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INTRAMURAL BURIAL.
ОглавлениеIV. The subject of intramural burial is the next on which I have to report, as affecting the health of the City.
In compliance with an order of the Health Committee, I have examined as fully as circumstances would allow into the requirements of the City of London in respect of burial accommodation, and the result of my inquiry obliges me to express my conviction, that the City can no longer with safety or propriety be allowed to furnish intramural interment to its dead.
In all those larger parochial burying-grounds where the maintenance of a right to bury can be considered important,—in all such, and in most others, too, the soil is saturated and super-saturated with animal matter undergoing slow decomposition. There are, indeed, few of the older burial-grounds of the City where the soil does not rise many feet above its original level, testifying to the large amount of animal matter which rots beneath the surface. The vaults beneath churches are, in many instances, similarly overloaded with materials of putrefaction, and the atmosphere, which should be kept pure, and without admixture for the living, is hourly tainted with the fœtid emanations of the dead. For the most part, houses are seen to rise on all sides in immediate contiguity to the burial-ground, forbidding the possibility of even such ventilation as might diminish the evil; and the inhabitants of such houses complain bitterly, as they well may, of the inconvenience which they suffer from this confined and noxious atmosphere.
With respect to burial in vaults, which prevails to a very great and dangerous extent in this City, I may observe that, among persons who are ill-informed on the subject, there exist erroneous notions as to the preservation of bodies under these circumstances. They are supposed, from the complete closure of their coffins, to remain unchanged for ages, like the embalmed bodies of Egypt and Peru; or at least—if perhaps they undergo some interior and invisible change (as the chrysalis within its sheath) that there is no interference with the general arrangement, no breach in the compactness of the envelope. Nothing can be less correct than this supposition.
It is unnecessary that I should detail to you the process of decay, as it occurs within the charnel-house; nor need I inquire for your information whether indeed it be true, as alleged, that part of the duty of a sexton consists in tapping the recent coffins, so as to facilitate the escape of gases which otherwise would detonate from their confinement. It is sufficient to state, that—whether such be or be not the duty of the functionary in question, the time certainly comes, sooner or later, when every corpse buried in the vault of a church spreads the products of its decomposition through the air as freely as though no shell had enclosed it. It is matter of the utmost notoriety that, under all ordinary conditions of vault-sepulture, the wooden case of the coffin speedily decays and crumbles, while the interior leaden one, bending with the pressure of whatever mass may be above it (or often with its own weight) yields, bulges, and bursts, as surely as would a paper hat-box under the weight of a laden portmanteau.
If the accuracy of this description be doubted, let inquiry be made on a large scale after the coffins of 40 years back[21]—let it be seen how many will appear! If, on the contrary, its accuracy be granted, then I apprehend nothing further need be urged, to establish the importance of abolishing a system which maintains on so large a scale the open putrefaction of human remains within places of frequent resort, and in the midst of populous habitations.
[21] Perhaps the expressions in my text are somewhat too general; not indeed as to the fact of the coffins ultimately giving vent to their fœtid contents (which is the real point at issue) but as to the time within which this occurs. In the dryer and better kept vaults, a longer period certainly elapses than that suggested; in the worse, probably a shorter one. The sooner or later is of little practical importance: but, on re-perusing my Report, I think it right to add this qualification.—J. S., 1854.
It is a very serious matter for consideration, that close beneath the feet of those who attend the services of their church, there often lies an almost solid pile of decomposing human remains, co-extensive with the area of the building, heaped as high as the vaulting will permit, and generally (as I have shown) but very partially confined. And if it be the case, as perhaps it may be, that the frequenters of the place of worship do not complain of any vitiation of their atmosphere, or perhaps do not experience it, not the less is it true that such a vitiation occurs, and—whether to the special detriment of the congregation or not, contributes to the overladen putrefactiveness of our London atmosphere.
