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
The people amongst whom I practise generally occupy one room where
they live in, and a bed-room above; but I have known many instances
of a family, say a man, his wife, and from three to six children,
having only one bed and one apartment for all purposes. But a great
many dwellings there consist of only one room, and in many of the
lodging-houses I have seen five or six beds in one small room, in
which it has been acknowledged that from 12 to 14 persons have
passed the night, and the air has been so bad that I have been
compelled to stand at the window whilst visiting the patient.
He also states, that—
He has seen many deaths take place in such houses when the body
remains in the bed where it died; and I have known it remain two or
three nights before interment. In Irish cases they keep them longer.
I have seen a child lie in a down-stairs room in a corner, dead of
small-pox, and another dying, and the house full of lodgers eating
their meals. The length of time that a corpse is kept varies very
much according to the disposition of the relatives and the means of
procuring a burial, as there are no restrictions as to the length of
time bodies are to be kept.
I have observed, that in cases of small-pox disease frequently
follows in rapid succession on different members of the same family.
I have frequently known cases of a low typhoid character arise where
many persons sleep in the same room: the addition of a death from
any such cause of course increases the danger to the living.
In Manchester and in several northern districts, it appears that by
custom the corpse seldom remains unburied more than three or four days,
but during that time it remains in the crowded rooms of the living of
the labouring classes. Every day’s retention of the corpse is to be
considered an aggravation of the evil; but the evidence is to be borne
in mind that the miasma from the dead is more dangerous immediately
after death, or during the first and second day, than towards the end of
the week. In a proportion of cases decomposition has commenced before
the vital functions have ceased; immediately after death decomposition
often proceeds with excessive rapidity in the crowded rooms, which have
then commonly larger fires than usual.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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