The Sun.
London, England, 1849-10-08 00:00:00

titnina

LONDON, MONDAY, OCTOBER 8, 1849.

It is not sufficient, in order to prevent a return of
that epidemic, the ravages of which are now happily
diminishing every day, that we should pay every
attention to the sewage and drainage of the metro-
polis. Even with the most perfect system of sewage
and drainage that the wit of man can devise, we
shall be still liable to an annual visitation of cholera
so long as the putrefying dead are permitted to
poison the air breathed by the living; and such must
necessarily be the case so long as intramural
interments shall, under any pretence whatso-
ever, be permitted. Those who have vested interests in
the propagation of plague and pestilence—the licensed
poisoners of their fellow-creatures—the patrons and
the allies of cholera and typhus, have recently had
their hopes revived by what we cannot but consider
the most extraordinary decision of Mr. JARDINE, who
seems to imagine that the proprietor of a burial-
ground has a right, not only to 1111 it with corpses,
but when the earth is thoroughly saturated with
putrid matter to go on piling corpse upon corpse, and
to pack them, without any regard to decency, ad
infinitum. Such is the only logical conclusion to be
deduced from the decision of Mr. JARDINE, a
judgment which would legalise the horrors of the Spa-
fields burying-ground and the unmentionable abomi-
nations of Enon Chapel. We firmly believe that the
decision of Mr. JARDINE is as contrary to sound
law as it is to right reason, and we hope the Board of
Health will, without loss of time, adopt the proper
measures for getting it reversed. If, however, it
should turn out that Mr. JARDINE is right in the eye
of the law, then most certainly was Mr. BUMBLE justi-
fied, when he denounced the law as "a Hass and a
Hidiot," and expressed a wish that "his eye might
be opened by experience," and we would respectfully
suggest, as the best method of opening the eye of the
law on this occasion, that all magistrates and
justices, and all those engaged in drawing up Acts of
Parliament, should be condemned to live in houses
abutting upon graveyards until such time as the law
on this subject should be so altered as to bring its
dictates in accordance with those of common sense.
'Were not the subject of such, literally speaking, vital
importance to every inhabitant of the metropolis, the
perusal of the defence set up for each particular
graveyard, by the individuals who happen to have a
vested interest in the continuance of that particular
pest-shop, would be really amusing. None of these
gentry attempt to justify the practice of intramural
interments—they all admit that such interments are a
nuisance ; but then each pleads for the continuance of
his own nuisance on the ground that it is "a very
little one," and that the great ones should be abated
in the firstinstance. One person, and one person only,
has greatly dared to stand forth as theDixoN of grave-
yards, to contend that the inhalation of the emanations
from a mass of putrefying animal matter is rather
healthy than otherwise. This singular individual is
the Rev. HENRY STEDBING, Minister of St. James's
Chapel, Hampstead-road, and to the burial•ground
attached thereto. It appears, from a letter addressed
to the Times, that
"This burial-ground is bounded on the north by Car-
dington-street, on the east by Whittlebury-street, and
on the south by Little George-street.
" The last-named street is inhabited by a very poor
class of persons, nearly every house being tenanted by
several families. It is separated from the burial-ground
by a low wall, distant from the backs of the houses
certainly not more than two yards. C'ardington and
Whittlebury streets have a slight advantage, inasmuch
as the houses are some five or six yards distant."
The inhabitants of these streets complain that the
exhalations arising from this graveyard are of a most
offensive, disgusting, and unwholesome character, and
that " upwards of thirty newly-made graves are to be
seen near the wall which separates the yard from
Cardington-street, many of these graves being not
more than two feet distant from the wall. The
average number of interments in this graveyard is
700, according to the grave-digger's statement."
Such being the state of the case, one of the inhabi-
tants of Cardington-street addressed a letter to the
Times on the subject, urging the necessity of imme-
diately closing the graveyard. Thereupon the Rev.
HENRY STEERING inditea a letter, in which he con-
tends for the peculiar salubriousness of this graveyard,
because himself and his family, who have lived in a
house attached to the burial-ground for fourteen
years, " have never suffered sickness from their con-
tiguity to the burial- ground"—(mark, he does not say
have never suffered sickness at all, but sickness from
their contiguity to the burial ground, he taking upon
himself to decide whether any sickness from which
they might have suffered was or was not occasioned
by their contiguity
.to the burial-ground) ; and then
he goes on to declare the superior salubriousness of
the neighbourhood of a graveyard in the_following
words :

" I have every reason to believe, well knowing my
poor neighbours as I do, that if a statistical inquiry
were instituted, it would be found that sickness and
death in this now crowded neighbourhood have been
less, on the average, than in almost any other similarly
populated district of the metropolis."

- Doubtless the Rev. HENRY STEBBING is a very
extraordinary man. So was the late M. CUADERT