Report on a general scheme of extramural sepulture for country towns / General Board of Health.

Date:
1851
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report on a general scheme of extramural sepulture for country towns / General Board of Health. 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.

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    degree to the parishioners whose relations are buried there. Dr. Sutherland states as the result of his experience of the condition of grave-yards in provmcial towns: In the numerous cities, towns, and populous parishes, which were under my inspection during the late epidemic cholera, and in those which I have since visited on special inquiries connected with the inter- ■'MuiUlLufSSgJic*? I hardly know a solitary grave-yard, 'either public or private, which is not filled to reple- tion, and unfit for further burials; I know very few which are not in dangerous proximity to inhabited dwellings, and I know none in which the interment of the dead is conducted under such regulations as experience has proved to be requisite for public i^alety/^__5^ ' From the whole of the evidence it appears, that ail classes of the people, magistrates, members of corpora- tions, incumbents, churchwardens, dissenting minis- ters, medical men, and the parishioners generally, are deeply sensible of the physical and moral evils which have been described, are prepared for a legislative enactment, forbidding, as soon as suburban cemeteries can be provided, any further burial within the pre- cincts of towns; and are anxiously expecting the re- quisite legal powers for carrying into effect a general system of extramural sepulture. In corroboration of these statements, Mr. Grainger reports:— I have had interviews with various gentlemen holding public offices, both municipal and parochial; with many ministers of religion, of all persuasions ; with magistrates, medical men, and others; my object having been, to obtain what mi^ht be regarded as a fair expression of opinion on the subject. In some few in- stances, I have had interviews with municipal bodies. Among all the various parties whom I have thus consulted, the feeling in favour of the principle of extra-mural sepulture is uni- versal; and in almost every instai.ce, the importance and necessity of a general change in the present mode of interment, were strongly insisted on. There is, further, an expectation that a legislative measure for the whole country will speedily be pro- vided: and this circumstance has, in two instances which came B 2