In Search of Gravestones Old and Curious

The design invented by the sculptor at Sutton at Hone, near Dartford, is less original and also less striking.

FIG. 59.—AT SUTTON AT HONE.

In the case of John Bone, bricklayer, of Bromley, Kent, it would probably be wrong to associate with his calling the tools engraved on his headstone. They were probably meant with the rest of the picture to represent the emblems of mortality.

FIG. 60.—AT BROMLEY.

There is, however, one stone which may be included in the category of trade memorials, though its subject was not a mechanic. Mr. John Cade was a schoolmaster at Beckenham, and appears to have been well liked by his pupils, who, when he prematurely died, placed a complimentary epitaph over his grave. The means by which he had imparted knowledge are displayed upon the stone, and below are the lines hereinafter set forth.

FIG. 61.—AT BECKENHAM.

Greenford, near Harrow-on-the-Hill, had quite recently a worthy inhabitant who was a gardener and presumably a beekeeper also. Accordingly a beehive appropriately decorates his gravestone.

FIG. 62.—AT GREENFORD.

The next problem is rather more doubtful, and in considering the possibility of the memorial indicated being "professional," we must remember that the parish of West Ham, now a populous place, was quite out of town and almost undiscovered until a comparatively recent time. Its eighteenth-century gravestones are consequently for the most part rustic and primitive. The skull and other bones here depicted, decked with wheat-ears and other vegetation, probably have some literal reference to the agricultural pursuits of the deceased, although of course they may be only poetical allusions to the life to come.

FIG. 63.—AT WEST HAM.

CHAPTER V.

A TYPICAL TRAMP IN KENT.

This unpretentious work makes no claim to deal with the whole subject which it has presumed to open. Its aim is rather to promote in others the desire which actuates the author to follow up and develop the new field of antiquarian research which it has attempted to introduce. As old Weever says, in his quaint style:—"I have gained as much as I have looke for if I shall draw others into this argument whose inquisitive diligence and learning may finde out more and amende mine."

This book, then, is not a treatise, but simply a first collection of churchyard curiosities, the greater number of which have been gathered within a comparatively small radius. It is only the hoard of one collector and the contents of one sketch-book, all gleaned in about a hundred parishes. Many collectors may multiply by thousands these results, bring out fresh features, and possibly points of high importance.

Two chief purposes therefore animate my desire to publish this work. One is to supply such little information as I have gleaned on a subject which has by some singular chance escaped especial recognition from all the multitude of authors, antiquarians, and literary men. I have searched the Museum libraries, and consulted book-collectors, well-read archaeologists, and others likely to know if there is any work descriptive of old gravestones in existence, and nothing with the remotest relation thereto can I discover.¹ There are, of course, hundreds of books of epitaphs, more or less apocryphal, but not one book, apocryphal or otherwise, regarding the allegories of the churchyard. Can it be that the subject is bereft of interest? If so, I have made my venture in vain. But I trust that it is not so.

The second object is to recommend to others a new and delightful hobby, and possibly bring to bear upon my theme an accumulation of knowledge and combination of light. Gravestone hunting implies long walks in rural scenes, with all the expectations, none of the risks, and few of the disappointments of other pursuits. From ten to fifteen miles may be mapped out for a fair day's trudge, and will probably embrace from three to six parish churchyards, allowing time to inspect the church as well as its surroundings. Saturdays are best for these excursions, for then the pew-openers are dusting out the church, and the sexton is usually about, sweeping the paths or cutting the grass. The church door will in most cases be open, and you can get the guidance you want from the best possible sources. A chat with the village sexton is seldom uninviting, and he can generally point out everything worth your observation. But the faculty of finding that of which you are in search will soon come to you. In the first place, the new portion of a churchyard—there is nearly always a new portion—may be left on one side. You will certainly find no ancient memorials there. In the next place, you may by a little observation pick out the eighteenth-century stones by their shape, which is as a rule much more ornamented and curvilinear than those of later date. They may also be detected very often by the roughness of their backs as well as by their weather-beaten complexions, and with a little experience and practice the student may guess correctly within a few years the age of any particular one seen even in the distance.

