From west, east, north, and south the same lament was heard, and the same petition came from other cities and towns in England. It was a common topic for the newspapers and journals, and it is hardly possible to look through any of them, published between 1850 and 1855, without finding references to the graveyards, or notices of their being closed by order in Council. An anonymous poem called “City Graves,” appeared in Household Words on December 14, 1850. It has seven verses, of which I will give three:—
“Within those walls, the peace of death—
Without, life’s ceaseless din;
The toiler, at his work, can see
The tombs of his mouldering kin;
And the living without grow, day by day,
More like the dead within.
“I saw from out the earth peep forth
The white and glistening bones,