Introductory report, suggesting the outline of a scheme for extramural interment : submitted to the Improvement-Committee of the Hon. the Commissioners of Sewers of the City of London / by the Medical Officer of Health.

  • Simon, Sir John, 1816-1904.
Date:
1853
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Introductory report, suggesting the outline of a scheme for extramural interment : submitted to the Improvement-Committee of the Hon. the Commissioners of Sewers of the City of London / by the Medical Officer of Health. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    thither for the burial of their friends, partly for the religious services of different congregations.* Something likewise must be added for such main- ways 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 daresay 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, per- sonal 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 * The distinction of the ground into a consecrated and an un- consecrated portion, as required by the Act of Parliament, will requireno addition to its total area; and therefore the propor- tion which these parts should bear to one another need not now be discussed.