YOU could leave your body to a medical school for dissection by students. The snag is that they tend to accept only bodies that are unautopsied after death, non-cancerous and within easy range of a school.
If your next of kin are receiving either income support, housing benefit, disability working allowance or council tax benefit, the local Social Security will pay for a basic funeral.
If not, your relatives can refuse to arrange for disposal of your body, in which case the local authority is legally obliged to register the death and carry out the funeral, with reimbursement from the estate or next of kin where possible.
Your body can be buried by friends and relatives in a garden or farm with the permission of the landowner, without permission from the council planning department or the environmental health department. It is advisable for the burial to be 250 metres from any human-consumption water supply or well or borehole, 30 metres from any other spring and 10 metres from any field drain, with no water in the grave when first dug. But a garden burial could severely reduce the value of a property.
In my view, the most satisfactory option is burial organised by the relatives in a nature reserve burial ground run by a farmer, local authority or wildlife trust, where a tree is planted instead of having a head-stone.
Nicholas Albery, Director, Natural Death Centre, London NW2.
Webmaster, CotOM (ft@nessie.mcc.ac.uk)