| Description |
In 1804, following decades of cemetery complications in major cities such as Paris, Napoleon issued a series of burial reforms that were to radically transform the ways in which French citizens would henceforth be buried. Still the basis for French burial laws to this day, the Decree of 23 Prairial year XII (June 12, 1804) guaranteed, for the first time in French history, distinct burial plots in public cemeteries for all citizens regardless of class or religion. However, burial would only be permanent for a small fraction of the population who met the considerable financial criteria for purchasing a perpetual concession, a land grant that transformed a plot public cemetery territory into private property where one could establish a family vault in perpetuity.(1) According to my ongoing dissertation research using the daily inhumation records at the Archives de Paris, these plots constituted less than 6% of burials in the nineteenth century, while all others took place in temporary concessions (renewable in five-year increments), or, even more often, in free plots within public territory (limited to just five years). |