To tempt the reader therefore to take up the study which I have found so pleasant, so healthful, and so interesting, I now propose to place in order the proceeds of a few of my rambles, and shew how much success the reader may also expect in similar expeditions. His or her stock-in-trade should consist of a good-sized note-book or sketch-book of paper not too rough for fine lines, a B B pencil of reliable quality, and a small piece of sandstone or brick to be used in rubbing off the dirt and moss which sometimes obscure inscriptions. No kind of scraper should ever be employed, lest the crumbling memorial be damaged; but a bit of brick or soft stone will do no harm, and will often bring to view letters and figures which have apparently quite disappeared. If a camera be taken, a carpenter's pencil may be of service in strengthening half-vanished lines, and a folded foot-rule should always be in the pocket. A mariner's compass is sometimes useful in strange places, but the eastward position of a church will always give the bearings, and a native is usually to be found to point the way. A road map of the county which you are about to explore, or, if in the vicinity of London, one of those admirable and well-known handbooks of the field paths, is useful, and the journey should be carefully plotted out before the start. A friend and companion of congenial tastes adds, I need not say, to the enjoyment of the excursion. My constant associate has happily a craze for epitaphs, but does not fancy sketching even in the rough style which answers well enough for my work, and I have had therefore no competitor. Together we have scoured all the northern part of Kent and visited every Kentish church within twenty miles of London. The railway also will occasionally land us near some old church which we may like to visit, and it was while waiting half an hour for a train at Blackheath station that I picked up the accompanying choice specimen in the ancient burial-ground of Lee.

FIG. 64.—AT LEE.

In this allegory Time appears to be commanding Death to extinguish the lamp of Life. The sun may mean the brighter life beyond. The building to the right is an enigma.

Often the first six or seven miles have to be encountered before we reach unexplored ground. The Cray Valley, for instance, may be cited for one day's experience. First a walk of seven miles to Orpington, one of the five sister churches of the Crays—all said to be Anglo-Saxon and of about one date. I must not digress to speak of churches, but it is only reasonable to suppose that the student who is capable of taking up as a pastime the investigation of churchyards has previously acquired something more or less of archaeological taste, and will not fail to notice the churches.² We reach the churchyard of Orpington, visit the church, and then my companion and I separate for our respective duties. I am not fortunate in securing any special prize, but it is well to select some object if only as a souvenir of the visit, and I jot down the following, which may be classed among the commonest order of all figurative headstones, but is nevertheless noticeable as a variant.

FIG. 65.—AT ORPINGTON, KENT.

The work in this instance is crude, and apparently done by an inexpert craftsman. The stone is, however, decayed, and it is possible that it is the draughtsman who has blundered. The two skulls, being of different sizes, suggest the male and female occupants of the grave, and would therefore assign the production to the later rather than the earlier date. The two bones are not often found in so lateral a position, and the vampire wings are clumsy in the extreme. I have collected varieties of the skull and crossbone character in many places, and seen the eccentricities of many masons in the way of wings, but have met with very few so far astray as these. While I am engaged in transferring the specimen to my book, our epitaph hunter has been round and discovered a treasure. I shall not trouble the reader with him henceforth, but I may note just this one of his successes as a sample of the rewards which attend his part in the pilgrimage. He has found a stone thus inscribed:

A short walk through the village and by the Cray River brings us to the church of St. Mary Cray, where I secure a new species, in which Death is doubly symbolized by the not infrequent scythe and possibly also by the pierced heart. The latter might refer to the bereaved survivor, but, being a-flame, seems to lend itself more feasibly to the idea of the immortal soul. The trumpet and the opening coffin indicate peradventure the resurrection.

FIG. 66.—AT ST. MARY CRAY.

Only a short distance farther, for the churches are small, we reach St. Paul's Cray, the burial-ground of which shews that the foregoing allegory was immediately duplicated, apparently by another hand, with just a little variation to redeem the piracy. The coffin is quite opened and empty, instead of being slightly open and tenanted, which is almost the only difference between the May and the September work.

FIG. 67.—AT ST. PAUL'S CRAY.

