Meet Victoria.   Cremation is a tradition in Victoria's family.   Both sets of my her grandparents were cremated, so were her uncle and her dad.

Now its Victoria's turn to sizzle.

Victoria pole dances to keep fit.   What hot feet and legs she has got!   They are about to get a whole lot hotter.

Victoria gets a nice ride in a hearse to Walton Lea Crematorium - where her dad was also cremated.

The Methodist minister talks about Victoria's favourite charities:

• Oxfam
• British Red Cross
• Internation Fund for Animal Welfare
• World Wildlife Organisation

There is still another 5 minutes before the curtains close on Victoria.   Dear reader, why not visit one of these sites and make a donation?   Soon... "Any Road" by Georage Harrison starts to play and the curtains close around Victoria.

The mourners leave the the chapel after your Victoria's service.     Her coffin is still sitting where it had been, although the curtain has moved back again.   A technician with a pole hooks Victoria's coffin and slides it straight onto an automated loader.   By the time of Victoria's cremation, the technician has filled four urns from previous cremations and has two bodies cremating.   Soon Victoria will be the third.

There are large storage racks situated near the cremators that can be used to hold coffins before cremation when the crematorium extremely busy. But Victoria will not have to wait before her cremation.  

The loader moves on tracks set into the floor across to one the cremators.   It is number three that will take Victoria - the same cremator that consumed her dad.

After 20 seconds the technician looks into the peep hole.   Victoria's coffin is completely and ferociously ablaze and already the coffin lid is peeling back to expose her to the heat.   The brown/grey smoke out of the chimney is the cardboard of your Victoria's coffin burning.

Victoria's complete combustion is ensured by conducting furnace gases from the primary chamber through further chambers at higher temperatures.   Sensors record furnace temperatures, furnace gas oxygen contents etc on computer screens.   Flue gases are monitored to ensure they comply with regulations relating to particulates (smoke) and other emissions.   Victoria's reduction to ashes will be environmentally friendly.

Victoria is cremated in her favorite dance outfit, blue velvet hot pants, French Connection white halter neck top, sheer shimmer tights, red "Burlesque" *Pleaser* dance shoes and her wedding ring.

And now it bit for the geeks out there... Tights are made out of nylon and Lycra (which is a form of polyurethane) to make them more stretchy.     Both contain carbon and nitrogen (e.g. nylon = repeats of hexamethyl diamine + adipic acid), as well as hydrogen. Under conditions of high heat, nitrile groups can form and if fused with a proton, produce hydrogen cyanide. So heat + sheer tights = coating of melted thermoplastic and toxic gas.   Once Victoria's skin and the nylon become fused, she has permanent tights.   (Well for as long as her legs last...)

After 20 minutes the technician looks into the peep hole again. Victoria's charred body can be seen surrounded by fierce flames.   What is left is mostly Victoria's torso, although her head is clearly visible.

Victoria's body burns well and provides enough fuel to maintain combustion throughout most of her cremation. Only at the end does the computer automatically turn on the main burner to finish her off.   At this point a wofty of smoke goes out of the chimney from the natural gas.   Victoria's bones are now glowing inside the chamber....

The temperature of Victoria's cremation will be as high as 1,000C but this must be reduced to around 160C for the evaporated mercury from her fillngs to be removed.   The hot fumes from her cremation are passed through cold water heat exchangers in the crematorium chimney.   They absorb much of the heat from her cremation and are linked with the crematorium central heating boilers.   The heat generated by burning Victoria will be used to keep mourners warm.   One last act she can accomplish is to keep the next group of people to use the crematorium chapel warm.   What a lovely way for Victoria's cremation to provide comfort for the living.     I am sure she will be proud to help out.

The operator uses the visual inspection port to check that Victoria's cremation is complete.   All that remains of her is a mass of red hot incinerated bone and coffin ash.   It has taken 90 minutes to reduce Victoria to this.     But how much is left of her?   Let us listen and learn:

Better than Pole Dancing as a way of loosing weight.   The crematorium technician presses another button and the retort door opens half way.   The technician quickly rakes the ashes forward using a long handled device.   Victoria's cremains go into trench type gap and this leads down into the cooling box.   A cold air blast into the box cools her ashes.

There is a loss of heat if a cremator is allowed to cool down between cremations.   So for the sake of fuel economy, the next body is loaded into the cremator immediately after Victoria's cremation is complete.   The flames are already licking his patent leather shoes.

All residues - (in Victoria's case coffin screws, but for others surgical implants) - are removed from the ashes.   Now to the machine used to pulverise Victoria - the cremulator.   It's a perforated tube about 20 centimetres in diameter inside which is a cylinder with titanium chains attached along its length.   Victoria's identity card is placed onto the machine.   Her bone fragments are poured into the tube and the chains flail round pulverising them.   When her ashes are reduced to a fine enough consistency they pass through the perforations and are collected below in the container.   Victoria's ashes look like gunpowder, millions of little flakes rather than fine powder.   A small proportion of the ashes have been irretriveably lost in the pulverisation process.

Victora's ashes are transferred into a plastic bag, which contains a further identity card; the bag is then heat sealed and placed into a plastic container with the original identity card attached.  

Victoria wanted to be be scattered in the clouds from a 747-400.   Unfortanately the ash scattering company only has something a little smaller.

Instead Victoria is scattered in the Crematorium Winter Gardens at the same place as her dad.  

Victoria's ashes quickly break down so that within a few days little trace of them can be seen.

Thanx to Victoria for letting us describe her - (hopefully a long time in the future) - final journey. Why not visit Victoria's blog?   Cmon you know you want to!

Want to go out in a blaze of glory? Like (or hate) this page?   Let me know. Click here for an anonymous form, leave a message, or mail me.   If you want to chat with Victoria join our Forum

Main sources for this page were an email from Frazer about his crematorium visit and conversations with John the crematorium technician. Also of interest are: Greater London Industrial Society Visit to Croydon Crematorium, The Hot Heart Cremator is discussed by Ron Salvatore, as are Cremation Times with speculations about the effects of cancer on the length of incineration.

I don't know the exact details of the procedures at Walton Lea crematorium, but I assume they are the roughly the same as at other crematoria.   It is unlikely that Walton Lea uses cremator heat in its central heating system at the moment, but it is quite possible that they will by the time (a long time in the future we hope) Victoria reaches them. Cremator pictures are from library images not Walton Lea itself.