and each with feelings all his own,
viewed the flame-lashed casket.
-Ralph Chaplin
Hellraisers Journal, Monday November 29, 1915
Chicago, Illinois-
The Body of Fellow Worker Joe Hill Reduced to Ashes
In his Last Will, FW Joe Hill wrote:
My body? Oh! If I could choose
I would to ashes it reduce
And let the merry breezes blow
My dust to where some flowers grow.
In accordance with the wishes of our Rebel Songwriter, Hill’s body was taken to the crematory at Graceland Cemetery on Friday, November 26th, and cremated. Ralph Chaplin has provided a moving description of the cremation procedure:
The coffin lid was raised for the last time to permit final identification. The attendants looked to me as committee spokesman for word to proceed. I bowed my head. The casket was wheeled to the doors of the blast chamber, which creaked open to receive it. The steel doors creaked together, and the tiny room was all white again. Only the roar of the fire blast could be heard, growing louder and louder. We could hardly bear it.
—–
Since the crematory was not operating on Thanksgiving Day [the day of the funeral], a committee of five returned the following day to attend to final details of the funeral. A photographer was on hand to make the identification pictures. A uniformed attendant stripped the body to the waist and raised it from the coffin. There was a pattern of purple bullet holes in the center of the chest. The wounds in the back where the bullets had left the body were next displayed. They were even more cruel. The white-satin lining of the casket was stained with blood. Joe Hill’s shoulders were bruised black and blue. The photograph showed the pale, strangely peaceful features, the sun-scorched tow hair, and the four bullet holes that had caused the death of the I. W. W. poet.
The casket was wheeled through and underground passage to the crematory room, where it was to be fed to the flames. The interior of the crematory was all white tile. The steel doors of the furnace were white enamel. The coffin lid was raised for the last time to permit final identification. The attendants looked to me as committee spokesman for word to proceed. I bowed my head. The casket was wheeled to the doors of the blast chamber, which creaked open to receive it. The steel doors creaked together, and the tiny room was all white again. Only the roar of the fire blast could be heard, growing louder and louder. We could hardly bear it.
But the committee’s job was not over yet. In order to make the record of legal identification complete, we were obliged to witness part of the actual burning of the body. We were accordingly led along a dark and narrow passageway around the side of the blast room to where there was a small circular hole in the far end of the furnace. Through this aperture each of us, one at a time, and each with feelings all his own, viewed the flame-lashed casket.
~~~~~~~~~~
SOURCE
Wobbly: The Rough-and-Tumble Story Of an American Radical
-by Ralph Chaplin
The University Of Chicago Press; First Edition edition, 1948
https://books.google.com/books?id=n-ygPQAACAAJ
IMAGES
Joe Hill, charcoal, by L. Stanford Chumley, ISR, Dec 1915
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=9VJIAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&pg=GBS.PA326
Joe Hill, body with four bullet wounds, cremation Nov 26, 1915
http://joehill2015.org/joe-hill-biography/