The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1846-10-20 00:00:00

SPORTING INTELLIGENCE.

CIIESTER AUTUMN MEETING.—The stewards elect
for the autumn races of 1847 are Sir John Gerard, Bart.,
the Hon. E. M. Ll. Mostyn, M.P., and B. Collett, Esq.

THE SOUTH LANCASHIRE COURSING CLUB
MEETING.
PATRON : HIS GRACE THE DUKE OF DEVONSHIRE.
The members held their first meeting of the present
season at Southport, on Wednesday and Thursday last,
under the stewardship of Messrs. Slater, Bake, King,
Bold, Robinson, and Peacock. Mr. Watson officiated as
judge. The leadingand smaller events were thus decided :
The ANNUAL DINNER STAKES, for all aged dogs.
Mr. Hunt's Hotspur beat Mr. Peacock's Selina.
Mr. Robinson's Difference beat Mr. King's Supervisor.
Mr. Coupe's Clara beat Mr. Bake's Coriolanus.
Mr. Ardern's Matchless beat Mr. Taylor's True Blue.
Mr. Thomas's Tiny beat Mr. Reade's Ruth Pinch.
Mr. Craven's Clarence beat Mr. Adamthwaite's Dis-
tiller.
Mr. Eden's Eleus beat Mr. Slater's Sunflower.
Mr. Deacon's Dinah beat Mr. Richardson's Reserve.
Second Ties —Difference beat Hotspur ; Matchless
beat Clara ; Clarence beat Tiny ; Elena beat Dinah.
Third Ties.—Difference beat Matchless ; Clarence beat
Eleus.
Deciding Course.—Clarence, by Sandy, out of Smart,
beat Difference, and won the stakes.
The ST. LEGER STAKES, for puppies.
Mr. Bake's Libel beat Mr. Peacock's Pantaloon.
Mr. Taylor's Rufus beat Mr. Craven's St. Valentine.
Mr. Rouchett's Fanny beat Mr. Deakin's Dot.
Mr. Slater's Sentinel beat Mr. Ellen's Experience.
Mr. Richardson's Rip beat Mr. King's Birmingham.
Mr. Hunt's Higbflyer beat Mr. Robinson's Rocket.
Mr. Adamthwaite's Dusty beat Mr. Bradley's Ben
Hart.

Mr. Reade's Rascal beat Mr. Thomas's Hector.
Second Ties.—Rufus beat Libel ; Fanny beat Sentinel;
Rip beat Higbflyer ; Dusty beat Rascal.
Third Ties.—Rufus beat Fanny ; Dusty beat Rip.
Deciding Course.—Dusty by !lector, out of Holdfast,
beat Rufus, and won the stakes.
The PRODUCE STAKES, for puppies, were won by Mr.
Eden's Euterpe, by Edwin, out of Enchantress ; Ro-
setta ma up.
The CIIURCHTOWN STAKES, for all-aged dogs, were
gained by Mr. Slater's Sentry, by Sandy, out of Ellen ;
Nimble run up.
The CONSOLATION STAKES, for beaten dogs, were de-
cided in favor of Mr. King's Supervisor; Clara run up.
The MARSKELL STAKES were won by Mr. Arden's
Monarch ; Handy run up.—The CROSSENS STAKES
were won by Burgundy ; Ben Hart run up.
The bares were scarce, ran bad, and the meeting did
not pass off with the usual eclat of the South Lancashire
Club.

CORRhSPONDENCE.

ON THE SANITARY STATE OF SOME PARTS
OF LIVERPOOL.

LETTER XVI.

