The Sun.
London, England, 1841-08-03 00:00:00

~bt/ alsit
b.N
called ti
s rfet9M
, dows act
one, eall
1.-4;j!, , 0, iT t
bottom,
4„."' .104, V'M.r
.
.41.111Nk' houses
/ I ..
(. I •
s.
'!
e.gik ; •
distanceground
, ,/•<" t644'y
IT •
11)1' I 1,1
. . . . atmosp!
,••••ww.lflif _ .

PRICE 5d

EVENING SUN.

he " Green Ground ;" on the west side th© IN in-
lmit the odour of another burying-place—a private
lied Enon Chapel—to perflate the houses ;at the
, the south end, is the burying-place of the alms-
; and in the centre of the Strand are the burying- •
and vault of St. Clement's Danes. So that in a
of 200 yards the livina, breathe on all sides an
there impregnated with dead odour. They are
consequently very unhealthy, aid typhus fever rages in
its most aggravated form.
•
BURYING-GROUND, PORTUGAL-STREET.—This, Called

the " Green Ground," is absolutely saturated with human
putrescence. Graves have been frequently seen open,
and bodies brutally exhumed. The effluvium from it is
at times so offensive, that persons living over it are dis-
gusted at the mat-odour. The walls, too, reek with
moist fluid..
ttiOX CHAPEL.--This chapel is separated from its
lower part underneath by a boarded floor. It is used as
a burying-place, and is crowded At one end, even to the
ceiling-top, with dead. Vast numbers of bodies had, in
1839, been placed here in pits, dug for the purpose, the
uppermost of which were covered by only a few inches
of earth. Soon after interments a peculiarly long nar-
row blc.ck fly is observed to cratlq Out of many of the
coffins, produced by the putrefaction 'of the bodies. A.
Sunday-school is weekly held over this pit of corrui•-
tion, and it is familiarly known
,to undertakers as the
" Dust-hole."

ST. CLEMENT'S, STRAND.—There is a vault under
this church called the Rector's Vault, and the products
of the decomposition of the animal matter are so power-
ful that lighted candles at the entrance of the vaults are
extinguished. On these occasions the windows of the
church are opened to admit the perflatiOn of air from the
street to occupy the place of the emitted gas. Thus a
diluted poison is given In exchange (torn the dead to the
living in this thoroughfare.
DRURY-LANE BURYING-GROUND,—ThiS is a most in-
tolerable and highly dangerous nuisance to the entire
neighbourhood. The inhabitants of "the houses are fre-
quently annoyed by the most repulsive sights.
RUSSELL-COURT, DRURT-LANE.—The rats here abound
and grow fat with corrupting flesh.
ST. GILES' BURYING-GROUND.—Thig ground has the
melancholy notoriety of originating the plague in 1665.
It was the fashion in those days to ascribe that visitation
to imported contagion; let us look to indigenous effects.
Pennant spoke of it in his " London" as having often "pu-
trid corpses, tacked between some slight boards, dispers-
ing their dangerous effluvia over the capital." The pre-
sent condition of it is asserted not to be much better.

The vaults, are however, better ventilated than the gene-
rality. _

WHITECHAPEL CHURCH.—Of this, Mr. Walker says,
the vaults underneath it have been suffered to become
very dilapidated ; and the smell from them, owing to
decomposed bodies, is dreadfully offensive. The bury-
ing ground, in the midst of a dense population, is dis-
gusting in appearance, and the putrefactive process goes
rapidly on. Numerous diseases are doubtless the result.
BETIINAL-GREEN.—Here eight or .ten funerals take
place every day, and three or four grave-diggers are
constantly employed. Water flows at four feet deep.
ST. LUKE'S, OLD-STREET.--There are three burying-
grounds belonging to this parish. The grave-digger
knows well what is the scent of the effluvia.

