New Orleans daily crescent. [volume] ([New Orleans, La.]) 1851-1866, 1853-08-09
The Unburied Dead.

On Sunday afternoon information was sent
to the Mayor that numerous dead bodies were
living on the ground in the Lafayette Cemetery,
unburied, for the want of force to perform the
work of sepulture, The Chairman Of the Com
mittee on Cemeteries, Mr.. Kurshedt, appointed
by the Board of Health, repaired to the spot
about dark. Near there he found the g chain
gang" which had been employed from early in
the afternoon in the work of burial, coming
away, having been unable to inter all the bodies
He prevailed on them, by promises of extra pay
and supper, to go back and resume the work
On arriving at the Cemetery, he found seventy
one bodies laying piled on the ground, swollen
and bursting their collins, and enveloped in
swarms Of flies. The chain gang was set to
work burying them, and by half-past three
o'clock yesterday they were all Inferred. Or
ders were given, we have been informed, by the
competent authority, that no more bodies should
be sent to that Cemetery yesterday. One cause
of the pressure on this Cemetery was, as we
have been informed, the impossible state Of
Louisa street, leading to the burying ground of
st. Vincent de Paul, where there are sixty
graves dug, and left unemployed in consequence
of the difficulty of getting to them 1t is also
reported that the reason why burial could not
b. procured in the Lafayette Cemetery, was be-
cause the Sexton refused to pay more than
twenty cents each for digging the graves. This
official gets dollar from the Corporation for
each body buried, and if from niggard motive
he failed to have the graves dug, to meet the re-
quirements of the times, he deserves the most
unreserved censure of the community.
The burials have heretofore been made in this
Cemetery in such careless manner as alone TO
produce pestilence. The tops Of the collins have
been sunk no lower than to level with the
surface of the ground, and then covered over in
the manner of potato ridges. In this situation
they were subject to be exposed to the washings
Of heavy rains, and the sun acting on the putrid
corpses within, they were liable to swell and
burst the collins, thus tainting the atmosphere
with putrescence sufficient alone to generate
plague.
This was the state Of things when several per-
sons in the neighborhood inhaling the rank
effluvia, informed the Mayor of the fact, who
Immediately took active measues for having the
graves covered with eighteen inches of additional
earth. Orders have also been issued to the
Iolreeb COulluioslOutf W seuu DOuleS TO reuter- 5
Field, or to st. Vincent de Paul, and the gates
of the Lafayette Cemetery No . have been
closed for the present, except to bodies coming
from the Fourth District.
The Mayor, we understand has taken the
responsibility of applying remedies to meet the
exigencies of the times.
The City Council has done nothing common
surate with its power to alleviate the present
pressing necessities brought about by the cpl
demic but have left all to be done by private
charity This, however, is attributable more
to ignorance of their duties on the part of its
members, and not to criminal inattention. Too
much credit cannot be conceded to the numer-
Gus associations which have undertaken the task
of alternating the present distressing state of
facts, and to the Mayer, who has taken such
energetic action in this regard