Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Jewish Burial Society Sues London Coroner For Refusing To Release Corpses

(JTA) — A London-area Jewish burial society has taken the local coroner to the country’s High Court over her burial policy.

The Adath Yisrael Burial Society took Mary Hassell, the senior coroner at the St. Pancras Coroner’s Office in central London, to the court for a judicial review over her policy that of not prioritizing deaths because of the religion of the deceased.

According to both Jewish and Islamic law, bodies of the deceased must be buried as soon as possible after death, ideally on the same day.

Hassell’s jurisdiction covers the largest concentration of haredi Orthodox Jews in Europe and the United Kingdom’s biggest Muslim community.

Sam Grodzinski, an attorney for the burial society brought statements from Jewish and Muslim religious leaders about the importance of speedy burial, the London-based Jewish Chronicle reported.

The policy has caused “widespread distress” among faith communities, the attorney told the court.

He said his case was not that religious groups must come first, but that religious belief must be “conscientiously taken into account” by the coroner.

“If the coroner’s officer knows that the family has a genuine religious need to hold the funeral of their loved one either later that day or the next day, this religious need cannot lawfully be excluded from the defendant’s consideration,” he also said, calling the current policy a “cab rank queue.”

Hassell, who was unrepresented in court because she wanted to “maintain a neutral position,” said in a written statement ahead of the hearing: “We respond to particular circumstances and wishes and we accommodate every family when we are able – provided that doesn’t materially disadvantage other families, we assist where we can.”

The Jewish Chronicle reported  December that one woman made 210 phone calls to the St. Pancras Coroner’s Office before being assured that her father would be buried four days after his death. Another family was told it would have to wait two weeks for an autopsy to be performed before a funeral could be held. Following a meeting with Hassell in January, Jewish leaders called for her removal.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.