§ 39. If the returns and the statements of witnesses acquainted with the crowded districts be correct, that four out of five families of the labouring classes have each but one room, then every unit of upwards of 20,000 deaths per annum which occur in the metropolis, every unit of 4600 deaths of the labouring classes which occur annually at Liverpool, must be taken as representing a horrible scene of the retention of the corpse amidst the family in the manner described in the testimony of those who have witnessed it;—and every unit of some 4000 deaths from epidemics in the metropolis, and every third or fourth recorded death in other towns, and even in crowded villages, represents a distressing scene, and moreover a case of peculiar danger and probable permanent injury to the survivors amongst whom it takes place. Great, however, as may be the physical evils to them, the evidence of the mental pain and moral evil generally attendant on the practice of the long retention of the body in the rooms in use and amidst the living, though only noticed incidentally, is yet more deplorable. § 40. The duty which attaches to male relations, or which a benevolent pastor, if there were the accommodation, would exercise on the occurrence of the calamity of death to any member of a family, is to remove the sensitive and the weakly from the spectacle, which is a perpetual stimulus to excessive grief, and commonly a source of painful associations and visible images of the changes wrought in death, to haunt the imagination in after-life. When the dissolution has taken place under circumstances such as those described, it is not a few minutes’ look after the last duties are performed and the body is composed in death and left in repose, that is given to this class of survivors, but the spectacle is protracted hour after hour through the day and night, and day after day, and night after night, thus aggravating the mental pains under varied circumstances, and increasing the dangers of permanent bodily injury. The sufferings of the survivors, especially of the widow of the labouring classes, are often protracted to a fatal extent. To the very young children, the greatest danger is of infection in cases of deaths from contagious and infectious disease. To the elder children and members of the family and inmates, the moral evil created by the retention of the body in their presence beyond the short term during which sorrow and depression of spirits may be said to be natural to them is, that familiarity soon succeeds, and respect disappears. These consequences are revealed by the frequency of the statements of witnesses, that the deaths of children immediately following, of the same disease of which the parent had died, had been accounted for by “the doctor,” or the neighbours, in the probability that the child had caught the disease by touching the corpse or the coffin, whilst playing about the room in the absence of the mother. Dr.