A supplementary report on the results of a special inquiry into the practice of interment in towns.Chadwick, Edwin
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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
A Christian attention and civility to all is required from the highest
public officer, without any fees or expense, and mendicancy on the part
of the inferior attendants, and the rapacity of the uneducated and of
the ill-educated, which always rushes in most strongly on the helpless,
are equally prohibited. Of the inspector himself, it is by these
regulations provided:—
(17.) It is the duty of the inspector to treat all who have to apply
to him with politeness and respect, and to give the required
information unweariedly and with ready good will.
Under no pretext is he allowed either to demand or receive any
payment, as he has a sufficient salary.
And in respect to the other officers:—
(40.) Besides, or in addition to the authorised payment printed in
the tax roll, and determined by the Cemetery Commission as the
sufficient remuneration of the Inspector, Commissioners of
Interments, the bearers and sextons, no one is on the occasion of a
death, either to give money, or to furnish food and drink.
The practice of furnishing crape, gloves, lemons, &c., by the
friends of the dead, is also given up, and the persons engaged in
conducting the interment, must take all the requisites with them,
without asking or receiving any compensation, under pain of instant
dismissal.
§ 170. It is now a prevalent complaint, which, so far as the present
inquiry has proceeded, appears to be a just one, that in the management
of the common grave-yards in this country, human remains are literally
treated as earth, by the sextons and gravediggers, and ignorant men to
whom that management falls. The popular sentiments are offended by such
open practices as that of using an iron borer, to bore down and
ascertain whether the ground is occupied by a coffin, and whether it and
the contents are sufficiently decayed for removal. Were proper
registries kept of all interments and their sites, these, and a
knowledge of natural operations, would render such offensive processes
unnecessary. There appear to be few parochial grounds in which the
remains of any individual of the poorer classes could be found with
certainty, for exhumation, or for judicial or other purposes.
§ 171. In the German regulations cited as examples, the public feeling
is carefully consulted, and the general principle is acted upon, that
the remains, so long as they last, are sacred, and must even be dealt
with as sentient. Year after year the regulations for the care of the
dead in the house of reception preparatory to interment are scrupulously
maintained, on the presumption that a revival may take place, and the
action upon the presumption is not relaxed, although perhaps there is no
actual probability of such an event taking place. Persons are kept in
attendance at the cemetery on this presumption, and with respect to them
it is expressly provided:—
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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