What is the practical purpose of burying casket 6-ft underground?

Question

Serious answers please.

Answer 1

Actually this rule was mandated by the Mayor of London to help stop the Black Plague from spreading. No joke.

The idea was that the depth would prevent the disease from spreading to the living. It's covered indepth at the following link:

Answer 2

The purpose for burying six feet under ground started when the dead were not buried in caskets but in cloth. The purpose was so that the bacteria and diseases from the dead would not rise up and contaminate the soil and the populous, also for erosion purposes. After a heavy rainstorm, many graveyards that did not have proper graves, bodies would float because the mud (did not bury in grassy areas) would be washed away. I don't know why precisely 6ft, not 6.5 or seven. But that is the reason for burying deep in the earth

Answer 3

In California it is only three feet. People are, in general, not buried 6 ft. under. At least not in the US. In most states, there are no laws about it. A person has to be buried deep enough so that animals cannot not dig them up, a flood will not bring them up to the surface, and a frost cannot heave them to the surface. Actually, dead bodies pose less of a threat to public health than the living. It's just that nobody wants to see their Uncle Jethro rise from the dead.

Answer 4

It puts the casket far enough below the frost level so that it is not likely to get pushed to the surface. I do construction and have lived in a few very cold climates. We always put our concrete footings at least four feet below the surface so they won't shift. I think it is the bottom of the grave and not the top that is 6 feet deep and that gravediggers go down 6 feet for the same reason.

Answer 5

Just a saying, most aren't that deep. Most are just a foot and half or two to the top of the casket, and maybe 5 feet to the bottom.
They need to be deep enough that animals don't dig them up, and in our part of the world deep enough that the frost doesn't heave them up. Type of soil makes a difference too. In Israel where it is all rock they bury them above ground.

Answer 6

That is deeper than animals will dig and deeper than the frost line (in colder climates, stuff buried above the frost line get pushed to the surface when the ground freezes). Its also as deep as a typical person could reasonably dig (it gets hard to dig when you are in over your head). Anything around that depth would work, but funerals tend to be ceremonial affairs with lots of rules so they picked a number.

Answer 7

In New Orleans, it's not practical at all. If you dig down six-feet, you hit the water table for the Mississippi River and the bodies would wash away. That's why the cemeteries there have above-ground crypts. I guess "practicality" is a matter of geography.

Answer 8

I think part of it is religious. Also I think that any gases and stuff coming off of the body when it's rotting can be rather dangerous because then we'd all be getting sick.

And another reason is that there are animals who like to dig up and eat dead rotting things, like vultures for example. So that is the main reasons for burying people 6 foot under.

Answer 9

I think it's because otherwise the body might get too close to underground pipes. So yes it's for sanitation mainly.

But I also heard the number 6 has a religious value among catholics. But I can't tell you why in paticular.

Answer 10

Probably comes from experience that that depth is too deep for local fauna to smell and dig up the corpse. It may also be a deterrent to grave robbers as it would require more equipment (a ladder or rope to get out) or an accomplice.