Foot's Cray is a good long step beyond and does not yield much profit, but I select the most novel specimen, which is a combination of ordinary emblems, with little attempt at symmetry, or even arrangement, other than the awkward juxtaposition of the cherubins' inner wings.

FIG. 68.—AT FOOT'S CRAY.

The churchyard at North Cray added nothing at all to my collection. This was the only blank drawn that day, but a beautifully kept ground surrounding a delightful church well repaid the visit. A call at Old Bexley Church completed the day's work, and gave me one of the few sketches belonging to the nineteenth century which I have made.

FIG. 69.—AT OLD BEXLEY.

The anchor stands for Hope, the draped urn signifies mourning for the dead, and the figure reading the Holy Book suggests consolation. From Bexley Church to the railway station was but a brief space. The day's tramp was ended.

CHAPTER VI.

MORE TYPICAL TRAMPS.

How far county divisions might affect the early fashions in gravestones was one of my first questions, and, having seen much of Kent, time was soon found for a scamper through the country bordering Epping Forest and along the backbone of Essex.

At Barking, just within the old Abbey gate, I came upon an enigmatical illustration.

FIG. 70.—AT BARKING.

The signification of the four balls I am unable to suggest, unless they be connected in some way with the planetary system and point man's insignificance. They appear to emanate from a cloud resting upon the hour-glass, and may help the other emblems in symbolizing time and eternity. The nickering candle is also of doubtful interpretation. It may mean the brevity of life; it can hardly be needed, in the presence of the skull, to indicate death. The candle is sometimes employed alone, occasionally extinguished. At Woolwich there is an instance in which the candle is in the act of being put out.

FIG. 71.—AT WOOLWICH.

The candle is indeed commonly used as a simile of life's uncertainty in all countries, and it may be that where it is represented in a state of burning it may be meant as a lesson on the number of our days. It is seen with the skulls in the churchyard of St. Nicholas, Deptford, and other places.

FIG. 72.—AT DEPTFORD.

In West Ham Churchyard may be seen the figure of the kissing cherubs rather prettily rendered, but to be found in various forms in many places, and always expressive of affection.

FIG. 73.—AT WEST HAM.

Wanstead Churchyard is remarkable for the abundance and originality of its old gravestones. Here is one (Fig. 74) which carries more distinctly the fanciful idea suggested at West Ham (page 34, Fig. 63); flowers and foliage, and even fruit, combining with the lowered torch and summoning trumpet to tell of life beyond the grave.

FIG. 74.—AT WANSTEAD.

There are several other variations of the same symbol in the elegant enclosure at Wanstead Church; but the most remarkable of the old stones is one which has at the top corners two projecting skulls, the one facing nearly to the front and the other in profile, both standing out in full relief, carefully and accurately sculptured, but too ghastly to be beautiful. This one, the Richmond example, and the two at Ripley constitute my entire experience of full relief work on a mere gravestone.

FIG. 75.—AT WANSTEAD.

Other churchyards in the locality we found less fruitful, and taking rail to Buckhurst Hill, we struck across Epping Forest to Chingford, also without profit, and walked on to Walthamstow, where another of the enfoliated death's-head pictures was found; the novelty being two skulls with ivy sprays, symbolical of evergreen recollections.

FIG. 76.—AT WALTHAMSTOW.

In the Broxbourne example on the same Plate (Fig. 77) branches of oak, bearing leaves and acorns, are used with good decorative effect on either side of a porch in which is seated a mourning figure, but I cannot undertake to explain the symbolical significance of the oak in sepulchral masonry.

FIG. 77.—AT BROXBOURNE.

My excursions into Essex have been too limited in scope to trace or test peculiarities in that county, but I have found by observation in a number of counties that, although there are occasional evidences of local invention, or at least of local modification, in certain districts, the same set of types which prevails in one county serves pretty well for all the rest.