DANGERS FROM EVEN PASSING EXPOSURE TO THE
• AIR OF CEMETERIES.
"Several lives have been lost of late years from the crowded
state of the burial grounds of London. A deep grave is dug,
and this is kept open to be piled with coffins until filled. Per-
sons venturing into these graves are immediately suffocated.
The earth in these localities is strongly impregnated with poi-
sonous exhalations ; and no excavation can be made without
its becoming immediately converted into a well of carbonic
acid."— Taylor's Medical Jurisprudence, p. 565.
I select several quotations, in order that the reader,
whose literary researches or personal experience have not
rendered him capable of judging upon this matter, may
comprehend the scope of the danger. Already I have
brought before him some evidence, from the philanthro-
pical Mr. Walker. I turn now to extract from a docu-
ment hardly accessible to the public—the Report of the
Parliamentary Committee on Improvement of the Health
of Towns, from their special inquiry on the effect of in-
terment of bodies in towns, (1842,) which investigation
resulted from a petition presented to the House of Com-
mons by G. A. Walker, surgeon. Two clauses in that
petition run thus :
"That in warmer c'imates, and in our own. exhalations from
dead bodies have in many instances seriously injured health,
and in some have immediately destroyed life. In confirmation
of the latter assertion, your petitioner would humbly direct the
attention of your honourable house to the death of two men
upon the opening of a grave in Aldgate church yard, in the
month of September, 1838, and to a ye, more recent instance in
the death of William Green, a grave rigger, of St. Margaret,
Westminster, and the subsequent illness and death of the sur-
geon in attendance, and his female domestic, who both sank
within a few days of the grave digger.
•• That your petitioner believes he is performing a public duty
in thus expressing his conviction, that the majority of the places
for the interment of the deed, are so many centres of infection,
constant,y giving off noxious effluvia, which, according to the
circumstances of locality, atmosphere, and the power of resist-
ance in those subjected to its influence, operate as a slow or
energetic poison."
The following queries and replies are painful evidences
against the lax morals of the burial-ground officials, &c.,
in and near London :
"215. Are the graves dug deep, or how are they dug?—They
are sometimes twelve or fourteen feet deep; up to twenty
sometimes; then they put in six or eight coffins, till it comes al-
most to the surface.
"216. To within what distance to the surface ?—I suppose
three or four feet.
" 217. Is this the general practice in this church yard?—Yes.
"218. Does any exhalation or putrid smell arise from it ?
Sometirr es in summer time.
" 219. Is that very great I—Yes, very great."
"289. Is it your belief that bodies were slipped down that
sewer previously ?—I have no doubt of it whatever."
"295. I had a job a few months back with the Savoy burl ,1
ground; 1 had several loads to take away of this description of
earth; that is a very small burial ground, but I look upon it as
the same sort (an overcrowded grave yard). I was taken very
ill with sickness at the stomach tram the smell."
" 247. I do all sorts of work ; sometimes night emptying;
and that is beautilul in comparison to this."
" 304. How long were you before you recovered from the
feeling you have described ?—I suppose it was three days before
I recovered my feeling and smell."
In reference to some experimental collecting of the
gases from coffins :
"439. What were the effects on your feelings at first, and
upon your health afterwards ?—My limbs seemed to fail me.
A medical man, who was with me at the time, was also affected,
and stumbled and fell; but he received nothing of it compared
to me."
"44 '. Then, from your own experience, you are satisfied that
the gas which is exhaled from the coffin is of the most deadly
quality ?—lt is."
" 621. You stated that a grave was kept open ; how long did
you know one of thos'i graves kept open ?—I think I could say
it was kept open from two to three months.
"622. What object could they have in so doing ?—To save the
t:ouble of opening it every time for a new tenant."
" 2920. Sir Benjamin C. Brodie, Bart., examined : Has it
occurred to you generally, in considering the causes of disease
in the Metropolis, to consider the crowded state of the church
yards as one cause of fever or disease?—l have always consi-
dered that as one cause."
Here, then, we have a striking element in the causes of
fever and disease, accused by one of the first medical men
of the day. Who can doubt that the overcrowded church-
yards and burial-places of large towns have much to do
with the occasion for Fever Hospitals, &c.?
Mr. G. A. Walker's evidence:—
"797. Have you observed sickness to be more prevalent in
those houses which overhang, or are situated near church
yards?—Yes; I am quite certain of that; and in my pa, ticular
locality, there are sunk areas on the side of the grave yards ;
and during the action of heat and moisture, gases must evolve ;
the heavy gases fall on the surface, and flow over, though invi-
sible to the eye, into those sunk areas, arid become part and
parcel of the atmospheric air which is breathed."
" 798. Are the effluvia very offensive in passing the grave
yards? —They may be distinctly smelt, and they are very un-
like any other smell."
" 832. How many miles from a large town might a cemetery
be plaeed with safety ?—I think if a cemetery were placed on an
elevation, it might be placed at a small distance ; but one thing
should he attended to, that of placing the bodies sufficiently
deep in the earth. with regard to the burials of the poor, it
will be difficult to say how they should be provided for; but if we
go upon the old system of putting eighteen or twenty bodies in
a grave, we shall have a source of disease which may he acting
for a long period. In Paris, they have an excellent plan for the
interment of the poor. The 'fosses communes' of a cemetery
are dug to a depth of four feet, the earth being thrown up on
either side of the fosse for a considerable distance. The bodies
are deposited side by side, but not one upon another. The mor-
tality of the day being received, the earth is thrown on the
coffins thus deposited until the fosse is filled, when soother is
dug and occupied in the same manner. This ground, if re-
quired, may with safety be again employed for buria , after a
period
or seven y ears "
" 52g. There is a different effect, probably in summer and in
n ter fiveye s ;
it is worst in a moist atmosphere and an in-
creased: emperature; and there are several places used for
burial whicn are very moist.
" 831. You consider that that is a great source of Bine s in the
metropolis?- 1 do."
Mr. W. thinks a clayey soil bad for inhumation, and
has no doubt that the percolation of water from grave-
yards will carry with it the various impurities, absorbing
the gases, &c., &c.
It is singularly unhappy that some of our grave-yards
are obnoxious to the former objection, beds of clay cc-

