Potter's Field Burial In New York City
The potters field on Hart Island hosts New York City burials of the poor and unidentified. Convicts from Rikers Island handle the work, paid about 20 cents an hour, with coffins of unfinished white wood and trenches stacking eight thousand yearly. Claude Solomon, 62, was interred among others in a cold, bleak, efficiency driven ceremony marked by mud, blood, and minimal ceremony.