Retention or exposure of dead body prohibited; shipment and interment.
Denver Revised Municipal Code § 24-183
in effectSec. 24-183. - Retention or exposure of dead body prohibited; shipment and interment.
(a) It shall be unlawful to retain or expose, or to permit to be retained or exposed, the dead body of any human being to the peril or probable injury to the life or health of any person within the limits of the city, or within five (5) miles thereof.
(b) No body, dead of cholera, smallpox, typhus fever, scarlet fever, diphtheria, or other contagious disease, shall be permitted to be brought into the city.
(c) No body, dead of any of the before-mentioned diseases, shall be shipped out of the city for interment, except under the following circumstances:
(1) When the interment is proposed to be made in a cemetery not more than ten (10) miles from the city, the body shall be transported in a funeral car constructed according to the direction of the manager of public health and environment and used for no other purpose than the carriage of dead bodies; and
(2) The body shall have been previously embalmed, the cavities stopped and filled with cotton soaked in a corrosive sublimate solution of a strength of one (1) in one hundred (100), the whole body being then enclosed in a cerecloth soaked in a corrosive sublimate solution of a strength of one (1) in one hundred (100); and
(3) The body thus prepared shall be in a zinc-lined, hermetically sealed casket.
(Code 1950, § 742.3; Ord. No. 1110-96, § 1, 12-16-96; Ord. No. 427-18, § 14, 6-11-18)
Source: City and County of Denver, Revised Municipal Code and Charter (Municode Library, library.municode.com)URL: https://library.municode.com/co/denver/codes/code_of_ordinances?nodeId=TITIIREMUCO_CH24HESA_ARTVIBIDE_DIV3BU_S24-183REEXDEBOPRSHINFetched: 10/27/2026