The Sun.
London, England, 1849-11-10 00:00:00

ettientnit ‘7lllt

01.4rD011. SATURDAY. NOVEMBER 10 1849.

Every laudable exertion continues to be made by
the most practical and indefatigable of all our sanitary
reformers, Mr. GEORGE ALFRED WALKER, the chair-
man of the National Association for the Abolition of
Intramural Interment. Thanks to the truly disin-
terested and energetic proceedings of this gentleman,
there is at lengh some probability that one of the most
horrible., if not the most horrible of all our public evils
will, before long, be entirely dissipated. Already his
efforts have aroused the attention of the people—have
lei to the formation of a society to carry the objects
he himself has been mainly instrumental in re-
vealing, and have secured, moreover, the pros-
pective co-operation of the Commissioners at Gwydyr
House, and the support of several of the prin-
cipal members of the Administration. To have
accomplished so much, even if no more were attempted,
would redound to the honour of any private indivi•

dual. But to remember the loathsome nature of the

particulars which Mr. WALII.EII has had personally to
investigate, to bear in recollection the difficulties he
has ha-1 to overcome almost without any assistance

whatever, and to know that all the goad which he
has up to the present time effected is considered
by him as only a first step towards a ge-
neral amelioration, afford sufficient reason, we
conceive, for the earnest consideration of his
labaurs by the inhabitants of the United
Kingdom. For ourselves we shall not cease to com-
ment upon the toils of this eminent public benefactor

until such time n they are crowned with that success
which in the end is inevitable.
It was very admirably and forcibly remarked by
IVALKEu, on the occasion of the last meeting of
the Society for the Abolition of Burials in Towns,
namely, on Tuesday the Gth instant, that it was
essential that there should not be " the slightest re-
laxwion of the exertions of those who desired to con-

serve their own lives and protect the remains of the
dead from desecration." That sentence condenses
into an epigrammatic compass the feelings out of
which the whole movement against the system of
intramural interment has emanated. The aspirations
of the advocates of this beneficent movement are two-
fold, relating to the quick and to the dead—to the
salubrity or the air inspired by the living, and to the
decency of the precincts hallowed by the presence of
the deceased. The arguments against the prevailing
system indeed are not only the arguments of common
sense, but of religion, not only the arguments of
matters•of-fact, but the arguments of the gentlest
and holiest sentiments, those tender and elevating
sentiments which are among the noblest preroga-
tives of humanity. In calling upon the multitude to
prevent the continuance of a practice which tends
so very materially to enhance the amount of the
general mortality, the aspirants for extramural inter-
ment are also entreating them to bear better in re-
membrance:the divine dogmas of Christianity. For,
according to the existing custom, we bury our dead
inure like dogs doomed to a godless annihilation than
like the remains of brings dvitined for resurrection
and immortality. But, according to the plan pro-
pounded by the Chairman of the Extramural Inter-
anent Association, the bodies of our departed brethren
would receive that decent sepidture which is surely
the most agreeable to the •feelings of the population,
and which is assuredly the most consistent with the
sublime teachings of Revelation.
It was among the most beautiful aspirations of a
poet of America that he should be buried where the
sunshine might warm the verdure of the grass, and
kindle the richest hues in the bells and blooms of the
wild-flowers, so that those who loved him might
sometimes be tempted to tarry near his resting place
when they came to muse over his memory. All
such thoughts are dissipated by the repulsive and
besi.l aspect of our city graveyards—the only
emotions inspired by them being emotions
of horror, shame, and loathing. With a suburban
cemetery it is otherwise. There affection may
linger without any hideous recognition of the
violation and desecration of the last solemn sanctuary
of those who have passed through the shadows of
dissolution. And it was felicitously shown on Tues•
day evening by an ingenious inhabitant of Brighton,
that the project of a general system of extramural in-
terment was in no measure incompatible with the
notions of economy. The plan submitted by him to
the meeting at Bridge street, Blackfriars, was
one of a proposed pyramidal cemetery, cal-
culated to contain within a very limited
area, corpses to the enormous number of 4,000,000.
How far such a scheme as this may be deemed re-
quisiteis tolerably clear from the very disgusting
details recorded by several of the gentlemen who ad •
dressed the assembly on Tuesday. One gave the
following frightful description of Lock burial-
ground in Southwark :
"Lock hurial-,tfre.und," he said, "composed a third
of an acre, in which four hundred bodies were buried
on
the liver,ge in a year. and during the cholera between
seventy and eighty. were buried a month. Of thirteen
houses close to it nine were unoccupied, and the inmates
of she other houses gave notice to quit. In three houses
six died of chvolera. S',ense of the cases were of a most
frightful character. One man left baind him a widow
ant children. In 1847, a grave• digger smashe dHi a
coffin, from which an area protruded, which he cut off
from the shoulder. When remonstrated with for such
brutality, he replied, • that if he did not chop up the
bodies he could not get room to bury a cat.'"
Another speaker mentioned that in St. Giles's
Cemetery, Camden Town, no less than 1,000 bodies
had been buried in a single year, while he very
_Setly alluded to St. George's graveyard, Hanover-
' aOare, as a " consecrated cesspool." A third recorded
certain circumstances in reference to the little church-
yard at the Essex village of Grays quite enough of
jusAlf to require the instant interposition of the autho-

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