Gen. W. T. Sherman once visited the catacombs under ancient Syracuse. His guide informed him that there were a million interments, but that the contents of every chamber had been sold for manure. The general asked him if a single grave had been spared; not one.
Only a short time ago a London florist bought two cart-loads of mould, and found it full of legs, arms, skulls, and other human bones. He brought an action against the person from whom he purchased the soil for misrepresenting his “goods.”
On Feb. 9, 1874, the railroad tunnel under the cemetery of Père la Chaise at Paris, France, caved in with a thundering crash, forming a pell-mell mass of coffins and bodies, earth and débris.
In our own country the rest of the dead is fast becoming from year to year more insecure.
The Medical Herald affirms: “As the increasing necessities of man create new demands for space, graveyards are demolished and converted to other uses. In Louisville, Ky., within the past fifteen years, two extensive cemeteries have thus been transformed,—one on Portland Avenue into a common, and one in Jefferson Street into a park, called Baxter Square.
“Now the youth stroll along the graded walks and sit in the shaded nooks, upon the very ground in which the bodies of their ancestry have decayed. The sacred spot of last repose of grandparents is now the mirthful scene of the nocturnal orgies of irreverent grandchildren. Cremation would render this impossible, and place any profanation of the sacred memorials of the dead beyond the public eye.”
Recently two burial-grounds,—one in New England, the other in Pennsylvania,—caved in, and the thickly crowded bones of many generations were exposed to view.
In my native city, Detroit, four cemeteries, to my knowledge, were closed and given up to the living. In every case save one these burial-grounds were excavated, the coffins, bones, semi-decomposed bodies, etc., carted away, and business blocks erected in their stead. In one of these cemeteries a brother of mine was buried; what became of his last remains I know not. Possibly they were used to fertilize a field; or perhaps cupidity tempted men to steal his body for the purpose of dissection; or an unscrupulous grave-digger may have sent his bones to a bone-mill, vended his coffin-plate, and used his coffin for firewood. Who knows? I would give a great deal if the relics of my brother, decently inurned, could be with me; but alas! I must give up expectations of ever finding any trace of him again.
THE PROPOSED DETROIT CREMATORIUM.