Garbage Crematories 
AND THE 
DESTRUCTION OF 
ORGANIC MATTER BY FIRE, 
BY / 
V V 
Samuel S. Kilvington, M. I)., 
President of The Board of Health of the 
City of Minneapolis. 
Read Before the AMERICAN PUBLIC HEALTH ASSOCIATION 
at its Sixteenth Annual Meeting, at Milwaukee, Wis., 
on Wednesday, November 21st, 1888. 
MINNEAPOLIS: 
Harrison & Smith, Printers 
18S8. GARBAGE CREMATORIES 
AND THE 
Destruction of Organic Matter by Fire. 
BY SAMUEL S. KILVINUTON. M. I)., 
PKKSIDENT Of MINNEAPOLIS HOVKD OF HEALTH 
The growth of great cities is the predominant feature of modern 
civilization. A necessary concomitant of their growth is the accu- 
mulation, in vast quantities and within a limited area, of the refuse 
of human life and the products of human death. 
()ne of the most urgent problems, then, of municipal management, 
at the present day, is that of the sanitary disposal of waste matter. 
Anti the very rapidity of our urban development has left us far 
behind the average progress of our times in the solution of this dif- 
ficult problem. 
When cities were simply adult villages, few and far between, with 
their sparse population scattered over wide reaches of land, the 
question of the disposition of refuse could, if not with entire wisdom, 
at least with comparative safety, be left to take care of itself 
Burial sufficed then to rid the living of their dead or to hide the 
debris with which men and animals overlaid the surface of the earth 
Slow growth and unlimited space gave time and room for the slow 
act km of those chemic forces of the soil which decompose and dis- 
infect its organic contents. 
But with the appearance of great cities—the birth of an ardent and 
pregnant civilization—springing, like the ancient Titan, fullgrown 
from the bowels of the earth, this question takes on a new aspect. 
Amid dense populations and closely crowded dwellings, the opera- tions of Nature’s laboratory become injuriously tedious. We cling 
to the old crude methods of waste-disposal, or permit the accumula- 
tion of animal and vegetable deposits in the vicinity of our homes, 
only to find that the chemistry of Nature is inadequate for our pro- 
tection and that even in the slow steps of her putrefactive processes 
she develops and introduces into the human economy the germs of 
disease. Nevertheless, we are slow to learn the lesson of the new 
order of things and still we permit the soil, and the air, and the 
water about us to be contaminated by human and animal dead; still 
we heap up, to our own destruction, the offscouring of our stables 
and our houses; still we poison the pure sources of our water supply 
with deposits of carrion, night-soil, garbage and manure. Future 
generations, could they unearth the strata of refuse with which our 
inhabitants of the past half century have overspread the sites of 
our cities or turn the rivers from their accustomed courses to view 
the waste material with which we have lined the beds of the 
streams,' would surely be justified in denominating this the age of 
.filth-formation. 
But, happily, we are beginning to read with profit the lines of hard 
experience. For fifteen or twenty years the large cities of the Old 
and New World alike have been casting about for some satisfactory 
solution of the problem of waste disposal. Throughout this period 
many expedients have been devised, many new methods have been 
applied and, though we are still in the period of experimentation 
we are gradually gravitating toward the settlement of this sanitary 
question. 
After all has been said and done in favor of all other means of 
ridding ourselves of the waste products of city life, history repeats 
itself in the suggestion of fire as the only competent agency at 
our command. I say history repeats itself in the suggestion of fire— 
for ancient civilizations and yet older pagan peoples long since, and 
again and yet again, arrived at the same sanitary conclusion to 
which we have come. Cremation of the human body, to say 
nothing of human waste, was in vogue among all early nations ex- 
cepting those of Egypt, Judea and China. It was from the effete 
civilization of the latter country that Christian peoples derived the 
insanitary and inhuman practice of earth burial. In a great part of 
Asia and South America, the fire is still employed to destroy the re- 
mains of the dead and the refuse of the living. The method was 
followed by several North American tribes. Even the Israelites 
burned the bodies of Saul and his sons at Jabosh; the Jews cremated the victims of the plague in the Vale of Tophet; and, outside the 
walls of Jerusalem, they cast their offal, garbage and dead animals 
into the unquenchable fire which burned perpetually in the pit of 
Gehenna, 3000 years ago. Cremation was practiced, undoubtedly, 
among the early Christians, while it was still resorted to by the 
Swiss in the eighth century. 
