The Sun.
London, England, 1853-09-27 00:00:00

classes, which occur from within the City of London,
those same arrangements which I have here deemed it
requisite to consider only in their relation to the poor.
For the latter, it has seemed indispensable that your
scheme should provide assistance equivalent, at least,
to the difficulty which its adoption must occasion them.
Beyond this, I believe you would wish to disturb as
little as possible the ordinary routine of interment ; and
I have aimed, therefore, at suggesting assistance only in
such kind and in such degree as may least interfere with
any interests of trade, least derange any established ha-
bits, least offend any prejudices of the people.
111. There is no part of the subject which I have con-
sidered with more anxiety than that which relates to
delays of interment, and to the prolonged keeping up of
dead bodies in the rooms of their living kindred.
Evils arising from this source are unknown to the
rich. Soldered in its leaden coffin, on tressels in some
separate and spacious room, a corpse may await the
convenience of survivors with little detriment to their
atmosphere.
Not so in the poor man's dwelling. The sides of a
wooden coffin, often imperfectly joined are at best all
that divide the decomposition of the dead from the re-
spiration of the living. A room tenanted night and day
by the family of mourners likewise contains the remains
of the dead. For some days the coffin is unclosed.
The bare corpse lies there amid the living—beside them
in their sleep, before them at their meals.
The death, perhaps, has occurred on a Wednesday or
Thursday ; the next Sunday is thought too early for the
funeral ; the body remains unburied till the Sunday week.
Summer or winter makes little difference to this deten-
tion ; nor is there sufficient knowledge on the subject
among the poorer population for alarm to be excited
even by the concurrence of infectious disease in a room
so hurtfully occupied.
I have no means of telling you with statistical preci-
sion in how many of your annual deaths the corpse is
detained in dangerous proximity to the living. But I
have already quoted an official classification of deaths, by
which it would appear that more than two-thirds of
your deaths are of the artisan class or below it. Among
them, at least, it would be exceptional for the corpse to
have a room to itself. On an average, then, there would
probably be lying within the City at any moment from
30 to 40 dead bodies in rooms tenanted by living
persons.
This very serious evil is well known to all persons who
have taken an interest in the sanitary advancement of
the poor ; and ineffectual endeavours have been made
for its diminution. The law does, indeed, empower your
officer of health, under certain circumstances, to order
the removal of a corpse from any inhabited room ; and
under the Nuisances Removal Act, the General Board
of Health may be authorised, during times of epidemic
disease, to issue directions and regulations for the speedy,
interment of the dead. Both laws have remained inope-
rative, and are likely to remain so.

If one were starting anew—legislating for a people
with unformed habits—nothing might be easier than to
devise regulations of a perfect kind with regard to the
sanitary management of the dead. The evils against
which we have to contend are amongthe deepliest-rooted
habits of the country. In defence of what exists there
are many stupid and ignorant prejudices ; but inter-
woven with these are feelings of tenderness and affection
to which all consideration and reverence are due—feel-
ings which would be shocked and outraged by any
abrupt endeavour to reduce the care of the dead to a
system of fixed regulations.

For myself, having the deepest sense of the evil in
question, and having officially the power to order re-
moval of the dead, I may repeat that I have never yet
exercised my authority. Practically speaking, I can
hardly conceive an instance in which I should attempt
to do so. It would require the strongest case that could
be shown of actual mischief in progress—of disease and
death multiplied day by day, through the presence of
some particular dead body, to justify interference even
in that single instance. Nothing like the operation of
a general law would be tolerated—nothing like including
the dead in a compulsory plan of hygienic police.
After very careful consideration of the subject, I may
confess myself even more impressed with its difficulties
than when I first began to give in my attention ; and in
the few suggestions which follow I cannot pretend to do
more than intimate where, in my opinion, a beginning
may usefully be made towards an improvement which
will take many years to accomplish.
Legislative remedies proposed for the evils which I
am bringing under your notice have been of two kinds,
viz., first, to restrict the time during which it should be
lawful to keep a body unburied ; secondly, to promote
the use of reception houses (as they have been called),
whither bodies might be removed from within all dwell-
ing places, and be kept under certain regulations during
the days preceding their interment.
As regards the first point, there are many foreign
countries, and even some parts of the United Kingdom,
where either law or custom has made it imperative to
bury within two, or three, or four days after death.
Our habit, unfortunately, is to keep the corpse unburied
for twice as long. A week may probably be considered
our medium interval between death and interment, and
with this delay, I need hardly tell you, the body becomes
putrid, sometimes intensely so, before the time for its
removal arrives.

