Part 31

In a paper read on the 2nd January last before the Academy of Sciences at Paris, by M. le Baron Charles Dupin, on the increase of savings’ banks and their influence on the Parisian population, some most startling facts are mentioned in the conclusion, showing the deplorable moral condition of a large portion of that population. “Le nombre proportionnel des indigents, au lieu d’augmenter, diminue, ainsi que celui des bâtards, mais avec lenteur déplorable; au commencement de l’époque dont nous résumons les progrès, le peuple de Paris abandonnait chaque année 205 enfants sur 1,000 nouveau nés; il n’en abandonne plus que 120: c’est beaucoup moins, et pourtant c’est _cent vingt_ fois trop. Encore aujourd’hui, le _tiers_ du peuple vit dans le concubinage ou dans le libertinage; un _tiers_ de ses enfants sont bâtards; un _tiers_ de ses morts expirent à l’hôpital ou sur le grabat du pauvre; et ni père, ni mère, ni fils, ni filles, n’ont le cœur, pour dernier tribut humain, de donner un cercueil, un linceul, au cadavre de leurs proches:—du côté des mœurs, voilà Paris, et Paris amélioré!”—It may on this point of comparison be a relief to state, the numbers who die in the workhouses in the British metropolis, do not exceed 4000 for nearly double the population, and that of these, on the average of the last ten years, not more than 293 have been so given up or abandoned as to be applicable to the public service in the schools of anatomy. The total number who are abandoned in all the hospitals of London, for that service, has not, on the average, exceeded 168 out of upwards of 2000 deaths per annum. The total number of subjects requisite for teaching in the schools of anatomy would be about 600. Notwithstanding that the prejudice against dissection has much abated, the full number deemed requisite has never been obtained of late years from all sources. In some instances, persons of education set an example by giving up their own bodies for dissection; in some other instances, the use of the remains is obtained by persuasions, and the promises of more respectful interment afterwards, than could otherwise be obtained. There are actually very few real “abandonments” by relations, the greater proportion of cases being of persons who have outlived near relations, of whom none, after due enquiry, which is always made, can be found. In respect to illegitimate births, it appears from the last parliamentary return of the number of illegitimate children born in the several counties of England (that of Mr. Rickman,) for 1833, that the proportion of illegitimate to legitimate births, was in Middlesex, 1 in 38; and in Surrey 1 in 40. This was most probably an understatement, but, whatever may be the real proportions they are below any comparison with the proportions in Paris. The highest proportion of illegitimate to legitimate births given in the returns, were those of the county of Pembroke, 1 in 8; and Radnor, where it is 1 in 7. It may be important to state for the sake of the example, and in illustration of the principle, as to the comparative economy of sanitary arrangements that this excess of 7,000 miserable deaths and burials per annum in Paris, at the least, might be saved by structural sanitary arrangements, which would prevent the accumulation of human beings in winding streets, (some of which are not more than eight or nine feet wide,) under circumstances which render decency, morality, health, or contentment impossible. The whole excess of deaths, as well as the demoralization that arises from overcrowding, might in all probability be saved even by the last vote of expenditure, five millions sterling, (which, at English prices, of 100_l._ for a tenement for a family, would have provided improved tenements, at improved rents, for fifty thousand labourers’ families) for maintaining the war on the Arabs, or by the interest of the money expended in building the immense wall and fortifications round the dangerous population (kept “desperate,” as Jeremy Taylor expresses it, “by a too quick sense of a constant infelicity,”) which those works encircle in Paris. In a copy of a report of the medical commissioners, appointed to examine the cholera, with which I have been favoured by one distinguished member, M. Villerme, and in which I have found powerful corroborative evidence on the influence of structural arrangements on the health and moral, not to speak of the political, condition of the population; they observe, “Le fléau qui a pesé si cruellement sur la capitale s’est fait sentir d’une manière particulièrement désastreuse dans les quartiers étroits, sales et embarrassés de l’ancien Paris; n’y aurait-il pas lieu de