Tinkering with established exhumation procedures, could get the government into trouble, argue Steven Gallagher and Frederick Cosgrove-Gibson
The creation of the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) has resulted in a reinterpretation of the law governing the exhumation of human remains. Unless an exhumation is regulated by another piece of legislation, eg the Disused Burial Grounds (Amendment) Act 1981, it is governed by the Burial Act 1857 (BA 1857), s 25, which states:
“Except in the cases where a body is removed from one consecrated place of burial to another by faculty granted by the ordinary for that purpose, it shall not be lawful to remove any body, or the remains of any body, which may have been interred in any place of burial, without licence under the hand of one of Her Majesty’s Principal Secretaries of State, and with such precautions as such Secretary of State may prescribe as the condition of such licence; and any person who shall remove any such body or remains, contrary to this enactment,
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