Among the wealthier classes, as I have said, this delay
is practically unimportant, except so far as every repeti-
tion maintains the pernicious custom. Scarcely on ac-
count of any risk arising to themselves in emanations
from the dead, but mainly for the sake of influence and
example, would one wish the educated classes of the
community to adopt the usage of earlier burial. Our
present practice is upheld by no law of necessity ; nor,
for the most part, does it represent any extravagance Of
grief, or fond reluctance of separation. Chiefly, it sub-
sists by our indolent acquiescence in a habit which
former prejudices and former exigencies established.
Fears of premature interment, which had much to do
with it, are now seldom spoken of but with a smile.
The longer interval once rightly insisted on as neces-
sary for the gathering of distant friends, has now, in
the progress of events, become absurdly excessive : in a
vast majority of cases, all whose presence is need-
ed live within an extemely narrow circle, and the
more distant mourner who, 50 years ago, would have
spent several days in coming from Paris or Edinburgh,
can finish his journey in 12 hours. It is much to be
wished that, under these changed circumstances, an
altered practise might ensue, in the upper classes of
society fixing their time of burial within three or four
days of death. Such example of wealthier neighbours,
aided by greater enlightment and education among them-
selves, would greatly tend to detach the poor from many
observances and delays in relation to the dead, which,
in their narrow dwellings, cannot continue with im-
punity.
_ _

But, as regards these poorer classes, cannot anything
be done in connexion with your new arrangements to
abridge the period of delay ? As for any positive regu-
lation limiting the time during which it should be
allowed to retain dead bodies in certain dwelling-houses,
such could only be enforced by an extensive organisa-
tion of sanitary police, which you would have to call
into existence for the purpose, and which, in the present
state of public opinion, would encounter insurmountable
difficulties on every occasion of its authorative inter-
ference. It is by indirect means and inducements alone
that I can hope at present to effect the desired altera-
tion ; and by them I think something can be ensued
towards shortening the delays of interment.
First, I believe that everything which cheapens the
cost of burial will conduce to such a result, for among
the poor one considerable cause of procastination must
often be the immediate absence of money. The plan of
conveyance and payment which I have suggested would
at least ensure you against any increase of this diffi-
culty, and might readily be applied to diminish it. For
under such a system of single payment for grave and
conveyance it would be practicable, and I think most
advantageous to fix two prices, with a difference of at
least five shillings between them—to charge the lower
fee whenever the funeral should occur within 80 hours
after death ' • the higher whenever this period should be
exceeded. If, by the general adoption of the former
alternative, the cemetery receipts should be diminished,
in respect of artisan funerals, even to the utmost extent
—say five or six hundred pounds per annum—this money
or much more would have been advantageously ex-
pended in purchasing so great a reform. If, on the
contrary, the immediate option of the working classes
should be in favour of continuing a system so injurious
to themselves and to their neighbours, there would be
no injustice in leaving them the incumbrance of a cost
from which it would require only their own will to
escape. The difference of price would soon be recog-
nised as a municipal tax on delays of interment—a tax
rendered legitimate by the public evil which it is de-
signed to correct, and guarded against remonstrance,
because any man may avoid it who will. And since the
delays in question often arise in a passive habit of the
people, founded on no deliberate intention or reason, I
cannot but believe that a well-marked difference of fee
would, as it were, startle the poor into considering the
question, which would come to be of daily argument in
their houses, "Is it worth while that our funeral cost
should be increased by the amount of one or two days'
wages in order that we may retain within our dwelling-
rooms four days longer that which every one tells us is
hurtful to ourselves and to others?"

It has been suggested to me that many delays occur
owing to Sunday being considered specially as a funeral
day among the labouring classes ; that an equal distri-
bution of burials over the week would not involve wait-
ing for a particular day ; and that the closure of your
cemetery on Sundays might occasionally be beneficial
for the purposes under consideration. Many arguments
will doubtless occur to you both for and against the pro-
hibition of Sunday interments, but this probably may
be regarded as a point of detail more fitly to be con-
sidered when your scheme is complete, and even when
it has actually given you some experience of its opera-
tion.

As regards the second point adverted to—the estab-
lishment of special reception houses for the dead—l do
not hesitate to say that, if they could be brought into
general use, their institution would confer great advan-
tages on the poor. But against this event, at least as
an immediate one, I grieve to see strong probabilities.
A first proposal made to some mourning household
that they should trust to strangers' hands the custody
of their unburied dead would, in most instances, greatly
and suddenly clash with their customs, and prejudices,
and affections.
Whatever success you might have in conquering this
difficulty would of necessity be slow ; and my practical
familiarity with the poorer classes makes me so little
hopeful of their immediate acquiescence in the plan,
that I should hardly feel justified in urging you to incur
any -very large expense,
or to embarass yourselve4 at
starting with any elaborate machinery, for the sake of
so
The
scanty an expectation.
reception houses of Germany, as you probably
maeeie—t
know, are founded with a double intention : partly for
the
dpomy
purpose which
ich I m
dhe
fromr a chiefly
injurious j consideringeree contiguityha
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d
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ve
to the living ; partly, also, that the bodies may be vigi-