Stack: The bodies, in wooden boxes, are stacked on top of each other. Seen here is an infant grave from 1990
Sitting
just off the east coast of the Bronx and a short boat ride from
Manhattan is Hart Island, a tiny mile-long atoll and former Civil War
prison camp that has for decades, and continues to be, a mysterious mass
grave.
Over
one million poor or unidentified people have been buried anonymously
at the site, with an average of 1,500 fresh corpses arriving each year
and put into the ground by inmates from the nearby Rikers Island jail
complex.
These burials are of the unclaimed - from stillborn babies, to dismembered bodies and homeless people.
Now,
after a slew of lawsuits were brought forward by families of the dead,
who claim they should be allowed access to the cemetery - which is
closed to public - the stories of those buried on Hart Island are able
to accessed by a new interactive website.
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