The destruction of organic waste material by fire is the subject be- 
fore us for discussion, and you observe that I take license from the 
breadth of the title bestowed upon my paper to include, incident- 
ally, even the disposal of the dead by this sanitary method; for, 
though the classification of the remains of the beloved living with the 
unclean category of other organic and obnoxious materials is shocking 
to the affectional sense, the consequences of our prevailing custom 
of interment for those-remains in large cities are as injurious as any 
similar disposition of any other decomposing matter we could make. 
Cremation must be the final end to which the organic products of 
human life and the organic products of human death must eventually 
come. 
Sanitarians give no uncertain sound in their spoken recognition of 
the pressing needs of the situation and of the best method of satis- 
fying those needs. Said Sir Henry Thompson, “No dead body is 
ever placed in the soil without contaminating the earth, the air and 
the water above and about it.” Said Sir Robert Rawlinson, some 
four years ago: “The effectual destruction of refuse, at the 
least possible expense, is the object which must be attained.” 
Says a recent issue of the Sanitary Engineer: “ Next to pure 
water, there is nothing more important to a municipality than 
the satisfactory disposition of its refuse, and the two matters 
are often closely connected ” And the eminent authority of 
London, to whom I have already referred, adds, in words quoted 
to this Association by my eminent predecessor upon this subject 
a year ago, “All matter liable to putrefaction must be consumed 
by fire !” Nothing, truly, but cremation will accomplish rapidly 
that which this putrefactive process does so slowly and, in its 
effects, so disastrously. 
Having established the desirability of this destructive agent, we 
turn from the principle to the practical study of the apparatus by 
means of which it may be utilized. Open air destruction of refuse 
by fire constitutes an intolerable nuisance. It is essential that an 
enclosed and carefully constructed furnace chamber should be pro- 
vided. The search after such a contrivance has been long and per- 
sistent and has led to variably successful results. As early as 1865, the writer’s appreciation of the importance of 
this question was stimulated, and his first practical ideas of a crema- 
tory were begotten, by his study of the furnace constructed at the 
Rock of Gibraltar for the purpose of disposing of the refuse accum- 
ulated by the garrison of that fort. It is believed that this crema- 
tory at the citadel on the straits was then the only furnace of the 
kind in public use. 
In the year 1870 a firm of contractors in Paddington, England, at- 
tempted the design of a refuse destructor, which, when put into 
practical operation, proved a conspicuous failure. A few years 
later, Whiley, of Manchester, attempted a somewhat similar struc- 
ture, with little better results. About 1875, the city of Manchester 
undertook to build a group of eight destructor furnaces. In con- 
trast with the patents of later days they are crude in design, unsat- 
isfactory in operation and expensive to support. Each furnace 
consumes less than five tons of material in twenty-four hours, and 
the entire plant employs not less than five men. Between 1881 
and 1883, several Yorkshire towns became interested in the problem 
of garbage destruction by fire and the attention thus drawn to the 
subject by these and other cities led, in the five years following, to 
the issuance of a group of patents and the construction of as many 
garbage or refuse furnaces by a half dozen inventors. 
