Reports Relating to the Sanitary Condition of the City of London

by John Simon

If one were starting anew—legislating for a people with unformed habits, nothing might be easier than to devise regulations of a perfect kind with regard to the sanitary management of the dead. But our case is widely different. The evils against which we have to contend are among the deepliest-rooted habits of the country. In defence of what exists there are many stupid and ignorant prejudices: but, interwoven with these are feelings of tenderness and affection, to which all consideration and reverence are due;—feelings which would be shocked and outraged by any abrupt endeavour to reduce the care of the dead to a system of fixed regulations.

For myself, having the deepest sense of the evil in question, and having officially the power to order the removal of the dead, I may repeat that I have never yet exercised my authority. Practically speaking, I can hardly conceive an instance in which I should attempt to do so. It would require the strongest case that could be shown of actual mischief in progress—of disease and death multiplied day by day through the presence of some particular dead body, to justify interference even in that single instance. Nothing like the operation of a general law would be tolerated;—nothing like including the dead in a compulsory plan of hygienic police.

After very careful consideration of the subject, I may confess myself even more impressed with its difficulties than when I first began to give it my attention; and in the few suggestions which follow I cannot pretend to do more than intimate where, in my opinion, a beginning may usefully be made towards an improvement which it will take many years to accomplish.

Legislative remedies, proposed for the evils which I am bringing under your notice, have been of two kinds—viz., first, to restrict the time during which it should be lawful to keep a body unburied; secondly, to promote the use of reception-houses (as they have been called) whither bodies might be removed from within all dwelling-places, and be kept under certain regulations during the days preceding their interment.

As regards the first point;—there are many foreign countries (and even some parts of the United Kingdom) where either law or custom has made it imperative to bury within two, three, or four days of death. Our habit, unfortunately, is to keep the corpse unburied for twice as long. A week may probably be considered our medium interval between death and interment; and with this delay, I need hardly tell you, the body becomes putrid—sometimes intensely so, before the time for its removal arrives.

Among the wealthier classes, as I have said, this delay is practically unimportant; except in so far as every repetition maintains the pernicious custom. Scarcely on account of any risk arising to themselves in emanations from the dead, but mainly for the sake of influence and example, would one wish the educated classes of the community to adopt the usage of earlier burial. Our present practice is upheld by no law of necessity; nor for the most part does it represent any extravagance of grief, or fond reluctance of separation. Chiefly it subsists by our indolent acquiescence in a habit, which former prejudices and former exigencies established. Fears of premature interment, which had much to do with it, are now seldom spoken of but with a smile. The longer interval, once rightly insisted on as necessary for the gathering of distant friends, has now, in the progress of events, become absurdly excessive: in a vast majority of cases, all whose presence is needed, live within a narrow circle; and the more distant mourner, who, fifty years ago, would have spent several days in coming from Paris or Edinburgh, can now finish his journey in twelve hours. It is much to be wished that, under these changed circumstances, an altered practice might ensue in the upper classes of society, fixing their time of burial within three or four days of death. Such example of wealthier neighbours, aided by greater enlightenment and education among themselves, would greatly tend to detach the poor from many observances and delays, in relation to the dead, which, in their narrow dwellings cannot continue with impunity.

But, as regards these poorer classes, cannot anything be done in connexion with your new arrangements, to abridge the period of delay? As for any positive regulation, limiting the time during which it should be allowed to retain dead bodies in certain dwelling-houses,—such could only be enforced by an extensive organisation of sanitary police, which you would have to call into existence for the purpose, and which, in the present state of public opinion, would encounter insurmountable difficulties on every occasion of its authoritative interference.

It is by indirect means and inducements alone, that I can hope at present to effect the desired alteration; and by them, I think, something can be ensured toward shortening the delays of interment.

First, I believe that everything which cheapens the cost of burial, will conduce to such a result; for, among the poor, one considerable cause of procrastination must often be the immediate absence of money. The plan of conveyance and payment which I have suggested, would at least ensure you against any increase of this difficulty, and might readily be applied to diminish it. For, under such a system of single payment for grave and conveyance, it would be practicable, and, I think, most advantageous, to fix two prices, with a difference of at least five shillings between them; to charge the lower fee whenever the funeral should occur within eighty hours of death, the higher whenever this period should be exceeded. If, by the general adoption of the former alternative, the Cemetery receipts should be diminished in respect of artisan funerals, even to the utmost extent—say five or six hundred pounds per annum—this money, or much more, would have been advantageously expended in purchasing so great a reform. If, on the contrary, the immediate option of the working classes should be in favour of continuing a system so injurious to themselves and to their neighbours, there would be no injustice in leaving them the incumbrance of a cost, from which it would require only their own will to escape. The difference of price would soon be recognised as a municipal tax on delays of interment;—a tax, rendered legitimate by the public evil which it is designed to correct, and guarded against remonstrance, because any man may avoid it who will. And since the delays in question often arise in a passive habit of the people, founded on no deliberate intention or reason, I cannot but believe that a well-marked difference of fee would, as it were, startle the poor into considering the question, which would come to be of daily argument in their houses:—‘Is it worth while that our funeral cost should be increased by the amount of one or two days wages, in order that we may retain within our dwelling-rooms four days longer, that which every one tells us is hurtful to ourselves and to others?’

It has been suggested to me, that many delays occur owing to Sunday being considered specially as a funeral day among the labouring classes; that an equal distribution of burials over the week would be preferable to this waiting for a particular day; and that the closure of your Cemetery on Sundays might accordingly be beneficial for the purposes under consideration. Many arguments will doubtless occur to you, both for and against the desirability of Sunday interments; but this probably may be regarded as a point of detail, more fitly to be considered when your scheme is complete, or even when it has actually given you some experience of its operation.