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

BLOCK PRINTING.

. TO THE EDITOR OF THE SUN.
So,—l have read in The Sun of last evening a
statement, extracted from the Glasgow Herald, in which
a.description is given of various improvements, so styled,
in the method of block printing. These kind of notices,
at a time when the operatives are already but half em-
ployed, are calculated to inflict still more serious injury
on their interests, and can only contribute to the re-
sources of those hideous monopolies that are already
spreading desolation and destruction throughout the
length and breadth of the land, and threatening every
industrious workman with immediate distress and,desti-
lution. The grasping avariciousness of these machinery
masters is most notoriously evident in the factohat they
never could, they never can, produce anything,, in qua-
lity which approaches the perfection of hand block print-
ing. Till dead matter bath the superiority over living
intelligence, it is not possible.. This selfishnesss is still
more apparent in the fact, that the . average cost of pro-
duction is pretty well equal, and this is explained more
fully by considering the enormous waste of materials,
the expensive nature of the Machinery, and the waggon
loads of machined rubbish that are ,dally returned on
the manufacturers' hands as utterly useless, not only ex-
hibiting the absurdity of the competitiOn, but its equally
futile pretensions to superiority, and its eventual ten-
dency to the ruin both of employers and those whose.
employ it supersedes, With regard to the Scotch
Editor's state:nent as to the equality between the French
and English !workman in manual dexterity, I will hereby
stake the produce of, six months' _labour, that myself and
another Englishman shall come and. do more work in
the time, and do it as well, as any four Frenchmen in
France.

Sir, in conclusion,. as we know. you.. for the unflinch-
ing advocate of the poor man, I have sent you a sample
of hand-made paper•bangings, and the price we can
make it at, and I beg to ask you thus publicly, if-you
think any machinery Call compete with it even in price.
Your obliged, obedient servant,
A HARD-FISTED OPERATIVE PAPER-
July 31, 1841. STAINER..
[We have received the sample of hand-made paper,
and taking into account the low price and the beauty
of the workmanship, it certainly is a wonderful produc-
tion. At a little distance it does not appear at all in-
ferior to paper that is sold at a shilling, while this costs
only one penny a yard.—ED. Sun.]

SPORTING INTELLIGENCE.

TATTERS ALL'S-YESTERDAY.

The settling for the Goodwood Races' dreW nearly as
large an attendance as is usually .seeti on the Tuesday
after Epsom, and as the process of paying and receiving
was necessarily confined to the room, its limited size oc•
cas:oned considerable inconvenience. Everything passed
off gicietly, and although this essential finale to the most
brilliant. of meetings was not brought to aclose until after
six o'clocic, a few straggling bets were laid on future
events at the undermentioned prices

DONCASTER ST. LEGER.
5 to 4 agBt Mr. Rawlinson's "Coronation—taken
9 to 2, apt T.ord Westminster's Van Amburgh—t
8 to 1 agst Duke of Cleveland's Middlehain—taken
15 to 1 agst Mr. Bell's The Squire—taken
16 to 1 agst Mr. Ferg!ison's Tearaway—ditto
8 to 1 agst The Squire and Tearaway—taken
4 to 1 agst Middleham, Tearaway, and Eringo—t
DONCASTER CUP.
1500 to 100 and 12 to 1, two or three times, were laid
agst
DERBY, 1842.
4 to 1 agst Scott's lot—taken •
10 to 1 agst All the mares—taken
12 to 1 agst Colonel's Peel's lot7-takerbe
20 to 1 agst Lord Verulam's Robert
taken and afterwards p d•
iltretaer taken
22 to 1 against Mr. Wreford's.
a rd bus— taken
25 to 1 agst Mr. Scott's Wil-%Nessus—taken
ljorhain-
-40 to 1 agst Hon. S. Herb
is jnster's Auckland—taken
50 to 1 agst Lord Westm
Fireaway—taken
50 to 1 agst Mr. Ferguson'sit,T. Mostyn's Preparation—t
40 to 1 agst Mr. Pettit'
•
1000 to 10 agst Mr.
htwald's Manta colt—taken
100 to 1 agst Mr. Lie Fesrptartero

BRIGHTON RACES.
BRIGHTON, MONDAY MORNING.

