How NYC Buries Its Poor

[From article]
In the last few years the old cemetery filled up, so the burials moved to Hart Island's south side. In 2010, there were 695 adults and 504 babies buried there. Four days a week, prisoners from Riker's Island lay plain pine boxes into two mass graves. In the adult grave, coffins are stacked three high. It will be filled with between 150 and 165 bodies (depending on the number of extra-wide coffins), plus separate coffins for body parts, and covered with 36 inches of dirt. The other grave, for fetuses and stillborn babies, will be loaded with 1,000 miniature coffins buried five deep. Both trenches are already open, dug by a yellow Caterpillar backhoe.
[. . .]
In 2011 she [Melinda Hunt] founded the Hart Island Project, a charity that helps families around the world search for relatives who went missing in New York, and who may be buried in the potter's field.

http://theweek.com/article/index/253289/the-invisible-island-where-new-york-buries-its-poor-and-unidentified

The invisible island where New York buries its poor and unidentified
Nearly one million people are buried in mass graves off of the Bronx. But the city prefers you know nothing about it.
By Christopher Maag, Narratively
November 24, 2013