The Sun.
London, England, 1848-12-20 00:00:00

,

LONDON, WEDNESDAY, DECEM BER 20, 1848.

Overtly the movement in favour of sanitary im-
provement has made but little advances during this
year of anxiety and revolutions. In reality, how-
ever, the conviction has ripened in the public mind
that some comprehensive measures are absolutely
required for the improvement of the general health of
the population, and for the diminution of the na-
tional mortality. Everybody whose pecuniary in-
terests are not affected by the innovations made
towards the extension of cleanliness, is ready to admit
that the conduct hitherto pursued by the Government
has been cruel beyond all description, and that the
connivance of the multitude in this official negligence
has been absolutely suicidal. The impurities of the
water supplied to our great towns for
consumption, the absence of all ventilation in the
dwellings of the humbler portions of the community,
the dreadful insufficiency of drainage, even in some of
our most superb thoroughfares, the pernicious ingre-
dients poured continually into the atmosphere from
the chimneys of factories, and from the poisonous
up from slaughter-houses.
knackers'-yards, and- interwuras ourfat-grounds—all
these abominations have been exposed so forcibly, and
so frequently, to the eyes of the million, that the}
have become altogether odious and unendurable. Add
to which the anxiety experienced as to the
possible advent of the Asiatic Cholera, has
tended to enhance the desire of the people for
some wholesome and purifying acts of legislation.
Compared with the agitation made during 1847 by
the advocates of sanitary reform, the lull of 1848 in
regard to this important question would appear to
betoken a decrease in the popular solicitude. such a
deduction, however, would be wholly erroneous ; for
we are bold to say that the will of the multitude upon
this subject is more than ever imperative. The de-
crees of Parliament last session are viewed as abso-
lutely insufficient. Something must be done, some
thing shall be done in this particular, say the people :
and the will of the people is the vitality of the Con-
stitution; it is the inspiration of the Legislature.
Silent though the promoters of sanitary improve-
ment may have been during the last eleven months,
their exertions have by no means relaxed in activity.
The Commissioners at Gwydyr House have had nt
sinecure. Dr. SOUTHWOOD SMITH has not slum-
bered. Evidence of this has been afforded by the
pamphlets which have occasionally issued from the
press—pamphlets filled in almost every page with
eloquence of stati•tics. One pamphleteer, reminding
us on his title-page of the golden adage, " Salim
populi suprema lex," has demanded the removal of the
stagnant filth of the Serpentine.* Another has re
vived in the most earnest language the nearly for
gotten evils resulting from the continuance of
the cattle market at Smithfield f While the
energies of one of the most indefatigable and one of
the most deserving of the originators of the move-
ment in favour of sanitary enactments, Mr. GEORGE
ALFRED WALKER, have been directed unremittingly
to the furtherance of the object of his aspirations.
The name of this gentleman has become familiarised
to the public from its association with the cause of
extramural interment, a cause which has been advo-
cated so long and so enthusiastically, out of the House
of Commons by Mr. WALKER, and in the House of '
Commons by Mr. MACKINNON. The former has
proved himself in this respect one of not the least of
the auxiliaries of the Honourable Representative
of Lymington. He has demonstrated the urgency
of the evil arising from the present horrible
system of burial and exhumation in the midst of the
crowded thoroughfares of London, not only through
his printed pamphlets, but throw h his s
tures.: As an example of the
horrors disclosed le
in
these pamphlets of Mr. Win
anitaa, will
o here pre-
sent merely a single extract from theanueetn.titled
"Interment and Disinterment.l The
quotation_
brief but ample—is from a production which appeared
upwards of five years ago, but so long as the dese.
crations to which it has reference continue it cannot
be regarded as after date. Here is the paragraph :
" Formerly on the north side of the grave-yard in
Drury-lane, belonging to the parish of St. Martin-in.
the-Fields, were boarded sunk areas, giving a borrowed
light and air to five houses, the property of his Grace
the late Duke of Bedford. This burying-ground was
originally below the surrounding level ; now it is at
least five feet above the street. This elevation has been
gained by packing bodies stratum super stratum, un

• " The Serpentine as it is and as it ought to be, and
the Board of Health as it is and as it ought to be. By
Edward John Tilt, M.D." Bvo., pp. 67. Churchill,
London: 1848. An admirable compilation from some of
the leading articles published in the Lancet.
t " An Inquiry into the present state of Smithfield
Cattle Market, and the Dead Meat Markets of the Me-
tropolis. By John Bull." Bvo., pp. 47. Ridgway,
London: 1848. A complete epitome of the arguments
in favour of extra-mural abattoa s, and a conclusive de-
monstration of the disadvantages of Smithfield.
" Lectures on the Actual Condition of the Metro-
politan Grave-yards. By George Alfred Walker, Sur-
g/ on." Four Series. Longman and Co., London: 1847.
Ile ether publications by the same author, to which
we hare alluded, are all well known, namely, " Gather-
ings from Grave-yards," " The Grave-yards of London,"
"The Spa-fields Golgotha," &c., &c., ie. The revela-
tions made in these remarkable brochures must be
classed amongst the most loathsome of all the Mysteries
of • London.

"Interment and Disinterment; or a further Expo-
sition of the practises pursued in the Metropolitan places
of Sepulture. By G. A. Walker." Bvo., pp. 28.
Longmau and Co., London: 1843.