Reports Relating to the Sanitary Condition of the City of LondonSimon, John
History
Reports Relating to the Sanitary Condition of the City of London
Simon, John
Cemeteries -- England -- London; Mortality -- Statistics; Sanitation -- England -- London
Arrangements to the above effect would be much simplified in working,
and their general adoption much promoted, if all disbursements for
funeral tickets, and for such other facilitations of conveyance as I
have adverted to, were made by your Burial-Board,--their cost to be
included in an uniform Cemetery fee; so that the friends of the
deceased, after paying for his grave, should, without further payment,
be entitled, if they desired it, to claim conveyance for his coffin from
home to the Cemetery, and for themselves (in stated number) by a funeral
ticket, at least for the railway portion of their transit. Thus to have
one single and inclusive price for all that belongs to the new
system--for the extramural grave, namely, and for conveyance thereto,
would enable your Burial-Board to maintain its total cost at a level
within reach of the poorer classes, and probably below that of existing
prices.
In addition to what I have here suggested, there are many other steps
which might be taken, if unforeseen circumstances should render them
necessary, to diminish the pressure of new burial-charges on the poor.
Time will develop, better than one can foretell, the exact operation of
our reformed system; and for such inconveniences as it may bring, you
will have no difficulty, I think, in finding appropriate cures. Nor
could it be otherwise than easy, if you thought it desirable, to extend
to the comparatively few funerals of wealthier classes which occur from
within the City of London, those same arrangements for facilitating
conveyance, which I have here deemed it requisite to consider only in
their relation to the poor.
For the latter, it has seemed indispensable that your scheme should
provide assistance, equivalent at least to the difficulty which its
adoption must occasion them. Beyond this, I believe you would wish to
disturb as little as possible the ordinary routine of interment; and I
have aimed, therefore, at suggesting assistance only in such kind, and
in such degree, as may least interfere with any interests of trade,
least derange any established habits, least offend any prejudices of the
people.
* * * * *
III. There is no part of the subject which I have considered with more
anxiety than that which relates to delays of interment, and to the
prolonged keeping of dead bodies in the rooms of their living kindred.
Evils arising in this source are unknown to the rich. Soldered in its
leaden coffin, on tressels in some separate and spacious room, a corpse
may await the convenience of survivors with little detriment to their
atmosphere.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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