The Sun.
London, England, 1847-08-16 00:00:00

BURIAL IN TOWNS.

Friday night G. A.Walker, Esq., surgeon, author of
"Gatherings from Graveyards," &c., and well known
for the zeal and ability with which he has advocated
the abolition of intermural sepulture, delivered the
fourth of a series of lectures on the actual condition of
the metropolitan graveyards, and their injurious
effects on public health and public morality. Mr.
Walker said, that in the previous lectures he had ex-
plained the nature and action of morbific poisons • had
shown the manner in which these poisons may be in-
troduced into the human body, and brought forward
cases which incontestably proved the fact that the re-
spiration of putrid exhalations from dead bodies be-
fore burial, or from vaults and open graves, is highly
injurious to the health of man and animals. He in-
tended next to prove that analogous effects are pro-
duced by the vapours which exhale from over-crowded
burying-grounds. In this case the generation of
morbific matter was more gradual, the poison less
concentrated; and persons were seldom directly
exposed to its influence for any considerable
length of time, and the relation was there-
fore less evident or less easy to establish; . but
he believed, when they weighed the evidence he would
produce, that the audience would leave the theatre
with the firm conviction that the saturated Brava,
yards of this metropolis were centres of infection,
producers of lingering disease or sudden death, and
that such places should be at once and for ever re-
moved from amongst us.—(Cheers.) This was no
mere assertion, but a matter capable of being proved
by the most simple calculation. It required no logic
to prove that it was impossible to lodge fifty indivi-
duals in a room ten feet square; and it was equally
impossible to inter in a safe and decent manner 3,000
dead bodies in an acre of ground, which can only
hold 136.—(Hear, hear.) To show that this was the
tact, it was necessary to give some calculations which,
though disgraceful and disgusting, were all important
and for the correctness of which he pledged himself.
An acre of ground contains 4,840 square yards, and
%%ill decently inter about 1,361 adult bodies. Pre-
suming that the dead body was committed to
the grave for the purpose of mingling with its
parent earth, ten years must be allowed for
this process, and hence the number of adult bodies
that an acre of ground will annually receive is 136.
From accurate returns of the superficial extent of the
parochial and some other burial-grounds of the me-
tropolis, and the number of bodies annually interred
in each, the following facts were deduced :—The
annual average of interments in the seven descrip-
tions of burying places comprised in these returns,
was stated to be 2,271. If this was divided by 7, it
gave the average for each, which gave 324 burials
annually to the acre—(Hear, and shame)—from
which might be fairly abstracted the burial places of
the Jews and the Society of Friends, which are well
conducted. Deducting these two they had five
species of grounds, which would give an annual ave-
rage of 426, instead of 136 each.—(Hear, hear )
In Germany the average was only 110, but here our
graveyards were made to receive every year three
times as many as they ought, and four times as many
as were permitted by the laws of well-regulated con-
tinental states.—(Hear, hear.) The overcrowding
of our grave-yards might be illustrated in another
way. The annual mortality of Llndon was at least
50,000. Supposing the burials renewed every ten
years, 444 acres would be required, whereas we have
only 209.—(Hear, hear.) But that was not all,
there were 182 parochial graveyards in London, of
these only 48 were confined to the proper limit of
136 to the acre; the rest exhibited various degrees
of saturation, from 200 up to 3,000 annually.
In St. Andrew's Undershaft the average per
acre was
Portugal- street Burying-ground ...
St. Dunstan's, Fleet-street
St. Dunstan's in-the-East ...
St. John's, Clerkenwell
St. Mary- at- Hill
St. Olave, Tooley-street
T