As early as 1877, the city of Birmingham adopted the Fryer 
patent, a costly invention, so clumsily adapted to the purpose that 
it was speedily abandoned upon sanitary grounds. In 1881, the 
same furnace was remodelled and operated more successfully in 
Birmingham. About the same time was built at Byker, near New- 
castle, England, a Fryer cremator}', which cost the remarkable 
sum of thirty-three thousand, eight hundred and eighty dollars. A 
little later the Healey Patent Destructor was introduced in Brad- 
ford, England, and was built upon a plan which has since been fol- 
lowed and improved by other inventors. About the same period, 
the Wilkinson furnace superseded in effectiveness, without actually 
displacing, the Fryer patent at Birmingham and was erected also in 
the town of Blackpool. In 1885, Mr. Stafford, of Burnley, built his 
first Bee Hive Destructor at Richmond, Pmgland. Co-incidentally, 
a crematory upon the Hickey model was put up at Bengal, India, 
while another Bee-Hive furnace was erected in Bombay. Mess. 
Hewes, Hewes & Geary also built a crematory in Leicestershire, 
England, for the treatment of sewage sludge, and, at the same time, 
the great Glasgow plant, to which we shall again have occasion to refer, was constructed. At this date, the evolution of a model refuse 
crematory seems to have reached a pause in its progress in Great 
Britain, to have passed over to the hither side of the Atlantic where 
t he superior inventiveness and mechanical ingenuity of the American 
mind have brought it, within three years, to a point of perfection, 
coupled with a degree of simplicity in structure and economy of 
cost, which completely discount the more ponderous scientific 
efforts of our British brethren. 
For, in 1885, Lieutenant Reilley, of the U. S. A., constructed for 
the L. S. post at Governor’s Island, New York harbor, a miniature 
crematory, for the destruction of the refuse of the post, which proved 
to be the archetype of American furnaces. In the same year the 
1 ittsburg gas companies offered the free use of natural gas to their 
city for the destruction of its refuse, and a small garbage furnace 
was built at Allegheny City, costing Si,500, in which this agent was 
used for fuel. Soon after our Canadian brethren took an active part 
in the solution of the problem, and Mr. William Mann, whose ad- 
mit able crematory was so fully described to us at the last annual 
meeting of the Association by Dr. Laberge, the efficient health officer 
of Montreal, undertook the destruction of the night soil of Montreal 
at a cost of S8.000 per year to the city, while a year later he took the 
larger contract for burning its miscellaneous refuse for the sum of 
843,000 per annum. 
One after another, in the three succeeding years, came the estab- 
ment of crematories in the cities of the United States. First, the 
Bartlett furnace, a small crematory for use at John Hopkins Hospi- 
tal, in Baltimore, was built. Then came the erection of the first 
crematory of the Engle patent at Des Moines, la., followed by the 
introduction of small furnaces upon this model in some of the 
colleges of that state. At the close of 1886, the Forrestal furnace 
was opened in Milwaukee. In 1887, Mr. M. F. Smith demonstrated 
the operation of a gas furnace, in Pittsburg, which would consume 
night soil and garbage in an astonishingly short space of time, but 
which seems to have been lacking in the essentials of sanitary pro- 
tection. \\ ithin the same year, Pittsburg witnessed the erection of 
the Rider garbage furnace and Chicago selected the William Mann 
patent l<u its municipal • use. In 1888, Detroit adopted the 
Glasgow Plant, while Buffalo adopted the Murtz system of disposing 
ot a certain class of refuse, from which oil is extracted, and the 
residue of which is used as a fertilizer. And finally, Minneapolis, 
which 1 have the honor to represent, came to the front in the adop- tion, with improvements, of the Engle patent, and her example, I am 
happy to say, has been followed by the city of Milwaukee in the 
choice of the model of the Minneapolis plant, which, in practical 
operation, \Ve shall have an opportunity to present to you. 
Other cities of prominence are carefully investigating the ques- 
tion of refuse destruction and are studying the different patents 
which offer themselves to the public. 
