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Home / Literature and art / D. H. Lawrence was exhumed in France in 1935 and cremated for a New Mexico shrine, and a…
Case file s1799 · Literature and art · 1930
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1930
D. H. Lawrence: D H Lawrence passport photograph
D. H. Lawrence. Unknown authorUnknown author (passport office). Public domain, Wikimedia Commons.
Died
2 March 1930
Place
Vence, France
Field
novelist · Literature and writing on the timeline
Legal tradition
French law (burial); US property law (Kiowa Ranch) · Common law · Civil law
Historical event
Frieda Lawrence's transfer of Lawrence's remains to the ranch near Taos, 1935
Literature and artBodies, bones and burialsWorld warsEuropeFrance

D. H. Lawrence was exhumed in France in 1935 and cremated for a New Mexico shrine, and a scholar reported that the man who carried the ashes said he threw them away

D. H. Lawrence died of tuberculosis in Vence on 2 March 1930 and was buried in the Vence cemetery two days later. His widow Frieda lived at Kiowa Ranch near Taos, New Mexico, with Angelo Ravagli, an Italian army officer who later became her husband. In winter 1934 Ravagli went to Vence and arranged an exhumation. The body was dug up on 12 March 1935 and cremated in Marseille on 13 March. Ravagli carried the ashes to New Mexico, and in April 1935 they were placed in the altar of a chapel he had helped build. Frieda died on 11 August 1956, was buried in front of the chapel, and gave the ranch to the University of New Mexico that year. A story says she mixed the ashes into wet cement for the altar so they could not be stolen; this is legend, and the university's own ranch history does not repeat it. A second account is documented as a claim: scholar Emile Delavenay wrote that a Belgian engineer, Baron Prosper de Hauleville, told him Ravagli confessed while drunk, "I threw away the DH cinders", into the Mediterranean. A certificate displayed at the shrine states the urn held Lawrence's ashes. Nothing proves either version.

What the law took from it

Remains moved by a survivor depend on the survivor's word, and a written chain of custody is the only proof of where they went.

Sources
  1. dhlawrenceranch.unm.eduScholarship
  2. fm.unm.eduScholarship
  3. historicmysteries.comPress

Cite as: celebrity.estate, “D. H. Lawrence was exhumed in France in 1935 and cremated for a New Mexico shrine, and a scholar reported that the man who carried the ashes said he threw them away,” story s1799, https://www.celebrity.estate/d-h-lawrence-1930, updated 30 October 2026.

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Where this case sits

Literature and artBodies, bones and burialsWorld warsEuropeCommon lawCivil lawFrance