In thus selling portions of your land for private and privileged employment, you would be satisfying what has become a habit, and may be considered a legitimate claim of the wealthier classes. Beyond this, it is also evident, that you would virtually be competing with the ordinary Cemetery-companies of the metropolis, in the most lucrative department of their trade. It would probably be easy for you, by varying your fees according to circumstances, either on the one hand to diminish, and almost prohibit, the frequency of applications for exceptional interments; or, on the other hand, to attract such applications. Even, if you thought it desirable, you might admit purchasers from other classes than those having right of burial in your municipal Cemetery;—in short, you might manage it commercially, with a view to profit, looking to its proceeds for covering many expenses of the general establishment.
With respect to the ordinary arrangement of your ground for public purposes, and the distribution of burials therein, you may estimate that, taking one grave with another, and allowing for the marginal spaces of each, the average size of a grave will be twenty-eight square feet. For illustration’s sake, I will suppose the ground to be laid out in plots—say the third of an acre in extent. Each such plot would contain four hundred single graves, mixed adult and young, with what foot-paths might be requisite for approaching them. The City mortality of twenty years (assuming this period to be the ordinary leasehold of a grave) might be reckoned at sixty-four thousand deaths; for the accommodation of which number there would be wanted one hundred and sixty plots of the above-mentioned size—say fifty-four acres of ground. I would propose that throughout each line of every such space, adult and infant graves should, as far as possible, lie alternately; and that, instead of filling all the graves together at stated periods (say every twenty years) half of them, taken alternately, should be filled at each semi-period—say every ten years. By this arrangement, half the complement of burials would take place in each plot, at a time when the decomposition of the preceding half-complement had finished itself, so far as putrefaction is concerned; and whatever contamination of air might be liable to occur under the best-considered sanitary arrangement, would certainly be reduced to the lowest conceivable amount. Or, as an alternative equal to this arrangement for the purposes of health, you might adopt the plan of filling in immediate succession all the burial-spaces of a plot; provided the surface could then at once be devoted to the growth of appropriate vegetation.
Fifty-four acres being then the quantity of ground which would suffice, on sound principles, for the ordinary interment of your entire annual mortality during a period of twenty years; at the expiration of which time (assuming your soil to be appropriate) one may reasonably expect that the ground will admit of a second similar occupation; and so forth in perpetuity: it will be requisite to add a considerable allowance of space for other accessory purposes.
Thus, room would be required for the various buildings that belong to the institution of a Cemetery: partly for the dwelling of such officers as you may require to be there resident, partly for the temporary accommodation of persons resorting thither for the burial of their friends, partly for the religious services of different congregations.[95]
[95] The distinction of the ground into a consecrated and an unconsecrated portion, as required by the Act of Parliament, will require no addition to its total area; and therefore the proportion which these parts should bear to one another need not now be discussed.
Something likewise must be added for such mainways as will be wanted along various lines of the burial-ground, for the carriage traffic which belongs to funeral ceremonies among the richer classes of society, and for other like purposes.
Further, I dare say you would think it inexpedient that your Cemetery should be entirely without decoration and elegance. Fifty-four acres of head-and-foot stones, or the same extent of bare mounds, might vulgarise even the aspect of death. By the judicious introduction of trees and turf and shrubs, of bends and undulations, you would probably seek to interrupt the long perspective of so many tombs, and, by these artificial resources of planning and planting, to enhance the native solemnity of the spot. Amid such ornamental portions of your ground might be scattered irregularly the various sites of exceptional interment,—family graves, personal graves in perpetuity, long leasehold graves, and the like; and the interposition of these large portions of comparatively un-occupied soil, with as much appropriate vegetation as could conveniently be introduced, might not only allow much tasteful decoration of the ground, but would likewise conduce to the healthful accomplishment of those purposes for which the Cemetery is established.
In respect of these and many other details of your plan, you will doubtless be guided by the direct and responsible advice of men specially skilled in the subject. I have, therefore, confined myself to the mention of those points which may determine your judgment merely as to the quantity of land required for your purpose.
Without offering any opinion as to the possible claims of non-resident parishioners, on which liability I would again suggest your obtaining a legal opinion; and without pretending to advise what allowance should be made for purely decorative purposes; I may yet conclude from such information as I have collected, that, with a hundred acres of suitable soil at your disposal, you would be amply able to meet all legitimate burial-requirements of your population in perpetuity, and would likewise (for many years at least) have a considerable excess which might be applied to the uses of ornamental arrangement.
From what I have said on the influence of soil, in determining the period after which burying-grounds may be resumed for a second series of interments, it will be obvious to you that this condition is an important element in deciding the sufficiency of any area for given burial purposes. And the site of your Cemetery might be such as somewhat to lessen, or greatly to increase, the suggested extent of your estimate. It would be fruitless, however, now to detain you with any endeavour to trace the several influences which different soils exert over animal decay. Such remarks, at the present time, could only be addressed to hypothetical cases, or stated in the most general form. Therefore, instead of attempting this anticipative argument on the subject, I hold myself ready to report to you, specifically, on the suitableness of whatever soil may be proposed to you for the purposes of your Cemetery.[96]