Why 6ft Under?

Ever wondered why burying people 6ft underground s considered the norm? Many states don’t have laws that enforce burying a body 6ft under; it’s usually left up to the funeral homes to decide how deep they want the grave. In the UK, it’s up to the owner. As long as animals can’t dig the grave site up and expose the body or coffin and the depth doesn’t lead to any safety concerns, the body can be buried at whatever depth they prefer. Also, some areas may receive more rainfall than others, resulting in them burying bodies differently. An example of this is New Orleans most likely wouldn’t want to bury their bodies 6ft under because it would only cause waterlogging and the coffin surfacing (this is still a problem, coffins are floating to the surface during floods).

One of the earliest documented instances where burying a body 6ft underground was mentioned was published in a leaflet in 1665 during the London plague(the last major epidemic of the bubonic plague in England and lasted 18 months while killing 100,000 people, close to a quarter of London’s population). Burying a body at this depth was believed to prevent the spread of the disease. 

Some reasons why we say specifically 6ft under include: to discourage body snatchers from stealing bodies for medical students to study (during the early 1800s, grave robbing was very common because medical schools had limited access to corpses for anatomical study and research purposes) and the risks of cave-ins and related accidents increase when digging deeper. 

Burying a body in a deep grave is not only a Western tradition. Among other cultures and civilizations, ancient Greeks and Romans also dug deep graves for their dead. 

Sources: Why Are People Buried 6 Feet Under? | Six Feet Deep Grave (askfuneral.com), Great Plague of London - Wikipedia, The Reason Why The Dead Are Buried Six Feet Below The Ground | Elite Readers, Why Are Graves 6 Feet Deep & What Are The Reasons Behind It? | All About Grave