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
To these bearers shall be given assistants, who shall be equally under
the control of the interment commissaries.
(5.) A sufficient number of sextons and assistants shall be appointed to
form the graves and assist at the interment.
(6.) There are four classes of funerals and interments. Every house of
mourning may choose the class of funeral on paying the sum fixed for
that class to the Church and Cemetery Commission.
All Christian interments, without distinction, can be conducted only
according to these interment regulations. It remains open to the friends
of the dead to attend the burial either in carriage or on foot; but this
must be without expense to the house of mourning. The funerals of the
town guards and of the soldiers of the line remain the same, but are
only to cost a fixed sum.
If it be the wish of a family, the clergyman may attend the funeral, and
he may perform a service either at the side of the grave, or, in case of
bad weather, in the house of reception.
All interments whatsoever, except in extraordinary cases, where the
police determines the time, must take place early—in summer before nine,
in winter before eleven o’clock, in the morning.
The blowing of trumpets from the steeples, the attendance of women with
napkins, the bearings of crosses, the attendance of the old-fashioned
mourning coach, and also the use of the so-called “chariot of Heaven,”
and the following of young handicraftsmen, which generally were an
immense expense, are all given up. New carriages of a simpler and more
respectable form, and such as are better suited to the object and to the
greater distance of the cemetery from the town, shall be built.
The bodies of adults who are taken direct from the house of mourning to
the grave, must be borne in the funeral carriage to the gate of the
cemetery, where the bearers will convey the coffin to the grave.
The dead who have been placed in the house of reception must be borne in
the same manner to the grave.
In exceptional cases, the dead may be borne to the grave by other
persons; but this is only allowed when there is any particular cause of
sympathy with the dead, or with the surviving family, and it must be
free of all expense.
(7.) A complete and exact plan of the new cemetery shall be prepared,
and all the graves shall be marked upon it.
Every place of interment must be numbered, which number must be engraved
upon the plan as soon as it is taken.
The actuary of the Cemetery Commission shall keep a book, in which is
entered, along with the number of the grave, the rank, age, name, and
surname of the deceased.
(8.) Those who possess family vaults, family graves, or monuments,
receive from the Cemetery Commission a document attesting their right,
and they must also follow the regulations which are contained in it.
(9.) No grave can be opened till after the lapse of 20 years.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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