....-. - . -
CLERKENWELL.—Four burying-groends belong to this
parish; they are all crowded and in disorder. In this
filthy neighbourhood fever prevails.
SPA-FIELDS.—Though the burying7greund is large,
it is well saturated with dead. '
So of others—so of all. But these we consider to be
comparative purities, were they put injuxtaposition with
some of the plague-like City grounds.- Horrors Would
accumulate without end, and smite - the senses into sick-
ness, were but a tithe-part of their horridness recited.
One alone we will advance.as a casual sample; its authen-
ticity may be relied on : .`
The vaults of a church in the City, hot to be named,
perhaps, for evident reasons, were in a most revolting
and dangerous condition, and the pariWOners hiid for a
long period during church-time been most dismally an-
noyed. At length, one of the churchwardens,
thinking the cause of complaint might arise from
external agencies vitiating the atmosphere, ordered
the windows, roof, and every part of the building
,"-o he examined and made secure, and double
doers were made at the entrance .of the Church.
Not*.;thstanding this precaution, the stench was still in-
support. Able, and the congregation was •at various times
compeller.. to leave the church, some being seized with
sickness daring service, and conveyed home. Finding
all the precab.`tions he had taken still continued ineffec-
tual, the church itself was finally examined, when up-
wards of one liuodred bodies were found in an active
state of putrefa.ctio.l. The workmen employed on first.
entering the vault were almost instantaneously pros-
trated on the floor, and :lad not the second been dragged
away by force, he would have been quickly one of the
corrupting mass.
Whether to attribute the si:Tgisiness which appears
to have existed on the part of tha City to this most vital
and important point, to apathy2.pr fatuity, Ike know
not, but when, from the eternal agiiii;on of the question
at Patis in later years, with the dreadful and calamitous
accidents with which both the English , end Parisian
press have. been constantly rife, we remember at the
same time that no single citizen in London can have
failed to be a witness of this broad-staring evil, it seems.
to us utterly anomalous that no- notice or movement
should, till the present moment, have been taken of the
subject. As Mr. Anderton declared before the
Common Council Court, and we have ourselves.
shown -from record and chronicle, the vast ana
enlightened city of London is. the only unparalleled and
ostensible city, which, from the Childee Nineveh 'down
to the town of Paris, has ever adopted the insufferable
and life-destroying practice of burying Within the compass
of its walls. At last, however we rejoice to see that
over-startling instances of terriffing occurrence, in con-
i.re
have 'at last wrought up some one p-..,..n to bat -h-
-airu.
the nuisance—the city of London, as Mr. Anderton has
emphatically learnt from both sources, was the only
great city in the world, he believed, in which the
practice was permitted. Now that full conscious-
ness of the evil is obtained, its abolishment
should be as instantaneous as utter; This nuisance into-
lerable must not for many days longer rest like a black,
pestilent plague-spot upon the City scocheon. The
pauper thousands who work in that huge Babylon from
sun-break to nightfall, have enough waste of body and
emaciation of limb from natural toil and labour, without
having their lives shortened by extraneous means, or
every gulp of air that they take—which"ought at least to
be balmy from heaven and salutary to existence—bloatod
with malaria, and suffocative of life. And this not alone
for the poor, but equally for the rich. The lungs of heir
princely merchantmen are as apt. to imbibe the poison as
the poorest hound. Vault, and churchyard, and char-
nel must nu longer hearse putrefaction. Alley, and lane,
and roadway must no longer have its gales polluted:
Stench, rottenness, and disease must be, shovelled any-
where but amid the vitals and heart of the City. The
Legislature will enact, and the nuisance be annihilated.
To those miserable wiseacres who allege the insup_er-
able expense of distant byrials we say nothing. The
leading question is not to ffe troubled with such obstruc-
tive vexations. If the Romans of old found a possibility
of maintaining their Copiatm, who were specially appointed
for removals of the dead without the city, London may
do the same. . .
To those far-seeing calculators, who would pose by
questioning as to where about London the millions of
her dead should be carried, we, in like vein, answer, •
that if Lacediemon bad its Ceramicus, Jerusalem its burial-
field at Kedron, and Paris its Pere-la-Chaise, London
may easily find spots large enough and isolate enough
close at hand. Blackheath, to wit—a broad and un-
bounded table-land. _ . .

Sufficient praise cannot be bestowed upon the decisive,
unanimous conduct of the Common Council upon the
immediate making of Mr. Anderton's motion. They
have now only to follow it up with alacrity and despatch.
Months must not be allowed to slide away, but days I*
counted, so long as this worse than Egyptian plague
perils the City. Let them cause the immediate ordinance
to be passed, identical with that of Rome—" Homineln
mortuum in Urbe ne sepelito."