“Those who have visited burying grounds in some parts of the South of England are well aware that tombs made in the shape of ‘waiting rooms’ are largely in vogue with the well-to-do classes. One in a little church-yard in Sussex was elegantly fitted up. The coffins were placed on one side of the well-lighted vault, while on the opposite side was a couch, chairs, and a table, together with books. The relatives of the deceased--eccentric they may have been, we are not prepared to say--visited the vault, access to which was gained by a flight of steps, and there passed much of their time in reading, the ladies doing needle work. But this sort of thing is only for the rich. The poor must be protected from being buried alive by other and more economical methods--namely, by stricter attention to the actual and unmistakable evidences of death, and by careful registration on medical certificates only.” It would appear by the following announcement, that an effort is being made to supply one of the several properly fitted mortuaries needed in the French capital:-- “The _Pall Mall Gazette_ of September 21, 1895, announces a decided novelty in the way of limited liability companies--the Mortuary Waiting-room Company, which, it says, is on the point of being floated in the French capital. Our contemporary says that the amount for subscription is stated to be £20,000, and dividends at the rate of at least 100 per cent. may, it is claimed, be confidently looked for. The company undertake to provide separate waiting-rooms, of two classes, in a large mortuary building. The alleged corpse will be comfortably deposited there upon a couch, and carefully looked after till the fact that it is a corpse shall have been established beyond question. The waiting-rooms will be tastefully decorated, with everything about them to welcome the revived tenant agreeably back to life. It is interesting to hear that no shareholder’s heirs will be allowed to visit him.” Some sanitarians and funeral reformers urge with much reason that the presence of the dead should not be allowed to endanger the health of the living, and recommend that if death has occurred from infectious disease, the body should be covered with charcoal and conveyed at once to a mortuary chamber; and others advise early burials for all as soon as possible. If, however, this volume has not demonstrated the danger of such early burials, except where decay of the earthly vesture is visible, it will have been written in vain. The following recommendation from a well-known physician and surgeon appears in _London_, p. 613, September 27, 1894:-- “Coroners’ Courts and Mortuaries,” a paper read at the Hygiene Congress at Buda Pesth, by W. J. Collins, M.D., M.S., B.Sc., D.P.H. (Lond.), L.C.C.