The following horses have arrived :—Orelia, Exit,
Banish (2 yrs), Mungo Parke, Remnant, Benjamin, Col-
chicum, Aspatria, Folly, Fugleman, c out of Obelisk's
dam, 10, Dismal Jemmy, Aethon, Amulet, four of Sir
Gilbert lieatlicote's, two of Mr. Theobald's, and se-
veral others.
A full meeting and plenty of sport are expected.

NEWMARKET FIRST OCTOBER MEETING, 1841
Mr. Goodman's Belgrade, 71b Bst agst Lord Albeniarle's
Minaret, 7st ; last half of Ab. M. ; 50.
Captain Ross's Nicolas, Bst 71b, agst Mr. Payne's
Escort, Rst 71b each ; 50, T.Y.C.
SECOND OCTOBER MEETING, 1841.

Duke of Bedford's John-o'-Gaunt, Bst 51b,7agA Mr.
Goodman's Belgrade, Bst ; Ab. M. ; 100, h ft.

A REGION ON FIRE.—The road lay along the
ridge of the mountain. On our right we looked down
the perpendicular side to a plain, two thousand feet beleyt
us. ; and in front, on another part of the same plain, were
the lake and the town of Aguchapa. Instead. of going
direct to the town, we turned round the foot of the
mount in, and came into a field smoking with but
springs. The ground was 'incrusted with sulphur, and
dried and baked by subterranean fires. In some places
were large orifices, from`which steam rushed out vio-
lently and with noise ; and in other 3 large pools or
lakes, one of them a hundred' and fifty feet in circum-
Fcroile% clirit 7.1,,,n,•77—,
bubliks three , • ,
taL,Lie tilt head-' ste:s of A clio:oa. •

great extent, the earth .was in a stateburning our boots and frightening- the Irorsez, and we
wore obliged to be careful to keep the horses from falling
through. At some distance was a stream of sulphur-
:ter,- which we followed up to a broad basin, made a
dam with stones and bushes, and had a most refreshit
warm bath.—Stephellx's Criotral America.

• We learn that her Majesty has been graciously
plelt:wa to grant a pension or 2001. a year, on the
List, to Lady deremie, the afflicted widow• of Sir John
Jeremie, late Governor of Sierra Leone.

MORNING SUN.

CITY OF LONDON BURIALS.

" HOMINEM MORTUUM IN URBE NE SErELITO."
• Roman Law in the Twelve Tables.

" Mr. Anderton, at a Court of Common Council held in
the City on Thursday last, said that he rose to submit a mo-
tion of importance to both rich and poor. He was able to show
that there were the most unanswerable arguments for applying
to the Legislature to pi event the sepulture of the dead in future
in the City of London, the only great city in the world, he be-
lieved, in which the practice was permitted.—( Hear, and cries
of Refer it at once to a Committee.') 111 r. Anderton imme-
diately thereupon made a motion to that effect, which was car-
ried by the Court unanimsusly."—See Sun, Friday, July 30.

