Part 26

With respect to the ordinary arrangement of your ground for public purposes, and the distribution of burials therein, you may estimate that, taking one grave with another, and allowing for the marginal spaces of each, the average size of a grave will be twenty-eight square feet. For illustration’s sake, I will suppose the ground to be laid out in plots--say the third of an acre in extent. Each such plot would contain four hundred single graves, mixed adult and young, with what foot-paths might be requisite for approaching them. The City mortality of twenty years (assuming this period to be the ordinary leasehold of a grave) might be reckoned at sixty-four thousand deaths; for the accommodation of which number there would be wanted one hundred and sixty plots of the above-mentioned size--say fifty-four acres of ground. I would propose that throughout each line of every such space, adult and infant graves should, as far as possible, lie alternately; and that, instead of filling all the graves together at stated periods (say every twenty years) half of them, taken alternately, should be filled at each semi-period--say every ten years. By this arrangement, half the complement of burials would take place in each plot, at a time when the decomposition of the preceding half-complement had finished itself, so far as putrefaction is concerned; and whatever contamination of air might be liable to occur under the best-considered sanitary arrangement, would certainly be reduced to the lowest conceivable amount. Or, as an alternative equal to this arrangement for the purposes of health, you might adopt the plan of filling in immediate succession all the burial-spaces of a plot; provided the surface could then at once be devoted to the growth of appropriate vegetation.

Fifty-four acres being then the quantity of ground which would suffice, on sound principles, for the ordinary interment of your entire annual mortality during a period of twenty years; at the expiration of which time (assuming your soil to be appropriate) one may reasonably expect that the ground will admit of a second similar occupation; and so forth in perpetuity: it will be requisite to add a considerable allowance of space for other accessory purposes.

Thus, room would be required for the various buildings that belong to the institution of a Cemetery: partly for the dwelling of such officers as you may require to be there resident, partly for the temporary accommodation of persons resorting thither for the burial of their friends, partly for the religious services of different congregations.[95]

[95] The distinction of the ground into a consecrated and an unconsecrated portion, as required by the Act of Parliament, will require no addition to its total area; and therefore the proportion which these parts should bear to one another need not now be discussed.

Something likewise must be added for such mainways as will be wanted along various lines of the burial-ground, for the carriage traffic which belongs to funeral ceremonies among the richer classes of society, and for other like purposes.

Further, I dare say you would think it inexpedient that your Cemetery should be entirely without decoration and elegance. Fifty-four acres of head-and-foot stones, or the same extent of bare mounds, might vulgarise even the aspect of death. By the judicious introduction of trees and turf and shrubs, of bends and undulations, you would probably seek to interrupt the long perspective of so many tombs, and, by these artificial resources of planning and planting, to enhance the native solemnity of the spot. Amid such ornamental portions of your ground might be scattered irregularly the various sites of exceptional interment,--family graves, personal graves in perpetuity, long leasehold graves, and the like; and the interposition of these large portions of comparatively un-occupied soil, with as much appropriate vegetation as could conveniently be introduced, might not only allow much tasteful decoration of the ground, but would likewise conduce to the healthful accomplishment of those purposes for which the Cemetery is established.

In respect of these and many other details of your plan, you will doubtless be guided by the direct and responsible advice of men specially skilled in the subject. I have, therefore, confined myself to the mention of those points which may determine your judgment merely as to the quantity of land required for your purpose.

Without offering any opinion as to the possible claims of non-resident parishioners, on which liability I would again suggest your obtaining a legal opinion; and without pretending to advise what allowance should be made for purely decorative purposes; I may yet conclude from such information as I have collected, that, with a hundred acres of suitable soil at your disposal, you would be amply able to meet all legitimate burial-requirements of your population in perpetuity, and would likewise (for many years at least) have a considerable excess which might be applied to the uses of ornamental arrangement.

From what I have said on the influence of soil, in determining the period after which burying-grounds may be resumed for a second series of interments, it will be obvious to you that this condition is an important element in deciding the sufficiency of any area for given burial purposes. And the site of your Cemetery might be such as somewhat to lessen, or greatly to increase, the suggested extent of your estimate. It would be fruitless, however, now to detain you with any endeavour to trace the several influences which different soils exert over animal decay. Such remarks, at the present time, could only be addressed to hypothetical cases, or stated in the most general form. Therefore, instead of attempting this anticipative argument on the subject, I hold myself ready to report to you, specifically, on the suitableness of whatever soil may be proposed to you for the purposes of your Cemetery.[96]

[96] For similar reasons, I defer any discussion of the depth at which bodies may most properly be deposited in the ground. The thickness of superjacent soil, which will deodorise, before their escape, the gaseous products of any given decomposing mass, or which will retain these gases more or less permanently in combination, varies most importantly with certain chemical and mechanical qualities of the soil: and on these it would be useless to dwell by anticipation. For accurate results, it may be necessary, after the selection of a site and during its preparation, to institute experiments on the subject.

