The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1875-02-20 00:00:00

ST. VALENTINE' AT THE POST-

"EARTH TO EARTH."

• 2he Times of Tuesday, published the following letters :
Sir,—You may think it desirable, in the interest of
a great social question which happily has already
received your powerful advocacy, to publish the fol-
lowing corespondence. It describes an earnest attempt
to bury the dead in complete accordance with the
Divine injunction, and the immediate frustration of
this attempt by the General Cemetery Company
(Ken sal-green).
I am perfeetly confident that public opinion will
shortly demand such legislative enactment as will neu-
tralize any statutory obligation under which it is
alleged we at present lie to bury our dead improperly,
or, as the clerk of the company,characteristicalty ex-
presses it, "according to the established custom of the
country." . _

The -question is one which cannot, I think, fail to
recommend itself to the serious attention of the
Government in the Parliament now assembled.—l am,
Sir, your obedient servant, J. C. HORSLEY.
Athenaeum.

"Kensington, Jan. 26.
"Gentlemen,—At the request of your chairman I
address you upon a subject regarding which I have
already had communication with him. Ido this with
much reluctance, the question involved being one
which has so much of sacred privacy in it when
brought home to us individually. It has, however,
been already publicly mooted, and I am among those
who believe it to be of great importance to the com-
munity at large, and that a body like yours might
Effectively aid its right solution. The question is that
of the proper mode of burying our dead, and its im-
mediate reference to you arises from what has taken
place between your company and myself within the
last week, when it has fallen to my lot to arrange
the funeral of a very near relative. I have long
held the opinions regarding interment which have
recently been so ably expounded by Mr. Seymour
Haden in his letter to The Times newspaper, and,
with the ready assent of all interested, I hoped to
have carried out the burial to which I now refer in
accordance with those views. I will, as briefly as
possible, describe the arrangements that were made
and what resulted from the action of your company.
The earthly remains of her who had departed this life
were shrouded and laid in a coffin of the ordinary
make. Over them were strewn thickly ivy leaves and
cypress branches, ferns and Christmas roses, plucked
from the walls and garden of an old country house
she had loved well in life, together with other floral
offerings from many faithful friends. Over all
was placed the usual coffin lid, but only temporarily,
fastened and, by a simple contrivance, easily remov-
able at th 9 right moment. On reaching the grave
it was intended that the coffin should be lowered
into it with the lid on, but, that previous
to the commencement of that portion of our
beautiful service at the burial of the dead which is
read by the grave side, the lid should be removed
and brought to the surface. What those standing
round would then have looked down upon would have
been, as it were, a bank of bright green leaves studded
with snow-white flowers. Then, when those solemn
words would have been heard—' Earth to earth, ashes
to ashes, dust to dust,' earth would of a truth have
been sprinkled upon earth, instead of the enaction of
that wretched conventional mockery, whereby a hand-
ful of dirt, ready to hand in the grave-digger's shovel,
would have been sent rattling down upon a hard
coffin lid. At the conclusion of the service the grave
would have been carefully and gently filled in to
the depth of a foot or eighteen inches with fine mould,
and the heavy clay clods of Kensal-green would have
completed the work. I should state that at the top of
the layerof mould some pieces of heartaaak would have
been placed, to mark the position of the interment in
case of the re-opening of the grave, and I may add that
every possible contingency in connexion with this
mode of burial had been considered by those whose
opinion on the subject is entitled to all respect and
confidence. To insure the proper carrying out of the
scheme I have thus described (a most important
feature of which was that the funeral should take
place as quickly after the death as possible), I put my-
self in immediate communication with your officials,
both at Kensal-green and at your office. It is useless,
now, to detail what took place—suffice it to say that
though at one moment I was promised that my wishes
should be attended to in every way, I was finally in-
formed by your chairman that he had no authority
to grant such permission and I was afterwards given
to understand that the Act of Parliament under
which your company was formed actually forbade
such a funeral as that I proposed. For obvious
reasons I could not prolong the discussion, and, there-
fore, had no choice but to bow to the decision of the
chairman, order the coffin lid to be screwed-down, and
the funeral to take place after the accustomed fashion.
Now, Gentlemen, what I ask from you is to examine
your Act of Parliament aid see if it really forbids the
mode of interment I desired to see carried out. If it
does I venture to call upon you to obtain such an
alteration in it as will prevent the recurrence for the
future of the difficulty I have met with. It is scarcely
possible that you, who are responsible for the proper
burial of the dead, can, after due reflection, object to
the views I entertain. My sole desire is to obey in
spirit and letter the Divine injunction to give Earth
to Earth,' and not to impede and thwart that injunc-
tion, as the ordinary mode of burial so fatally accom-
plishes. Had I been permitted to bury my dead as I
hoped to have done, the shattered and deserted earthly
tenement would have been rapidly resolved into the
earth, according to the decree of the Almighty. Had
interment quickly after death, and burial in the
manner I propose been enforced by Act of Parliament
from the time your company was formed, Kensal green
Cemetery would now be a replenished God's Acre,
instead of what it is, and what all graveyards and
burial places are, stores of hoarded putrefaction.---I
am, Gentlemen, your obedient servant,
"JOHN CALLCOTT HORSLEY.

" To the Directors of the General Cemetery Company."...
" General Cemetery Company, 0111 co, 95, Great
Russell-street, Bloomsbury, Jan. 2S.
"Sir, —I have the honour to inform you that your
letter, dated the 20th inst., was yesterday laid before
the Directors, and in reply, tam instructed to acquaint
you that the General Cemetery Company are incorpo-
rated under 2 and 3 William IV., c. 110, and in virtue
of that Act of Parliament the company are compelled
to have all interments within their grounds 'performed
according, to the established custom of the country.—
I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
"FREDERICK RIVIERE, Clerk of the Company.
"S. C. Horsley, Esq., R.A., 1, High-row, Kensington, W,"