The learned author of the Funeral Monuments sets
apart a chapter especially, to show that the oldest and
most savage nations never broke in upon the healthiness
or salubrity of their own living quarters, by interment
of the bodies of their dead within the walls or precincts
of town or city ; in this case showing themselves, old and
barbaric as they were, to be wiser than we, who might
comparatively account ourselves as the "children of light.'
}4rom the above quoted author, and other sources, we
shall succinctly lay an account of these cities before our
readers, which will of themselves bear silent testimony
thia the ancient Pagan of every region upon earth has
been wise enough to know that burial-places in the
neighbourhood of the living are a worse than national
evil ; and that they looked upon them, even in the crude
state of their physics, as the originators of every noisome-
ness and pestilence ; while they clearly understood that
the necessity for the entire removal of the dead from the
immediate proximity of the living was founded upon
the dangers which arise from the invariable foetid exha-
lations of animal decomposition.
The dusk shades of the past present us with, first,
the great Misraimitic branch of the Noachian family—
the sage and wise Egyptians ; and then, in order due,
others that acted likewise with themselves. Great as
was the veneration of the Egyptians for the ashes of
their ancestors, amounting almost to adoration, and
though they embalmed them with myrrh and spice, yet
so fearful were they of the contaminative nature of any-
thing that had passed into death or corruptibility, that
from every wall and every city they peremptorily ex-
cluded those very ashes, while the places which had
been consecrated for ordinary burials were destined to
receive the urns. Their soldiers were from time to time
employed in constructing subterranean cavities at a dis-
tance from the city, and the influence of their laws, na-
ture, and religion, was always exerted to separate the
dead from the -living.
Second in the category of the great cities who
adopted this practice, were the Jews. The cave of He-
bron, and other places situated in open deserts and un-
inhabitated places, contained in themselves the bodies
of the first women of the post-diluvian period, with the
giant patriarchs themselves. There was Abraham bu-
ried ; there Isaac, Leah, and Rebecca, The road-side
from Jerusalem to Ephratah served as the wide-removed
burial-place of her whom history knows as " the beau-
tiful mother of Israel." Even when groaning under
Egyptian thraldom, tae burials of the Israelites were still
in remote and distant spots ; the valley of Moab mourned
over Moses himself, and the vine and the lily on the
mountains of Ephraim, bewailed the burials of Joshua
and Eleazar.

This dread of propinquity in any shape to the dead,
took on itself a heightened form when the Hebrew multi-
tudes coalesced in the Land of Promise. Law then made
it peremptory that to bury the dead in the houses of indi-
viduals was to render them utterly unclean. Nay'. so
formidably did they dread any intercommunication with
the departed body that travellers were even forbade to
walk upon places where they were buried, and the white
cenotaph, or pillar, served equally as a warning beacon
as, in a minor point of view, for a memorial. The
great valley of Jehoshaphat, stretched out in gloomy
grandeur, as the Valley of Tombs ; and the word Ge-
henna deduces its origin from that continual fire, which
burned perpetually in the ditch of Tophet, or vale of
Hinnom, to consume the dead, and other filths of the
city. Every city had, moreover, its public cemetery out
of the walls. The grand public cemetery of Jerusalem
itself was out in the valley of Kedron, and the burial-
spot for strangers, the Potter's Field, closely adjoined it.
After the primitive .custom of cremation by fire gra-
dually grew disused among the Greeks, their lee°islators
made it the chief point in their code to abolish, ultra-
nurnia, the dead. Cecrops, at Athens, wished the
dead to be inhumed without the city. Inviola-
ble rule was this also, in Thebes, Sicyon, Macedon,
and the Chersonese. Plato, in his republic, would not
even permit inhumation in fields fit for tillage : he re-
served for that purpose, dry, arid, and desolate grounds,
which were available to no other use. He 'who violated
this rule was cursed with maledictions, and, in a word,
the whole religious doctrine of the Greeks, tended only
powerfully to support the laws which directed the bodies
of the dead to be removed far away from the living.
Rome is not behind in her authorities. On the top of
Mount Janiculum, in her first days, Numa rested his
crowned head, the Mount being not then within the
city. Between the city and the Tiber, lay the Kings in
the Campus Martins. The imperative voice of the
Twelve Tables further corroborated this law. " Hominem
mortnum ill,isrbe ne sepelito neve urito" was as mighty
its a Mosaic commandment; nor was it less uncondition-
ally obeyed. The highways were alone the burial-spots
of the noblest families, and when in later times popula-
tion grew more numerous, Adrian prohibited, anew, in-
humation in cities, and Antoninus Pius, in his rescripts,
included even the suburbs of the empire.
It is at this point—the sun-dawn of Christianity—that
the custom first began to be disregarded. Death, at this
period, became invested with a holy loveliness, and the
saints and martyrs who expired in its cause, were sup-
posed to breathe from their bodies the odour of sanctity,
and to invest all precincts with a celestial perfume.
Raimented, as their souls were supposed to be, in the
beauty of holiness—and plenished with the sweet influ-
ences of the clivine Spirit—their bodies were looked upon,
not in the light of bestiality and corruption, but as sanc-
tified and imperishable, and, by reason:of intense self-
mortification and penance, to have been. fitted to
shine before the Throne of crystal, and to stand beside
the chasteness of the Holy Son on high. Converted
thus, into an object of loVe and appreciation, the practice
of shrining them in cathedrals, churches, and consecrated
grounds began. This at first was in a certain degree in-
offensive and innocent ; the noxious effects were dimi-
nished by reason of the unfrequency of the occurrence,
and they partook, as yet, of nothing of that fearful viru-
lence which has taken place, like a crying plague, in our
modern towns and cities.

