The Sun.
London, England, 1850-03-02 00:00:00

NATIONAL CEMETERIES.

The following is a copy of a petition recently pre-
sented to the House of Commons by Mr. Mackin-
non, M.P. :
"To the Honourable the Commons of the United
Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in Parliament
assembled,

The Humble Petition of the President and Members
of the National Society for the Abolition of Burial
in Towns,

" Sheweth, that it was clearly demonstrated before a
Committee of your Honourable House in the year 1840,
and, more fully before the Special Committee appointed
to inquire into The Effect of Interment of Bodies' in
1842, that the burial of the dead in the midst of the

living is a practice fraught with the most disastrous
consequences. That your petitioners would remind
your Honourable House, that during the prevalence of
epidemic cholera, in the metropolis, the remains of be-
tween 2,000 and 3,000 persons who had perished from
pestilence, were deposited, weekly, in places long since
incapable of giving decent, much less sanitary burial, to
a single body. That it has long been a matter of com-
mon and scandalous notoriety, that the bodies of the
dead are disposed of so as to produce incalculable injury
to the public health, and the public morals. Tnat
during the prevalence of a pestilential disease, which
your petitioners believe was, in many instances, clearly
traceable to the practice hich they call upon your
Honourable House to arrest, the bodies of the dead
were deposited in streets and thoroughfares, under and
around churches, chapels, and human habitations—in
the very midst of two millions of the inhabitants of the
metropolis. That, utterly regardless of repeated
warnings and predicted consequences, the bodies of the
dead have been, and continue to be, placed one upon
another and side by side, in deep pits ; whilst thousands
of others have been, and continue to be, de-
posited, in shallow graves, with an utterly un-
protective covering, of a few inches of soil
(chiefly compounds of human remains), over each
coffin. That your petitioners beg to remind your Ho-
nourable House, that the practice of intramural burial, in
itself so injurious and demoralising, is rendered incal-
culably more injurious and destructive by the systema-
tic employment of means for the purpose of providing
space for new comers. That the mischiefs thus inflicted
upon the living are incalculably increased by the mutila-
tion and disturbance of bodies previously interred, and
also by the incessant turning up of human remains, in
every stage of decomposition. That your petioners have
abundant evidence to prove, that in London, Bristol,
Waterford, and other places, some of the most virulent
and fatal cases of recent cholera, were developed in the
immediate neighbourhood of burial places. That your
petitioners respectfully suggest that, although the mis-
takes of centuries, as to the insanitary construction of
the habitations of the living, and the sewerage of cities
and towns, can be rectified only by necessarily slow de-
grees, and at an enormous pecuniary outlay—the imme-
diate arrestation of the practice of intramural burial—a
practice which admits of neither palliation nor excuse, is
as easy as it is urgent and imperative.
" That for the above and other cogent reasons your
petitioners respectfully call upon your Honourable
House to interpose your authority,—to accord a power,
to step in between the living and the dead,—and to pass,
forthwith, a general Act tor the formation of national
cemeteries, far removed from human dwellings.
" And your petitioners will ever pray, &c.,
" GEo. ALFRED WALKER, Surgeon, President."
17, New Bridge-street, Blackfriars, Feb. 11, 1850.

At Preston, a man was killed by a dose of cayenne
pepper and herb tea, administered by a quack. In
Burnley, Itiartha Lord, aged eighteen, was also killed
by a quack who prescribed a decoction of heterogeneous
herbs.

The Semaphore (le Marseilles of the 25th ult. an-
nounces the arrival from Civita Vecchia of six war-
steamers, carrying 2,700 men of the French army in
Italy. Those troops were quartered in the neighbour-
hood of Marseilles until the Government should have as-
signed to them another destination.