Island million dead: can new Yorkers to visit Hart Island

Island million dead: can new Yorkers to visit Hart Island

Recently the city Council of new York adopted an agreement on the closure of the prison complex on Rikers Island. Of course, this question is not days and not even months, but prison will somehow close down.

However, not all new Yorkers that the city is still a dark island, which is also controlled by the Department of corrections.

Just 25 kilometers North-East from Manhattan raspored HART island (Hart Island) is a small island with an area of approximately 101 acres. The city bought the land in 1868 and since then used as a cemetery. From the mid-1860s years were buried here more than a million people, including more than 65 thousand over the last 36 years. Burials continue here to this day, carried them out prisoners from the prison on Rikers island, which is periodically brought here specially with security, writes the Daily News.

Who is buried in «the island of a million dead«? Unidentified Civil war veterans, the poor, immigrants, the homeless, the poor, the first victims of the AIDS epidemic, the babies who died at birth.
Now the island is buried the so-called «unclaimed» bodies. However, the laws of the state of new York is designed so that families often simply do not have time to learn about the death of a relative: in some situations, the execution of all documents only 48 hours. Thus, the «unclaimed» may declare the body of the person on whose death the family doesn’t suspect.

The organization of The Hart Island Project, whose employees for the past ten years have collected information on buried on the island have ensured that their relatives can finally visit the island once a month, but only with an armed guard.

Members of the city Council of new York- mark Levin and Elizabeth Crowley — I think that everyone should be able to freely visit the island, not only with relatives buried there. In their opinion, it is a historical place, and new Yorkers need to know about him and remember him.
So they initiated a bill on the transfer of the island from the jurisdiction of the Department of corrections to the parks Department of the city.

«In the past half century HART island was concealed from the people of new York the truth about how we treat the poor, the sick and forgotten people. It’s time to change» — say the initiators of the bill.

Island million dead: can new Yorkers to visit Hart Island

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