Under the Emperors Gratian, Valentine, and Theo-
dosius the Great, the practice of intrusion into towns
and cities, was, for the reasons above cited, becoming
universal ; till it had grown to such enormity, as called
for the famous 'Theodosian code to be partly constituted
for the sake of its annihilation. The clauses of the law
which in particular relate to this circumstance express
themselves as designed to prevent the infection of the
atmosphere which so many funerals necessarily occa-
sioned. Theodosius sternly forbade the interment of the
dead in the interior of the cities, and, what was stronger
still, ordered that the bodies, even with every urn and
monument whiCh WAS in the city of Rome, should be
summarily carried without the walls. This decree was
fulfilled to the letter throughout the whole llom'an
empire.
The Christian churches however, had by this -"mina,
found that burials within their precincts, were a ',dame of
rich and invaluable income, an. 4. the Harpagons 1f the reli-
gious orders yziher encouraged than resin, ced the en-
croachment."
*evertKeress the Council of Bracar :frt. Christi 563)
published their celebrated canon, bywhich not only
interment in churches was peohi',,ited, but cities had
even the right to prevent any individual from being
buried within their walls.
Among the modern sta.t4tes against interment in
churches and towns, thers are " numbers without num-
ber." The Parliament:l. of Paris have, over and over
again, prohibited this custom ; and the records of the
time are eternally- speaking of the noisome and sickly
inffuence which they exercised on the surrounding dis-
trictS: These restrictive acts have consequently created
ithtige. many cemeteries which are now her safeguards of
health:
Ibis a strange fact in science that till within the last
century it was scarcely believed that cadaveric emana-
tions destroy life instantly, or give rise to various kinds
.of disease, whose effects depend upon the concentration
'of the poison, or other accidental circumstances. But
the direct and indirect effects of the churchyard are t,„.
'somewhat better understood. Eminent men, both in
France and England, have given up their time
tht?lethitsi'll,n-
vestigation, and unequivocally determine, v
support have adduced the most frightful instances in pport
the fact, that the deadliest virus which can come uponom
the, living, is that of poisonous
gases perilated
miff ns, vaults, and churchyards.
Nearly all the London churchyards and churches are
filled with dead bodies ; they have been travelled over
and ever again by the sexton's spade ; 1,000 graves are
opened every week in the metropolis ; the earth is satu-
rated with " human putrescence," and permeated by the
ascending vapours, and these vapours are dreadfully
mephitic, and, in certain circumstances, instantaneously
fatal. The mortality of the metropolis is 45 per cent.
higher than the.rtiortality of the country districts ; and
although no death or epidemic can be directly traced to
the churchyards, yet there cannot be little doubt, as an
eminent medical authority axpresses himself, that a part
of the ex.cessive mortality is due to their concentrated
exhalat',ons, and fevers, in most cases, of a violent ty-
phoif). nature, are the immediate and terrific results.
ifard upon the commencement of the past year, 1840,
fthe author of " Gleanings in Graveyards" gave to the
world the result of his practical experience, after investi-
gation of some of the chief burial-grounds in the metro-
polis, and as the City has again taken up this subject in
+R warm and positive manner, for the further rectifica-
ti'm of the evil, a condensed and accurate recitation of
the then infamous state of the London churchyards will
tend to apprize the reader of what the genera it/ of them
were at that period, and from these few he may gather
the enormity of the system, and judge of the very dread-
ful extent in other qucrters, more central in the C.ty,
which have not yet been under examination.
eL ENE NT'S-LAN E. —The back window of the houses
on the east side of this lane look into a burying-e•round,
called the " Green Ground ;" on the west side the win-
dows admit the odour of another burying-place—a private
one, called Enon Chapel—to perflate the houses ; at the
bottom, the south end, is the burying-place of the alms-
houses ; and in the centre of the Strand are the burying-
ground and vault of St. Clement's Danes. So that in a
distance of 200 yards the living breathe on all sides an
atmosphere impregnated with dead odour. They are
consequently very unhealthy, and typhus fever rages in
it* most aggravated form.
/3 ITRY/NG-G RORND, PORT LIG AL-BTREET.—This called
the " Green • Ground," is absolutely saturated with' human
putrescence. Graves have been frequently seen open,
and baffles brutally exhumed. The effluvium froin it is
at times so offensive, thatpersons l• • er it are.
din-
Rusted,. at the , lying over
mad-
moist fluid. onour. The walls, too, reek with
BNoN c1i4114, %lapel s adparated from ifs

