In 1913, George Bernard Shaw described witnessing the cremation of his mother. Her body was placed in a violet coffin and loaded feet-first into the flames. “And behold!” he wrote. “The feet burst miraculously into streaming ribbons of garnet coloured lovely flame, smokeless and eager, like Pentecostal tongues, and as the whole coffin passed in it sprang into flame all over; and my mother became that beautiful fire.