The Sun.
London, England, 1853-04-02 00:00:00

EXTRAMURAL
TY SEPULTURE
.FOR THE
OF LONDON

The following extracts contain the prominent parts of
the report of Mr. Haywood, the surveyor to the City
Commissioners of Sewers, ordered to be printed by the
court on the 28th of February :
Pursuant to your instructions I beg to submit to you a
report giving an outline of the preliminary considerations
involved in the important question of providing a place of
extramural sepulture for those lying withM the jurisdiction
of the City of London or having present right of burial in
the churchyards, Szc., situated within its limits.
I will at once proceed to submit to you an outline of the
considerations which occur to me as those immediately
concerning the question of providing a place of extramural
sepulture for the inhabitants of the City of London.
the
The primary considerations appear to be—First,
site ; secondly, the area.
As to the site-1. The situation or site for the proposed
cemetery is, to a certain extent, defined by the 9th clause
of the Interment Act, which is to the following effect :
No new burial-ground or cemetery (parochial or non-
parochial) shall be provided and used in the metropolis, or
within two miles of any part thereof, without the previous
approval of one of her Majesty's Principal Secretaries of
State.
By this clause it appears that it is possible that objec-
tions may be held to apply against every site within two
miles of the metropolis. Now for the purpose of the Inter-
ment Act the metropolis is clearly defined by its interpre-
tation clauses, and includes a district of large area, and a
radius of three or four miles from the centre, although I
apprehend, whatever that interpretation might have been,
your committee would have preferred a site well placed
beyond existing houses, as well as removed from the pro-
bable encroachments of the metropolis for at least two or
three generations to come. The existing cemeteries, which
sprung into existence by the commercial enterprise of our
people, and which, deficient in their management and sys-
tem, as they may seem when tested by any imaginative
standard of perfection, certainly made a vast stride in the
right direction, and paved the way to the improved and
now universal ideas upon the subject of sepulture, illus-
trate the necessity of adopting a site at a considerable dis-
tance from the metropolis, for the whole of them, with the
exception of that at Kensall-green, are already surrounded,
more or less, by dwelling's, and some of them closely sur-

rounded by them.
The objection may be started of the difficulty and ex-
pense of reaching a place of sepulture so far distant from
the place of death, but this objection will to a great extent
fall to the ground, when it is considered that any site that
can, under any circumstances or considerations, be selected,
even if the 9th clause of the Burial Act be interpreted in
the least restricted sense, cannot well be less than upon a
four-and-a-half or five miles radius from the centre of the
metropolis, and that probably the cost or difficulty of pro-
curing suitable ground may place it at the least a mile
further off. This, indeed, determines the mode of con-
ducting funerals of every description for the future. Walk-
ing funerals for all classes must be abandoned. Funerals
can be effected by vehicular transit alone, and the cost of
conveyance a mile or two more or less, after the working of
the system for a year or so, and when all the economies
which may be expected to be gained by time and expe-
rience have been realised, will, I submit there are fair
grounds to imagine, be an insignificant item in the general
expense, whilst the advantages of the further distance will
be felt to be greater and greater every year as the popula-
tion increases, and approaches the place of sepulture with

