2. With regard to such trades as are considered to be simply offensive, and where the evidence of injury to health is indirect and uncertain, I can hardly doubt that a wise legislation would exclude them also from the circle of the metropolis. Tallow-melting, whalebone-boiling, gas-making, and various other chemical proceedings, if not absolutely injurious to life, are nuisances, at least in the ordinary language of the law, or are apt to become such. It is the common right of the neighbourhood to breathe an uncontaminated atmosphere; and, with this common right, such nuisances must, in their several degrees, be considered to clash. It might be an infraction of personal liberty to interfere with a proprietor’s right to make offensive smells within the limits of his own tenement, and for his own separate inhalation; but surely it is a still greater infraction of personal liberty when the proprietor, entitled as he is to but the joint use of an atmosphere which is the common property of his neighbourhood, assumes what is equivalent to a sole possession of it, and claims the right of diffusing through it some nauseous effluvium which others, equally with himself, are thus obliged to inhale. Such, as it appears to me, is the rational view of this matter; and although I am not prepared to speak of these trades in the same terms as I applied to slaughtering and its kindred occupations,—although, that is to say, I cannot speak of them as injurious to health on any large scale, yet I would respectfully submit to your Hon. Court that your Act of Parliament empowers you to deal with such nuisances in respect of their being simply offensive.[20]
[20] City Sewers Act, 1848, § 113.
3. Under the same head, I would likewise beg leave to suggest whether it might not be practicable for your Hon. Court to regulate the operation of establishments which evolve large volumes of smoke. The exterior dirtiness and dinginess of London depend mainly on this cause; and the same influence, by rendering domestic cleanliness difficult and expensive, creates an additional impediment to its cultivation. People naturally despair of cleansing that which a day’s exposure to the atmosphere blackens again with soot; or they keep their windows shut, breathing a fusty and unwholesome air, in the hope of excluding the inconvenience. Now, when it is remembered that all the smoke of London is but so much wasted fuel, it must surely be felt that the enforcement of measures for its consumption would be to the interest of all parties; amply economizing to the manufacturer whatever might be the trifling expense of appropriate arrangements, while it would relieve the public of that which, called by the mildest name, is a nuisance and a source of heavy expense.
INTRAMURAL BURIAL.
IV. The subject of intramural burial is the next on which I have to report, as affecting the health of the City.
In compliance with an order of the Health Committee, I have examined as fully as circumstances would allow into the requirements of the City of London in respect of burial accommodation, and the result of my inquiry obliges me to express my conviction, that the City can no longer with safety or propriety be allowed to furnish intramural interment to its dead.
In all those larger parochial burying-grounds where the maintenance of a right to bury can be considered important,—in all such, and in most others, too, the soil is saturated and super-saturated with animal matter undergoing slow decomposition. There are, indeed, few of the older burial-grounds of the City where the soil does not rise many feet above its original level, testifying to the large amount of animal matter which rots beneath the surface. The vaults beneath churches are, in many instances, similarly overloaded with materials of putrefaction, and the atmosphere, which should be kept pure, and without admixture for the living, is hourly tainted with the fœtid emanations of the dead. For the most part, houses are seen to rise on all sides in immediate contiguity to the burial-ground, forbidding the possibility of even such ventilation as might diminish the evil; and the inhabitants of such houses complain bitterly, as they well may, of the inconvenience which they suffer from this confined and noxious atmosphere.
With respect to burial in vaults, which prevails to a very great and dangerous extent in this City, I may observe that, among persons who are ill-informed on the subject, there exist erroneous notions as to the preservation of bodies under these circumstances. They are supposed, from the complete closure of their coffins, to remain unchanged for ages, like the embalmed bodies of Egypt and Peru; or at least—if perhaps they undergo some interior and invisible change (as the chrysalis within its sheath) that there is no interference with the general arrangement, no breach in the compactness of the envelope. Nothing can be less correct than this supposition.
It is unnecessary that I should detail to you the process of decay, as it occurs within the charnel-house; nor need I inquire for your information whether indeed it be true, as alleged, that part of the duty of a sexton consists in tapping the recent coffins, so as to facilitate the escape of gases which otherwise would detonate from their confinement. It is sufficient to state, that—whether such be or be not the duty of the functionary in question, the time certainly comes, sooner or later, when every corpse buried in the vault of a church spreads the products of its decomposition through the air as freely as though no shell had enclosed it. It is matter of the utmost notoriety that, under all ordinary conditions of vault-sepulture, the wooden case of the coffin speedily decays and crumbles, while the interior leaden one, bending with the pressure of whatever mass may be above it (or often with its own weight) yields, bulges, and bursts, as surely as would a paper hat-box under the weight of a laden portmanteau.