Thirty years before the "OECD" was formed as a definition of "rich countries", Dublin Ireland (where I spent 4 days) was still fresh (15 years) from the Uprising of 1916.
The walls of Glasnevin Cemetary were built with gun turrets to shoot grave robbers. Anyone found over the wall at night was presumed to be a grave robber, and shot and killed. The scavenging of graves had begun in earnest in the 1800s, when Ireland was as poor as India of 1900s.
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Surprisingly, the "end of life" issue driving grave robberies was reuse. Grave robbers had learned to dig narrow holes down to the coffins. A noose or hook was inserted over the neck of the cadaver, and the body would be pulled for its teeth. Cadaver teeth were, at the time, the chief monetary driver of hospitals and research universities, which bought them to make dentures. Dentures were afforded by the emerging rich, or were exported to England. The emerging rich, like the Irish merchant who sold Cummings flush toilets to become a baron, could afford the concrete coffins and monuments to protect their teeth, or dentures.
This is a lot like the scrap recycling industry today. LA Times has a story on just how difficult it is to regulate without resorting to shooting people in the OECD, today.
The walls of Glasnevin Cemetary were built with gun turrets to shoot grave robbers. Anyone found over the wall at night was presumed to be a grave robber, and shot and killed. The scavenging of graves had begun in earnest in the 1800s, when Ireland was as poor as India of 1900s.
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| Glasnevin Cemetery Museum |
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Surprisingly, the "end of life" issue driving grave robberies was reuse. Grave robbers had learned to dig narrow holes down to the coffins. A noose or hook was inserted over the neck of the cadaver, and the body would be pulled for its teeth. Cadaver teeth were, at the time, the chief monetary driver of hospitals and research universities, which bought them to make dentures. Dentures were afforded by the emerging rich, or were exported to England. The emerging rich, like the Irish merchant who sold Cummings flush toilets to become a baron, could afford the concrete coffins and monuments to protect their teeth, or dentures.
This is a lot like the scrap recycling industry today. LA Times has a story on just how difficult it is to regulate without resorting to shooting people in the OECD, today.
