Judge orders Concord man to have heirloom mummified baby buried

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Charles Peavey and his family had this mummified baby passed on to them for generations, until one of his nieces told her day care providers that there was a dead baby in the house.

The authorities confiscated the mummy named “Baby John”. Till then, this baby was put on display in a bureau in Peavey’s home. Relatives and friends came and saw the baby many times and used to treat the desiccated infant as a family member giving it holiday cards and a dried fish as a pet.

Peavey said his family is disappointed about the decision, but he has no alternative and doesn’t have money to do the DNA testing on the baby. He said he will follow the judge’s orders and give the baby a decent burial.

Peavey said his family believes the mummy is the stillborn child of a great-great uncle. The New Hampshire state authorities did a preliminary testing and concluded that the baby died of natural causes shortly after its birth. They said the remains were decade’s old but didn’t confirm the exact age and origin of the baby.

"It's one of the few things from our family past that we have left," Peavey had written in a petition to the court. "And when I pass on, I was looking forward to passing it on to another family member, to keep some of the history for future family members."

The prosecutor Richard Head, however, was concerned about Peavey’s family treatment of the mummy. He pointed out Peavey’s MySpace page, which opens with “The Addams Family” theme song and includes a photo of a small crypt and also suggest that it may hold the remains of Baby John’s sister. Peavey said he put that as a joke on the site and will take it down.

In the end, the Judge agreed with Richard Head and ordered Peavey to bury the baby instead.

Based on the Channel 7 article (linked above), it seems that providing a DNA link is enough of a reason to justify keeping a dead body in one's home.

I personally think it's quite disturbing if a body is passed on like an heirloom. Every religion says bury or cremate the dead as soon as possible, so I don’t know where Peavey and his family got this idea to keep the dead baby as a heirloom for generations.