It is well therefore to guard against disappointment. Pilgrimages like ours, having for their real purpose healthy exercise and physical enjoyment, are not to be counted failures when their ostensible errand seems to have borne no result. It is necessary for the pilgrim to be armed with some such reflection as this against the shafts of discomfiture. There have been occasions when, at the close of the day, conscious as I might be of the pleasant hours past, the freshened brain and the body reinvigorated, I have yet covetously mourned the scanty and valueless additions to my note-book. Other pilgrims may therefore take warning, be prepared for blank days in barren coverts, and sully not their satisfaction with regrets. But it will be a blank day indeed which does not carry its pleasures with it and store the mind with happy recollections. One walk on a winter's day over the hills from High Barnet to Edgware I reckoned sadly unproductive of the special novelties I sought, but it afforded me the contemplation of some landscapes which I can never forget, and it printed on my brain a little papier-maché-like church at Totteridge which was worth going miles to see. Better fortune next time should be the beacon of the gentle tramp. The long jaunt I had from Chigwell Lane Station through the pretty but unpopulous country west of Theydon Bois, uneventful as it was, made an ineffaceable mark on my memory. I picture now the long and solitary walk across fields and woodlands, with never a soul to tell the way for miles and miles, crossing and recrossing the winding Roden, startling the partridges from the turnips, and surprising, at some sudden bend in the footpath, the rabbits at their play. It is not without excitement to steer one's course over unknown and forsaken ground by chart and compass. These needful guides then prove their value, and in a hilly country an altitude-barometer is a friend not to be despised. It is not without some pride in one's self-reliance to find one's self five miles from a railway station, as I did at Stapleford Abbotts; and, though my special quest was all in vain at several halting-places that day, I met with a Norman doorway at Lambourn Church which archaeologists would call a dream, the axe-work of the old masons as clean cut and as perfect as though it had been done last week; and in taking a near cut at a guess across country for Stapleford Tawney I mind me that I lost my way, or thought I had, but the mariner's needle was true, and emerging in a green avenue I saw before me a finger-post marked "To Tawney Church." I took off my hat and respectfully saluted that finger-post, and was soon in the churchyard, where I haply lighted upon one of the gems of my collection, the headstone sculpture of "The Good Samaritan."

FIG. 78.—AT STAPLEFORD TAWNEY.

I have, however, an earlier study of the same subject from the churchyard at Shorne Village, near Gravesend, which, is here given for comparison, and I have seen two others at Cranbrook. They all have some features alike, but there are differences in the treatment of details in each case.

FIG. 79.—AT SHORNE.

The stone at Shorne being close to the church door is well known to the villagers, by whom it is regarded as a curiosity. The schoolmaster was good enough to give me a photograph from which my sketch is made. But such rarities are seldom esteemed by, or even known to, the inhabitants of a place, and are passed by without heed by the constant congregation of the church. At Stapleford Tawney, just named, a native, the first I had seen for a mile or two, stopped at the unwonted sight of a stranger sketching in the churchyard, and I consulted him as to application of the parable of the Good Samaritan in the case under notice. His reply was that, though he had lived there "man and boy for fifty year," he had "never see'd the thing afore." He condescended, however, to take an interest in my explanations, and seemed to realize that it was worth while to seek for objects of interest even in a churchyard. This was decidedly better than the behaviour on another occasion of two rustics at Southfleet. They had passed my friend jotting down an epitaph, and the turn of a corner revealed me sketching a tombstone, when one to the other exclaimed, "Land sikes, Bill, if 'ere ain't another on em!"

CHAPTER VII.

EARLIER GRAVESTONES.

