The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1875-01-16 00:00:00

r or to any other proceeding involving a departure
from those laws, will turn out to be quite unneceseary.
How, then, are we to bury our dead? Clearly, with-
in a reasonable time of their dissolution and in coffins,
if we must have coffins, of such a construction as will
not prevent their resolution. No coffin at all would, of
course, be best, or a coffin of the thinnest material
which would not long resist the action of the earth; or
a coffin the top and sides of which admitted of removal
after the body had been lowered into the grave, or a
coffin of some light, permeable materials, such as
wickerwork, open at the top, and filled in with any
fragrant herbaceous matters that happened to be in sea-
' son. A layer of ferns or mosses for a bed, a bundle of
sweet herbs for a pillow, and SA much asit would still con-
tain after the body had been placed in it of any aromatic
or flowering plant for a coverlet—such a covering, in
short, as while it protected the body from the imme-
diate pressure of the earth as effectually as the stoutest
oak, would yet not prevent its resolution. I can con-
ceive no better form of coffin. Let us emulate the
healthy sentiment of those older Jews who considered
it an indignity and an injury to be refused prompt
burial, and so to be made an offence to the living and
bury it while it is fresh and lovely, and while, if we
feel it to be an effort and a sacrifice to part with it, we
may also feel that we are making that effort and that
sacrifice in the cause of the dead.
Nor would there be the least difficulty in framing
an Act which, with a greater consideration for the
dead, should provide for such a mode of burying
them as our reason and our interest require. The
appointment in each district of a proper officer
' corresponding to the Continental medecin verifi-
cateur, to take cognizance of everything relat-
ing to the dead of that district, should be one
of the things such an Act provided for. An
obligation on the peat of every householder to
report within a certain time the occurrence of any
death or deaths under this roof should be another.
The visit of such officer, also, within a spe-
cified time, to verify the fact and cause of death
and to define and prescribe the requirements of the
law as to time and mode of interment, another. And,
since it is our unnatural delay in burying the dead
which necessitates their hermetic enclosure, that
the interval between death and interment should in
no case exceed, say, 36 hours. The abolitionaof the
permanent tenure of the ground by the dead and of
the use of imperishable coffins, brick graves, vaults
and every impediment to the resolution of the body
should be another. The institution of special Boards,
corresponding to the Bureaux des Pompes Funebres
in France, for the management of cemeteries (which
Boards should not include the local guardians of the
poor) another. And, in respect to the economy of the
ground, careful provision, of course, that graves once
used should not be re-opened till ample time
had been given for the resolution of their contents.
Nor, since it is impossible for nature to err, and
since it may be taken as an axiom that she still ever
be found ready to supply us with the means of doing
that which she requires us to do, need we ever be at a
loss for ground in which to bury our dead. If it be
true that a body, properly buried, is resolved in five,
or at most, six years, it follows that, at that interval
or at intervals as much longer as we please, we may
bury again and again in the same ground with
no other effect than to increase its substance and
to raise its surface. Is there, however, no ground
in the immediate neighbourhood of our own
city that would be the better for this increase and
for being thus raised? , The Cremationists will tell
us that there is not, but is there the shadow of a
foundation for such a statement? Along the course
of our great river from London to the sea, for
instance, have we not vast lowland tracts of rich
alluvial soil deposited by that very river and capable
of being drained, planted, and beautified, in which,
with equal benefit to the land and to ourselves, we
may bury our dead for centuries? If, as we have
seen, the surface of the Holborn Burial Ground
was raised 15ft. or 18ft. by the interments within it
of three centuries, why should not the lowlands of
Kent and Essex be raised and reclaimed in the
same way, and as much as possible of the valuable
ground in and about the city, now occupied as ceme-
teries, be restored to better uses? What if it take us
thousands instead of hundreds of years thus to reclaim
and elevate such lands and so practically dispose of
our difficulties as to burial forever? With the silent
river for our Appian Way and the fresh salt breeze
from the sea to ventilate it and to swell the
man
coloured sails which, as -long as we remain a nat' ,
will continue to traverse and enliven it, what better
or more natural burial place can we have?
And now, Sir, with the soil at our feet asking us
to reclaim and replenish her in this simple and obvious
way, what are we to think of the wild project to drive
into vapour the bodies of the 1,600 people that die
weekly in London alone, at a needless cost, and infinite
waste, and with an effect on the respirable air of the
city that has yet to be estimated? I say advisedly "at
an infinite waste " because it is incorrect to say that, in
its ultimate reception of the products of Cremation,
the earth acquires an augmentation of its substance
equivalent to that of the solid constituents of a body
actually committed to it. When the body, consisting as
it does of solid and fluid constituents in certain pro-
portione, is placed within the earth the fluids are
withdrawn by attraction, evaporation, and the re-
quirements of vegetation, while the solids remain
to constitute an equal portion of new earth. • Ex-
posed to the more rapid desiccation of the furnace
much the same thing, indeed, may be said to result,
since the fluids are driven off and the solids re-
main ; but there is this essential difference—a dif-
ference fatal to Cremation--in the two processes—
viz., that while, by the earth the solid residuum
is wholly resolved and disppsed of, by the furnace
It is left upon our hands; that while one process, in
short, is perfect and final, the other is incomplete.
What are we to do with this residuum, with this
six, eight, or ten pounds of solasnatter (the average
weight, by the way, of the Egyptian mummy) that
the furnace is incapable of driving off? Are we to
scatter it "broadcast over our fields," as recommended
by. the Cremationists ? Apart from the fact that this
is only another and a clumsy way of burying it,
I doubt a general acquiescence in such a mode
of disposing of it, and rather fear that the tendency
might be to preserve it, and that room must be
found somewhere for the 1,600 urns or other vessels
capable of receiving it. What are we to do with
these urns? Are we to take them into our houses
and move them with our furniture with every
change of abode? How will our sons's sons, who
have lost all interest in us, feel disposed to treat
them? Will it not come to pass that they will one
day want to get rid of them, and will there not then
be some little risk of their desecration here? What
if, after all, they should be obliged to listen to the
voice of nature and be driven to bury them-? If
the positions sought to be established in this letter are
true—if burial is the natural and necessary process we
have asserted it to be—we may be sure that sooner or
later, evade or misinterpret her as we may, Nature
will make herself heard at last, and by the penalties
she imposes upon us for our abuse of her gifts compel
us not only to bury our dead, but to bury them pro-
perly.—l am, Sir, your obedient servant,
F. SEYMOUR HADEN.

