Another early exponent was Augustus Henry Lane Fox Pitt Rivers, one of the nineteenth century’s leading archaeologists, who not only desired cremation for himself but insisted upon it for his wife, despite her continued objections. “Damn it, woman, you shall burn,” he declared to her whenever she raised the matter. Pitt Rivers died in 1900 and was cremated, even though it wasn’t yet legal. His wife outlived him, however, and was given the peaceful burial she had always longed for.
