The Canton mail. [volume] (Canton, Miss.) 18??-1882, 1876-05-13
POTTER'S FIELD.
The PoMper B"ryin1 Ground of Ne'r York
Cify-Barb0rors Mode of burial
II SicSeuiu0 Recital,

| CUV-.B0TbuSOIS NODE OF ISHTtUt
II Sickenis0 Recital.
The Potter's Field or public burial
| place of Kings county, covers an area Of
about three and one-half acres of the
Poor farm at Flatbush. 1t fronts on
Clarkson street, at the rear of the Luna
tic asylum, and is barely stones. throw
distant from the Aims house, Charity
hospital and other public institutions.
1t was selected as a pauper burying-
ground when the old Poor house, which
stood near what is now the corner of
Flushing and North Portland avenues,
was abandoned nearly thirty years ago,
when it's present location which is now
thickly populated, was only sparsely set
tied. Since then thousands of deceased
persons, many of whom have died of
smallpox and other contagious diseases,
have been buried in its trenches, which,
in warm weather, emit exhalations alike
dangerous and disagreeable to persons
who have unwittingly purchased and &C.
cupied houses in its vicinity.
Trenches about sixteen feet deep and
twenty feet square, dug by able-bodied
paupers, constitute the common graves
of men, women and children in Potter's
field. The bodies are crowded into
rough pine boxes which cost about two
dollars each and which are piled indis-
criminately one above another in the
trenches. A thin layer of earth which
is soon washed away by the rain it
Sprinkled over them, and when one
trench is filled another is dug close be-
side it. Small boxes containing the re-
mains of infants are wedged into the in
terstices between the larger ones, and
when the earth is washed away from the
tops they warp and crack in the sun I'M
til the surrounding atmosphere is filled
with nauseous and pestilential odors.
From 600 to 700 bodies are annually
inferred in this barbarous way, though
efforts have been made by philanthropic
citizens at several different times to have
better and more humane method
adopted and more suitable place estab
lished. More than half of the area has
been already filled with the remains of
the old and young of both sexes huddled
together in trenches, which virtually
form single pit crowded with human
bodies in every stage of decay.
Bodies can not be recovered by rela-
tives or friends of the deceased unless
application be made promptly after
burial and under favorable circumstances.
The boxes were formerly numbered only
with chalk, but latterly black paint has
been used for that purpose SO that the
numbers which are the principal and al
most the only means for Identification
are less easily obliterated.
In most cases those who seek the re-
mains of lost relatives or friends in this
mammoth death-pit, are doomed to dis
In hot weather the search
is especially difficult, for then the inter-
ments are SO frequent that several tiers of
collins are made in few days, and the task
of removing them while searching, is so
dangerous and unpleasant at that season
that even the hardened keeper shrinks
from it with disgust.
Such, in brief, is an imperfect descrip-
ton of the public burial place of Kings
county, with its more than half a million
of inhabitants, whose philanthropy, lib
erality and culture as displayed in all /
other directions is proverbially great.
Millions of dollars are annually raised by
taxation for various public purposes, and
half a million dollars are annually set
aside for charity, but none to provide
a decent resting place for the remains of
the pauper or stranger. The voices of
the living have been raised without avail,
but the mute appeal still comes from the
thousands of the departed whose bodies
lie rotting and neglected in the horrible
of Potter's Field.