Farewell to the Forgotten : Cemeteries: More unidentified and unclaimed bodies are winding up at the county’s paupers field. Because of the economy, fewer people can afford mortuary services or burials, workers say.

It is a cemetery without tombstones, monuments or bouquets. Or mourners.

Albert Gaskin cannot remember the last time anyone shed a tear at Los Angeles’ paupers graveyard.

Although traffic bustles past its chain-link gates, Los Angeles County Cemetery on the Eastside is as forgotten as the people who have ended up here.

The names of the dead--people who could not afford a grave because they were poor, forgotten or unidentified--are memorialized only in a three-inch-thick ledger. Gaskin, the cemetery’s supervisor, uses it to keep track of the recent arrivals:

“Carter, Baby Boy. Seven days old.”

“Doe, John. Age unknown.”

“Chavez, Baby Girl. Newborn.”

As crime and poverty escalate, the cemetery, located under swaying palm trees on East 1st Street, is a crude but sobering barometer of society’s ills, the final testament to a region’s violence and despair. These days there are more murder victims, more homeless people, more babies.

“The economy has a lot to do with it,” said Gaskin, who has worked at the cemetery since 1981. “There’s no money for a burial through a mortuary, so they end up here.”

Once in a while, Gaskin might get a call from someone looking for a long-lost relative. But usually when the phone rings, it’s the morgue asking him to pick up another body that no one claimed.

The cemetery staff cremates the bodies--an average of 50 a week--and places the ashes into tiny metal boxes. The boxes are stacked with thousands of others on shelves standing more than nine feet tall. If no one comes to get the ashes after three years, they are poured into a mass grave during an annual burial.

In January, the remains of nearly 1,300 indigents are expected to be buried in a six-foot-deep grave. A small plaque will be placed on the plot, denoting only the year of their cremation: 1990.

“I always feel a little sad to see all the people buried at one time with no one here to say goodby to them,” Gaskin said. “I always say a little prayer for them. You never know, someday this could be me.”

Before the bodies reach the county’s graveyard, they are taken from their place of death--usually County-USC Medical Center, the last resort of medical care for the indigent--to either the county morgue or the coroner’s office for identification and notification of next of kin.

Coroner’s office investigator Nick Romero said he searches for someone--anyone--who will claim the remains.

Many of the deceased are transients who have survived for years on the streets; others are immigrants with no identification. Some have come from other states to chase the California dream, only to end up penniless and anonymous.

Almost all have been forgotten by their families, Romero said.

“Sometimes, even if a guy lives in his own house, his family will say, ‘Oh, I wasn’t that close to him,’ ” Romero said. “Others say they just don’t have any money for a funeral. You hear all kinds of reasons. It’s a cold world out there.”

The coroner’s office keeps the bodies for about three months before they are sent to the county cemetery.

During an average month, the cemetery receives the remains of about 50 babies, almost all stillborn, 100 men and 50 women.

Before the ashes are scheduled for burial, most will be identified and relatives will be contacted. But only a small portion will be claimed.

Of the estimated 2,600 remains the cemetery received last year, only 250 were shipped to mortuaries at the request of friends and relatives.

“We get less babies claimed than we do adults,” said Craig Garnette, who has worked at the cemetery for nine years. “All I can figure is the families never got a chance to know these babies, since so many of them are stillborn.”

Recently, an organization called Child Rest in Peace Foundation began providing burial services, with flowers and a headstone, for all abandoned babies picked up by coroner’s investigators.

And the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles pays to have remains of those who are identified as Catholics taken to the Queen of Heaven Cemetery in Rowland Heights, where they are placed in individual plots after a ceremony performed by a priest.

For the rest, their burial will probably be attended by only a few county workers and administrators. After a county chaplain says a short prayer, the ashes are poured out of the metal boxes into the grave, a process that takes most of the day.

Although county officials say they would prefer burying the indigents in coffins, as New York City does at Hart Island, there is not enough room at Los Angeles’ four-acre cemetery, which has been using the same cremation and burial process since the 1920s.

“We try to make it dignified,” Gaskin said. “People come to Southern California thinking it’s Hollywood. They end up on the streets. They are penniless, down on their luck. You feel really sad for them sometimes. I never take one out to the grave without being blessed.

“I always say goodby.”