The Sun.
London, England, 1849-05-18 00:00:00

NATIONAL SOCIETY FOR THE
ABOLITION OF BURIALS IN TOWNS.

A public meeting was held on Wednesday evening at
the Royal National Sch,ols, Cowper-street, City•road,
fur the purpose of petitioning Parliament for the imme-
diate closing of all burial places in cities and towns.
George Thompson, Eai., M.P., was unanimously
elected to take the chair.
Th 2 meeting was very numerously attended, and among
those present on the platform we observed Mr. George
Allred Walker, Mr. Luke James Hansard, Mr. Joseph
George Ross, Mr. Joseph Rogers, Mr. Charles Gilpin,
Mr. Elihu Burrit•;, and Mr. J. C. Atkinson, and a
number ot ladies.
Tim CHAIRMAN observed that this was emphatically
an age of reforms. Look in whatever direction you
might, you saw men eager and earnest in behalf of
measures of improvement and social advancement. It
was well to sec the intelligence and energy of the nation
so employed. It was a proof of activity of thought, of
the existence of a large amount of philanthropy, and of
a general desire to lessen the inevitable evils which
humanity in its best condition was called to bear. He
(the Chairman) sympathised with most of these reform
movements, and if not prepared to vote for the accom-
plishment of all the projects afloat, he at least rejoiced
to see the minds of men so much alive, and their powers
so generally quickened into active exertion.—(Cneers.)
Nothing was worse than a state of indifference and
inertion. He could cordially wish good speed to
all societies aiming to elevate, to instruct, and
to enfranchise the people.—(Loud cheers.) The
meeting of that evening was called, not to pro-
mote financial, or representative, or ecclesiastical,
or educational reform, but to help a great and vital
branch of sanitary improvement—to promote the cause of
public health, and with it, the cause of public decency,
and order, and morality—(Cries of " Hear, hear")
—also to recognise, to honour, and to protect
from outrage, the holiest and sacredest feelings
belonging to us as human beings. He (the Chairman)
was not in favour of combination and organization on
every subject, for he thought there was much for every
man to du in his individual capacity, which, if ho per-
formed it, would tend to better the condition of society
around him; but he was in favour of public agitation
and of organized action on the question under discussion,
because the evil was a great one—a national one, con-
netted with the cherished institutions of the country—
likely to be defended by those who thought they had
a vested interest in the abuse, and because the
remedy could only bo applied by the Government with
the aid of the Legislature, and that Government and
that Legislature would require on this, as on all great
questions, a wholesome and powerful pressure from
without to induce them to do their duty.—(Cheers.)
What was the object sought to be attained by this and
similar meetings? A law to prevent and to prohibit
the burial ot the dead within the immediate pre-
cincts of the dwellings of the living.—(Hear, hear.)
A law to provide, that in future the sepulchres and
tombs of our friends shall be at such a distance
from the abodes of those they leave behind, as
that the process of decomposition, inevitable after
death, shall not be the parent of diseases that may be
fatal to those who survive.—(Hear, hear.) But do we
assume too much when we say that the existing prac-
tice is attended with danger and positive injury to the
living ? Unhappily, wo do not. No man requires to
be told, that large accumulations of putrescent animal
matter are in the highest degree pernicious when in the
midst of the living.—(Hear, hear.) No man can deny
that the scythe of that indiscriminate destroyer,
Death, sweeps down 50,000 of our metropolitan popu-
lation annually. No man can deny that these
lifeless bodies are, with comparatively tew exceptions,
buried within the immediate neighbourhood of our
places ot abode. No man can deny that in consequence
of the amount of mortality, and this mode of burial,
from two millions and a half to three millions of pounds
weight of dead and decaying animal matter are annually
deposited in our graveyards. The measurement of
those graveyards, and a comparison of their capacity
with the number of deaths and funerals, has demon-
strated beyond the power of successful cavil or dispute,
that not only are our consecrated places of sepulture
overcrowded—that not only are bodies interred within a

few feet and otten wain a few inches of the surface—
that not only is there a reopening of graves, and a mo-