It becomes of present and overshadowing importance, as we bring 
this history of the evolution of the crematory up to our own im- 
mediate day, to determine the relative merits of these patents, and, 
in order that this may be intelligently done, we should entertain 
clearly the qualities which they must necessarily possess for the 
fulfillment of metropolitan needs. A furnace, moderate in its cost 
of construction, economical in its needs of fuel, demanding a min- 
imum of labor in its conduct, adapted to the varieties of waste ma- 
terial to be consumed, approximating a perfect and rapid destruc- 
tion of such material, with practical freedom from all occasion of 
nuisance in the way of excess of smoke, the disposition of refuse, or 
the formation of noxious gases or offensive odors, and affording a 
product which will, at small cost of handling, prove remunerative 
and available for fertilizing or mechanical uses—this is the practi- 
cal ideal that we seek. 
I shall briefly discuss the leading features of the several patents 
now in conspicuous use, and endeavor to enable you to form some 
judgment of the greater or less measure in which they approach to 
that ideal. Three distinct methods of classification might be 
adopted—(I) that which turns upon the adaptation of the crematory 
to the destruction of certain definite kinds of refuse; (2) that which 
depends upon the provision for the immediate or the ultimate burn- 
ing of the material; (3) that which is concerned with the means 
employed for the destruction of the smoke and offensive gases 
which result from the combustion of the material. I shall endeavor 
to assign to each of these patents its proper place under these sev- 
eral heads. Some of them I shall be compelled to pass over with 
but a few words of mention, either because they are not adapted, by 
the methods cf their construction, to the needs of American city life, 
or because they are surpassed both in economy of construction and 
of operation by the later American models. 
Among these may be noted the Healey Patent Destructor, built 
by the Municipal Appliances Company of London. It is designed 
for the burning of ordinary miscellaneous refuse and is not adapted to the disposition of night soil. It is constructed upon the plan of 
an inclined grate and belongs therefore to the class of furnaces in 
which the garbage must be dried before descending into the fire. 
It is one of that class also in which a super-heated reverbatory arch 
is provided over the fire-grate, by means of which it is intended that 
smoke and noxious gases shall be consumed. The authorities of 
Bradford, where this furnace is in use, have found, however, that 
this end is not practically attained and that the offensive vapor 
issuing from the chimney flue constitutes a nuisance. 
The Fryer furnace is altogether too costly for general adoption. 
It contains what is called a concretor, for the destruction of night 
soil, and a carbonizer for other refuse. The grate is formed upon 
the same general model as that of the Healy patent and the refuse, 
therefore, is dried and then burned. Its capacity, equally with that of 
the Wilkinson furnace, which we may also mention in passing, is 
small, and the cost of operation in both is relatively large. The 
Hewes, Hewes & Geary plant is a model of scientific construction, 
but its operation has not been practically demonstrated in this 
country. Unlike the furnaces to which we have already referred, 
whose product is only of value as a factor in the making of mortar, 
the Hewes, Hewes & Geary crematory produces a high quality of 
fertilizer, which is secured, however, at a cost too great to make its 
sale profitable in this part of the country. 
The Glasgow plant is only in a limited sense a crematory. It 
really constitutes a station for the receipt, sorting, sale and distribu- 
tion of refuse collected in a wonderfully systematic way, by the 
bucket system, from all parts of the city it serves. Animal manure 
and the more valuable kinds of miscellaneous refuse are not cremated 
at all. The cinders are sorted from the ashes collected and are 
economically used as fuel to feed the furnace fires, whilst the finer 
residue of the same is mixed with night soil and deodorized. A 
large quantity of this material is thus disposed of, and the product 
is mixed with the unburned refuse to form a fertilizer. The forms of 
refuse that are not available for fertilizing purposes are burned and 
the product of their combustion is ground up and used in mortar 
making. The Bee-Hive Crematory, patented by Mr. Stafford, of 
Burnley, is perhaps the most prominently and favorably known of 
any of the English models. As constructed at Richmond, England, 
it has a furnace in bee-hive form, situated upon each side of its chim- 
ney shaft. Each bee-hive is six feet in diameter, is built of fire- 
bricks, and is divided into three parts, vertically, by two tiers of grate bars. Upon the lower rectangular tier of bars the fuel is 
received, while the refuse is thrown through the openings in the 
furnace dome upon the upper inclined grate. The Beehive 
belongs therefore to that class of furnaces which dry the refuse 
before burning it, while it carries the gases and smoke of com- 
bustion over, through conducting flues, from one bee-hive fur- 
nace to the other, passing the same over the fire and measura- 
bly consuming them. It is used for the destruction of garbage 
and miscellaneous refuse, and has a capacity of some fifteen tons a 
•day. But a slight odor is discoverable in the smoke and vapor issu- 
ing from its chimney-shaft. The product of combustion is slacked 
and then ground up and used for making mortar. I am fortunate 
in being provided with illustrations of the Bee-Hive Crematory. 