signaler ici quelques améliorations utiles à introduire dans ces localités? Les raisons d’état ont souvent dominé les intérêts matériels des villes; autrefois les voies étroites et tortueuses appliquées même aux rues pouvait faire partie des moyens de défense à l’usage de l’état: aujourd’hui des rues larges et droites deviennent dans l’intérieur des villes un premier élément de sécurité publique autant que d’hygiène; il y a donc double avantage à favoriser dans ces conditions, soit des percements nouveaux, soit l’élargissement des voies actuelles.” They give forcible descriptions of population analogous to that found—happily in less proportions,—in the worst part of our cities, and they also attest, from the examination of the inferior population of that capital: “C’est une vérité de tous les temps, de tous les lieux, une vérité, qu’il faut redire sans cesse parceque sans cesse on l’oublie; il existe entre l’homme et tout ce qui l’entoure, de secrets liens, de mystérieux rapports dont l’influence sur lui est continuelle et profonde. Favorable, cette influence ajoute à ses forces physiques et morales, elle les develope, les conserve; nuisible, alors elle les altère, les anéantit, les tue. Mais son action n’est jamais plus redoutable que lorsqu’elle trouve à s’exercer sur une population entassée, quelle qu’elle soit d’ailleurs, et voilà pourquoi l’on observe dans certains arrondissements une mortalité plus grande; voilà pourquoi le germe des maladies s’y développe plus constamment, pourquoi la vie s’y éteint plus rapidement, enfin pourquoi l’on y compte habituellement un décès sur trente-deux habitants, quand il n’y en a qu’un sur quarante dans les autres.” They also indicate as part of the effects of the noxious physical causes the moral depravity and the predominance of bad passions which impede amendment. “Ces obstacles sont réels, ils ne sauraient être méconnus, mais qui peut douter de les voir s’affaiblir, si d’une part la classe aisée de la population, comprenant mieux les intentions de l’autorité et ses intérêts véritables, se prête plus aisément à l’action des règlements sur la propreté et la salubrité publique, et si d’une autre part l’instruction, pénétrant dans cette portion de la population qui doit une partie de ses vices et de sa misère à l’ignorance, fait naître chez elle, avec des mœurs plus pures, des habitudes plus régulières et plus en harmonie avec l’hygiène publique?” But these representations of the Medical Commissioners of Paris have not been heard by the classes appealed to, and relief is sought by the mode of “giving vent” to the dangerous passions in preference to the superior treatment recommended, of the removal of the physical circumstances by which those passions must continue to be generated. Thus it may be mentioned in illustration of the important principle of the superior economy and efficiency of structural means of prevention, that the expenditure of money on Algiers appears to have been upwards of four millions sterling per annum, during the twelve years of its occupation. The capital sunk on the permanent structural arrangements for supplying London with water being about three millions and a half, it may be safely alleged that one year’s expenditure on Algiers would have sufficed for the structural arrangements for a supply of water for the cleansing of every room, and house, and street in Paris; or on the scale of the expense of the works completed for supplying Toulouse with water, one year’s expenditure on Algiers would have sufficed to supply one hundred and fifty towns of the same size as Toulouse with the like means of healthful, and thence of moral improvement; or such a sum would have sufficed to have effected for ever the “percements et enlargissements des voies actuelles,” and thence to have advanced the health and achieved the comparative security of four or five such cities as Lyons. One year’s cost of any one regiment maintained in the war on the Arabs would suffice to build and endow a school, or to have constructed between one and two miles of permanent railway. The total amount of capital so applied exceeds nearly by one-fourth the amount expended on the existing railroads in Great Britain. It may be confidently averred that the cost of the forts detaches, or _enceintes-continues_, said to be on a reduced scale upwards of ten millions sterling, would, if properly directed, with the accessaries of moral appliances in addition to such physical means as those indicated by the officers of public health, suffice within the period of the living generation, to renovate the physical and moral condition of the great mass of the population in the interior of that capital.

