When the coffin is not laid in contact with the soil, but entombed in a vault or walled grave, the occupied space is covered by a stone cemented down, air-tight, upon a ledge in the wall, and the raising of which is for ever forbidden. The entombment may also be made by an air-tight surrounding of concrete. The best practice of vault burial is to place some charcoal or disinfectant along with the coffin, so that no foul gas shall escape should reopening be necessary. When old vaults underneath churches are reported upon and found inimical to public health, the churchwardens can be compelled to remove the contents elsewhere, and disinfect the vaults, charging the poor-rates with the expenses. No interment is now allowed under any new place of worship, except with the authority of the Secretary of State. During the ten years, too, which followed the passing of the Burial Acts in 1852, more than one hundred church vaults in the metropolis were disinfected and sealed up.
Cemeteries, and not churchyards, are now the chosen sites for interments. These cemeteries are permitted to be located upon any piece of ground, provided that the usual restrictions are not set at naught.[100] A well-chosen cemetery[101] is one whose soil is dry, close, and yet porous, permitting the rain and its accompanying air to reach a reasonable depth, and so expedite decay. The formation is also well covered with vegetable mould, which assists in neutralising any hurtful emanations and encourages the growth of shrubs. The subsoil is also of such a kind as to need no underdraining, and such as will prevent the water lodging in any grave or vault.[102] It will also stand exposed to the north or north-east winds, which are dry, and which do not hold the putrefactive gases in solution, like the moist south or south-westerly winds.
Cemeteries can be made upon clay soils, if properly drained by deep cross-drains, and by pipe-drains laid from grave-space to grave-space, duly conducted into the main drain, or by causing the first interments to be made near the drain, strewing gravel at the bottom of each grave opened out, and similarly connecting with this porous layer each new grave with a previous one. When the soil does not admit percolation downwards, it is necessary to get rid of the surface water by laying a line of pipes at the upper end of each row of graves, and so intercepting it. Or upright pipes are placed, reaching down to the bottom of the grave and to the artificially placed gravel then communicating with the drain. The clayey soils of some burial-grounds have also been improved by the admixture of sand and gravel when refilling the graves. But, even after all this expense, the gases evolved during decay are retained very often in the soil, and, after thirty or more years, little or no change will have been effected. The laws of nature are thus contravened; for she has ordained that, in good soil, all but the larger bones shall disappear in twelve years. If interments be made in the worst of clays, sudden heat will open up fissures in the ground with lamentable results.
An improperly chosen graveyard, then, may be said to be one where the soil is dense and clayey, and impervious to moisture. It will be insufficiently drained, necessitating the use of planks to walk upon in wet weather. It will be too close to the abodes of the living, too small to permit proper planting, the graves covered, it may be, with flat stones, which prevent the passage downwards of the air and rain, and surrounded, moreover, by high walls which exclude the fresh air. The ground will be stony and insufficiently covered with vegetable soil. No natural outfall will exist, and the drainage-water must be pumped up, the bare idea of which is horrible. It will be near also to water-bearing strata, or to a reservoir. Long before decomposition has taken place, owing to the smallness of the site and the impossibility of obtaining any more land except at high building prices, the organic matter hidden out of sight will be far too large in proportion to the area. From the foregoing we may conclude that a proper site for a cemetery is not everywhere obtainable, and that serious mistakes must often be made.
The older burial-grounds can be closed at the expiration of a month's notice given by duly qualified persons, on the order of the Privy Council, and any one assisting at a burial contrary to that order is liable to fine and imprisonment.
The Ecclesiastical Commissioners can grant, in certain cases, a faculty permitting the erection of schools in churchyards, especially when the grounds have been closed under the Burials Act; and never shall I forget a school of this description in one of our largest cities. Old burial-grounds can be converted to more common secular purposes under certain restrictions, as may be witnessed almost every day in London. In such cases the remains must be decorously removed to some consecrated ground, after due notice to the relatives. An example of this may be observed at the present moment at the demolished church of St. Antholin, London; only in this case the remains have not been carted away as usual to the City of London Cemetery at Ilford, but have been placed in a monster vault constructed at the base of the tower, which is the only part of the church that is to remain. In this vault have been placed over 200 chests, each containing the contents of a grave.
If the closed burial-ground be taken under the Land Clauses Act for public improvements, and converted into sites for building, the freeholder obtains the sum at which it was valued previously to the passing of the Act, and the building may proceed. In the City of London the Commissioners may, with the Bishop's consent, arrange with the churchwardens for the appropriation of any disused burial-ground. Sometimes, as in the case of the Bunhill Fields ground, the space may be laid out and preserved as an open space by a corporation, and a burial board may do the like with all ancient graveyards within their jurisdiction. The authorities, however, I believe, provide that, in burial-places so closed, vertical tombstones shall not be thrown down and made use of as a paving, and, as a general rule, the growth of grass is encouraged for sanitary purposes.
I have given an account of the past and present state of the burial laws, because it was necessary to do so in order to estimate the position which any better system of dealing with our dead will occupy. It cannot be said that no pains have been taken to lessen the horrors of the tomb, for I have taken the trouble to make a list of the proposed improvements in the paraphernalia of death which have appeared[103] since 1781, and everything seems to have been considered. From 1781 to 1825 the main thing studied was security against the rifling of the grave; and then on to 1871 followed plans for all kinds of coffins in stone, marble, granite, slate, porcelain, earthenware, bitumen, asphalte, paper, peat, india-rubber, iron, and glass. Glass has been the favourite material, just as it was in old Italy, where it was mostly selected to enshrine the ashes collected from the pyre. It is melancholy to peruse these strivings after the impossible, and to see what fond but unavailing attempts have been made to rob inhumation of its terrors.