In connection with the foregoing, the following letters
have been sent to The Times for publication :

Sir,—l think that Mr. Seymour Haden's theory, excellent
as it is, and likely to commend itself to the minds of many
to whom the idea of cremation could never be but repulsive,
leaves something yet to be desired; and I would beg to
suggest to those who are considering the subject from
his point of view that greater allowance should be made
for the varying character of the earth to which the bodies
of the dead are committed, which in some cases is far from
favourable to the result he desires to attain. In proof of
this I may call attention to the fact that, whereas four
years of interment sufficed to reduce to small proportions
the remains of Mr. Haden's favourite dog, the opening of
an earth mound in Berkshire, reported in. The Times some
three mouths back, revealed to my investigation the skeleton
of a Saxon warrior buried not less than 1,500 years ago. This
points, I believe, to the neussity for employing some agency
that will insure a more definite action upon the bodies
of the interred than we can depend upon their undergoing
if simply placed in the earth in the manner thatilr. Haden
proposes.
The application of quicklime would be eillcacious, and
would not, I should think, be objectionable to the survivors
77-I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
WILLIAM DONALD NAPIER.
George-street, Hanover-square, Jan. 12.

Sir,—The change advocated by Mr. Seymour Haden in
his interesting letter from interment of bodies in coffins to
burial in shrouds or some other light and easily resolvable
involuerum is, in truth, only the recurrence to a form of
interment practised in England so recently as the earlier
part of the 17th century, and familiar to lawyers as having
formed the subject of more than one well-known decision
in both Common Law and Ecclesiastical Courts. In the
case of "Rex. v. Coleridge" (2 B. A. 806), the Court
decided that the mode of burial was of ecclesiastical cog-
nizance, and therefore refused a mandamus to inter the
body of a parishioner in an iron coffin. And in a cele-
brated case ("Gilbert V. Buzzard," 3 PhilL, 335) which gave
rise to one of Lord Stowell's most elaborate judgments,
that distinguished Judge, in permitting the interment of a
body in a patent iron coffin, thus alluded to the general
question of the mode of burial as practised by Christian
countries :
" Some involuora," he said, "or coverings have been
deemed necessary in all civilised and Christian countries,
but chests or trunks containing the bodies, descending
along with them to the grave and remaining there till their
own decay, cannot plead either the same necessity or
same general use. In offr own country the use of coffins
is extremely ancient, though most probably by no means
general; they are not 2unninat;nt, or directly required by
any authority whatever ; and it is to be observed that in
the Funeral Service of the Church of England there is no
mention—indeed, there is rather an apparently studious
avoidance of any mention, of coffins. It is throughout the
whole Service, the corpse or body. Funerals were anciently
cotibred and uncoffined, and were charged for accordingly;
from which I might venture to draw this conclusion that
even at that time (1627) it was recognized as not unjust that,
where the deceased, by the use of his coffin, took a large
occupancy of the ground. he should compensate the parish
by an increased payment."
And in a Statute passed in the reign of Charles 11. (30 Car.
11. cap. 3, sec. 3) for the Encouragement of Woollen ann-
faC M
turers, it is enacted, inter alia, that no corpse of any per-
son shall be buried in any shirt, sheet, or shroud naixec with
flax, or any Other stuff or thing other than what is made
of sheep's wool only, on pain of £5 ; where it is to be ob-
served, as remarked also by Lord Stowell, that it is not re-
quired that coffins should be used (2 Consist. Rep. 346) The
Common and Ecclesiastical Law, therefore, the former custom
of the country, and the language of our Church's ritual would
seem to contain nothing in opposition to, rather much in
favour of, the adoption of the change in the mode of burial
advocated by Mr. Seymour Haden; while the reason of the
thing, and the necessities of a rapidly increasing population,
combine to recommend a sepulture which in itself has
nothing to shock the most fastidious or pious sense.—l am,
Sir, yours obediently,
Inner Temple, Jan. 12.

. ____

THE SHAKERS IN THE NEW
FOREST.
The Correspondent of the Standard, writing from Lyming-
ton, on Monday, says
"I visited the Shakers yesterday, at Ashley-Arne-
wood. They vere holdipg morning service in, the
- barn, which is a roomy easid comfortable building, with
, flooring, and extremely well built. • Service had
,ommenced as we arrived; the people were singing, a
young lady playing the harmonium with much taste
and feeling. We were courteously. received; a very
respectWe elderly man took his seat on the floor to make
-xtrui „for us., Tb.e barn is about 60 by 20 feet, and is
'divided 'tiatcniglit into three compartments-by carpets
swung ftBu.i'LthiS 'ettifig 'beams. The . centrat [door,
opening into the farm-yard, was open, to give light

I good.
COY'