Mercy and children

This is not an upbeat post, but that is often the nature of mercy.

Western countries still have procedures for 'pauper's burials'. These take place where the deceased either has no survivors or where the survivors do not have the means to bury the departed.

The processes are all much the same - the dead are gathered at a mortuary and once a sufficient number are 'collated', they are buried (or in Australia usually cermated) together in mass graves. In New South Wales, the number to a grave is 6, but in other countries it can be many, many more. There is no funeral service and the grave is left entirely unmarked.   

In New York, pauper's burials take place at Hart Island, known as the 'Potter's field'.  Over 850,000 people are buried there, with about 1,500 being added each year, even to this day.  To save on expenses, prisoners from a nearby island-jail conduct the burials and maintain the island. 

Cruelly, many of the dead are children, either born (and died) in poverty or found dead after being abandoned.  A cross erected on the island brings the situation into relief. Simply reading the inscription on the monument leads one automatically to prayer.   This is about as an anonymous end to a life on earth as could be imagined.

Upon learning of all of this, I began to understand that there is something merciful in burying the dead, a traditional corporal work of mercy.

Of course one of the most tragic of all cases of destitute burial (as it is known in Australia) is where the body of an abandoned newborn baby is discovered. When this occurs in the city where I live, it often makes the news, and in the end there is sufficient public feeling for a proper funeral service and burial to be mercifully arranged. But that is not always the case.

In South Australia there is presently legislation being considered to create what is often known as a 'baby safe-haven' scheme. The idea is that mothers who either abandon their newborn babies, or worse kill them, often do so in very confused psychological circumstances. (These circumstances are such that infanticide can act as a partial defence to undiluted murder in New South Wales.)  The purpose of the scheme is to allow distressed mothers a place where they can anonymously leave the baby which will then be adopted out.  The child, sadly, is unlikely to ever learn who its mother is, but it will be alive and not joining those in the pauper's grave.

This is one part of the world in which we live so easily forgotten, if ever learnt of in the first place.