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From: Margie Campbell <>
Subject: [CASANBER] Article in SR on County Hospital storage of Urns
Date: Mon, 18 Feb 2002 09:14:06 -0800


Hi everyone
Some of you may get this more than once, as it's going to many lists, sorry.

Stockton Record
23 January 1988
Front Page

X-RAY URNS ITS SPOT
Coroner can use space
by Edie Lau
The Stockton Record

Four thousand eight hundred (4,800) urns containing the ashes of people long
dead should be removed from the county morgue and buried.

That's the recomendation of the San Joaquin County Grand Jury, in a report
released Friday.

The remains were left from the days when the building was used as a county
crematorium. The jurors said the copper urns, on shelves in a locked room,
are taking up valuable building space.

"The Sheriff's Office is not in the cemetery business and the urns should be
removed." the jury wrote. They said relocating the urns would cost about
$8,400.

Sheriff Coroner John Zunino and County Administrator David D. Rowlands, Jr.
agreed that acting on the grand jury's suggestion won't be hard.

"What they idenified makes goosd sense" Rolands said "Money is not the
issue" he added "It's just a matter of treating the remains with dignity."

Aside from the urn problem, the jurors had good things to say about the
coroner's operation, calling it "very efficient and well managed." They
said the staff was "well informed" and "compassionate." and the records
"well maintained and readily available."

The county morgue has been housed in a bu9lding behind San Joaquin General
Hospital in French Camp since 1980. For 50 years before, the building was a
crematorium operated by the hospital.

According to the jurors report, some of the urns have been stored there more
than 50 years. In the last decade only two urns have been claimed by
relatives. It's unclear why so many remains went unclaimed.

The urns are under the control of the county hospital (San Joaquin General
Hospital [mc]). The space taken up by the urns, about a quarter of the
building, could better be used by the coroner, ther jurors said. For
example, the x-ray machine is in a refrigerated room sometimes used to store
bodies awaiting autopsy. The corpses have a foul odor that can make the
x-ray technician's enviroment most unpleasant. The x-ray machine could be
moved to where the urns are now, jurors said.

The morgue also lacks space for drying bloody or contaminated clothing that
must be kept as evidence. Baxter Dunn, captain of the coroner's division,
said investigating officers are forced to take the wet clothing to other
buildings.

The practice is potentially dangerous, given the types of diseases -- such
as hepatitis and AIDS, that are spread through blood.

The county already faces the task of exhuming about 40 bodies from an
unmarked pauper's cemetery near the county hospital. The cemetery is in the
middle of the site for a new jail.

"Maybe we can make this one project." Rowlands said.

******
There is a large photo showing Gordon King of SJCounty Hospital inspecting
copper boxes containing cremated remains, some 50 years old.

This is dated 1988, two years before we moved back here from Washington
State, so I don't have any rememberance of what happened. Does anyone
remember these urns being moved? Were they just disposed of? Could this be
what became of State hospital inmates after the State Hospital quit
burying/cremating people themselves?

If you have an ancestor who died after 1920 or so... and you can't find
them... this may be something to check.
Marge
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~mcampbel/home.htm
Margie Campbell's Web Page

http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~mcampbel/Calif/
History of Stockton State Hospital (Stockton, CA)

http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~mcampbel/ICGS/
Iron county, MO Genealogy Society Page

http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~mcampbel/cem/Napa
State Hospital Oversight Hearing & Links to organizations who need
our help to save old cemeteries.
Stockton State Hospital Cemetery page

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Hermes family name list
Wenstrom family name list

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