Reports Relating to the Sanitary Condition of the City of London

by John Simon

In attempting to fix the extent of ground required for your purpose in respect of this mortality, I must bring before you some preliminary considerations.

First,—as regards the minimum accommodation to be given in your Cemetery; I assume that every person buried there, however humble his previous station in life, may in death claim a grave to himself. It has been the opprobrium of our previous system that, in the poorer classes of interments, many bodies have been huddled together into a single pit. Probably you will think, as regards your future burial-place, that no consideration of cheapness can justify this indecency: probably you will be unwilling that, in a presence which confounds all social comparisons, there should be drawn, with your sanction, between rich and poor any so disrespectful distinction. But at all events, on sanitary grounds, I feel bound to assure you that these multiple burials are quite inadmissible. With such concentration of organic remains in very narrow compass, the soil grows utterly fœtid; and it becomes impossible to guard against nuisance arising to the public, or against danger to those who are occupied in digging and tending the ground. These evils, indeed, are so glaring, and the indecorum of crowded interment has long been so notorious, that nothing could have given them continuance except the necessities of our narrow accommodation under the system of intramural burial: and it would of course be without excuse to perpetuate them under the changed circumstances of extramural Cemeteries, where space can so readily be obtained for all legitimate requirements of the public. So far as the experience of other countries may help to determine your judgment in this matter, I may inform you that, in every foreign interment system which can deserve to be considered an establishment of public authority, the right of single burial is universally recognised.

Next—as regards the succession of interments; according to the burial-usages of modern times, no public Cemetery with fixed limits can be permanently useful, except on a full recognition of the fact that it is a decaying place for the dead, not a place for their embalmment or mummification. For hence it follows, that ground once used for burial becomes equally fitted for a second use, whenever by gradual decomposition the bodies first interred there have thoroughly vanished from the soil.

This principle has given the common rule of burial; and for obvious reasons. Under any other plan, the entire area allotted for interment would presently be in holding. No portion, however remote the date of its first occupation, could be resumed for a second series of interments; and the provision of a new Cemetery would be indispensable. Pushed to its extreme consequences, such a system must eventually convert the entire country into its burial-ground.

Under the practice of intramural interments—that practice which the new law supersedes, the principle of temporary tenure has been made to cover all manner of brutal abuses. Graves have been disturbed—within metropolitan churchyards and other burying-grounds, in which the transformations of decay had not half accomplished themselves; and public decency has been outraged—here, in the centre of civilisation, by the spectacle of human remains being tossed about like offal. It is one chief advantage of extramural sepulture, that, while the inevitable decay of the dead will be removed from the vicinity of the living, and the latter will no longer have their atmosphere tainted by this hideous contamination; so likewise for the dead—however humble, that in this new resting-place, room will be allotted them with no indecent stint; that the dwellings and market-places of the living will no longer hem them in, grudging their narrow requirements; that their return to dust will be respected, as beseems the last phase of mortal existence; and that, against any desecration of their repose, there will be given every security which piety and affection can demand.

There may be difference of opinion as to the precise time when a grave can with truth and decency be thought to have become distenanted. The rapidity of decay varies in so extraordinary a degree according to soil, that some inhumations are almost equivalent to embalming; while, in other cases, the process is comparatively rapid. Only experience of a particular soil will enable you to know with precision, what length of tenure is needed there for the purposes of interment to accomplish themselves; but on general principles one can approximate pretty nearly to the truth. Assuming the site of your Cemetery to have been selected with due regard to those qualities of soil which determine the differences adverted to, I think it unlikely that any adult grave can properly be re-opened within twenty years[93] of the time when interment shall last have occurred in it. Very long within this time, however, all soft textures of the body would have completed their decay. Remains of the coffin and of the skeleton—materials insusceptible of putrefaction, would alone occupy the grave, and with gradual crumbling blend themselves in the soil. Not till this final disintegration of the skeleton is complete—not till the identity of its different elements is destroyed, can the first occupant of a grave be fairly deemed to have abdicated his tenure. From this time only, can his interest in it be held as having reverted to the public, for whoever next may claim a similar usufruct of the ground.

[93] Twenty years would probably represent at least four times the average period during which the bodies of the poor have been left at rest in many grave-yards of the metropolis. Yet I would willingly advocate a longer term of years as the personal tenure of a grave, if public opinion would sanction the heavier expense which must thus be entailed on the living.

Taken for granted that, as regards the general public, your Cemetery will be established on the principle of a temporary tenure of graves, it remains for you to determine to what extent you will permit wealthier applicants to purchase exemption from this rule, and obtain a freehold interest in particular portions of your ground. I have little to say on this point, because it is of no sanitary importance, provided that privileges so purchased do not in any degree interfere with the general economy of your plan. Barring any risk of this kind, it comes before you simply as a question of finance.

A precaution, however, which I would suggest, is, that, first of all, you should provide a cemeterial space sufficient for the interment purposes of your population, on the principle of temporary tenure; that no portion of this space should, under any circumstances, be alienated from its public destination; that the whole of it should remain in perpetuity the common burying-ground of the City of London. This prime necessity of your plan being secured, it will be competent for you to include in your purchase a certain redundant number of acres; and out of these you can allot, at your discretion, such quantities of ground as may be desired in freehold, either for the purposes of family interment, generation after generation, or for the fiction of perpetual tenure by some single occupant.[94]

[94] In regard of these exceptional burials, it will be requisite to fix certain regulations; especially for the construction of family graves, wherein it will be desired that many who during life have been united, shall after death have their ashes mingled together in the soil. A frequent custom in private Cemeteries for fulfilling this purpose has been, for graves to be dug to a considerable depth—sometimes such that twelve coffins could be piled there, one on the other; and these deep pits have commonly been provided with brick walls. Now, for the same reason as determined my opinion against the multiple burial of the poor, I would argue against this arrangement, as one which might occasion excessive accumulation in single spots of your Cemetery, and as being in principle bad. In preference, I would venture to recommend the endeavour to introduce an interment-custom, which is prevalent abroad, of family plots of ground instead of family pits. Under ordinary circumstances, all the accommodation heretofore sought in the one arrangement would be found superiorly in the other; and in a well-projected suburban Cemetery the larger superficial extent could probably be afforded at much less cost than is usually paid for the pit. Persons familiar with the details of Cemetery-burial would easily devise an arrangement of such plots, whereby they should be separate and secluded, admitting of appropriate decoration, and altogether likely to prove more acceptable to public opinion than many existing arrangements. In regard of such plots, too, there might be conceded a privilege which I believe has not been allowed in private Cemeteries; namely, an hereditary right to refill the ground for any successive number of times, subject only to such restrictions as will determine the succession of interments in other parts of the Cemetery.