14 DAY TRIAL // It seems that the founding father of psychoanalysis can't rest even after death, as thieves hunt his remains and attempt to steal his ashes. The callous felons broke into the crematorium from Hoop Lane and in their failed attempt to put their hands on Sigmund Freud's ashes, they damaged a very special urn, and were still left empty-handed.
Freud's ashes were resting alongside his wife Martha's remains in a unique 2,300-year-old Greek urn inside the Golders Green Crematorium, near London. The urn was a gift for the famous psychoanalyst from one of his close friends, Princess Marie Bonaparte, the great-grandniece of famous French ruler Napoleon Bonaparte.
The special urn was on display at the crematorium, that has seen the funerals of many other famous celebrities like Amy Winehouse, Peter Sellers, Bram Stoker or Enid Blyton.
The institution is now concerned with their security issues and have moved the damaged urn into a more secure location to avoid any similar incidents.
Authorities handling the case called the incident a despicable and callous thing to do, “even leaving aside the financial value of the irreplaceable urn and the historical significance of to whom it related, the fact that someone set out to take an object knowing it contained the last remains of a person defies belief,” Detective Constable Daniel Candler says, according to Daily Mail.
Sigmund Freud died in September 1939, at the age of 83, after his inoperable mouth cancer led him to ask doctors for a lethal dose of morphine. His wife, Martha, died at the age of 90 and was added in the urn, to rest with her husband, in 1952.
Freud is one of the people who made incredible breakthroughs in the field of psychoanalysis, studying and understanding the unconscious with the use of associations, dreams or fantasies and has been an undeniable academic influence in the field.