The Sun.
London, England, 1863-04-16 00:00:00

The Lord Mayor is understood to have received
a communication from Sir George Grey apprising
him that it is the intention of the Governme,it to
introduce a bill in the House of Commons, having
for its object to place the whole of the metropolis,
including the City, under one system of politie. The
Aldermen have been summoned to attend a meeting
at Guildhall to-day, for the express purpose of
hearing the letter of the Home Secretary read and
shaping their course of action.

For years past nothing has occurred to cause
greater excitement and alarm among the members
of the Corporation than the proposition to amalga-
mate their police with that of' the metropolis. From
the highest to the lowest they may be said to be up
in arms at the suggestion, and already a great
amount of bitter party feeling has been engendered,
which is chiefly directed against Sir George Grey
and Sir Richard Mayne. Ward meetings are being
held all over the City to protest against the
threatened innovation, which is denounced in
speeches and resolutions as being opposed to the
principle of local self-government, akin to centra-
lisation, aimed at some of the time honoured pri-
vileges of the Corporation. A favourite figure of
speech is, that it is an attempt to introduce "the
thin end of the wedge," and that, once deprived of
the management of their police, the right of elect-
ing their own magistrates, on which they pride
themselves, would follow, and a stipendiary would
be substituted for an unpaid magistracy. It would,
however, be an error to suppose that the pubao
feeling in the city of London on this or on any
other occasion is at all fairly reflected in
these assemblies. They are usually held in some
little schoolroom capable of holding fifty or a
hundred people, as at the election of an alderman
or a common councilman, and any more than in
numbers they cannot be said to represent in
any considerable degree the intelligence or wealth
of the citizens. A notable instance is at
nand. Tito ward of Langbourn, which is
located in the midst of the populous and wealthy
community in Fenchurch and Lombard streets,
and in the neighbourhood of the old East India
House, has a constituency for civic purposes of less
than 270, and at the recent hotly contested election
for an alderman, not more than 200 of them took
the trouble to record their votes. It was considered
a proud circumstance that a banker on the one
side and on the other had been allured from his
business for half an hour to propose or second the
candidates on the day of nomination, and six
hours of the following one were spent in polling
the 200 voters.
But it is not only in the wards that resistance is
made to the contemplated change. Appeals are
being addressed directly or indirectly to the corpo-
rate bodies throughout the kingdom, with the view
to enlist their sympathy and assistance, by allega-
tions that it also concerns them, as a blow aimed at
municipal institutions. The petitions to Parliament,
too, are being sent in some instances to leading
members of the Opposition, with the obvious in-
tention of making it a party question.
This partizan spirit betrayed itself in the Court
of Aldermen on Tuesday during a conversation as to
the distribution of a sum of money which had been
forwarded from her 'Majesty to the Lord Mayor, to
be given to poor people who had suffered injuries
in the City on the night of the illuminations. Oae
member of the Court went so far as to call it an act
of indiscretion, judging it from its alleged effect in
eliciting the number of accidents, such as they were.
['he tone of the whole conversation was to deride
the notion that there had been such a thing as an
accident in the City on the occasion, barring, of
course, the six or eight lives which were sacrificed,
and a few black eyes, and it was not until an ob-
servation by Alderman Mechi, gently adverting to
the humane feeling which had prompted the Royal
lonation, that the subject was allowed to drop.--
Times.

GRAVEYARD SECRE TS.

The mania which seems to f xis & now for selling antiquated
church property, and removing the remains of the dead
from their last resting-places to make room for the upward
tendency of business, has led to some curious developments
which have startled the community, and in many instances
given rise to suspicions not much to the credit of certain
persons holding high position as churchgoing folks and vir-
tuous members of society. The case of the Sullivan-street
Chut ch was the first that attracted the attention of the pub-
lic. The disgraceful details of the manner in which the
bodies were removed from the vaults of that church must be
still fresh in the recollection of our readers. Many coffins
were discovered in a state of perfect preservation, with the
shrouds also immaculate, but with nothing else save a
shovel full of dust ; and it was generally believed at the
time that certain persons had carried on a very profitable
business in the bodies , f the dead interred in the vaults of the
church. But if the developments which were brought to
light by the removal of the remains from the Sullivan-street
Church are to be considered strange, they are nothing as
compared with what has been since discovered in the graves
of the old Baptist Church, corner of Wooster and
Amity-streets. About a month ago the trustees of
the latter church resolved to remove the remains of the
dead to Cypress Hills Cemetery, preliminary to selling the
property. Here, as in the Sullivan-street vaults, coffins
were found deprived of their tenants. One day, while the
labourers were engaged in their work, a grave was disco-
vend which had once contained five or six coffins, with.
their remains. All but one of these coffins were very nearly
gone. The third coffin was still in a good state of presera
vation. The curious part of the story remains to be told.
The bodies in all the coffins except the third from the sur-
face, already alluded to, had wasted away into undistin-
guishable collections of flesh and bones. The body in the
third coffin was still left perfect in form, the stockings and
shroud in a good state of preservation, and the flesh hard-
ened almost to petrifaction. Dr. Sayre was invited to view
:Prvieuedryar and adipose tissues
the body, and expressed the greatest surprise at what he
witnessed. The shroud was covered the entire length with.
a smooth white substance resembling wax. On examina-
tion the body proved to be that of a woman. A. party of
physicians have since visited the church, at the invitation
of the city inspector. They found the shroud coated with a
thin, white, mouldy substance, which might have resulted
from the deposit of the gases in the coffin, or might have
been the residue of some antiseptic matter sprinkled there•
in for the purpose of preserving the body. On removing the
shroud the body was discovered to be somewhat. The
altered than when at first viewed after disintermetn Th
sehabfilbinrgesdwrieerde
skin was of a dark reddish colour, resnestemohamrebllyeaibwnbgdohdodayinti:eyuerm,eleticaathittnheesdeetaa
or the covering of old cheese. The
above, had assumed a
Baader:.
to petrifaction.
approaching iatigmeistrh,oheriahgneidnasda,l, and in fact every porot:edonleogPthe body, except-
bs.tance re
ai2.anwwds:u'oddr proceed from
ofroucnrudnit-o
All the cleilflter;
would be i stone struck with
hardenedon being condition,
struckfw orhmwithieh
n intolets
they
The skin was cut
pled ta"°w.the tendons through with some diffi-
culty, andmuscular
be
wa soundesari
bme
ociulolatni
rkaveiseartstrong
le i
culty,
body immediately after death. nan ordinary heathy
abdominal region unmistakable On examining the
evidences
examination had been performed that a post mortent
suggested by the medical examinerswere discovered. It was
that of some unfortunate
of poison, like airs. creature who had been the victim
sStephens,t whose body, it will be re-
membered, was perfectly
fact that the hair was etta saturated with arsenic. From the
y. black, and. that the teeth were
in a perfectly sound cj .onditicn, it is conjectured
that the
woman,_ whoever she was, could not have been more than
30 or 35 years old at the time of her death. However that
may be, it is pretty certain that the remains must have been
interred over 30 years ago, from the fact that the coffins
found above the one which contained her body showed by
the dates on their plates that they had lain beneath the
earth for that full period. This is the only way that the
length of time her remains have been buried can be arrived
at, inasmuch as there was no plate on the coffin to speak
for itself. It is a remarkable fact that there was not the
slightest stench from the body, even from the head, which
had decayed. The prevailing idea seems to be that there
was some foul play, Perhaps the only conclusion that the
authorities will ever be able to arrive at will be that of the
moody Hamlet, that there are stranger things iheas:::
and earth " than your philosophy ever dreamt o fn.,,Z
vork Herald.
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