Oct. 20, 1846.

I curring frequently in the red sandstone on which Liver-
pool and its suburbs lie. I have seen the stiff clay turned
up often in our cemeteries, if my memory is not trea-
cherous on the point. With regard tee the percolation
point, how will St. James's Cemetery stand ? It seems
most objectionably chosen for inhumation. Its being in
a hollow is the very reverse condition of what ought to
be. A hill-side is the proper locality. Then the drainage
of the water from it, down into the lower levels of the
densely-populated regions of the town below it, cannot
he favourable to any wells or other escape of natural
drainage. As this City of the Dead increases in its silent
tenantry, the nuisance would be likely to go on increasing
in amount and then whenever sickness breaks out, or
some epidemic appears, meteorological conditions will be
apt to be accused when, after all, it may have been the
artificial arrangements about the living or dead which will
be in real fault. There is a spring in this cemetery which
finds its way from the fissured rock at the eastern side,
and this water has for long been in repute amongst the
poorer part of the population for remedial purposes. The
other day I had a little patient whose eyes had evidently
been the subject of that scrofulous inflammation of the
lids which is so common in ill-fed, ill-clothed children.
They said that after resorting to several doctors in vain,
they had recourse to this remedial water of the cemetery•
with marked benefit! I may be allowed to suggest, that
as this favourite cemetery is rapidly acquiring its comple-
ment of dead, it would be wise in the directors to close
the gates at a very early afternoon hour, as the well-like
form of the cemetery renders it more dangerous than any
other not so shut up, for parties to walk in. I cannot
persuade myself that even in the morning portion of the
day it is any other than a very unconstitutional walk, as
far as the bodies of the promenaders are concerned. moral
impressions apart. We all feel a natural desire from time
to time to visit the abodes of the silent crowd, once en-
dowed like ourselves; but, from the peculiarly mistaken
arrangements of burial-grounds in Great Britain, there is
no country where this feeling may not be indulged with
more impunity than in this country. The maL-ing these
places an arena for commercial speculation is, with all the
collateral advantages which may be discovered in its fa-
vour, a most repugnant method of undertaking for the
dead. It is English ; and foreigners reproach us justly
with our indecencies. The remark is offered in no dis-
respect for the present companies, or general management
of our cemeteries. They are not worse probably than
elsewhere—they may even be better than most ; and the
taste for decorating the grave, so recently sprung up in
our populations of towns, (it has always more or less
charac..erised the rustic repositories of the village church-
yards,) may be largely owing to the enterprise, sys-
tem, and freedom from restraints ecclesiastical, of general
cemeteries. It is the principle itself which requires guard-
ing, lest the activity of the landlord should be re-enacted
over the tenements of the dead, after the same fashion
which dictates the overcrowding of our living population.
The practice of nurse-maids taking walks with children
up and down, for perhaps an hour or Iwo, in such places,
is objectionable. Little children require the selection of a
place offering a purer air than a cemetery, more especially
as they cannot be supposed to be the subjects of those
moral impressions which the adult population are suscep-
tible of, and for which good the detriment to health is
often deliberately risked.