Footnote 27:

Vide Appendix—Explanations of the District Mortuary Returns.

Footnote 28:

_Vide_ other instances cited in the Annales d’Hygiene.—Number 59, p. 153 to 159.

Footnote 29:

Vide Regulations at Franckfort and Munich, Appendix.

Footnote 30:

Vide Appendix for the list of burial places returned, and a view of the spaces requisite on the preceding scale, § 145, and the relative space occupied as burial ground by the chief religious denominations.

Footnote 31:

It is due to the medical profession to state, that they have always discountenanced as injurious the practice of entombment in vaults under churches. A Parisian physician had the following epitaph to his memory:—

“Simon Pierre, vir pius et probus Hic sub dio sepeliri voluit Ne mortuus cuiquam noceret Qui vivus omnibus profuerat.”

At Louvain, there is the tomb of a celebrated anatomist, with the following:—

“Philippus Verhagen, Med. Dr. et prof. Partem sui materialem Hic in cœmeterio condi voluit, Ne templum dehonestaret Aut nocivis halitibus inficeret.”

Footnote 32:

Perpetuities in burial grounds may be said to have been declared illegal by Lord Stowell’s decision in the case of Gilbert v. the Churchwardens of St. Andrew’s, Holborn, on the use of iron coffins. His lordship, in his judgment in that case, remarked, that “All contrivances that, whether intentionally or not, prolong the time of dissolution beyond the period at which the common local understanding and usage have fixed it, is an act of injustice, unless compensated in some other way.”—Haggard’s Rep. v. 2, p. 353. _Vide_ statement of the principle of this decision, in the extracts from the judgment given in the Appendix, No. 12.

Footnote 33:

The neglect of the cemeteries at Paris, and especially of those portions dedicated to the interment of the poorer classes, has been the subject of public complaint, and means are now being taken to redress them. A friend, who aided me with some inquiries in respect to them, states,—

The English tourist in visiting Père la Chaise is attracted by splendid monuments in the midst of cypress trees, and little gardens filled with flowers planted round a majority of the tombs; but the graves of the humbler classes lie beyond these, and to them the stranger is seldom conducted. The contrast is painful. When I last visited Père la Chaise, on a fine day in November, and after a week of unusually fine weather for the season, I found the paths quite impracticable in the poorer quarter of the cemetery, and as I watched a man, in the usual blouse dress worn by the working class, picking his way through the mud to lead his little boy to pray over the grave of his mother, I could but deplore the economy of an administration which had neglected to provide, at least, a dry gravel path for the humble and pious mourner.

Footnote 34:

Vide Appendix for an exemplification of the excess of deaths and funerals, and other losses incurred by setting aside Sir Christopher Wren’s plan for the rebuilding of the city of London.

Footnote 35:

One of the twelve tables was in these words, “_Hominem mortuum in urbe ne sepelito neve urito_.” Cicero, in one of his epistles, Epist. ad Div. iv. 12, in which he describes the assassination of his friend M. Marcellus, at Athens, mentions that he had been unable to obtain permission of the Athenians that the body should be buried in the city; they said that such permission was inadmissible on religious grounds, and that it never had been granted to any one.

Footnote 36:

Bingham’s Christian Antiquities, b. xxiii. ch. 1, s. 2.

Footnote 37:

_Vide_ Leviticus, chap. xiv., verse 33 to 48, for early sanitary measures of purification.

