It is agreed by the most experienced public officers, that even a compulsory power to form unions of two parishes, but leaving the union beyond that number optional, would be equivalent to a provision, that two and no more shall unite; but that a merely permissive power to unite would be nugatory, except perhaps in the case of the smallest parishes: in other words, since there are in the district to which the enactment would apply, in the metropolis, upwards of 170 parishes, it would imply the establishment of upwards of 100 places of burial in such places as the following clauses would enable the parishes to provide.
And be it enacted, that every such committee may provide a convenient site of land for the burial of the dead of the district for which such committee shall be formed, which land shall not be in or within the distance of two miles from the precincts or boundaries of the city of London or Westminster, or the borough of Southwark, or in or within one mile of any other city, town, borough, or place; and no land which shall be purchased for such purpose shall be within 300 yards of any house of the annual value of 50l., or having a plantation or ornamental garden or pleasure-ground occupied therewith (except with the consent in writing of the owner, lessee, and occupier of such house).
An undertaker who has an extensive business, states that he has for some time been desirous of purchasing a piece of ground for interments in the suburbs of the metropolis, as a private speculation of his own, and that he had been three years in looking out for a plot that was suitable and purchasable, but has hitherto been unable to procure one. Other witnesses, on similar grounds, doubt the practicability of parishes procuring land, unless at enormous prices.
Supposing it were possible to procure separate plots for all the parishes which will require them in the suburbs, there are preliminary objections to the plan which relate to the suburbs themselves.
§ 105. The suburbs, it may be submitted, not only require careful protection on their own account, but on account of the population of the crowded districts of the metropolis, which are relieved by the growth of the suburbs. The progress of the new increments to towns is, therefore, as a sanitary measure, entitled to favourable protection. But the appropriation of vacant places, without reference to any general plan, must create very frequent impediments to the regular or systematic growth of the suburbs, and can scarcely fail ultimately to deteriorate them. And by the proposed measure the place of interments being removed, not only without any securities for the adoption of new measures of precaution, such as will be shown to be requisite in the formation, and also in the management, of places of burial for a large population, and the proposed machinery being such as to render it very nearly certain that no improved arrangements can be executed in such burial-grounds, the measure would simply effect the transference of common grave-yards from the old to the midst of new suburbs; and this transference must be accompanied by the creation of a new and apparently economical, but really extravagantly expensive and permanently inferior, agency, for the management of the new ground.
§ 106. These results admit of proof derived from the actual trial of a system of parochial interments apparently differing in no essential point, and especially in the nature of the agency and the scale of establishments, from the plan proposed.
In the parishes of St. Giles-in-the-Fields, St. George, Hanover-square, St. James, Westminster, and St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields, over-crowding of the burial grounds within the parish, between forty and fifty years ago, led the parish officers to obtain local acts for the establishment of burial grounds in the suburbs. The spaces then obtained were apart from any buildings. They are all now closely surrounded by them. The burial grounds of the parish of St. Giles-in-the-Fields having been the subject of an investigation before the Committee of the House of Commons, I have not made any inquiries with relation to them. In the suburban burial ground which belongs to the parish of St. George, Hanover-square, which consists of two acres of land, the interments have been for many years at the rate of about 1000 corpses per annum. It is now in the centre of a dense town population. It has become the subject of complaints similar to those made in respect to burial grounds in the ancient parts of the metropolis; and it appears that there are equally good grounds for the discontinuance of the practice of interment there, and for the selection of a burial place at a greater distance, notwithstanding that the payments from individuals produce to the collective funds of that parish a surplus beyond the expenditure of the management of the ground.
§ 107. The arrangements for burial in the parishes of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, which has a population of 25,000, and of St. James, Westminster, which has a population of 37,000, where the suburban burial grounds have not been crowded to the same extent, may be adduced as a high class of examples of a change of practice to extra-mural or suburban burials, and of management by a parochial machinery. In the parish of St. James, Westminster—
The gross expenditure of the chapel and ground between the years 1789 and 1835 (46 years) amounted to £73,879 1s. 11d., and it is estimated that the cost of maintaining the chapel and ground during that period over and above the receipts was not less than £50,000, the whole of which was drawn from the churchwardens under authority of the Act of Parliament.
But the chapel attached to the burial ground of this parish has been converted into a chapel of ease, for the accommodation of the inhabitants of the parish where it is situate. The vestry clerk of the parish states—