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
Catalogue details

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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    you take before you begin this work ?—A quartern of rjin, and a pot of beer, and a pipe of tobacco, and then my blood begins to flow.” This man has seen an old sexton up to his knees in “ slush and bloody matter.” Mr. Mackinnon, 1689, asks—“ Did you not feel rather awkward at this kind of work at the beginning ?—Yes ; I used to stand and tremble ; I could not stomach it at all.” Poor wretch ! during his brutal endeavours to deface God’s own image, he was within a few yards of the Chapel in which the living worshippers met. He might not enter there—he was no fit com- pany for those who were hearing of a better world—of an eternal future ; the horrible present was too real for him ; he was the degraded instrument of un- checked, reckless, determined avarice—a vice disgusting under all circumstances, but infinitely above comparison, more disgusting and injurious in its con- sequences, when it fastens upon dead victims, and erects its altar in a rank, over- gorged grave-yard.* Let not your readers, Sir, imagine that the above picture is an unreal one. Your London grave-digger is not a whit better than the defunct re- surrectionist—they are twin brothers. He is a person sui generis-, his habits, his oc- cupation, unfit him to be other than what he is, too frequently—a reckless aban- doned, bad man, made so by the force of circumstances. With scarcely an excep- tion, they are drinking men; not always by choice—frequently from necessity. Stimulation is temporary strength, and temporary strength thus procured is too often needed in the execution of their disgusting work. If there are men who, on the ‘‘winking of authority,” will break within the house of death, what will the respectable, the thinking, part of the com- munity say to the fact, that in the majority of instances, such practices, and infinitely worse, must be resorted to in many receptacles for the dead ; and that there is too much reason to believe that those who ought to know better than to originate the necessity for the employment of such means, have “ winked” at the brutal readiness of their depraved agents, and tacitly sanctioned the frequent, almost daily, repetition of practices at which humanity shudders, and which religion should indignantly repudiate ? Those who desire further proofs of these allegations will find an abundance of them in the “ Report of the Select Committee on Health of Townsf.” At the risk of tiringthe patience, orof offending the sensibilities, of your readers, I will further illustrate this division of my subject. On the 20th February, 1839, a vestry meeting was holden for the purpose of considering the propriety of re- opening the Poor-Ground belonging to St. Saviour’s Parish, generally known as the Cross-bones Burying-Ground. The ground had been closed about two years— the time generally alloived for the destruction of the bodies!! and it was moved, “ that it be re-opened the mover of the resolution stating, that in conse- quence of the aversion generally manifested to bury in what is named the “ Irish Corner,” many bodies were taken out of the parish to be buried. This corner, however, had been cleared, and room made for about a thousand bodies. One gen- tleman argued, that “ if the graves had been made deeper, hundreds more corpses might have been buried there.” Another admitted, that it really was too bad to bury, within 18 inches of the surface, in such a crowded neighbourhood ; and it was even hinted that “ the clearing,” viz., “ the digging up, and the removal of the decayed (?) fragments of flesh and bones, with the pieces of coffin, &cc., would be the best course, were it not for the additional expense.” The. funds of the vestry, and the Health of the living, were here placed in opposite scales ; the former had the preponderance. In tbis immediate locality is a most disgusting grave-yard and receptacle for the dead, in Ewer-street, called Ewer-street Chapel. Whe- ther the street be in a sufficiently filthy condition on the surface, to warrant the minister and proprietary of the grave-yard and so-called vaults in making further use of its filthy capabilities, I know not; but it is a fact, that the greatest freedoms have been taken where they were least likely to be resented. Dead men tell no tales. Many of your readers, Sir, may have noticed a chapel in the London-road, now called St. John’s Episcopal Chapel. This place, some years since, had a burying- ground attached to it; indeed, the chapel stood in the grave-yard. The chapel * This crave yard contains (exterior measurement) 28,756 superficial feet, and would receive 80!) adult bodies. The chapel stands in the grave-yard, and has a receptacle bodies. The burying-giound was “opened in the year 1820, and has received (?) nine thousand five hundred bodies.”—Vide Evidence, p. 116, answers 2140 42. is NOW The proprietor (Mr. Tugg, an undertaker) 44 considers that not one-half of the gioun occupied.”!!'.-Answer 2148. When will it be quite full ?J , , „ f Health of Towns (effects of interment of bodies), June, 1842. Hansard ana uo.