Footnote 38:

It is perhaps an important fact, that the great majority of burials in some burial-grounds are stated by the undertakers who perform them to be burials of persons who are not subscribing members of the congregations who are reputed to be the owners of the grounds, and whilst only one out of three of the parishioners of many parishes choose burial in the ground belonging to their parish church, the solemnization of the marriage ceremony being generally satisfactory to the population, and all of them having the option to have the marriage solemnized with or without the religious ceremony, only one out of twenty-four in the metropolis prefer solemnization elsewhere than at the established church. From the Registrar General’s Report it appears that, in 1839, out of 18,648 marriages celebrated in the metropolis, only 772 were not solemnized in the established church; and out of 124,329 marriages performed that year in the whole of England and Wales, only 7,311 were performed out of the established church.

Footnote 39:

Bingham observes that St. Chrysostom speaks against those who use excessive mourning at funerals, showing them the incongruity of that with this psalmody of the church, and exposing them at the same time to the ridicule of the Gentiles. For what said they are these men that talk so finely and philosophically about the resurrection? Yes, indeed! But their actions do not agree with their doctrine. For whilst they profess in words the belief of a resurrection, in their deeds they act more like men that despair of it. If they were really persuaded that their dead were gone to a better life, they would not so lament. “Therefore,” says Chrysostom, “let us be ashamed to carry out our dead after this manner. For our psalmody, and prayers, and solemn meeting of fathers, and such a multitude of brethren, is not that thou shouldst weep and lament, and be angry at God, but give him thanks for taking a deceased brother to himself.” St. Jerome also frequently speaks of this psalmody as one of the chief parts of their funeral pomp. He says at the funeral of the Lady Paula at Bethlehem, which was attended with great concourse of bishops and clergy and people of Palestine, there was no howling or lamenting as used to be among the men of this world, but singing of psalms in Greek, Latin, and Syriac (because there were people of different languages present) at the procession of her body to the grave.” “And being so general and decent a practice, it was a grievance to any one to be denied the privilege of it. Victor Uticensis, upon this account, complains of the inhuman cruelty of one of the kings of the Vandals. Who can bear, says he, to think of it without tears, when he calls to mind how he commanded the bodies of our dead to be carried in silence without the solemnity of the usual hymns to the grave.” (Vol. vii. 335.)

Footnote 40:

Dr. Southwood Smith’s Report, Poor Law Commissioners’ Fifth Annual Report, Appendix, p. 160.

Footnote 41:

Whosoever may feel inclined not to attach much weight to infantile mortality on any such theory as that the “pressure of population” is thereby diminished, may be requested to consider the evidence of the fallacy, and proof that in the very districts where such mortality is the greatest, so is the amount of births. Vide General Sanitary Report, Note, p. 175; Tables, p. 182 and 183, et seq.; and the subsequent corroborative evidence adduced in connexion with the district returns of the proportions of deaths and funerals given in the Appendix to this Report—Appendix.

Footnote 42:

Vide on the subject of defective registration of the causes of deaths: a letter to the Registrar-general from Mr. Baker, coroner to Middlesex, printed in the Minutes of Evidence on the practice of coroners, given before a Select Committee of the House of Commons, p. 128 of paper 549, Sess. 1840.

APPENDIX.

No. 1. REGULATIONS FOR PUBLIC INTERMENT AT FRANCKFORT, PASSED 1829.

The transference of the cemetery to the outside of the town required the herewith enacted abolition of the ancient mode and custom of interring the dead, and the substitution of another and more suitable arrangement. For this purpose the following regulations for Sachsenhausen [the suburbs of Franckfort], as well as Franckfort, are published for general observance:—

SECTION I.

(1.) The mixed Church and School Commission has the chief superintendence of all church, cemetery, and interment affairs.

The regulation of all matters relating to interments is conferred upon the legally-appointed Church and Cemetery Commission.

All officers employed in connection with interments are placed under the control of the said Commission, and it will be its duty to report yearly to the mixed Church and School Commission on the expenses and receipts, and the general progress of the institution.

(2.) The superintendence of the cemetery, of the sextons in their various employments, and of the house of reception, is given to an inspector, whose duties are hereafter described in the 2nd section.

