Note 230 — Chapter XXX · CEMETERIES.

Vide ‘Fitzgerald’s Public Health Act,’ p. 130, 3rd edition.

[231] Vide ‘Fitzgerald’s Public Health Act,’ p. 131, 3rd edition. Foot note to clause x. Cemetery Clauses Act 1847.

[232] Cemetery Clauses Act 1847, s. 20.

[233] Vide ‘Cremation of the Dead,’ by William Eassie, C.E. &c. &c., p. 50.

[234] The roads and paths in a cemetery require to be carefully made, in order that they may be available during any weather.

[235] 20 & 21 Vic. c. 81, s. 25.

[236] The following is a description of the manner of burying the poorer people in the cemetery of Pere la Chaise, near Paris. (Vide ‘The Parks, Promenades, and Gardens of Paris,’ by W. Robinson, F.L.S., &c., p. 109.) “A very wide trench or fosse is cut wide enough to hold two rows of coffins placed across it, and 100 yards long or so. Here they are rapidly stowed in one after another, just as nursery labourers lay in stock ‘by the heels,’ only much closer, because there is no earth between the coffins, and wherever the coffins, which are very like egg-boxes, only somewhat less substantial, happen to be short so that a little space is left between the two rows, those of children are placed in lengthwise between them to economise space; the whole being done exactly as a natty man would pack together turves or mushroom spawn bricks.”. . . Let us hope that whatever else may be “taken from the French,” we may never imitate them in their cemetery management.

[237] Depth of burial varies from 6 to 10 feet, but there must be 4 feet of earth upon the top of the last coffin if an adult, 3 feet if a child.

[238] A proper grave should be dry when opened, and have a sufficiency of soil over the coffin to absorb any gases of decomposition; it should allow an adjoining grave to be opened without collapsing, and should if possible dispense with the necessity of shoring or close timbering the sides, and should allow sufficient space for a headstone to be placed over it.

[239] In a tomb or walled grave, the coffin should be enclosed in an air-tight case, by means of a stone cemented down which must never again be moved; or concrete may be used. It is a good plan to put some charcoal with the coffin to absorb any gases of decomposition in case of the vault opening accidentally at any future time, and in order to guard against such an occurrence it is better to leave at least 2 feet of earth on the top of the grave below the surface of the ground in walled graves.

[240] “No body shall be buried in any vault under any chapel of the cemetery or within 15 feet of the outer wall of any such chapel.” (Vide s. 39, Cemetery Clauses Act 1847.)

[241] In a beautiful out-of-the-way valley in Wales, there is a pretty village with a quiet churchyard far from the “busy haunts of man,” yet here it is found necessary to disinter all the bodies, as this churchyard will soon be 30 feet under the surface of the water of an immense reservoir now being constructed to supply the living with drinking water, and it would not be right to leave the bodies there.

[242] The body of Lord Balcarres was (as is now history) removed from the mausoleum in his own grounds, and only recovered after a most painful interval; this desecration could not have happened had his body been cremated and the ashes suitably secured.

[243] I believe it was Lord Shaftesbury whose remark on this point was, “What would have become of the blessed martyrs, if destruction by fire was to annul their chances of resurrection?”

[244] The metropolis alone has in addition to the numerous burying grounds near its parish churches, &c. (many of which have been, however, dug up and destroyed), the average of which it would be difficult to determine, the following cemeteries, which may be called extra mural:

Woking Cemetery 500 acres

Ilford and Leytonstone Cemetery 168 „

Norwood and Nunhead Cemetery 40 „

Highgate Cemetery 40 „

West London at Brompton 40 „

Abney Park Cemetery 32 „

Kensal Green Cemetery 18 „

Victoria Cemetery ——

Tower Hamlets Cemetery ——

Colney Hatch Cemetery ——