Bettersten Wade’s search for her adult son ended when she discovered that an officer had run him over — and without telling her, authorities buried him in a pauper’s field.
Bettersten Wade’s search for her adult son ended when she discovered that an officer had run him over — and without telling her, authorities buried him in a pauper’s field.
I actually disagree with the practice not the name. There is a long history of giving nice names to distasteful practices to hide their true nature. In a way distasteful names are at least honest.
I’m not sure what alternatives you think we should have for burying unidentified people. I could see an argument to be made about how poor people shouldn’t have to be relegated to certain types of cemeteries or graves just because they can’t afford “proper” ones. But generally even if you took away cost people usually choose where they want to be buried based on various factors if possible, or their families do for them if they haven’t, so you need to have a system for people whose choice and affiliations are otherwise unknown. The original intent of potter’s fields was for burying strangers and unknown people, and that’s ideally what the practice should be more about rather than a class thing imo. And in that case, it’s more of a necessary practice than anything else, and the dead deserve to be referred to with dignity. It’s not like they’re the ones who chose to be buried there, yet they bear the brunt of the term “pauper”, giving an “uncomfortable name to an uncomfortable practice” is a nice idea and all but the only people who suffer for it are the people being buried there, not the ones doing the burying. So it just seems rather mean and unnecessary. The term isn’t a commentary on the practice, it’s a commentary on the people it’s being practiced on, who arguably deserve to be treated better than that.