Great Britain -- Social conditions -- 19th century; London (England) -- Description and travel
From the church, we passed out into the churchyard. Here, there lay, at
that time, one hundred and forty-five bodies, that had come ashore from
the wreck. He had buried them, when not identified, in graves containing
four each. He had numbered each body in a register describing it, and
had placed a corresponding number on each coffin, and over each grave.
Identified bodies he had buried singly, in private graves, in another
part of the church-yard. Several bodies had been exhumed from the graves
of four, as relatives had come from a distance and seen his register;
and, when recognised, these have been reburied in private graves, so that
the mourners might erect separate headstones over the remains. In all
such cases he had performed the funeral service a second time, and the
ladies of his house had attended. There had been no offence in the poor
ashes when they were brought again to the light of day; the beneficent
Earth had already absorbed it. The drowned were buried in their clothes.
To supply the great sudden demand for coffins, he had got all the
neighbouring people handy at tools, to work the livelong day, and Sunday
likewise. The coffins were neatly formed;—I had seen two, waiting for
occupants, under the lee of the ruined walls of a stone hut on the beach,
within call of the tent where the Christmas Feast was held. Similarly,
one of the graves for four was lying open and ready, here, in the
churchyard. So much of the scanty space was already devoted to the
wrecked people, that the villagers had begun to express uneasy doubts
whether they themselves could lie in their own ground, with their
forefathers and descendants, by-and-by. The churchyard being but a step
from the clergyman’s dwelling-house, we crossed to the latter; the white
surplice was hanging up near the door ready to be put on at any time, for
a funeral service.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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