For more than 1000 years before the 19th century burial was the conventionally respectful way of dealing with dead bodies in Christian Europe. From the moment in 1874 when it was founded to replace burial by cremation, the Cremation Society of England was always concerned to appear respectable. Although it was not clear that cremation was lawful, it was far from certain that it was illegal--indeed the Society received legal advice that cremation could be conducted lawfully. One consequence of the Society's concern for respectability, however, was that it was unwilling to take the risks involved in testing the law. It wanted legislation expressly permitting cremation or assurances from the Home Office that it would not be prosecuted should it carry out a cremation. Neither were forthcoming. A single adverse judicial precedent would be a great impediment to the Society, but since it was not prepared to force the issue, it was not able to shape the contexts in which judicial precedents might be created. In this it was at the mercy of others, and it is extremely unlikely that it would have chosen the first two occasions on which the issue did come before the courts. The first was provided in 1882 by the litigation that arose from the exhumation in England and cremation in Milan of Henry Crookenden in 1878, which the Society had helped arrange. It is probable that the view of the judge who decided the case was that cremation was unlawful but the Society was fortunate that he did not find it necessary to come to a firm decision about that. On the second occasion when the issue came before the courts--the prosecution of William Price in 1884 for cremating rather than burying his son's body--the circumstances were even less favourable to the Society's cause and the issue could not be avoided. Fortunate previously, the Society was triply fortunate now: James Fitzjames Stephen, the judge, was not unsympathetic to cremation, he liked William Price, and the views of the judge in the Crookenden case about the legality of cremation had not been recorded in the official law report. Stephen was therefore able to say that there was not even an obiter dicta adverse to cremation and he ruled that cremation was lawful. This ruling, being no more than that of a single trial judge, was not a binding precedent, but it was authoritative and the Society was emboldened by it to begin cremations. There were no further prosecutions and, when legislation came in 1902, it was permissive and regulatory rather than prohibitive . Though now of less relevance to cremation, the decision in Price is still an authority about the permissibility of other--indeed of any--means of dealing with dead bodies. It is likely to be increasingly regarded as people take greater initiatives in devising their own funerary rituals.