A private High School in London has held a burial ceremony for a 200-year-old skeleton it kept in its biology department.
Investigations found she was most likely Indian, aged 20–45, who died from cancer or diabetes. There was evidence of terrible tooth decay.
The New Journal watched as a small wooden coffin was carried into the school’s grounds in North Road in a procession led by headteacher Adam Pettitt.
The school said representatives from several faiths had been invited to attend, but no relatives could be contacted. There are no records of who she was or how she came to be in its biology department, the school added.
Highgate School, which has not been accused of any wrongdoing, is understood to have spent three years negotiating with various authorities before the funeral could take place in the adjacent churchyard.
Comment Dan Hicks:
Another day, another bizarre story of a skeleton in the closet, this time at Highgate public school in London. The unregulated state of legacy colonial collections of ancestral remains is simply unsustainable—it’s a free-for-all at present, with institutions just improvising on the right thing to do.