Although memorials of the dead in one shape or another have apparently existed in all eras of ethnological history, it would seem that the upright gravestone of our burial-grounds has had a comparatively brief existence of but a few hundred years. This, however, is merely an inference based on present evidences, and it may be erroneous. But they cannot have existed in the precincts of the early Christian churches of this country, because the churches had no churchyards for several centuries. The Romans introduced into Britain their Law of the Ten Tables, by which it was ordained that "all burnings or burials" should be "beyond the city,"³ and the system continued to prevail long after the Roman evacuation. It was not until A.D. 742 that Cuthbert, eleventh Archbishop of Canterbury, brought from Rome the newer custom of burying around the churches, and was granted a Papal dispensation for the practice. The churchyards even then were not enclosed, but it was usual to mark their sacred character by erecting stone crosses, many of which, or their remains, are still in existence. Yet it was a long time before churchyard interments became general, the inhabitants clinging to the Pagan habit of indiscriminate burial in their accustomed places. We hear nothing of headstones in the early days of Christianity, but there are occasionally found in certain localities inscribed stones which bear the appearance of rude memorials, and these have been regarded as relics of our National Church in its primitive state. It is also suggested that these stones may be of Druidical origin, but there is nothing to support the theory. Among the aboriginal Britons the custom of simple inhumation was probably prevalent, but there are not wanting evidences in support of the belief that cremation also was sometimes practised in prehistoric times. An instance of early interment was discovered in a tumulus at Gusthorp, near Scarborough, in 1834. In a rude coffin scooped out of the trunk of an oak-tree lay a human skeleton, which had been wrapped or clothed in the skin of some wild animal, fastened at the breast with a pin or skewer of wood. In the coffin were also a bronze spearhead and several weapons of flint—facts which all go to establish a remote date. The absence of pottery is also indicative of a very early period. Regarding the skins, however, it may be remarked that Cæsar says of the Britons, when he invaded the island, that "the greater part within the country go clad in skins."

Christian burials, as we have seen, cannot be dated in England earlier than the eighth century, and monuments at the grave may have possibly originated about the same period, but there is nothing whatever to sustain such a belief, and we cannot assign the earliest of existing memorials to a time prior to the eleventh century. Indeed it is very significant to find that the tombs within the churches are only a trifle older than the gravestones outside, scarcely any of them being antecedent to the sixteenth century. As burials inside churches were not permitted until long after the churchyards were used for the purpose,⁴ it is indeed possible that no memorials were placed in the edifice until Tudor days; but this is scarcely feasible, and the more probable explanation is that all the earlier ones have disappeared. Those which can boast an antiquity greater than that of the common gravestone are very few indeed. It might have been supposed that the sculptured shrine under the roof of the sanctuary, reverently tended and jealously watched, might have stood for a thousand years, while the poor gravestone out in the churchyard, exposed to all weathers and many kinds of danger, would waste away or meet with one of the ordinary fates which attend ill-usage, indifference, or neglect. This indeed has happened in a multitude of places. Who has not seen in ancient churchyards the headstones leaning this way and that, tottering to their fall? Are there not hundreds of proofs that the unclaimed stones have been used, and still serve, for the floors of the churches, and actually for the paving of the churchyard paths? It was not thought strange, even within the memory of the present generation, to advertise for owners of old graves, with an intimation that on a certain date the stones would be removed; and vast numbers of them were thus got rid of—broken up perhaps to mend the roads. But still greater perils have been survived by the earlier of those memorials which remain to us, both without and within the churches. The dissolution of the Papal power in Great Britain was the cause of one of these hazards; for, towards the latter end of Henry VIII.'s reign, likewise during the reign of Edward VI., and again in the beginning of Elizabeth's, commissioners in every county were vested with authority to destroy "all graven images" and everything which seemed to savour of "idolatry and superstition." Under colour of this order, these persons, and those who sympathized in their work, gave vent to their zeal in many excesses, battering down and breaking up everything of an ornamental or sculptured character, including tombs and even the stained windows. Moreover we are told by Weever⁵ that the commission was made the excuse for digging up coffins in the hope of finding treasure. Elizabeth soon perceived the evil that was being done by the barbarous rage and greediness of her subjects, and issued a proclamation under her own hand restraining all "ignorant, malicious, and covetous persons" from breaking and defacing any monument, tomb, or grave, under penalty of fine or imprisonment. This checked, but did not wholly cure, the mischief; and, although in her fourteenth year of sovereignty she issued another and sterner edict on the subject, the havoc was perpetuated chiefly by a sect or party whom Weever describes as "a contagious brood of scismaticks," whose object was not only to rob the churches, but to level them with the ground, as places polluted by all the abominations of Babylon. These people were variously known as Brownists, Barrowists, Martinists, Prophesyers, Solisidians, Famelists, Rigid Precisians, Disciplinarians, and Judaical Thraskists. Some who overstepped the mark paid the penalty with their lives. One man, named Hachet, not content with destroying gravestones and statuary, thrust an iron weapon through a picture of the Queen, and he was hanged and quartered. Another, John Penry, a Welshman, was executed in 1593, and of him was written:

