Interment and disinterment : a further exposition of the practices pursued in the metropolitan places of sepulture, and the results as affecting the health of the living : in a series of letters to the editor of the Morning Herald / by G.A. Walker.
- Date:
- 1843
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Interment and disinterment : a further exposition of the practices pursued in the metropolitan places of sepulture, and the results as affecting the health of the living : in a series of letters to the editor of the Morning Herald / by G.A. Walker. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.
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![large towns by our present system of internal sepulture, the more is he lost in won- der that the people, generally sufficiently alive to a perception of what they consider prejudicial to their interest, do not arise en masse, and demand as an act of justice, and as a matter of right, that many, if not all, these places should cease to be em- ployed. If the necessity of suppressing the nuisance complained of has years since been by others tacitly admitted, how much more necessary is it that as time pro- gresses, and population continually increases, whilst the burial-places are compara- tively decreasing, all who are interested in the well-being of the community should be up and doing. The history of the burial-places, and the modes of burial adopted by the ancients, proves that although they infinitely surpassed us in their veneration for their deceased friends, yet, with a wise prudence, they would not permit the dead to inconvenience the living. Upwards of 2,000 years since, the Decemviri prohibited in the following words the burying or burning of any dead body in the city :— “ Hominem mortuum in urbe ne sepelito neve urito.” In England the salus populi is not suprema lex. The French, fickle and volatile, alternately generous and brutal, previous even to their most bloody revolution, took care to remove their dead outside the city. Their celebrated catacombs are tenanted by the bones of those who, in the darker ages, rested in the centre of the metropolis. We in England arrogate to ourselves, and in some instances with justice, a superior state of civilisation and refinement as compared with other nations, but in this respect our country is in the rear, not in the van, of civilisation. How imperfect will be our projected improvements, our triumphal arches, pillars, statues, the enlarge- ment and beautifying of our streets, when these are either surrounded by, or sur- round, such places of burial as now exist! Sums of money have been voted for the purpose of laying out parks as places of recreation for the middle and poorer classes of society, and much stress is laid upon the beneficial results looked for by allowing these classes the benefit of fresh air. I yield to no one in my anxious wish for the improvement of my fellow countrymen, and I am quite sure that a most sincere desire exists among our legislators for the amelioration and improvement of the public condition. If we reflect that the inhalation of fresh and comparatively pure air is barely available once a week to the majority of our popul tion in towns—if so frequently—and that it is at once neutralised, and more than neutralised, by a six days’ residence in a filthy, badly-ventilated house, in per- haps a filthy locality, made still more dangerously unhealthy by the sweltering de- composition of masses of human bodies, we are at once reminded of the old proverb, “ Charity begins at home and surely charity could not be better employed than in annihilating the sources of contagion, arising from practices of which the very Goths and Vandals would have been ashamed. I have the honour to be, Sir, Your most obedient servant, GEORGE ALFRED WALKER. London, November 9, 1842. Letter III. [From the Morning Herald, November 16.] Sir,—Having made repeated and particular inquiries into the subject I have undertaken to discuss, it may be permitted me, before proceeding with proofs of injury to health and loss of life occurring in our own and in other countries from the emanations of dead bodies, to offer to your readers a calculation of the number of bodies (admitting for an instant that no injury results from the burial of the dead in the midst of the living), that might be decently and properly interred in a given space. An acre of ground contains 43,560 square feet. Now, keeping always in view the necessity of a lateral surface of earth, as well as a superior one, to prevent exhalation of the most disgusting, and perhaps the most dangerous of all odours, into the at- mosphere, in this space may be interred 1,361 adult bodies. Let us further elucidate this proposition—for I am anxious, Sir, that the public may clearly understand the figures, lest they should not comprehend the deductions. The mean average of an adult coffin being 6 feet by 1 foot 6 inches, the space required for its disposal will be](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21915441_0011.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
