Without consent from relatives, the bodies were “lent” to a medical school and then left in a bureaucratic limbo by the medical examiner’s office, revealing continuing problems with the city’s mortuary system.
Hart Island, a 101-acre island off City Island that is home to the city’s Potters Field, has been designated a place of historical significance.
About a million people are buried on Hart Island—a mile-long strip of land sitting directly across from City Island in the Bronx. People end up at this public cemetery for different reasons: in some cases, families couldn't afford to bury their loved ones or failed to claim them. In other cases, remains could not be identified.
NY1 got a rare tour of an island that's been shrouded in mystery for decades, a place where the city's forgotten are buried.
The 600 miles of New York City’s shoreline that secured its status as a center of trade in the 18th century now host some of its more forgotten spaces. Despite an active harbor, the city has mostly turned inward from its bays and beaches, leaving ghostly pockets around the “city of hurried and sparkling waters,” as Walt Whitman anointed it in 1860.
When asked about legislation to transfer Hart Island from the Department of Correction to the Department of Parks and Recreation, Mayor de Blasio claims he is not aware of Bill 134.
Listen Cue to 20:54 minutes
Waterfront space in New York City is typically thought of as long promenades and vertical development opportunities, but within those 600 miles of coastline is a history that is marked by the ebb and flow of growth and industry.
August 19, 2016 - Governor Cuomo signed legislation yesterday that prevents unclaimed bodies destined for burial on Hart Island from being used as cadavers without a family consent.
It is not true that people in the city cemetery have no family or friends. Agreeing to a public burial should not mean that anything can happen in transit. Legislation to reform the burial process is once again stalled at City Hall, and state intervention is necessary.
Every week, bodies that have been unclaimed and unidentified are taken by ferry to a potter's field on Hart Island, off the coast of the Bronx in New York City. It is there they are laid to rest under unmarked gravestones, leaving no information about the deceased.
Though the new measure applies only to New York City and still needs the governor’s signature to become law, its passage in both houses on June 16 showed a significant shift in public attitudes toward human remains and the dead the city considers unclaimed.
It's a remote island off the easternmost part of the Bronx surrounded by mystery and untold stories of the people buried there, and News 12 is for the first time in years giving a rare look at Hart Island and the city's public cemetery known as Potter's Field.
Re “Bodies Given to N.Y.U. Sent to Mass Graves” (front page, May 28):
One died in her multimillion-dollar apartment. Another left $1.3 million to charity. A third was an opera costume designer who took regular trips to Europe with his devoted partner. All three donated their bodies to medical science, and eventually served as cadavers for first-year medical students at the New York University School of Medicine.
My grandmother was buried in a potter’s field in Erie, Pa., in 1934. We knew little about her life. As a young adult, I located the potter’s field that held my grandmother’s remains. An old logbook in a nearby geriatric home revealed the number on her grave marker; there were no names on the stones.
As mighty a city as New York claims to be, its power and pride seem nowhere in evidence on Hart Island, a desolate spot off the Bronx shore where the most pauperous and forgotten citizens are buried in tiers of coffins for their eternal rest in a potter’s field.
Hart Island holds a unique place in the life of one of the world's most vibrant cities. It is where the bodies of dead people go when they are unclaimed by others.
Hart Island is the lonely strip of land in Long Island Sound where the bodies of New York City's unclaimed dead lie in mass graves.
Under a New York State law rooted in the 1850s and last amended in 2007, next of kin can have as little as 48 hours after a death to claim a body for burial, or 24 hours after notification, “if the deceased person is known to have a relative whose place of residence is known or can be ascertained after reasonable and diligent inquiry.”
Rosalee Grable’s last wish was to be buried with other poor people in New York City’s potter’s field on Hart Island — an eroding 100-acre spit of land on Long Island Sound.