W ith pleasure I turn to the fuller descriptions, which I am able to 
afford, of the four principal crematories which have been in use dur- 
ing the last three years in the United States and Canada. The For- 
ristal furnace, which has been operated until recently in the city of 
Milwaukee, consists of a two-story building. Teams drive into this 
building and dump their loads into a hopper, from whence it is car- 
ried by elevators into the drying room above. Here it is treated by 
steam heat and the liquid residue is drained off. It is then shoveled 
through a tubular chute to the floor below, where it is deposited 
in front of the furnace doors. Thence it is shoveled into the fire and 
kept constantly stirred. The fire itself is operated upon the princi- 
ple of a blacksmith’s forge with the aid of a blast fan. The latter, 
together with the refuse elevators, is run by a small steam engine, 
which also furnishes steam for the drying room. The furnace is of 
brick, with a square form and an arched top. It maintains a single 
fire, which is re-lighted every day. A single row of doors, upon 
each side of the furnace, serves for the admission of fuel, for the 
supply of refuse and for the work of stirring or stoking the fire. 
Smoke and gases are carried out directly into the chimney shaft. 
An engineer and four laborers are required to run the plant. To 
sum up, the Forristal crematory is designed for the destruction of 
miscellaneous refuse; it is not adapted to the disposal of night soil; 
it has a single fire which directly consumes the waste material, but 
it has no special provision for destroying smoke and gases. 
Hie Rider garbage furnace is, as we have already said, in use in the 
city of Pittsburg. It has been largely used in that city for the de- 
struction of spent tan bark and has performed this task, as also that 
of the destruction of garbage, to the apparent satisfaction of its own- ers and the public. Its construction seems to require the primary 
investment of a large sum, but its patentee claims, as one of its most 
desirable features, great economy in the expenditure of fuel. It is 
said to require an amount of fuel equal to less than five per cent, of 
the material cremated, this being used as an initial supply to bring 
all parts of the furnace to a proper temperature, after which, it is 
claimed that the garbage itself, if furnished in sufficient quantity, 
will provide all the fuel necessary to maintain its operation. It is 
needless to say that this must depend, in any furnace, upon the de- 
gree of combustibility of the refuse matter discharged into it as 
also upon the disposition which is made, throughout the whole ex- 
tent of the furnace, of these fuel-forming materials. 
Hie Rider furnace is of an elongated form. It consists of a front 
chamber, 12\'2 feet in length by 6 feet 5 inches in width. This 
chamber is surmounted by a dome in which are eight circular open- 
ings 15 inches in diameter. I11 the rear of this is another chamber, 
9?_> feet in length by the same width, which is floored with a tile 
hearth. This is separated from the first chamber by a bridge wall, 
three feet in thickness, and has in its rear a second bridge wall over 
which the products of combustion pass to enter the chimney. This 
second chamber is also surmounted by a dome in which are six 
circular openings the same size as the first. The products of 
combustion in this furnace are said to be completely innocuous, while 
the solid residuum is valuable as a fertilizer. This crematory, then, 
belongs to that class which can be adapted to the destruction of 
excreta as well as miscellaneous refuse. It disposes of its supply 
by immediate and direct combustion, and, although no special means 
are provided for the consumption of smoke and gaseous products, 
experience with it, up to the present date, would indicate its freedom 
from any objectionable or insanitary features. 
