Cremation is the act of reducing a corpse by burning, generally in a crematorium furnace or crematory fire. Contrary to popular belief, the remains (often called cremains) are not "ashes" in the usual sense, but rather dried bone fragments which have been pulverized in a device called a cremulator.

Cremation may serve as a funeral or post-funeral rite which is alternative to the interment of an intact body in a casket. Cremains, which are not a health risk, may be buried or immured in memorial sites or cemeteries, or they may be legally retained by relatives or dispersed in a variety of ways and locations.

Today, cremation is an increasingly popular form of disposition of the deceased. This is true even in the Christian world, which for many years was opposed to cremation, but has come to a greater acceptance of cremation over the past century.

In Christian countries, cremation fell out of favour due to the Christian belief in the physical resurrection of the body, and as a mark of difference from the Iron Age European pre-Christian Pagan religions, which usually cremated their dead. Beginning in the Middle Ages, rationalists and classicists began to advocate cremation. In Medieval Europe, cremation was practised only on special occasions when there were many corpses to be disposed of simultaneously after a battle, after an epidemic or during famine, and there was an imminent danger of disease spread. Much later, Sir Henry Thompson, Surgeon to Queen Victoria, was the first to recommend the practice for health reasons after seeing the cremation apparatus of Professor Brunetti of Padua, Italy at the Vienna Exposition in 1873. In 1874, Thompson founded The Cremation Society of England. The society met opposition from the Church, which

would not allow cremation on consecrated ground, and from the government, who believed the practice to be illegal.

Cremation was forced into British law when a Welsh doctor, William Price burned his infant son, named Jesus Christ, in a Pagan ritual shortly before 1883 in the historic town of Llantrisant. The doctor was a well known eccentric whose cremation ceremony was initially stopped by people coming home from church. The police returned the partially burnt body of his son on condition that it would neither be buried nor burned. Later that year, Dr. Price reneged on his promise and burned his son's remains. The townsfolk, unhappy with this sacrilege, went in an angry mob to burn out Dr. Price, but were turned back when they discovered only his wife armed with pistols. Dr. Price had already left the building. Dr. Price was arrested and tried in an 1884 court case which resulted in an amendment to legalize cremation in February of that year.

An Act of Parliament for the Regulation of burning of human remains, and to enable burial authorities to established crematoria was passed in 1902.