There is yet one other consideration which may affect the extent of your purchase. The law restricts you from approaching within 200 yards of any dwelling-house, without the previous written consent of its owner, lessee, and occupier. But there is no law restricting the nearness within which any builder may approach your wall with his design for new habitations; and it might easily occur to you, within a short time of establishing your Cemetery, to find a new town growing in close proximity around it. If there be any meaning and value in the clause, which forbids your undue approach to inhabited houses--if it truly represent that this approach would be a sanitary evil, then obviously the law is deficient in the respect adverted to. It would be in your power to guarantee the continuance of a belt of unoccupied ground, as an immediate circuit to your Cemetery, in either of two ways:--either, namely, you might purchase a considerable extent of ground beyond the actual requirements of your Cemetery, might devote its central hundred acres to interment, and might let its remaining circumference for agricultural purposes; or, if you were fortunate enough to be treating for the central portion of some considerable estate, you might stipulate, as a condition of purchase, that no building should be reared within such distance of the wall of your Cemetery, as you, on due consideration, may deem fit.

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II. In the provision of a Cemetery, it is required by the Act of Parliament, that ‘the Burial-Board shall have reference to the convenience of access thereto from the Parish or Parishes for which the same is provided;’ and it is legalised, that ‘any Burial-Board may make such arrangements as they may from time to time think fit, for facilitating the conveyance of the Bodies of the Dead from the Parish, or the place of Death, to the Burial-ground which shall be provided.’

It cannot but be obvious to you, that the choice of a site for your Cemetery might be such as to interpose very serious obstacles in the way of interment, even for the richest classes; and under the most favorable circumstances, the removal of the dead to a distance of some miles from their previous residence, cannot but threaten serious difficulty to the poor. Assuming--what various conditions of the Act of Parliament render almost inevitable, that your Cemetery must be distant at least six miles from the centre of the City, the present funeral charges can hardly be maintained without increase, if the traffic is to be conducted on the same principles as heretofore. The price for which an artisan could procure a decent funeral for his wife or child, within a stone’s throw of his door, will unavoidably be augmented by every mile you add to the distance, if the conveyance is still to depend on the old means and arrangements.

When I consider the classes of persons likely, as inhabitants of the City, to claim interment in your Cemetery--classes, among which the predominance of narrow, if not necessitous, circumstances will be frequent; when, for instance, in a year’s official returns, I see that artisans and paupers make more than two-thirds of your entire classified mortality; I cannot but think this aspect of the matter a very important one. From some years’ experience of your death-register, I should say that, of City funerals, there would not be one in ten where the friends could afford to disregard an additional expenditure of half a guinea; and, in the majority of instances, I am persuaded that a smaller addition would be enough to cause inconvenience and distress. It therefore seems to me certain, that your plan for extramural sepulture, however perfect at all other points, might either entirely fail of its purpose, or become cruelly oppressive to the poor, by the simple expensiveness of approaching the burial-place. And I suppose it was in anticipation of the difficulties here adverted to, that the framers of the Metropolitan Burials Act introduced the permissive clause, which I just quoted, empowering Burial-Boards ‘to facilitate the conveyance’ of the dead, and thus virtually rendering them responsible, so far as the poorer classes are concerned, for the cheapness and efficiency of such conveyance.

I would therefore submit, that in your decision as to the site of your Cemetery, so soon as the indispensable conditions of appropriate soil are given, the first point to examine is accessibility; that the spot to be chosen should have, in addition to its carriage roads, the utmost facility of railway approach; and that, for those with whom small differences of price are an important consideration, you should be able to guarantee a rate of transport for coffin and mourners, not in excess of existing charges.

From observation of arrangements which have lately been made with Railway-Companies by the Directors of Cemeteries, and from inquiry of persons engaged in such undertakings, I entertain little doubt that you might make a contract to the following effect with the authorities of any line convenient for your purpose--viz., that every day, at a fixed hour, there should be a train, or some portion of a train, exclusively adapted to the funeral purposes of the poorer classes; that for this train there should be issued funeral tickets, franking the conveyance of a coffin with some stated number of mourners, who should also be entitled to return; that the introduction of funeral traffic should be by a special entrance, and its exit at a special terminus.

Such contract supposed,--in connexion with this funeral train, you might further arrange to maintain public hearses; which, at the option of persons concerned, and on due requisition being made, should convey any coffin from its former home to the railway terminus; and which again, if necessary, at the distal station, should complete its conveyance to the grave. This facility might even be extended, if the distances were considerable, to the similar conveyance of a certain number of mourners, with the undertaker in charge of their procession.

Also, if desirable, it could no doubt be arranged, with a view to economy, that the undertaker’s responsibility for a funeral should terminate at the railway terminus, up to which he would have conducted it; and that its reception at the distal station should be entrusted to servants of your Cemetery, who would then fulfil all remaining duties in respect of it.

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.

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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.

Not so in the poor man’s dwelling. The sides of a wooden coffin, often imperfectly joined, are at best all that divide the decomposition of the dead from the respiration of the living. A room, tenanted night and day by the family of mourners, likewise contains the remains of the dead. For some days the coffin is unclosed. The bare corpse lies there amid the living; beside them in their sleep; before them at their meals.