After the remarkably complete description of the Mann crema- 
tor}- to which this association listened a year since, it is hardly nec- 
essary that 1 should go at length into the details of its construction. 
Like others ol its class, it can be adapted in form and size to the 
location it occupies and the needs of the community it is intended 
to serve. It shares with the Kngle patent, the beauty of simplicity 
ot structure. As built in Montreal, where its operatian is reported 
to be very satisfactory, its combustion chamber is quadrilateral, with 
dimensions sixteen feet long by nine feet broad and ten feet high. 
This is fitted with a grate, of approximately the same dimensions, 
which is laid with a slight incline upward in the direction of the chimney flue. At the lower end of this grate is its single fire-place. 
It has upon each side of it, three tiers of three doors each; the up- 
per tier are at the level of a staging floor, upon which the loaded 
refuse carts are driven, the refuse being emptied directly into the 
furnace through these doors, or placed upon the floor in front of 
them. The second tier of openings is situated just above the line 
of the grate and these are used for stirring the fire. The lowest tier 
is at the level of the ash-pit, and gives opportunity for the removal 
of the ashes. The grate bars are laid two inches apart. 
In Montreal two forms of the Mann furnace are in operation, one 
for the destruction of miscellaneous refuse; the other for the 
burning of night soil. There, as in Chicago, where the same furnace 
is used, the smoke emitted has not amounted to a nuisance, nor has 
any perceptible odor been noticed from either excepting during the 
cremation of chicken feathers. 
In conclusion, let me invite your attention briefly to the only re- 
maining patent left for our discussion—the Engle crematory; an 
invention which has demonstrated, or is demonstrating, its own suc- 
cess in the cities of Minneapolis, Des Moines, Coney Island and 
Milwaukee. As constructed in the city of Minneapolis and'' 
duplicated here in the city of Milwaukee, we have an elongated 
arch furnace. Its cremating chamber is thirty-three feet long by 
five feet wide. It has a height of arch from the grate to the 
dome of seven feet clear. At the end of this grate nearest 
to the chimney flues, but not in connection therewith, 
is the primary fire-place. Beneath the grate, throughout the 
whole length, is an elongated ash-pit which is floored with fire- 
clay tiles and which forms the roof of a super-heated smoke-flue 
which I shall presently describe. At the end of the furnace most 
remote from the chimney shaft is a fire grate, four feet below the 
level of the first, upon which a secondary fire burns. Between this 
and the chimney shaft runs the long horizontal smoke flue, to which 
I have already referred, with its super-heated tiled roof, continuing 
for a length of 28 feet to the chimney shaft which rises 100 feet 
in height. The building in which the furnace is enclosed is of three 
stories. At the level of the first floor is a double row of doors, the 
upper of which give opportunity for feeding the primary fire and for 
stoking the burning material, while the lower open into the ash-pit, 
and permit the removal of ashes. At the farther end of the furnace, 
upon this same floor, are doors for supplying the secondary fire and 
removing any ashes it may produce. The second floor is at the level of the top of the brick furnace, and upon this floor are delivered the 
bodies of dead animals, which,by means of pully attachments, are low- 
ered through a large tubular shaft rising to the level of this story and 
discharging into the furnace at a point near the primary fire. To 
the level of the third story rise from the furnace dome three tubular 
shafts, fifteen feet in length, into which the misellaneous refuse 
wagons immediately discharge their contents from the upper floor 
upon which they drive. Preparatory to the operation of the furnace, 
fires are started in the primary and secondary fire-places and are 
maintained until a sufficient degree of heat prevails throughout 
the furnace and in the super-heating-flue beneath the ash-pit. I 
have already emphasized the fact that animals are discharged into 
the furnace nearest the primary fire, whilst other miscellaneous ma- 
terial is distributed through the smaller tubular Hues along the re- 
moter portions of the grate. This arrangement contributes, to the 
aid of the primary fire, the best fuel-forming materials to be burned 
first, thus diminishing the amount of fuel required to maintain the 
action of the furnace. The gaseous products of combustion are carried 
over the grate and thence over the secondary fire, burning at a lower 
level at the opposite end, and are there consumed; thence any small 
amount of remaining smoke or gas is carried along through the 
super-heated horizontal flue, undergoing further combustion, until 
the chimney-shaft is reached. The ashes or the debris, falling 
through the bars of the grate, light upon the fire-tiled floor of the 
ash pit, where they are again consumed; while liquids, dropping 
upon it, are instantly evaporated; thereupon also the final ashes are 
deposited. The arrangement by which the scavengers dump 
directly into the flues minimizes labor and insures greater cleanliness. 
