Heart Island: New York Public Cemetery, the last resting place of the lost

In a photo taken in October 2019 at Heart Island Cemetery, flowers are placed on a tomb.
The corona virus has been filled with dead bodies in the US city of New York, and now more than 24 bodies are being buried daily in the Heart Island Public Cemetery, where only 24 burial occasions occur in one week.

By April 13, more than 10,000 people had been killed in New York City and the number of daily casualties had exceeded 700 in five days.

The island of New York has been home to men who were poor, unknown and had no one to bury.

For more than 150 years, the island has been the home of corpses that have no heirs. More than a third of these bodies are for newborns. They are buried in tombs where thousands of bodies are buried, while there are also mass graves in which more than 150 people are sleeping forever.

Since 1869 in Hart Island, people whose heritage has not been known have been buried. There are also people who have been killed by an outbreak.

During a recent outbreak, spokesmen for the mayor of New York have said that only people belonging to New York City are being buried in Hart Island and no relatives have been released to take their bodies.

For over 200 years, the island was privately owned by various people, but in 1868 it was sold to New York City. One year later, 45 acres of land were dedicated to the cemetery on the island, where people were buried, whose families could not afford the burial.

From that time on this island there is nothing special other than the burial of the people. The island is under the New York Department of Corrections.

More than a thousand people are buried in the island every year. An estimated one million people are buried here, but it is difficult to know the exact number because the tombs were reused in the 1930s.

said to be the largest in the United States where AIDS deaths are buried

In addition, the cemetery records were burned in the fire in the 1970s.

The first burial ground in Hart Island took place in 1869, by a woman named Louisa van Slick, who was 24 years old. She was suffering from tuberculosis and had no information about her heritage.

The next year, when an outbreak of yellow fever spread, sick people were kept in quarantine on the island. The New York City administration then set up a hospital to treat TB patients at Quarantine. In those days TB was called white plague. One in every seven Americans was infected.

The island reappeared in 1985 due to another deadly disease. The disease was AIDS, which, due to lack of complete information, the dead cells closed their doors for those killed by the disease.

In the early days of AIDS, 17 people who died of the disease were buried in the island. The men were buried in an unusual 14 feet deep grave.

It is said that most of the AIDS deaths across the United States are buried here. Heart Island Cemetery was declared a temporary cemetery during the influenza outbreak in 2008.

The devastation of the Corona virus outbreak continues in New York City, and the number of people wishing to visit Hart Island Cemetery is also growing.

Heart Island Cemetery is under the reform of the Department so people are not allowed to visit their loved ones' graves.

Recently, efforts by organizations such as 'Heart Island Project' and 'Picture the Homeless' allowed survivors to visit twice a month, but the Corona virus has also been stopped.

Last December, the mayor of New York moved legislation to oversee the island's Parks Department and also arranged for more boats to be taken to the island. It has been described as a major breakthrough for those who want to visit their relatives' graves regularly.