Journal of the Society of Arts and Official Organ of the Royal Commission for the Chicago Exhibition.

  • Society of Arts (Great Britain)
Date:
1892
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Journal of the Society of Arts and Official Organ of the Royal Commission for the Chicago Exhibition. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

    6/20 page 22
    vious insight into the composition and cha- racter of the recent meeting of so-called Hygiene and Demography, because the present paper is the immediate outcome of that meet- ing. Composed as that meeting was of ladies ready to hold up their hands for whatever was most advanced, and of equally advanced cremationists in about equal portions—inordi- nately long papers were read at it, which largely transgressed the 15 minutes allowed for them, and which took up so much of the available time of the meeting as to leave exactly three minutes, and no more, for the defence of the more regular papers, of which due notice had been given, and which strictly conformed to the rules laid down for the guidance of their authors. No wonder that, when a resolution was proposed favourable to cremation at a meeting worn out by the reading of these long papers, no hands were found to vote against it; and that this same resolution should have been since paraded in all directions, and on every occasion, as a deliberate expression of European opinion. I say no more of it. On the other hand, if I had said one word less, I could have given you no idea of the uphill battle which it has devolved upon me either to abandon or to fight. HaTing premised, and, I repeat, most unwillingly premised, this much, I now pro- ceed to the consideration of the propositions which stand at the head of this paper. First, then, as to burial as it is. Burial as it is consists in this—in the hermetic enclosure of the dead body, which, instead of being buried at once, has been kept in the house till putrefaction has set in, in a strong air-tight box or cofBn (of oak it may be, or even of lead), and in disposing of these boxes one upon another till a legalised piece of ground called a cemetery is full of them ; then, in doing the same thing in another piece of ground till that also is full; then in a third till that is full; and so on, in one piece after another, till all are full—till the dead, in fact, are in permanent possession of all of them, or, as Lord Stowell pithily puts it, till the dead have shouldered out the living. I have already said so much of this mode of burial that I need here say no more of it. Burial as it ought to be, again, consists in the enclosure of the body as soon after death as possible (as soon, that is to say, as the rigor mortis, which is a proof of death, has passed off and before decomposition has begun) in a coffin as perishable as itself, and which allows pf fts gradual disappearance without harm to anything or anybody. For this method, or, rather, for this ;pri7tciple, of burial, I am myself entirely responsible, and if this principle were well understood, as I have described it elsewhere, I need not again refer to it. It is, however, even now, so much a sealed book to many, and possibly to many here, that I may, perhaps, be forgiven if I once more repeat what I said of it at a meeting presided over by Lord Shaftesbury many years ago :— It is the departure from the simple conditions which should attend the solemn act of committing a body to the earth which is the cause of all the evils that surround the subject, and which it is the aim of all I have written on the subject to mitigate, if not altogether to remove. The retention in a dwelling- house for as long as possible of a body, which ought to be committed to the earth as soon as possible, is the first departure of this kind. It is also the most important, because it is this departure which necessi- tates the strong coffin, and it is the strong, imperish- able coffin again, which prevents the resolution which it is the beneficent office of the earth to accomplish, and which, therefore, it should be the first care of the living to promote. Some curiously mistaken notions exist as to what happens to a dead body when, in the words of the old ritual, it is ' laid into the ground,' the popular notion being that it becomes a part of that clay to which it is committed. Nothing of the kind, of course, is the case. A body properly buried—buried, that is to say, in such a way that the earth may have access to it—does not even remain in the earth, but returns to the atmosphere. Let me explain. Suppose a body buried three or four feet below the surface, the earth, as earth, affects it in no way whatever. The part played by the earth in its resolution is that of a mere porous medium between it and the air which is above it. Through this medium the air with its dews and its rain filters, and, when it reaches the body, oxidizes it, that is to say, resolves it into new and harmless products; and then these new products, passing up- wards again through the same sieve-like medium, re-enter the atmosphere and become the elements of its renewal, and of the nourishment and growth of plants. The body, in fact, literally as well as figuratively, ascends from the dead, and fulfils the cycle of its pilgrimage by becoming again the source and renewal of life yet it is this very pro- vision which, with our strong imperishable coffins, we are doing our best to prevent! Another mistake, too, is to suppose that, after a time, this coffin itself decays in the earth. It does not. Substances only which contain nitrogen readily decay in the earth, decay being the effort of the nitrogen to get out. But wood is a non-nitrogenous body, and does not readily decay; so that, in the Holborn Burial- ground, the coffins of Charles II.'s time were found just a,s they wpre buried, and with their contents
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3