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YOUR LETTERS
 
Living don't want to mingle with the dead

• THERE is nothing hysterical or unbalanced about us not wanting to sleep next to a mortuary (Mortuary at foot of garden wins backing, Feb 23).
Unless one is into necrophilia it is a natural human instinct to not wish to have an around-the-clock reminder of death. Hospitals always see to it that their mortuaries are situated where patients are not made aware of stored dead bodies. The new University College hospital has followed this tradition. Their living patients and dead patients are totally separate.
In hospital, if a person dies in the next bed to you their corpse is not left lying there, yet this mortuary has its walls as near to the ends of our gardens as a patient in an adjacent bed would be in a hospital ward. These are three four-story houses – many divided into flats occupied by young couples in their first homes – and from whose back windows there can be no avoiding the sight of hearses, mourners and mortuary business. Not, I should have thought, the ideal background for starting a family.
As a retired nurse I never failed to be awed by the moment when the amazing human machine stops forever. However, the living have to cope with life, bring up children, pay rent or mortgage and for that they deserve much more consideration and respect than they’ve been getting.
Death comes soon enough for all, without forcing us to witness its rehearsal on a daily basis. This really is not a suitable project to be wedged into a residential triangle and, unless Ms Cassidy has permission to bury on Hampstead Heath, she still has to transport corpses many miles for burial – thus causing unnecessary road pollution. Would it not make sense to have the mortuary nearer the burial sites?
In Dan Carrier’s report it was said that Ms Cassidy hoped that, in time, we residents would accept the mortuary. Did she mean like battery hens learn to accept being battery hens – or abused children learn to accept being abused?
Maybe Jehane Markham or Jon Snow could make room for eight bodies at the end of their gardens?
Roz Maxwell
Oakford Road
NW5
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