Among the questions likely to be asked under this topic, is that 
which relates to the primary cost of construction. Definite answers 
to this query cannot be given, for the reason that, with any one of 
the furnaces we have described, cost must depend very largely upon 
location, availability of materials, command of skilled labor, and the 
size and capacity of the furnace which the circumstances and extent 
of the population demand. Equally important is the question of the 
cost of operation. This again is insusceptible of a definite reply. 
Location, available fuel-supply, economical management of the 
furnace fires, the class of garbage or refuse to be burned, and the 
proper disposition of fuel-forming materials—these are all consider- 
ations which largely affect the question of working cost. The Mann 
furnace in Montreal is said to be operated at a cost of 25 cents per ton of miscellaneous refuse and of 75 cents per ton of night soil. It 
is claimed that the Rider furnace will do about the same thing. 
An estimate of the expenses of operating the Engle crematory in 
Minneapolis for a period of five days, during which the furnace was 
worked by three men entirely new to the task, two of whom were 
on duty by day and one by night, gives the following facts and figures: 
CONSUMED IN FIVE DAYS. 
Thirty-three horses, 59 dogs, 103 barrels of hotel and commission 
house refuse, 12 loads market offal, 70 loads manure, weighing in all 
over 200 tons. 
Total cost of labor and fuel for this period $38.25 or $7.65 per day, 
the entire weight of refuse being destroyed at a cost of 19 cents per 
ton. The ash deposited in the course of the consumption of this 
material is exceedingly small in quantity, weighing less than 200 
pounds per day. 
This estimate, eminently satisfactory as it is, is not altogether a 
fair one. The men employed were wholly inexperienced. The fur- 
nace at the beginning of these five days was cold, and it required 
several hours to superheat it. The fuel used was simply lath edgings 
and coal screenings, or “breeze.” The glut of horses was unusual 
and crowded out the ordinary supply of garbage. It is safe to say 
that upon an average run, over an extended period, 15 to 20 cents 
per ton of refuse would pay for the labor employed and the fuel 
consumed. 
So far then as a brief period of time has permitted careful obser- 
vation, the principal American crematories may be said to have 
demonstrated their fitness for the task of waste destruction. The 
possibility of burning the refuse materials of a great city, without 
imposing upon its people a penalty of insanitary consequences in 
the performance of the act, has been established beyond the shadow 
of a doubt. Nuisance is far more apt to arise from mismanagement 
in the handling of the material to be burned than it is likely to ensue 
from the products of cremation. The odors which arise from the 
direct burning of night soil, even without any special precaution for 
the consumption of gases formed, are not so obnoxious as might be 
imagined, resembling the smell of burnt leather. The commercial 
value of the solid residue of cojjmbustion has yet to be tested. It will 
vary, of course, according to the method of cremation. The innoc- 
uous character of the ash must be demonstrated in each individual 
case. The only analysis of this material, as produced by the Minne- apolis crematory, that I have had an opportunity to obtain, has been 
made within a few days past by Prof. James A. Dodge, professor of 
chemistry in the Minnesota State University. The sample which he 
examined was selected in small quantities from different parts of the 
ash-pit, but it was taken therefrom within a few hours of the initial 
starting of the furnace, and before the ash-pit had become thoroughly 
super-heated; consequently it may be assumed that it contains some 
proportion of organic matter which would be consumed under more 
average circumstances. 