And there was a danger to be encountered far later than that which was due to the anti-Popery zealots of the Tudor dynasty. On the introduction of the Commonwealth there arose such a crusade against all forms and emblems of doctrinal import as to affect not only the ornaments of the churches, but the gravestones in the churchyards, many of which were removed and put to other uses or sold. The Puritans, as is well known, went to the extremity of abolishing all ceremony whatever at the Burial of the Dead.⁶ The beautiful Service in the Book of Common Prayer, now used more or less by all the Reformed Christian denominations of England, was abolished by Parliament in 1645—that and the Prayer Book together at one stroke. In lieu of the Prayer Book a "Directory" was issued on the conduct of public worship, in which it was said:

"Concerning Burial of the Dead, all customs of praying, reading, and singing, both in going to or from the grave, are said to have been greatly abused. The simple direction is therefore given, that when any person departeth this life, let the body upon the day of burial be decently attended from the house to the place appointed for public burial, and there immediately interred without any ceremony."

Penalties were at the same time imposed for using the Book of Common Prayer in any place of worship or in any private family within the kingdom—the fine being £5 for a first offence, £10 for a second, and a year's imprisonment for the third.

The Puritans, however, are to be thanked for stopping the then common practice of holding wakes and fairs in the churchyards—a practice traceable no doubt to the celebration of Saints' Days in the churches, and for that reason suppressed as remnants of Popery in 1627-31.

It need not be said that the Burial Service and the Prayer Book came back with the Restoration, but the discontinuance of fairs in churchyards seems to have been permanent. Many instances, however, have occurred in later years of desecration by pasturing cattle in the churchyards,⁷ and offences of this nature have been so recent that the practice cannot be said with confidence to have even now entirely ceased. But we return to the gravestones.

From one cause or another it is pretty certain that for every old gravestone now to be seen twenty or more have disappeared.

In Gough's "Sepulchral Monuments of Great Britain" many instances are given of the wanton and wholesale destruction of church and churchyard memorials, even late in the eighteenth century. In some cases the church officers, as already stated, gave public notice prior to removal of gravestones, in order that persons claiming an interest in the remains might repair and restore them; but more frequently the stones were cleared away and destroyed, or put somewhere out of sight without observation. Sometimes this was the act of the Rector; at other times individuals, exercising rights of ownership, have done the disgraceful work, and occasionally the whole of the parishioners have been implicated. Gough says that the inhabitants of Letheringham in Suffolk, being under the necessity of putting their church into decent order, chose to rebuild it, and sold the whole fabric, monuments and all, to the building contractor, who beat the stones to powder, and sold as much at three shillings a pound for terrace (?) as came to eighty guineas. A portion of the fragments was rescued by the Rev. Mr. Clubbe, and erected in form of a pyramid in the vicarage garden of Brandeston, in the same county, with this inscription:

CHAPTER VIII.

REFORM AMONG THE GRAVESTONES.

That the state of the old churchyards in this country, down to the middle of the nineteenth century, was a public scandal and disgrace, is a remark which applies especially to London, where burial-grounds, packed full of human remains, were still made available for interments on a large scale until 1850 or later. The fact was the more discreditable in contrast with the known example of Paris, which had, as early as 1765, closed all the city graveyards, and established cemeteries beyond the suburbs. One of the laws passed at the same time by the Parliament of Paris directed that the graves in the cemeteries should not be marked with stones, and that all epitaphs and inscriptions should be placed on the walls, a regulation which appears to have been greatly honoured in the breach. In 1776 Louis XVI., recognizing the benefit which Paris had derived from the city decree, prohibited graveyards in all the cities and towns of France, and rendered unlawful interments in churches and chapels; and in 1790 the National Assembly passed an Act commanding that all the old burial-grounds, even in the villages, should be closed, and others provided at a distance from habitations.⁸ Other States of Europe took pattern by these enlightened proceedings, and America was not slow in making laws upon the subject; but Great Britain, and its worst offender, London, went on in the old way, without let or hindrance, until 1850, For fifteen years prior to that date there had been in progress an agitation against the existing order of things, led by Dr. G.A. Walker, a Drury Lane surgeon, living in a very nest of churchyard fevers, who wrote a book and several pamphlets, delivered public lectures, and raised a discussion in the public press. The London City Corporation petitioned Parliament in 1842 for the abolition of burials within the City, and a Select Committee of the House of Commons was at once entrusted with an enquiry on the subject.

