Then again, the proprietor of this colossal hog-sty, with his burnery of bones, and other fragrant contrivances, created a stench, unknown among men, since the bituminous conflagration of the cities of the plain—Sodom and Gomorrah; and which terrible stench, in the language of Sternhold & Hopkins, “came flying all abroad.” In the keeping of the varying wind, this “arria cattiva,” like that from a graveyard, surcharged with half-buried corpses, visited, from day to day, every dwelling, and nauseated every man, woman, and child in the village. Four town meetings were held, upon this subject. Roxbury calmly remonstrated,—Boston doggedly persisted; and, at last, patience having had its perfect work, the carrion carts, while attempting to enter Roxbury, were met, by the yeomanry, on the line, and driven back to Boston. Chief Justice Shaw having refused an application for an injunction, the complaint was brought before the grand jury of Norfolk. Bills were found, against the owner of the hogs, and the city of Boston. My learned and amiable friend, the late John Pickering, then the City Solicitor, defended them both, with great ability; and the present Judge Merrick, then County Attorney, opposed the whole swinish concern, with the spirit of an Israelite, and the power of a Rabbi. The owner of the hogs and the city of Boston were both duly convicted, and, entering into a written obligation to sin no more, in this wise, the indictment was held over them, for a reasonable period, until they had given satisfactory evidence of their sincerity.
In the testimony of Dr. George Cheyne Shattuck, which was published, at the time, after sustaining the prosecutors amply, in their allegation, in respect to the deleterious effect of the nuisance, he remarks—“The Creator has established, in the sense of smelling, a sentinel, to descry distant danger of life. The alarm, sounded through this organ, seldom passes unheeded, with impunity.”
Dr. John C. Warren and sixteen other respectable physicians concurred in this opinion.
No. LXI.
How long—oh Lord—how long will thy peculiar people disregard the simple, unmistakable teachings of common sense, and the admonitions of their own, proper noses, and bury the dead, in the very midst of the living!—Above all, how long will they continue to perpetrate that hideous folly of burying the dead, in tombs! What a childish effort, to keep the worm at bay—to stave off corruption, yet a little while—to procrastinate the payment of nature’s debt, at maturity—DUST THOU ART AND UNTO DUST THOU SHALT RETURN!—For what? That the poor, senseless tabernacle may have a few more months or years, to rot in—that friends and relatives may, from time to time, be enabled, upon every re-opening of the tomb, to gratify their morbid curiosity, and see how the worms are getting on—that, whenever the tomb is unbarred, for another and another tenant, as it may often happen, at the time, when corruption is doing its utmost—its rankest work—the foul quintessence—the reeking, deleterious gases may rush back upon the living world; and, blending with ten thousand kindred stenches, in a densely peopled city, promote the mighty work of pestilence and death.
Who does not sympathize with Cowper!
Oh for a lodge, in some vast wilderness,
Some boundless contiguity of shade,
Where the atrocious smells of docks, and sewers,
Eruptive gas, and rank distillery
May never reach me more. My lungs are pain’d,
My nose is sick, with this eternal stench
Of corpse and carrion, with which earth is fill’d.
I am not unmindful, that, in a former number of these Dealings with the Dead, I have passed over these burial-grounds, and partially exhibited the interior of these tombs already. But there really seems to be a great awakening, upon this subject, at the present moment, at home and abroad; and I rejoice, that it is so.
I am aware, that, within the bounds of old, peninsular Boston, no inhumations—burials in graves—are permitted. This is well.—Burials in tombs are still allowed.—Why? This mode of burial is much more offensive. In grave burial, the gases percolate gradually; and a considerable portion may be reasonably supposed to be neutralized, in transitu. This is unquestionably the case, unless the grave is kept open, or opened, six times, or more, on the speculation principle, for the reception of new customers. In tomb burial, it is otherwise. The tomb is opened for new comers, and sometimes, most inopportunely, and the horrible smell fills the atmosphere, and compels the neighboring inhabitants, to close their windows and doors.