The following is the report of the analysis made to me by Prof. 
Dodge: 
“I hereby report to you the results of my analysis of a sample of 
ashes lately received from you. 
ANALYSIS. 
Per cent. 
Moisture 2.82 
Organic matter 10.G8 
Sand and clay 49.19 
Sodium chloride 2.88 
Iron 1.96 
Lime, CAO 10.26 
Magnesia, MGO 78 
Potassa, KfO 2.68 
Soda, MAjO...< 2.57 
Anhydrous phosphoric acid, P*Ob 8.16 
Anhydrous carbonic acid, COg 1.49 
Soluble silica, SOg 1.24 
Sulphur in sulphates and sulphides 1.59 
Oxygen, combined with part of the iron and part of the sulphur, 
and loss 3.75 
100.00 
I append the following notes on the foregoing analysis: 
The organic matter is partly unburned carbon and partly nitro- 
genous matter communicating considerable odor to the ashes. The 
iron is probably mostly in the state of oxide of iron, but partly in 
the state of sulphide of iron; the latter gives some odor. The lime 
and magnesia are mostly combined with the phosphoric acid, making 
about 18 per cent, of phosphates of lime and magnesia. The potassa 
is mostly combined with carbonic acid. The soda is probably com- 
bined partly with carbonic acid. The silica is probably combined 
with soda and some potassa. The sulphur probably exists mostly 
in sulphate of lime. 
The precise manner and proportion in which the above bases and 
acids are combined cannot be determined.” 
Very respectfully yours, 
James A. Dodge, Prof, of Chemistry. It will be seen that this ash contains many constituent elements 
which make it of some value as a fertilizer. The product of any 
such furnace, employed in the destruction of animal and vegetable 
refuse, would be enhanced in value by the admixture of the product 
of a night soil crematory. This fact is illustrated by the manage- 
ment of the Glasgow plant. I have at hand samples of the ash of 
the Engle crematory at Minneapolis, which I shall be happy to sub- 
mit either to the olfactory organs or to the chemical retorts of the 
members. 
After the most minute description of the several crematory pat- 
ents, that the limits of such a paper as this will permit, has been 
made, the choice of a furnace remains a difficult one. It lies un- 
questionably, for American cities, between the Rider, the Mann and 
the Engel patents. Each of these have their features of advantage. 
After a careful study of the subject, Minneapolis and Milwaukee 
have, as you are aware, determined upon the Engel crematory, with 
certain modifications. And after a careful selection has been made, 
an equally important duty remains A furnace should never be 
built from mere designs or drawings, or even under the charge of an 
ordinary architect or builder. The supervision of the work by a 
specially trained person should be secured, or it will inevitably fol- 
low that mistakes will be made and money foolishly expended. 
But 1 must hasten to a close. The summation of facts I have had 
the pleasure to lay before you, must give to every sanitarian among 
us a sense of self-congratulation that he has fallen upon such a 
period of progress in this direction and has the opportunity of 
hastening the steps of this reform. Everywhere interest in the 
question of cremation is awakening, and the present points to a 
future—a near future—in which every city, large or small, upon the 
American continent, will consider the crematory a necessary part of 
its municipal outfit. And not only is it given to each of us to look 
forward to a time when our cities will be redeemed from the curse of 
accumulating waste, when the rivers will be unpolluted by the sew- 
age which now converts them into common sewers, when the cess- 
vault and the garbage pit and the manure heap and even the earth 
cemetery will be abandoned, when the age of filth formation will be 
superseded by the era of filth destruction, when fire will purify 
alike the refuse of the living and the remains of the dead,—but also 
is it allotted to each one of us to help to bring in the coming of this 
sanitary consummation.