Comparing the effects of the practice of retaining the bodies before interment, with the effects of emanations from the dead after interment, when buried in crowded districts, which appears to you to be the most pernicious practice?—When a body is retained in a small room, badly ventilated, and often with a fire in it, the noxious gases evolved in the process of decomposition are presented to persons exposed to them in a highly concentrated form, and if their health is in a certain state favourable to receive the contagion, the effect is immediate. In crowded burial-grounds in which I have never seen a body at a less depth than three feet from the surface (allowing for the artificial building up of the ground to give apparent depth to the grave), the gases having this thickness of earth to penetrate, arrive at the surface in a divided state, and by small quantities at a time mix so gradually with the atmosphere, that it becomes comparatively harmless by dilution, and is scarcely perceptible. In confined situations, where the ground is limited in extent, the long continuance of gradual evolutions of noxious matter would, doubtless, be a cause of debility to surrounding inhabitants; but such instances, I think, are rare. I have made inquiry in the immediate neighbourhood of grave-yards, and I form my opinion from the result. There can be no doubt whatever as to the propriety of burial beyond the limits of towns, and if the corpse of the poor man could be deposited at a distance, without entailing a greater expense upon him, I think it would improve the health of our large towns very much; but I believe the retention of the corpse in the room with the living is fraught with greater danger than that produced by the emanations from even crowded grave-yards. § 27. The condition in which the remains are often found on the occurrence of a death at the eastern part of the metropolis are thus described by Mr. John Liddle, the medical officer of the Whitechapel district of the Whitechapel Union. What is the class of poor persons whom you, as medical officer, are called upon to attend to?—The dock labourers, navigators, bricklayers’ labourers, and the general description of labourers inhabiting Whitechapel and lower Aldgate.