In respect of such vaults, I do not consider that the mere cessation of burial in them will be sufficient; seeing that at the present moment they contain amongst them many thousand coffins, as yet tenanted by the materials of decomposition; and year after year, if left in their present state, these will be poisoning the air with successive instalments of their progressive decay. It seems to me quite indispensable that some comprehensive measure should be undertaken, for abolishing at once and for ever all burial within the City of London. Conjointly with the general application to Parliament, for prohibition of further intramural sepulture, I would recommend that authority be obtained by the City for its several parishes to procure the decent removal to extramural cemeteries of such coffins as already occupy their vaults; or, failing this measure, I would recommend that all coffins now lying within vaults, be walled up in their present resting-places with uniform impermeable masonry. For very obvious reasons, I should prefer the former plan to the latter.[22]
[22] Probably the most successful attempt at hermetical enclosure of organic matters would not reach beyond effecting a postponement of their diffusion through the atmosphere. The true principles for burial of the dead lie rather in recognising their decomposition as inevitable, and in providing only lest it be offensive or injurious to the living. This is best attained by interment in a well-chosen soil, at a depth proportioned to the qualities of the ground; with no pretence of everlasting coffins and impenetrable cerements; but with ample vegetation above, to relieve the upper earth from whatever products of decay may mount and mingle there; and especially with thorough drainage below, so that down-currents of air and rainfall may freely traverse the putrefactive strata, ventilating and washing the soil, and diffusing its organic contents through deeper levels, till their oxidation is complete and their new inodorous combinations are discharged in watery solution.—J. S., 1854.
Intramural burial is an evil, no doubt, that varies in its intensity according to the numbers interred; becoming appreciable in its effects on health, so far as the rough measure of statistics can inform us, only when many interments occur annually, or when ground is disturbed wherein much animal matter had previously been left to decay. But, be the evil large or little in any particular case, evil undoubtedly it is in all, and an unmitigated evil.
The atmosphere in which epidemic and infectious diseases most readily diffuse their poison and multiply their victims is one, as I have already often stated, in which organic matters are undergoing decomposition. Whence these may be derived signifies little. Whether the matter passing into decay be an accumulation of soaking straw and cabbage leaves in some miserable cellar, or the garbage of a slaughter-house, or an overflowing cesspool, or dead dogs floated at high water into the mouth of a sewer, or stinking fish thrown overboard in Billingsgate-dock, or the remains of human corpses undergoing their last chemical changes in consecrated earth, the previous history of the decomposed material is of no moment whatever. The pathologist knows no difference of operation between one decaying substance and another; so soon as he recognises organic matter undergoing decomposition, so soon he recognises the most fertile soil for the increase of epidemic diseases; and I may state with certainty, that there are many churchyards in the City of London where every spadeful of soil turned up in burial sensibly adds to the amount of animal decomposition which advances too often inevitably around us.
Nor can I refrain from adding, as a matter claiming attention, that, in the performance of intramural interment, there constantly occur disgusting incidents dependent on overcrowdedness of the burial-ground; incidents which convert the extremest solemnity of religion into an occasion for sickness or horror; perhaps mingling with the ritual of the Church some clamour of gravediggers who have mis-calculated their space; perhaps diffusing amidst the mourners some nauseous evidence and conviction, that a prior tenant of the tomb has been prematurely displaced, or that the spade has impatiently anticipated the slower dismembering of decay. Cases of this nature are fresh in the memory of the public; cases of extreme nuisance and brutal desecration in place of decent and solemn interment; and it is unnecessary that I should revive the record of transactions inconsistent with even the dawn of civilisation.[23]
[23] It happened that during the few months preceding the presentation of this Report, there had occurred some of the most flagrant and disgusting illustrations of the evils adverted to.—J. S., 1854.
From the circumstances which I have mentioned, it can hardly fail to appear most desirable to you, that the use of some spacious and open cemetery at a distance from the City should be substituted for the present system of intramural interment, and the urgency of this requirement will be demonstrated all the more cogently, when it is remembered that the annual amount of mortality in the City averages above 3000, and that under the present arrangements every dead body buried within our walls receives its accommodation at the expense of the living, and to their great detriment.
In recommending that consideration be given, at as early a period as possible, to the means for establishing some sufficient municipal cemetery (a consideration which, for obvious reasons, must be prior to any Parliamentary proceedings for the prohibition of intramural interments) there are three points to which, even now, I think it advisable to advert, as essential to the admissibility of such a plan. I would submit, first, that the site of any such cemetery must be sufficiently remote from the metropolis to obviate any repetition of the present injury to a resident population; and I hardly know how this purpose can be attained, without going some distance beyond the immediate suburbs of London as indicated by the Bills of Mortality:—secondly, that the space required for the proper inhumation of the dead of the City of London[24] would be not less than 54 acres; and, thirdly, I would suggest that the charter of such an establishment ought to contain provisions against the erection of houses within a certain distance of the burial-ground, so that this may at all times and under all circumstances be surrounded, exterior to its wall, by a considerable belt of land totally devoid of resident population. The absence of such a provision as the last would very soon lead to the extramural cemetery becoming intramuralised by the growth of a new suburb around it, and would again evince, by new and unnecessary illustrations, how incompatible with each other are the Dead and the Living as tenants of one locality.
