| Deaths in five Summer Quarters asfollows:— | East London Union. | West London Union. | City of London Union. | Totals for entire City. | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Saint Botolph. | Cripple- gate. | Work- houses. | North. | South. | Work- house. | S.W. | N.W. | South. | S.E. | N.E. | Work- house. | |||
| July, Aug., Sep., | 1849 | 171 | 199 | 73 | 148 | 295 | 33 | 145 | 77 | 86 | 77 | 73 | 18 | 1395 |
| „„„ | 1850 | 102 | 93 | 26 | 74 | 65 | 18 | 39 | 39 | 43 | 31 | 43 | 22 | 595 |
| „„„ | 1851 | 123 | 105 | 38 | 76 | 73 | 11 | 40 | 39 | 53 | 36 | 42 | 27 | 663 |
| „„„ | 1852 | 160 | 116 | 26 | 74 | 77 | 31 | 44 | 32 | 49 | 26 | 54 | 28 | 717 |
| „„„ | 1853 | 126 | 151 | 20 | 66 | 52 | 31 | 39 | 41 | 42 | 32 | 48 | 22 | 670 |
| Total of five Seasons | 682 | 664 | 183 | 438 | 562 | 124 | 307 | 228 | 273 | 202 | 260 | 117 | 4040 | |
ON THE PRESENT
BURIAL-PLACES OF THE CITY.
TO THE IMPROVEMENT COMMITTEE OF THE HON. THE COMMISSIONERS OF SEWERS OF THE CITY OF LONDON.
December 10th, 1852.
Gentlemen,
In order to an application of the Metropolitan Burials Act by the constituted authorities of the City, you have requested me to report how far, in my judgment, the existing burial-places within this jurisdiction are fit for further reception of the dead.
I have little to add to the information which I have laid before the Commission in my successive annual reports—especially in [that of 1849], and which long since induced me to express my conviction ‘that the City of London could no longer with safety or propriety be allowed to furnish intramural burial to its dead.’
It would, indeed, be ridiculous if I should pretend to you that this part of the subject requires any further inquiry. Putrefactive decomposition of one kind and another is the principal cause of town-unhealthiness. Against its occurrence round about our houses all your legislation is directed. The human body, once destitute of life, furnishes no exception to the laws of organic decay: under the common laws of chemical change, it soon dissolves itself into products neither less offensive, nor less poisonous, than those of any brute’s decomposition. And you cannot take a juster view of the subject—you cannot arrive at stronger arguments for the immediate abolition of intramural interment, than by forcing yourselves to discard for a moment all memory of the fading human outline which masks this dreadful nuisance, and to conceive it as a mere bulk of animal matter, planted every year to undergo decomposition within the City, beneath our Churches, and before our thresholds.[91]