of the remains of the petitioner's father, who died in 1976, and the interment of those remains

The petitioner, whose mother had died recently, wished to exhume his father's cremated remains from the parish where his father had spent his early childhood, and to inter the cremated remains of both his parents in a plot in the grounds of Rotherham Crematorium, opposite which his parents had lived for 45 years. During her lifetime the petitioner's mother had regretted her decision to have her husband's remains interred in the parish where he lived as a boy and had expressed the wish that her remains and those of her husband should be buried together in the cemetery they both knew so well. The Chancellor decided that this was a case where an exception should be made to the general rule against exhumation, and granted a faculty: "I consider that the reasons for granting it satisfy the Blagdon test of being exceptional and the Alsager test of there being a good and proper reason such that most right thinking members of the church would agree. I have cautioned myself against importing or introducing a concept of the remains of a deceased person being generally portable."

The petitioner wished to have the cremated remains of her father (who died in 2007) exhumed from Dean churchyard, near Bolton, and reinterred in the churchyard at Warburton with the as yet uninterred cremated remains of her mother (who died in 2018), because the petitioner's parents had started life as a married couple in Warburton, and a number of members of the family lived there. The Chancellor could find no exceptional circumstances to justify embarking from the general principle that burial should be regarded as permanent. Amongst the reasons given for his decision not to grant a faculty, the Chancellor observed that the Petitioner's mother had chosen to have her husband's remains interred at Dean and had regularly visited the grave there until her death, and he also stated that "to allow this application would be to approve a practice of regarding cremated remains as ‘portable’ and that to do so would encourage such applications, which I am not willing to do".

The petitioner applied for the exhumation of his father’s remains, in order that they might be buried in another burial ground with the remains of his mother, who died in 2017. The petitioner’s father had died 27 years previously. His widow, until her death, had frequently complained about the churchyard where her husband was buried as being overgrown. The situation was made worse by the installation 22 years previously of a gas governor site next to the grave, which became noisy and at times gave off fumes, which distressed the petitioner’s mother. Before she died, she expressed a wish that on her death her late husband’s remains should be exhumed and interred with her remains elsewhere. The Chancellor concluded reluctantly that he could find no exceptional circumstances to justify an exhumation. There had been no mistake in the place of interment of the petitioner’s father; 22 years had elapsed since the installation of the gas governor site; and a mistake of law on the part of the petitioner, that he did not realise until recently that it was possible to exhume remains, would not entitle the petition to succeed.

The petitioner wished to dis-inter the remains of his father on a temporary basis, because the vault in which his father's casket rested was flooded and could not decently be used for further interments. The proposal was to have the vault repaired and made water-tight, after which the casket would be returned to the vault. The Chancellor granted a faculty.

The Petitioner wished to exhume the remains of her husband from an Oxfordshire churchyard and reinter them in Antibes, where her husband had spent much of his life. The Chancellor declined to grant a faculty, being unable, following the guidelines laid down in In re Blagdon Cemetery [2002] Fam 299, to find any sufficient justification for allowing exhumation.

The petitioner wished to exhume the cremated remains of her mother from the churchyard at Mapledurham, Oxfordshire, and reinter them in a plot she had reserved in the cemetery at Chester le Street, County Durham, so that the remains of her mother, father and herself could all be interred in the same grave. The Chancellor determined to grant a faculty (subject to seeing written evidence that the grave at Chester le Street had been reserved), as one of the guiding principles of In re Blagdon Cemetery [2002] Fam 299 was that an exception to the general rule against exhumation could be made to allow the remains to be exhumed in order for them to be reinterred in a family grave.