New Orleans City of the Dead Tour 12.5.26

I'm a ghoul. I love old cemeteries. I thought Theo and I were going to admire old tombs and headstones, and we did. But we got a whole lot more. We learned a lot of New Orleans history, e.g. with a very high water table it was difficult to keep your dead buried - people. and later, bits of bone, kept floating up to the surface of the grave. For the high numbers of Catholic folk in New Orleans cremation was not an option. Eventually the solution was discovered, bury you dead above the ground, in tombs. Also, you can show off with beautiful buildings, iron surrounds and marble. We learned
(how after a huge fire in the city people built replacement homes with sloped rooves and water barrels to collect rain runoff, for fighting future infernos). And then not long afterward yellow fever started wiping out the city's population (mosquitos breeding in the stagnant barrel water). After a while (deaths kept reoccurring every summer) townfolk concluded that reopening their family tomb to send off the next victim was letting out the killer germs, so because so many burials were occurring per family, there were walls built of coffin shapes that were treated like "holding cells". Not until at least one year and one day later could they be opened, and remains could then be rehoused in the family tomb. We learned the tombs have shelves in them (good planning, but not enough to keep up with the annual yellow fever epidemic). There's a metal plate on the tomb front with screws that would be removed to reveal the rough brickwork/plastering after last burial. This would be broken open to access the shelving. 10 foot pole would be used to scrape forward the remains which would be poured into a cloth bag which was then pushed to the back of the shelf to fall into a big hole underneath the tomb. Thus the meaning of the sayings "I wouldn't touch you with a ten foot pole" and "a bag of bones".
If you're wondering how difficult it would be to scrape your hefty great uncle forward to be bagged up, fear not. Apparently a summer in a tomb would reduce the body to damn all (ironic when you think they're trying to avoid cremation). I think Blade, the guide, mentioned temperatures inside of 400F (204C)Read more