The following were the official figures shewing the burials in the London district⁹ from 1741 to 1837, and it was asserted that many surreptitious interments were unrecorded:

In the same year (1842) a Export was presented to Parliament by the Select Committee on "The Improvement of the Health of Towns," and especially on "The Effect of the Interment of Bodies in Towns." Its purport may be summed up in the following quotation:

"The evidence ... gives a loathsome picture of the unseemly and demoralizing practices which result from the crowded condition of the existing graveyards—practices which could scarcely have been thought possible in the present state of society.... We cannot arrive at any other conclusion than that the nuisance of interments in great towns and the injury arising to the health of the community are fully proved."

Among the witnesses examined were Sir Benjamin Brodie and Dr. G.R. Williams.

In 1846 a Bill was prepared to deal with the matter, but it was not until 1850 that an Act was passed "To make better provision for the Interment of the Dead in and near the Metropolis." Powers were conferred upon the General Board of Health to establish cemeteries or enlarge burial-grounds, and an Order in Council was made sufficient for closing any of the old churchyards either wholly or with exceptions to be stipulated in the order. One month's notice was all that was needed to set the Act in operation, and in urgent cases seven days; but it was found necessary in 1851 to pass another Act for the purpose of raising funds; and in 1852 a more stringent Act was put upon the Statute Book to deal summarily with the churchyards. This was, in the the following session, extended to England and Wales, the General Board of Health having reported strongly in favour of a scheme for "Extra-mural Sepulture" in the country towns, declaring that the graveyards of these places were in no better condition than those of London.

Consequently, in the years which followed 1850, a general closing of churchyards took place throughout the Metropolis, and to a lesser extent throughout the kingdom, and an active crusade against all similar burial-grounds was instituted, which may be said to be still in operation. The substitution of new cemeteries in remote and mostly picturesque places was of immediate advantage in many ways, but it did little or nothing to remedy the dilapidated appearance of the old graveyards, which indeed, now that they brought in no revenues, became in many cases painfully neglected, dejected, and forlorn. Happily, in 1883, the Metropolitan Public Gardens Association was established, and its influence has been very marked in the improvement of the old enclosures and their conversion into recreation grounds. The Metropolitan Board of Works, the London County Council, the City Corporation, public vestries, and private persons, have shared in the good work, but the chief instrument has been the Public Gardens Association.

Of old burial-grounds now open as public gardens in the London district there are more than a hundred. Care is always taken to preserve the sacred soil from profane uses, games being prohibited, and the improvements confined to paths and seats, levelling the ground and planting with trees and flowers. The gravestones, though removed to the sides of the enclosure, are numbered and scheduled, and all in which any living person can claim an interest are left untouched. No stones are ever destroyed in the process of reformation, but previous ill-usage and natural decay have rendered very many of them illegible, and in another century or so all these once fond memorials will probably have become blank and mute.

To the middle of the nineteenth century may also be assigned the change which we now see in the character of our gravestones. Quite in the beginning of the century the vulgar and grotesque carvings and Scriptural barbarisms of the eighteenth century had given place to a simple form of memorial in which it was rare to find the least effort at ornament; but, as soon as the Burial Acts were passed and the old churchyards were succeeded by the new cemeteries, the tasteful and elegant designs which are to be seen in every modern burial-ground were introduced, founded in great measure upon the artistic drawings of Mr. D.A. Clarkson, whose manifold suggestions, published in 1852, are still held in the highest admiration.