The death perhaps has occurred on a Wednesday or Thursday; the next Sunday is thought too early for the funeral; the body remains unburied till the Sunday week. Summer or winter makes little difference to this detention: nor is there sufficient knowledge on the subject, among the poorer population, for alarm to be excited even by the concurrence of infectious disease in a room so hurtfully occupied.

I have no means of telling you, with statistical precision, in how many of your annual deaths the corpse is detained in dangerous proximity to the living. But I have already quoted an official classification of deaths, by which it would appear that more than two-thirds of your deaths are of the artisan class or below it. Among them at least, it would be exceptional for the corpse to have a room to itself. On an average, then, there would probably be lying within the City at any moment, from thirty to forty dead bodies in rooms tenanted by living persons.

This very serious evil is well known to all persons who have taken an interest in the sanitary advancement of the poor; and ineffectual endeavours have been made for its diminution. The law does indeed empower your Officer of Health, under certain circumstances, to order the removal of a corpse from any inhabited room. And, under the Nuisances Removal Act, the General Board of Health may be authorised, during times of epidemic disease, to issue directions and regulations for the speedy interment of the dead. Both laws have remained inoperative, and are likely to remain so.

If one were starting anew--legislating for a people with unformed habits, nothing might be easier than to devise regulations of a perfect kind with regard to the sanitary management of the dead. But our case is widely different. The evils against which we have to contend are among the deepliest-rooted habits of the country. In defence of what exists there are many stupid and ignorant prejudices: but, interwoven with these are feelings of tenderness and affection, to which all consideration and reverence are due;--feelings which would be shocked and outraged by any abrupt endeavour to reduce the care of the dead to a system of fixed regulations.

For myself, having the deepest sense of the evil in question, and having officially the power to order the removal of the dead, I may repeat that I have never yet exercised my authority. Practically speaking, I can hardly conceive an instance in which I should attempt to do so. It would require the strongest case that could be shown of actual mischief in progress--of disease and death multiplied day by day through the presence of some particular dead body, to justify interference even in that single instance. Nothing like the operation of a general law would be tolerated;--nothing like including the dead in a compulsory plan of hygienic police.

After very careful consideration of the subject, I may confess myself even more impressed with its difficulties than when I first began to give it my attention; and in the few suggestions which follow I cannot pretend to do more than intimate where, in my opinion, a beginning may usefully be made towards an improvement which it will take many years to accomplish.

Legislative remedies, proposed for the evils which I am bringing under your notice, have been of two kinds--viz., _first_, to restrict the time during which it should be lawful to keep a body unburied; _secondly_, to promote the use of reception-houses (as they have been called) whither bodies might be removed from within all dwelling-places, and be kept under certain regulations during the days preceding their interment.

As regards the first point;--there are many foreign countries (and even some parts of the United Kingdom) where either law or custom has made it imperative to bury within two, three, or four days of death. Our habit, unfortunately, is to keep the corpse unburied for twice as long. A week may probably be considered our medium interval between death and interment; and with this delay, I need hardly tell you, the body becomes putrid--sometimes intensely so, before the time for its removal arrives.

Among the wealthier classes, as I have said, this delay is practically unimportant; except in so far as every repetition maintains the pernicious custom. Scarcely on account of any risk arising to themselves in emanations from the dead, but mainly for the sake of influence and example, would one wish the educated classes of the community to adopt the usage of earlier burial. Our present practice is upheld by no law of necessity; nor for the most part does it represent any extravagance of grief, or fond reluctance of separation. Chiefly it subsists by our indolent acquiescence in a habit, which former prejudices and former exigencies established. Fears of premature interment, which had much to do with it, are now seldom spoken of but with a smile. The longer interval, once rightly insisted on as necessary for the gathering of distant friends, has now, in the progress of events, become absurdly excessive: in a vast majority of cases, all whose presence is needed, live within a narrow circle; and the more distant mourner, who, fifty years ago, would have spent several days in coming from Paris or Edinburgh, can now finish his journey in twelve hours. It is much to be wished that, under these changed circumstances, an altered practice might ensue in the upper classes of society, fixing their time of burial within three or four days of death. Such example of wealthier neighbours, aided by greater enlightenment and education among themselves, would greatly tend to detach the poor from many observances and delays, in relation to the dead, which, in their narrow dwellings cannot continue with impunity.

But, as regards these poorer classes, cannot anything be done in connexion with your new arrangements, to abridge the period of delay? As for any positive regulation, limiting the time during which it should be allowed to retain dead bodies in certain dwelling-houses,--such could only be enforced by an extensive organisation of sanitary police, which you would have to call into existence for the purpose, and which, in the present state of public opinion, would encounter insurmountable difficulties on every occasion of its authoritative interference.

It is by indirect means and inducements alone, that I can hope at present to effect the desired alteration; and by them, I think, something can be ensured toward shortening the delays of interment.