Have you had any reason to believe, that by careful and kind treatment of the labouring classes, their prejudices may be extensively overcome?—Yes, certainly. There was no prejudice stronger or more general than that to post-mortem examinations, or to any dissection; yet by care, and by the inducement of the allowance of a better funeral, that prejudice has been extensively overcome. The teachers of the medical schools, after dissection of a body, and its use for the advancement of medical knowledge, have made a liberal allowance for the interment of the remains; such sums as three or four pounds have been allowed for that service. When the relations of the poorest classes have expressed the common aversion to a pauper funeral, and their pain at having to submit to it on account of their necessity, I have told them if they would allow the remains to be taken to a medical school, and be examined, the teachers would allow them such a respectable funeral as they wish; I have sometimes added, “It is for the advancement of science; persons of the highest rank and condition in society have directed their remains to be examined, and I do not see what sound objection there can be to any of the poorest classes doing so.” Whenever I have made the offer under such circumstances it has generally been accepted.
Of course after the examination at the schools, the remains were properly and respectfully interred?—Yes they were, wherever the parties requested, whether in or out of the parish.—They frequently chose places of interment out of the parish, and in some instances places two or three miles distant, and almost always out of the town.
Why was the burial mostly chosen out of the parish?—Generally from a dislike to the places and mode in which paupers were buried; to their being put into a hole, where, perhaps, fifty others were, instead of having a separate grave. They frequently made it a main condition, that the remains should be buried out of the parish.
The means to ensure voluntary compliance with all salutary regulations for the better ordering of interments, are those which ensure real respect to the remains of the interred, and thus to the feelings of the survivors. The widows’ and the mothers’ feelings of reluctance to part with the corpse would, from such measures, receive appropriate alleviation.
Proposed Remedies by means of separate Parochial Establishments in Suburban Districts.
§ 103. A set of remedies, as proposed in the Committee of the House of Commons, and agreed to, has been before the public, and the chief part of them embodied in a bill proposed to the House at the close of the Session of Parliament of 1842. All the evidence of disinterested persons which I have met with, all paid and experienced officers connected with parishes, whose interests would perhaps be the least disturbed by parochial establishments, concur in the conclusion that the measures proposed for creating such establishments would not diminish, but would rather diffuse, and might even aggravate the evils intended to be remedied.
By the first clause it was proposed to enact—
That the rector, vicar, or incumbent, and the church-wardens of every parish, township, or place in every such city, town, borough, or place respectively, shall form a parochial committee of health for every such parish, township, or place.
§ 104. The first observation which occurs on this proposal is, that it involves the formation of “a committee of health,” for the execution of a sanitary measure, requiring the application of a very high degree of the science applicable to the protection of the public health, and omits all provision of services of the nature of those which would be required from a well-qualified medical officer. A provision on a parochial scale would indeed preclude the regular application of such service, except at a disproportionate expense. As a remedy against undue charges on the smaller parishes, a power of forming unions for the purpose is provided by the clause.
Or it shall be lawful for the rectors, vicars, or incumbents and church-wardens of any two or more parishes, townships, or places therein, to form such parishes, townships, or places into a Union for the purposes of this Act; and in such cases the rectors, vicars, or incumbents, and church-wardens of each parish, township, or place so united, shall form a parochial committee of health for such Union; and all the powers hereinafter given to any such committee may be executed by the majority of the members of any such committee at any meeting.