lestation of their tenants beture dust has returned to dust,
and ashes to ashes; but that there is a systematic work
of sacrilegious and brutal destruction carried on, and that
the bodies anxiously tended while sick, tearfully laid out
when dead, reverently shrouded, and then buried with
the most solemn and holy of Christian rites, are torn
from their cuffing and hewn to pieces by the spade of
the gravedigger, that room may be made for others, to
be in their turn subjected to similar outrages.—(Hear,
hear.) Were our grave yards innocuous —did they, in-
stead of steaming forth pestiferous and pestilential exha-
lation—breathe 6abean odours—such atrocious burgla-
ries, where more than gold is rifled, ought to call down
the gathered execrations of all who love decency—of all
who respect the peace of the dead—of all who regard
the rites of our holy religion.—(Cheers.) But the pre-
cious gift anti inestimable blessing of health is put in
peril by the system. The best earthly possession is a
body in health and vigour. Give me health, and I may
be poor, but still serene, cheerful, happy. Give me
health, and I may have to toil, and more, to grapple
with difficulties, and to bear perplexities and trials; but
the toil shall prove a blessing in disguise to my body, and
the elastic soul beneath its burden shall wax stronger
and stronger by the very necessity of bearing up against
the obstacles that oppose me.—(Cheers.) But, rob me
of my health—make me the victim of slow disease, or
functional derangement. and the spirit at once sympa-
thises with the body—the treasure of an immortal mind
is in this state of being in an earthen vessel—the lamp
burns in a frail pitcher—this cerebral matter is the ma-
terial organ of the soul—this body (with its various
members) is the servant, the instrument, and more,
the companion, inseparable, of the immaterial and '
den thl-ss mind.—(Hear, hear.) We are fearfully
and wonderfully made ; and so close is the
connexion between, so intimate and mutual the depen-
dence of mind and matter, that you cannot derange the
one without an injury to the other. If, then, you would
have pure, vigorous, active, healthy minds, study the
structure and functions of the body; darken not the
windows of the soul, pollute it not its temple, do not pull
it down by the grossness of the body, do not enfeeble it
in its operations, or taint it in its currents, by the
neglect, the abuse, or the desecration of the physical
system.—(Cheers.) But what has this to do with grave-
yards? This. There is nothing more essential to the
health than the purity of the atmospheric air. With-
hold it, and we die; pollute it, and a " thousand ills that
flesh is heir to" happen. The past and present mode of
burying the dead might have been the invention of
some malign being to render baneful this essential ele-
ment of healthful existence. Cathedrals, parish
churches, churchyards, and burial-grounds of all
kinds, consecrated and unconsecrated, are la-
boratories of disease ; earth and walls are satu-
rated with putrefaction, and the air in them and
around them is charged with sublimated particles, which
entering the lungs of the busy and unsuspecting popula-
tion of our city, are poisoning them by inches, if they do
not in many instances prove speedily fatal.—(Rear,
hear.) lie continued—l will venture to read a brief
extract or two from a valuable communication from the

pen of W. Simpson, surgeon, to the Journal of Public
Health for April, 1849. The facts are taken from the

writings of Mr. G. A. Walker—from the publications of
that gentleman, who has done so much to enlighten the
world on this subject. He says—
" Let any one look with unprejudiced eyes at the
actual state of the metropolitan graveyards and bury-
ing places; let him examine the vaults crowded with

dead, over which, separated by a thin covering, he
must sit during divine service, and ask himself whether

such things ought to exist. The numbers annually
buried in the Portugal-street burial-ground are ten
times as many as they ought to be, and the necessity
of obtaining room gives rise to the most revolting in-
decencies. Of some of them Mr. Walker was himself
an eye-witness. He saw heaps of coffin• wood perfectly
fresh, with cloth covering—bones on the surface pre-
pared for removal, and experienced the effects of the
(Slavin which are constantly thrown off from the surface.
The new Bunhill-fields burying-ground, Dover-road,
Borough, contains about two-thirds of an acre of
ground, and receives every year about 1,560 bodies—
average, 2,323 to an acre. It has been calculated by Mr.
Chadwick that no ground can neutralize more than 110
bodies annually to the acre. According to Mr. Walker's

calculation, 136 are the utmost—thus-twenty times as
many bodies are buried every year in this ground as
ought to be. And thus the violation of the tomb must be
inevitable—must be a work of daily necessity."—(Hear.)
He quotes one instance of the atrocities committed under
this hideous system, which I cannot omit to refer to,
though it exhibits human nature under a most revolting
and humiliating aspect.
" The Spa-fields ourying-ground, London, contains
42,640 feet, and might inter decently about 1,361 bodies.
Within a period of fifty years about Bu,ooo bodies have
been deposited there. The number of burials average
1,500 per annum, in place of 1,361 in perpetno. The
gravediggers in this ground have committed the most
fearful atrocities on the bodies of the dead. The long
hair of women has been cut off and sold to hair-drossers;.
teeth have been taken from every corpse worth ravag-
ing, and the clothes of the dead torn off by these mid-
night miscreants.

The practice of burning coffins and portions of their
contents in the Spa-fields burying•ground, has been
carried on upwards of a quarter of a century—a fire has
been constantly burning day and night. It has not been
possible for a long time to obtain a grave without muti-
lation and disturbance of previous corpses. The coffins
of still born' children have been broken up and used
for the purpose of lighting the fires in the bone-house,
because they are made of deal."—(Hear, hear.)
Let me now refer to a case fully proving the danger of
opening graves, and filling the surrounding atmosphere
with the subtle poison which exhales from decayed bodies.
" The circumstances connected with the outbreak of
fever in Minehinhampton sustain to the fullest extent
these opinions. Minchinhampton is a swat! town in
Gloucestershire, containing about eight hundred inhabi-
tants. It is pleasantly and healthily situated on a declivity,
wo•ll drained, free from most causes of disease, and re-
markably exempt from fever heretofore. Dr. Daniel Smith
had not met with a single case of typhus during four-
teen years' practice in it. Tho church and churchyard
are very old—the latter has served as a burial-ground
for the last 500 years, and is small in extent. In 1843,
the church was rebuilt, and it became necessary to lower
the surface of the churchyard a few feet. The earth so
removed was, in a fatal hour, devoted to purposes of
agriculture.
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