'... 1,278
.. 1,021
... 1.182
... 1,210
... 3,073
... 1,159
.. 1,257

St. Swithin's, ooley-street 1,760
Turning from parish grounds to Dissenting burial-
places the following were the results :
Wickliffe Chapel, Stepney ..
• • 1,210
Enon Chapel, Woolwich .. .. ... 1,080
Parker, Dockhead, Woolwich ... 1,613
Moorfields .. 1,210
Cannon-street road .. ... 1,109
And, lastly, New Bunhill-fields was distinguished
by an average of 2,323.—(Hear.) It was humiliating
to think that a parish ground—St. John's, Clerken-
well—stood at the head of these unchristian nui-
sances—pestiferous in every respect, because, when a
proportion of 3,073 were annually interred on an acre
of land, it followed that the bodies could only
ramain in the ground five months instead of ten
years.—(Hear.) Hence the stacking of coffins
in deep pits, the brutal dismemberment of bodies, the
consumption of coffin wood in many localities, the
danger to mourners from attending such places, the
insidious infection which, especially in the warm
season, poison the atmosphere, and, by undermin-
ing the health, hurried thousands to an un-
timely end, again to become the subjects of fresh in-
dignities, the centre of infection to survivors, and
the distributors of pestilential emanations.—(Hear,
hear.) In support of these general propositions, the
lecturer proceeded to adduce a vast number of deeply-
important and most interesting specific evidence,
tracing malignant typhus fever in many instances to
the poisonous exhalations from dead bodies in various
places ; and also numerous cases of measles and
scarlet fever in children, arising from the same
cause. From these instances we quote one :—Mr. J.
Irwin, residing at No. 32, Clement's-lane, which
overlooked the burial-ground in Portugal-street, had
enjoyed good health with his family until lar.: came to
reside in that neighbourhood. They have never en-
joyed health since. The wife of one of his lodgers, in
comfortable circumstances, was attacked by typhus
fever in the house, and removed to the hos-
pital. The husband, who went to visit her, fell ill of
the same disease, and died in four days. Two other
lodgers also had fever. The husband died, and was
removed to the graveyard from which he met his
death. Dr. Walker at this period attended Mr.
Irwin, who was fast merging into that low form of
fever of which this locality has furnished so many
examples. On looking into the " green ground"
through the window of Mr. Irwin 's room, Dr.
Walker noticed a grave open within a few feet of the
house. The sick man replied to his observations,
" Ah, that grave is just made for a poor fellow who
died in this house in the room above me, he died from
typhus fever, from which his wife has just recovered.
They have kept him twelve days, and now they are
going to put him under my nose by way of warning
to me."—(Hear, hear.) Fortunately Mr. Irwin re-
covered, and has since laboured earnestly for the
abolition of this monster nuisance. But it was not
alone in the crowded graveyards of London that the
pestiferous and deadly nature of this poison exhaled
from the graves of the dead were exhibited. The
lecturer showed by reference to two recent outbreaks
of fever at Minchinhampton and Axminster, most
remarkable illustrations of the intimate connexion
which exists between graveyard emanations and the
development of pestilential fever. After detailing the
facts connected with these outbreaks, Dr, Walker pro-
ceeded to adduce copious evidence of the same fact from
Sinde, Chusan, Jamaica, and Egypt, all of which
led to the irresistible conclusion that intramural se-
pultureenooutirc was in all cases an unmitigated evil, and
ought
course
to
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lictteoudrwea
ht
ipcohrn.c
telvaaatnl dkneofrtoorr ever.
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Enon Chapel, is now applied, and stated that frequent
applications bad been made to Sir J. Graham and the
present Home Secret.try b
by himself and other inha-
bitants on the subject of this almost unequalled
sance, but hitherto without effect. It was, how-
ever, in contemplation to hold a public meeting
shortly with referencech to it, and he hoped they would
avoid doing justice to theild
c ne es riss
attentione)nt passing, he could not
Bail papers that had for
thishseubject, and had been
all alte T 1
directed many
ypublice ars
cause of sanitary
that the public
of the greatest service to
of gratitude to
Ae papers for their
pplause.) Dr.
an. d instructive
orevwfoerdnai
deep generally.deb t
importance to
i_eenrte(d
ctsaHomef the gravest
noble and useful exerotesiotanntssa.i
full concluded
of
facts
public health and morality by •
lecture, Walker
stating that, ho however
injurious a deteriorated atmosphere might
full grown adult, it was infinitely more so toe to a
dren, who perished weekly by thousands. Hence he
called on them, not only as Englishmen and as
Christians, but as parents, as they desired to leave
behind those who were to continue the race, as they
valued health and its inappreciable blessings them-
selves, to cast from them that prolific came of pre- '
mature destruction, the practice of the interment of
the dead in the neighbourhood of the living.—(Loud
applause.)

• A vote of thanks was unanimously given to the
lecturer at the conclusion.