The Sun.
London, England, 1853-03-30 00:00:00

NATIONAL CEMETERIES.

The following is a copy of a petition presented to the
House of Commons by Mr. Mackinnon,—" To the
Honourable the Commons of the United Kingdom
of Great Britain and Ireland in Parliament assembled,—
The humble petition of the President and Members of
the National Society for the Abolition of Burial in Towns,
showeth that it was clearly demonstrated before a com-
mittee of your honourable house in the year 1840, and-
more fully before the special committee appointed
to inquire into The Effect of Interment of Bodies'
in 1842, that the burial of the dead in the midst
of the living is a practice fraught with the most
disastrous consequences. That your petitioners
would remind your honourable house, that during
the prevalence of epidemic cholera in the metropolis,
the remains of between 2,000 and 3,000 persons, who
had perished from pestilence, were deposited weekly in
places long since incapable of
body.
That it hasgivingdecent long,muchheeleesa
matter of common less
sanitary, burial to a single
notoriety,so tproduce that the
are andd i
bodies of the deadspscaosneddaouolfsos a
a
incal-
culable injury to the public health and the public morals.
That during the prevalence of a pestilential disease, which
p
your petitioners believe was, in many instances, clearly
traceable to the practice which they call upon your hon.
house to arrest, the
bodies of the dead were deposited in
streets and thoroughfares,-under and around chapels and
human habitations—in the very midst of two millions of
the inhabitants of the metropolis. That utterly regard-
lees of repeated warnings and predicted consequences,
the bodies of the dead have been, and continue to be,
placed one upon another and side by side, in deep pits ;
whilst thousands of others have been, and continue to be
deposited in shallow graves, with an utterly unprotec-
tive covering, of a few inches of soil (chiefly com-
pounded of human remains) over each coffin. That your
petitioners beg to remind your honourable house, that
the practice of intramural burial, in itself so injuri-
ous and destructive by the systematic employment of
means fox' the purpose of providing space for new
comers. That the mischiefs thus inflicted upon the liv-
ing are incalculably increased by the mutilation and dis-
uurbance of bodies previously interred, and also by the
incessant turning up of human remains, in every stage
of decomposition. That your petitioners have abundant
evidence to prove, that in London, Bristol, Waterford,
and other places, some of the most virulent and fatal
cases of recent cholera were developed in the immediate
neighbourhood of burial-places. That your petitioners
respectfully suggest that, although the mistakes of cen-
turies, as to the insanitary construction of the habitations
of the living, and the sewerage of cities and towns, can
be rectified only by necessarily slow degrees, and at an
enormous pecuniary outlay—the immediate arrestation
of the practice of intramural burial—a practice which
admits of neither palliation nor excue, is as easy as it is
urgent and imperative. That, for the above and other
cogent reasons, your petitioners respectfully call upon
your Honourable House to interpose your authority—to
accord a power to step in between the living and the
dead—and to pass forthwith, a general act for the forma-
tion of national cemetaries far removed from human
dwellings. And your petitioners will ever pray, &c."—
G. A. Walker, Surgeon, in Practical Suggestions for the
Establishment of National Cemetaries.

LAMENTABLE AFFAIR.-M. Emile de Vauxonne, Judge
at the Court of Appeal, and President of the Council
General and of the Municipal Commission of Lyons,
went on the 25th to the shop of M. Gobert, gunsmith,
to get a pair of pistols repaired. By an inexplicable
chance it happened that the pistols were loaded, and on
M. de Vauxonne touching the trigger of one of them to
show M. Gobert what the pistols required, the arm went
off, and the charge struck the gunsmith obliquely in the
breast. He at once fell on the ground crying out, " I
am a dead man. M. de Vauxonne, horror-struck at
what had occurred, seized on the other pistol and blew
out his brains. When medical aid was brought to M.
Gobert it was discovered that the wound which he re-
ceived is not likely to prove of any gravity. This fact
renders the precipitancy of M. de Vauxonne the more to
be lamented.—French paper.