The first [-fourth] of a series of lectures delivered at the Mechanics' Institution, Southampton Buildings, Chancery Lane, Nov. 27, 1846 [-August 13, 1847], on the actual condition of the metropolitan grave-yards.

  • George Alfred Walker
Date:
1849
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The first [-fourth] of a series of lectures delivered at the Mechanics' Institution, Southampton Buildings, Chancery Lane, Nov. 27, 1846 [-August 13, 1847], on the actual condition of the metropolitan grave-yards. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Facts like these need no comment; they illustrate themselves. I will, how¬ ever, secure the occasion to express my regret that the agents of these most shocking, and I think utterly unjustifiable, refinements of cruelty have, so far as I know, escaped the castigation of the press; and 1 am farther desirous of re¬ cording my deliberate opinion and conviction, that in far too many instances many who call themselves guardians are rather the oppressers of the poor, for it is a lamentable fact, as I have proved to you, that those who are appointed to dole out the rations, such as they are, for the poor and unfortunate, are not guiltless of the crime of compelling those committed to their charge to breathe, to take into their blood, in fact, an atmosphere so offensive, so disgusting, and so deadly, as not to admit of any degree of comparison with any other. As 1 have before remarked, the terms employed in describing the condition of this cemetery were so much more flattering than I thought it deserved, that soon after the Parliamentary Committee had concluded its labours, I again visited the place for the purposes of inquiry and inspection. It was admitted before the Committee, of which I have above spoken, that the average of burials was then nearly 1,400 per annum, the majority doubtless of the poorer class. The fol¬ lowing remarks, published by me in 1842, were fully justified by its then con¬ dition :—“ An open pit dug under the wall dividing the cemetery from the work- house (of St. Pancras) was full nearly to the surface with pauper bodies ; the buzzing of myriads of flies in and over this pit might be heard at a consider¬ able distance from its mouth. A short distance from it I found projecting into four open private graves four coffins, the tops of which were not more than 9 inches from the surface.”* Such was the condition of things so much lauded before a Committee of the Imperial Legislature in 1842—such the boasted advantages it possesses over that disgraceful receptacle of corruption, the old ground situated round St. Giles’s church. These are the unmistakable evidences of the “ management” of the “ clergyman who lives there, who is also the sexton, who takes a great interest in it, who makes it as acceptable as he can, whose arrangements have been considered very judicious.”f On this I beg to observe that I consider the “arrangements” of which I have above spoken anything but “judicious” to the poor creatures immured in the workhouse, or confined in the Black-hole at St. Pancras,-—any¬ thing but “acceptable and I think it an insolent stretch of authority, and an unprincipled application of the system of might against right, to subject living humanity to such an infliction. Need I remind you that in the complex, everchanging, pecuniary relationships of English society, facts are constantly demonstrating that the rich man of to-day may become a pauper to-morrow ? This case may in degree be yours or mine; andVe may ask ourselves, if overtaken, after a life expended well and * Vide “ Interment and Disinterment,” p. 9. t Vide “ Report on the Effect of Interment of Bodies,” p. 75, question 1453.
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