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
That inasmuch as there appear to be no cases in which the emanations
from human remains in an advanced stage of decomposition are not of a
deleterious nature, so there is no case in which the liability to danger
should be incurred either by interment (or by entombment in vaults,
which is the most dangerous) amidst the dwellings of the living, it
being established as a general conclusion in respect to the physical
circumstances of interment, from which no adequate grounds of exception
have been established;—
That all interments in towns, where bodies decompose, contribute to the
mass of atmospheric impurity which is injurious to the public health.
_Injuries to the Health of Survivors occasioned by the delay of
Interments._
In order to understand the state of feeling of the labouring classes,
and the general influence upon them, and even the effects on their
health, of the practice of interment, it will be necessary to submit for
consideration those circumstances which immediately precede the
interment, namely, the most common circumstances of the death.
§ 24. In a large proportion of cases in the metropolis, and in some of
the manufacturing districts, one room serves for one family of the
labouring classes: it is their bed-room, their kitchen, their washhouse,
their sitting room, their dining room; and, when they do not follow any
out-door occupation, it is frequently their work room and their shop. In
this one room they are born, and live, and sleep, and die amidst, the
other inmates.
§ 25. Their common condition in large towns has been developed by
various inquiries, more completely than by the census. As an instance,
the results may be given of an inquiry lately made, at the instance and
expense of Lord Sandon, by Mr. Weld, the secretary of the Statistical
Society, as to the condition of the working classes resident in the
inner ward of St. George’s, Hanover Square, and in the immediate
vicinity of some of the most opulent residences in the metropolis. It
appeared that 1465 families of the labouring classes had for their
residence 2175 rooms, and 2510 beds. The distribution of rooms and beds
was as follows:—
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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