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LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL.
No. S. 35.-The following Bill was read a first time at a Meeting of the Council held on the 5th February, 1914:—
4
Short title.
Definitions.
A BILL
ENTITLED
An Ordinance to provide for the regulation of the burning of Human Remains and to enable Crematoria to be established.
WHEREAS it is expedient to provide for the establish- ment of Crematoria in this Colony and the regulation thereof:
Be it therefore enacted by the Governor of Hongkong, with the advice and consent of the Legislative Conneil thereof, as follows:-
1. This Ordinance may be cited as the Cremation Ordi- nance, 1914.
2. In this Ordinance:--,
The expression "burial authority" shall mean any burial board, council, committee, sanitary board, or other local authority having the powers and duties of a burial board, and any local authority maintaining a cemetery under the No. 1 of 1903. Public Health and Buildings Ordinance, 1903, or under
any other Ordinance.
Burial Au-
thority may provide for cremation.
Site of Cre- matorium.
Regulation as to burning.
The expressiou “Crematorium" shall mean any building or place fitted with appliances for the purpose of burning human remains, and shall include everything incidental or ancillary thereto.
3. The powers of a burial authority to provide and maintain burial grounds or cemeteries, or anything essential, ancillary or incidental thereto, shall be deemed to extend to and include the provision and maintenance of crematoria : Provided that no human remains shall be burned in any such crematorium, until the plans and site thereof have heen approved by the Director of Public Works, and until the crematorium has been certified by the burial authority to the Governor to be complete, constructed in accordance with such plans, and properly equipped for the purpose of the disposal of human remains by burning.
4. No crematorium shall be constructed nearer to any dwelling house than 200 yards, except with the consent in writing, of the owner, lessee and occupier of such house, nor within 50 yards of any public highway, nor in the consecrated part of the burial ground of any burial author- ity: Provided that the Governor-in-Commeil
may authorise the maintenance within these limits of any existing erema- torium for such period of time as he may think fit.
5. The Governor-in-Council may make regulations as to the maintenance and inspection of crematoria, and prescribing in what cases and under what conditions the burning of any human remains may take place, and directing the disposition or interment of the ashes, and prescribing the forms of the notices, certificates and declarations to be given or made before any such burning is permitted to take place, such declarations to be made under and by virtue of the Statutory Declarations Ordinance, 1893, and also regu- lations as to the registration of such burnings as have taken place. All statutory provisions relating to the destruction and falsification of registers of burials, and the admissibility of extracts therefrom as evidence in Courts and otherwise, shall apply to the registers of burnings directed by such regulations to be kept.