[230] Vide ‘Fitzgerald’s Public Health Act,’ p. 130, 3rd edition.
[231] Vide ‘Fitzgerald’s Public Health Act,’ p. 131, 3rd edition. Foot note to clause x. Cemetery Clauses Act 1847.
[232] Cemetery Clauses Act 1847, s. 20.
[233] Vide ‘Cremation of the Dead,’ by William Eassie, C.E. &c. &c., p. 50.
[234] The roads and paths in a cemetery require to be carefully made, in order that they may be available during any weather.
[235] 20 & 21 Vic. c. 81, s. 25.
[236] The following is a description of the manner of burying the poorer people in the cemetery of Pere la Chaise, near Paris. (Vide ‘The Parks, Promenades, and Gardens of Paris,’ by W. Robinson, F.L.S., &c., p. 109.) “A very wide trench or fosse is cut wide enough to hold two rows of coffins placed across it, and 100 yards long or so. Here they are rapidly stowed in one after another, just as nursery labourers lay in stock ‘by the heels,’ only much closer, because there is no earth between the coffins, and wherever the coffins, which are very like egg-boxes, only somewhat less substantial, happen to be short so that a little space is left between the two rows, those of children are placed in lengthwise between them to economise space; the whole being done exactly as a natty man would pack together turves or mushroom spawn bricks.”. . . Let us hope that whatever else may be “taken from the French,” we may never imitate them in their cemetery management.
[237] Depth of burial varies from 6 to 10 feet, but there must be 4 feet of earth upon the top of the last coffin if an adult, 3 feet if a child.
[238] A proper grave should be dry when opened, and have a sufficiency of soil over the coffin to absorb any gases of decomposition; it should allow an adjoining grave to be opened without collapsing, and should if possible dispense with the necessity of shoring or close timbering the sides, and should allow sufficient space for a headstone to be placed over it.