lower part underneath by a boarded floor. It is used as I
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, dun for the purpose, the
uppermost of which were covered by only a few inches
of earth. Soon after interments a peculiarly long nar-
row black fly is observed to crawl out of many of the
coffins, produced by the putrefaction of the bodies. A
Sunday-school is weekly held over this pit of corrup-
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 from 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 arc fre-
quently annoyed by the most repulsive sights.
RUSSELL-COURT, DRURY-LANE.—The rats here abound
and grow fat with corrupting flesh.
ST. GILES' BURYING-GROUND.—This 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.
BETHNAL-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-grounds belong to this
parish; they are all crowded and in disorder. In this
filthy neighbourhood fever prevails.
SPA-FIELDS.—Though the burying-ground 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 in juxtaposition 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, not to be named,
perhaps, for evident reasons, were in a most revolting
and dangerous condition, and the parishioners had 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
to be examined and made secure, and double
doors were made at the entrance of the Church.
Notwithstanding this precaution, the stench was still in-
supportable, and the congregation was at various times
compelled to leave the church, some being seized with
sickness during service, and conveyed home. Finding
all the precautions he had taken still continued ineffec-
tual, the church itself was finally examined, when up-
wards of one hundred bodies were found in an active
state of putrefaction. The workmen employed on first
entering the vault were almost instantaneously pros-
trated on the floor, and had not the second been dragged
away by force, he would have been quickly one of the
corrupting mass. _ _

Whether to attribute the sluggishness which appears
to have existed on the part of the City to this most vital
and important point, to apathy or fatuity, we know
not, but when, from the eternal agitation of the question
at Paris in later years, with the dreadful and calamitous
accidents with which both the English and 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 and
enlightened city of London is the only unparalleled and
ostensible city, which, from the Chaldee 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 terrifying occurrence, in con-
nexion with the lou3-languaged voice of past history,
have at last wrought up some one person to battle with
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 scoeheon. 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—bloated
with malaria, and suffocative of life. And this not alone
for the poor, but eqiially for the rich. The lungs of her
princely merchantmen axe as apt to imbibe the poison as
the poorest hound. Vault, and churchyard, and char-
nel must no lbngrer 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 insuper-
able expense of distant burials we say nothing. The
leading question is not to be troubled with such obstruc-
tive vexations. If the Romans of old found a possibility
of maintaining their Cop iate, 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 Lacedmmon had its :ieramicus, Jerusalem its burial-
field at Ketiron, and I'aris its Pere-la-Chaise, London
may easily find spots large enough and isolate enough
close at hand. ISlackheath, to wit—a broad and un-
bounded table-;and.

Sufficient praiseca cannot be bestowed upon the decisive,
unanimous, conduct of the Common Council upon the
lilimedl.4te making of Mr. Anderton's motion. They
have now only to follow it up with alacrity and despatch.
Y,.onths must not be allowed to slide away, but clays be
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—" Hominem
mortuum in Urbe ne sepelito."