•
its dwellings.
2dly. The selection of the site may be'in a degree influ-
enced by considerations of the street traffic upon the route
to it, It is manifestly advisable, if possible, to select a
site which will enable the funeral processions to reach it
without encountering or-being interrupted by a dense and
concentrated traffic. If there is truth in this, crossing the
river by the bridges would be most objectionable, and the
question of site for a City Cemetery appears to be so far
narrowed by the northern districts being thus at once in-
dicated for the purpose. A very considerable range of
country is nevertheless still left open to choice, even with
this restriction. The evidence collected by the Board of
Health is in favour of a north-eastern situation and a high
level (provided the soil is suitable), and that the higher the
elevation of a cemetery the nearer it may be permitted to
be to a city, the reasons given being that "S. and S. W.
winds being usually moist hold the putrefactive gases in
solution more readily than the W. or N. E. winds, which
are dry;" but with adequate area, and with well-devised
regulations in other respects, I submit this point is not a
primary essential.
3dly. The nature of the soil is, however, next to that
of the distance from the metropolis, the most important
consideration in the selection of the site ; as it not only has
the most direct bearing upon the sanitary consideration in-
volved in the subject, but as it determines almost entirely
the rate of decomposition of the human remains, so it re-
gulates largely the area of ground that will be required,
and upon the area required so will tho first outlay for
ground, fencing, and planting, &c., depend.
After quoting evidence advising a gravelly soil, not too
compact in its nature, and reasonably dry, Mr. Haywood
proceeds—" Clay appears to be a soil the worst adapted for
interments. It is stated that in a metropolitan cemetery,
where there are ' two kinds of soil,' clay and marl, coffins
which have been interred 8 years in the former are sound
and undecayed, whilst coffins interred in the latter are en-
tirely decomposed, and their contents dissolved, except
part of the bones."
But the objections to a clayey soil, or a most boggy soil,
are various. Not only do such soils appear to retard de-
composition, but they are subject, like receptacles herme-
tically closed, to retain, and under certain circumstances to
evolve rapidly, quantities of concentrated and dangerous
gases, the products of decomposition.
As to the area. Firstly, this depends upon whether it is
needful to provide space for the whole number of those
who upon an average of years die within the City, or in
addition thereto to provide also space for those having
right of burial within the City, whether they die in the
City or not ; or whether it is needful to provide space only
for such a number as, from an average of past years, may
be shown to have been buried within the City, upon the
assumption that it presents a fair average of the inter-
ments that may be expected to take place annually in the
new cemetery, From the tables prepared by your officer
of health, and given in his last annual report, it appears
that the total number of deaths in the City were-
-1848-49 3,763
1849-50
1850-51
1851-52
Average, 3,139 per annum.
It may, I think, safely be inferred that nearly the whole
of those dying, and included in the average annual number
of 3,139, had right of burial within the City, and would
have the same right in the new place of sepulture. The
number dying out of the City, but with a right of burial
within it, as in vaults and family graves, &c., must neces-
sarily be very limited. I have at present no means of ascer-
taining this number. From the return furnished you by the
Board of Health, showing the number of interments within
the City for the seven years ending 1848, the total number
of interments was 12,669, the average number per annum
being 1,810. Thelexcess of the number dying within the
City over those actually buried there, it will be seen is as much
as 734. por cent. These figures do not give perhaps a strictly
correct proportion, as the returns of the burials are for dif-
ferent years from those of the mortality by your officer of
health, but for this purpose they approximate, I have no
doubt, sufficiently close. I have heard that certain parishes
have, within the last few years, contracted with cemetery
companies for the burial of their poor, and no longer bury
within the City. For many years past, also, public feeling
upon the subject of intramural interment has induced the
middle and wealthier classes to choose their resting-place
in the suburban cemeteries ; the actual number of burials
has therefore declined of late years, but it may be a
question whether, upon the provision of a suitable
place of interment, the whole of the City parishes will not
at once choose ;it as the legitimate place of burial for
their poor, as well as from its probably being the
cheapest. The middle classes might resort there as their
rightful place of burial, and also upon the grounds of eco-
nomy; and the wealthier classes might—if in the selection
of the sites, the laying out, and in the decency and order
of its regulations and maintenance, it approached the me-
tropolitan cemeteries—choose it as willingly, if not by
preference, to any other places of sepulture; and thus in
the coarse of a few years the burials within the City Ceme-
tery might boar a far larger proportion to the deaths within
the City than the burials within the City churchyards now
do. This is the first point to be determined in reference
b the question of area, and I submit that the various
considerations here given would tend to show the expe-
diency of determining the area in reference to the actual
number of deaths annually taking place within the City,
rather than by the average number of those buried within
the City for some years past. The question of area
is somewhat narrowed by the City population not being
subject to progressive increase like a suburban district—
indeed, the houses within the City are yearly becoming
numerically less, and the resident population, although
according to the decennial returns shown to fluctuate
slightly, has been nearly a fixed quantity for the last
fifty years. The recommendation given by the Board
of Health in their report upon extramural sepulture in
1850 was, " that it be unlawful to inter in any
burial ground more than one corpse in a grave."
Dr. Sutherland stated to the board, after having
made extensive inquiries upon the Continent as to the
mode of sepulture there adopted—" In all the cemeteries
I visited, with one exception, it appeared to be either
the law or the practice to bury only one body in a
grave. I found the advantage and necessity of this fully
appreciated. From various reports upon extramural se-
pulture, I gather that at Stuttgard and Munich, the ave-
rage space required for an adult's grave is about 32 square
feet, and the average throughout the Continent appeared
to be from 30 to 40 square feet. The depths at which
the graves are fixed upon various parts of the Con=
tinent are as follows :—At Stuttgard, where the depths
vary according to the age of the deceased, the average is
about 5 feet 2 inches ; at Glasshulle, 3 feet 5 inches ;
at Frankfort, 5 feet 7 inches ; at Munich, 6 feet 7 inches ;
in France, from 4 feet 10 inches to 6 feet ; in Austria, if
lime is used, 6 feet 2 inches ; and in somes portion of Ger-
many, from 7 feet to 11 feet. The time which is fixed be-
tween the reopening a grave for interments, is fixed at
Paris 5 years, Munich about 9 years, Leipsic about 15 years,
Prussiar2o years, Frankfort 20 years, Stuttgard4ls to 18
years. tlnd.eed, the general tendency in the evidence and
reports of competent judges is, that from 7 to 10 years is
the least time that should elapse between the burial of one
eorpse, and the re-opening of the ground for fresh inter-
ment, it being always understood that the soil of the ceme'!.
tery is of a suitable nature. There are strong arguments tp
be adduced in favour of burial of but one body in a grave;
there are almost equally strong arguments in favour of as-
signing such a space for each coffin as may prevent their
being uncovered when graves are dug adjacent to them ; the
rule which places a corpse at such a depth which will ear
able decay to proceed gradually is for the same reason good,
and the nearer to the abodes of men the more needful that
regulations similar to those should be strictly adhered to.
The clause 110, in your Sewers Act of 1848, which enacts
that five feet should be the least depth between the sur-
face of the ground and the top of any coffin, appears to
have been framed with the soundest wisdom, and should
be adhered to whatever way the other points may be
determined. If you should determine that more than one
body should be permitted to be interred in a grave, then to
prevent the denudation of coffins containing human re-
mains, or the chance of those remains being turned up and
exposed, as is so frequently the case, it would be expedient
that at least two feet six inches, or three feet of earth
should remain between the top of one coffin and the
bottom of the other, and to regulate this the most care-
ful registrations of every depth of grave and every in-
terment that takes place in it, would be needful. But
for sanitary reasons, for the prevention of injurious ema-
nations, and chance of the exposure of human remains, for
the simplification in the management of the ground, faci-
litation of registration, and other reasons, the interment
of but one body in one grave at suitable depths appears to be
best. Irrespective of tho other considerations which it ap-
pearstoof me
having at once suggest themselves and urge the pro-
priety an adequate to
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