(3.) For the performance of all the necessary arrangements preceding the interment, commissaries of interments are appointed to take the place of the so-called undertakers. These commissaries have to arrange everything connected with the funeral, and are responsible for the proper fulfilment of all the regulations given in their instructions.

(4.) In order to prevent the great expense which was formerly occasioned by the attendance with the dead to the grave, bearers shall be appointed who shall attend to the cemetery all funerals, without distinction of rank or condition.

To these bearers shall be given assistants, who shall be equally under the control of the interment commissaries.

(5.) A sufficient number of sextons and assistants shall be appointed to form the graves and assist at the interment.

(6.) There are four classes of funerals and interments. Every house of mourning may choose the class of funeral on paying the sum fixed for that class to the Church and Cemetery Commission.

All Christian interments, without distinction, can be conducted only according to these interment regulations. It remains open to the friends of the dead to attend the burial either in carriage or on foot; but this must be without expense to the house of mourning. The funerals of the town guards and of the soldiers of the line remain the same, but are only to cost a fixed sum.

If it be the wish of a family, the clergyman may attend the funeral, and he may perform a service either at the side of the grave, or, in case of bad weather, in the house of reception.

All interments whatsoever, except in extraordinary cases, where the police determines the time, must take place early—in summer before nine, in winter before eleven o’clock, in the morning.

The blowing of trumpets from the steeples, the attendance of women with napkins, the bearings of crosses, the attendance of the old-fashioned mourning coach, and also the use of the so-called “chariot of Heaven,” and the following of young handicraftsmen, which generally were an immense expense, are all given up. New carriages of a simpler and more respectable form, and such as are better suited to the object and to the greater distance of the cemetery from the town, shall be built.

The bodies of adults who are taken direct from the house of mourning to the grave, must be borne in the funeral carriage to the gate of the cemetery, where the bearers will convey the coffin to the grave.

The dead who have been placed in the house of reception must be borne in the same manner to the grave.

In exceptional cases, the dead may be borne to the grave by other persons; but this is only allowed when there is any particular cause of sympathy with the dead, or with the surviving family, and it must be free of all expense.

(7.) A complete and exact plan of the new cemetery shall be prepared, and all the graves shall be marked upon it.

Every place of interment must be numbered, which number must be engraved upon the plan as soon as it is taken.

The actuary of the Cemetery Commission shall keep a book, in which is entered, along with the number of the grave, the rank, age, name, and surname of the deceased.

(8.) Those who possess family vaults, family graves, or monuments, receive from the Cemetery Commission a document attesting their right, and they must also follow the regulations which are contained in it.

(9.) No grave can be opened till after the lapse of 20 years.

Hence, if a family grave-plot is full, and the oldest grave has not been closed 20 years on the occurrence of another death in the family, if it cannot be placed in the grave-plot of any other relative, it must be interred in the general interment ground, in the regular order and course.

(10.) The printed table of the cost of interment determines what sum is to be paid for funerals to the Church and Cemetery Commission.

SECTION II.—_The duties of the Cemetery Inspector._

(11.) He is chosen by the Church and Cemetery Commission, and the appointment is confirmed by the mixed Church and School Commission.

In case the latter commission should find reason to delay the ratification, the grounds of the delay are to be reported to the senate, which will then order what is requisite.

The oath of the Cemetery Inspector must be taken before the younger _Herr Bürgermeister_, but his dismissal must be conducted in the same manner as his appointment.

He must be examined by the Sanitary Board, and must be found by them to be qualified. He must also be a burgher.

The Cemetery Inspector retains his situation during good behaviour, exact obedience to the interment regulations, and all other matters contained in his instructions.

(12.) The sextons and their assistants are under the control of the Cemetery Inspector.

He has to enforce the regulation that all those employed in the solemnities of funerals, or in the house of mourning, shall appear in good black clothes, and that no disorder, negligence, or defect, is permitted in the cemetery.