A supplementary report on the results of a special inquiry into the practice of interment in towns.Chadwick, Edwin
History
A supplementary report on the results of a special inquiry into the practice of interment in towns.
Chadwick, Edwin
Burial; Cemeteries -- Great Britain; Mortality -- Statistics; Public health -- Great Britain; Working class -- Great Britain
§ 166. In the cemetery at Liverpool, where Mr. Huskisson is interred, it
is the practice to pile the coffins of the poorest class in deep graves
or pits, one coffin over the other, with only a thin covering of earth
over each coffin until the pit is filled, when it holds upwards of
thirty, as the sexton expressed it, about “thirty-four big and little.”
The observation of several of the joint stock cemeteries, and their
estimates of future amounts of interments, not of one body in one grave,
but of bodies piled one over the other by five and even ten deep,
without any new precautions in respect to the emanations, the general
experience of the difficulty of effecting any change through commercial
associations that does not promise an immediate return for the expense
incurred, prove that, although they may be kept in a better condition to
the eye, there is no security that they will not be as injurious as any
common burial grounds, and stand as much in need of some regulations for
the protection of the inhabitants of the dwellings which in time may be
driven closer around them.
§ 167. Besides the improvements in formation of the cemeteries and
management of the interments, the regulations of the Franckfort and
Munich cemeteries present instances which it may here be proper to
submit for consideration, of the advantages derivable in aid of the
religious service from a better organized staff of officers in
maintaining superior order in the grounds on all occasions of solemnity.
§ 168. It will have been perceived how little support the clergymen have
in any appointed staff of officers to maintain order in the
burial-grounds of the more populous parishes. §§ 87, 88, and 111. On
occasions of several interments taking place in burial-grounds in the
metropolis at the same time, the master undertakers will volunteer their
services to get the crowd of by-standers into some order, and show how
much might be done by other and better superintendence to add to the
impressiveness of the last scene. The inferior attendants, the
grave-diggers, at the interments which I have witnessed at the new
cemeteries, attended, as they usually do at the parochial grounds, in a
disorderly condition—unshaven, dirty in person, in dirty shirts and in
the old and the common filthy dress. During the burial service the
undertakers’ men only concerned themselves in removing the feathers from
the hearse and preparing for an immediate return; all the attendants
began talking on other matters, and went their different ways
immediately the coffin was lowered; the mourners were left with the
utmost unconcern, except by the grave-diggers, who followed them in the
attitude of the usual solicitations of money for drink.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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