Interments (felo de se) Act 1882

The Interments (felo de se) Act 1882 (45 & 46 Vict. c. 19) is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom which allowed a person whose death was felo de se (criminal suicide) to be buried in a churchyard at any hour, and with the usual religious rites.[4] Previously, suicides could be buried only between 9pm and midnight, and without rites.[5] Sir James Stephen said that the act was "so worded as to lead any ordinary reader to suppose that till it passed suicides were buried at a crossroads with a stake through their bodies".[6]

It shall not be lawful for any coroner or other officer haying authority to hold inquests to issue any warrant or other process directing the interment of the remains of persons against whom a finding of felo de se shall be had in any public highway, or with any stake being driven through the body of such person, but such coroner or other officer shall give directions for the interment of the remains of such person felo de se in the churchyard or other burial ground of the parish or place in which the remains of such person might by the laws or custom of England be inteired if the verdict of felo de se had not been found against such person.
— Interments (felo de se) Act 1882, s. 2

Interments (felo de se) Act 1882[1]
Parliament of the United Kingdom
Long titleAn Act to amend the law relating to the interment of any person found felo de se.
Citation45 & 46 Vict. c. 19
Territorial extent England and Wales and the Channel Islands.[2]
Dates
Royal assent3 July 1882
Commencement3 July 1882[3]
Repealed3 August 1961
Other legislation
Repeals/revokes4 Geo. 4. c. 52
Repealed bySuicide Act 1961, s 3(2) & Sch 2
Status: Repealed
Text of statute as originally enacted

The Suicide Act 1961 abolished felo de se and in consequence also repealed the 1882 act.

Section 3

This section allowed interment to be made in any way prescribed or authorised by the Burial Laws Amendment Act 1880. By section 13 of that Act, any clergyman of the Church of England authorised to perform the burial service was permitted, in any case where the office for the burial of the dead according to the rites of the Church of England might not be used, to use at the burial ground such service, consisting of prayers taken from the Book of Common Prayer and portions of the Holy Scripture, as might be prescribed or approved by the ordinary.[7][8]

See also

References
  • Halsbury's Statutes,
  • The Public General Statutes, passed in the forty-fifth and forty-sixth years of the reign of Her Majesty Queen Victoria, 1882. Queen's printer. London. 1882. Page 48.
  1. The citation of this Act by this short title is authorised by section 6 of this Act.
  2. Interments (felo de se) Act 1882, section 5
  3. The Acts of Parliament (Commencement) Act 1793
  4. Peck, H T and Peabody, S H and Richardson C F. The International Cyclopedia: A Compedium of Human Knowledge. Dodd, Mead and Company. 1892. Volume 14. Page 59.
  5. "An Act to alter and amend the Law relating to the Interment of the Remains of any Person found Felo de se.". Statutes Revised. Vol. 5: 52 George III. to 4 George IV. London: Eyre and Spottiswood. 1877. p. 928. Retrieved 7 April 2019.
  6. Stephen, J.F. (1883). A History of the Criminal Law of England. Vol. 3. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. p. 105. ISBN 9781108060745.
  7. Burial of a Person Found "Felo de se" (1906) 50 Sol Jo 147 to 148
  8. The Law Times. 1893. Volume 96. Page 408.
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