It strikes me, in thinking over this matter, that instead
of the promenading along the damp and gloomy walks of
such a cemetery as St. James's, the same object could be
nearly attained, with considerable diminution of the risk
to the health, i f such a plan were devised as, for instance,
a light cast-iron bridge spanning the hollow from side to
side, either from north to south, or from east to west.
By such plan, the tomb of the immortal Huskisson, and
the coup d' cell of the files of sepulchral monuments,
would arrest the eye and gratify the curiosity of the
strange visiter. The general effect of the Oratory and
the Mausoleum, the archway unique, and the details of
the ground, would produce a general effect in funereal
keeping unequalled in England, and only short of the
Pictorial effect of Pere la Chaise, the grand cemetery of
Paris, by reason of its greater limitation of scale ; whilst
the eastern side, with its excavated rows of vaults, would
rivet the eye with their antique order and classic resem-
blance to the ruins of theTombsofPetra,in Idumea, the pic-
tor-al sublimityof which has called forth the admiration and
astonishment of the modern traveller (see Keith, Sir R.
K. Porter, &c.) This bridge might repay its cost of
erection by a halfpenny or penny toll, and very possibly
might bring in a legitimate and adequate per ventage for
the capital expended in the outlay, and which would be
wanting in most of those objections which tell against the
more immediate and partly reprehensible practices
about the corpse-ground itself. Even mourners might
occasionally avail themselves of it with an impunity denied
not unfrequently to those closer to the soaking soil of the
grave vicinity.
It appears that the " burying-place at Pompeii was
immediately without the walls"—" that was the general
habit of the ancients."
"Q. 1810. Is it not the case in the East, that their cemeteries
begin where the town ends?—Dr. Bowring, L.L.D. : Very fre-
quently."
" One feature connected with the removal of burial places
from towns, is that beautiful and interesting places may be cho-
sen ; and in Syria, for example, the site of some of the ancient:
sepulchres is exceedingly striking. I remember when In
lestine, taking a meal on the borders of the lake of Gallice ..ff
looking behind me, observed the ancient sepulchres 0
of the t
Magdala, which is still known by the name of Migdal.
towered
ceedingly romantic situation, hewn out of a rock which
above the lake." an e x

MV
•-
Finally, in reference to the subject of quotations, Mt.
Walker's reply to Query 2089 will be instructive
What isyour objection to interment in a dam.... ground?
That heat conjoined with moisture rapidly assists putrefaction.
With regard to my objection of placing bodies in a clamp soil, I
think it is a very proper one; for we have the authori y of se-
veral eminent and learned medical men men in France, who
invariably have chosen, so far as they hare had an opportunity,
hieh and dry soils; for a clayey soil will retain the gas for ever.
If any epidemic were to visit us, in consequence possibly of the

overgorged state of our church yards, I would sap. break down
the tombstones, and cover the surface with clay a foot deep, and
then you will be safe."

Mr. J. C. Atkinson, a surgeon, gave, in evidence be-
fore the committee, his opinion that epidemics latterly
prevalent in England had acquired a tendency to perpetu-
ation and exaggeration, in consequence of the deteriora-
tion of the atmosphere of large towns by interments
within municipal precincts.
Mr. Baker, a surgeon, of Leeds :

• ,
" 2537. I have a return of the cases of fever for several years,
and also of the cholera streets marked on it, and the fevers and
the cholera are, through these successive years, in the same
streets."