By the commencement of the present century the minds of thoughtful men on the Continent, in America, and in England, began to be exercised about the overcrowded state of the graveyards in the towns, and their very unwholesome effect upon those who lived near them.

We owe the agitation which finally led to the closing of the London graveyards mainly to the untiring zeal of a surgeon of Drury Lane, George Alfred Walker. His work lay amongst the poor of that district, and he was led to believe that the frequent occurrence of what he called typhus fever, and similar maladies, was due in great measure to the large number of overcrowded burial-grounds which existed in the neighbourhood. He made a very careful study of the subject, he gathered information from France, Germany, and other countries, he visited a large number of the worst graveyards in London, and made searching inquiries respecting them. Having become familiar with the practices that were carried on in these places, he brought out a book dealing with the whole question in the year 1839, the title-page of which fully explains its purpose. It is as follows:—

The question was taken up from purely philanthropic motives. Walker was not connected with, or interested in, any particular Cemetery, but he was “fully convinced of the necessity for legislative interference to destroy the present dangerous system.”

He had precedents to go upon, for as early as the year 1765 a decree was made by the Parliament of Paris, closing all cemeteries and churchyards within the city, and providing for the formation of eight cemeteries in the suburbs; and in 1774 a further decree was made prohibiting the re-opening of vaults, similar action being subsequently taken in other French towns. Nor was France alone to be admired. Precautions of the same kind were adopted from time to time in Rome and other cities of Italy, in Denmark, in New York, and even in Dublin; but the London burial-grounds still continued to be in constant use.

Walker collected details of many cases of death and illness directly attributable to contact with human remains in a state of putrefaction. It was certain that gravediggers held their lives in their hands. The more experienced of them, when they “bored” or “tapped” coffins, immediately fled to a distance, and remained away until they considered that the harmful exhalations would have been sufficiently distributed into the air for them to continue their unpleasant work in comparative safety. Another custom was to burn papers, &c., in graves and vaults, while some men were in the habit of holding rue and garlic in their mouths. But they generally suffered from bad health, were frequently seriously ill, and sometimes died from the direct effects of the poison they had inhaled. They were also much addicted to drink, and very many were accustomed to say that they could not do their work without the help of spirits.

After making the following general statement, Walker carefully described between forty and fifty of the most crowded of the metropolitan burial-places, and especially those in his own district: “Although willing to admit that the neighbourhood of slaughter-houses—the decomposition of vegetable substances—the narrowness of the streets, and the filth and poverty of some of the inhabitants, greatly contributed to the furtherance of the mischief (typhus fever), I felt convinced that the grand cause of all the evil was the immediate proximity of the burial-places, public as well as private.” It is quite unnecessary to repeat the descriptions, they are much alike; I will only give one as a specimen, which is free from obnoxious details.

“St. Ann’s, Soho.—There is only one burying-ground belonging to this parish; it is walled in on the side next to Prince’s Street; close to this wall is the bone house; rotten coffin wood and fragments of bones are scattered about. Some graves are only partly filled up, and left in that state, intended, probably, for paupers. The ground is very full, and is considerably raised above its original level; it is overlooked by houses thickly inhabited. The inhabitants of the neighbourhood have frequently complained of the past and present condition of this place. The numbers of dead here are immense.”

Some of his descriptions were thought at the time to be exaggerated, but they were fully corroborated in the evidence given before the Parliamentary Committee which sat in 1842.

Such a note as the following is instructive: “Ground in immediate proximity to this place” (Bermondsey Churchyard) “is advertised to be let on lease for building purposes.” And yet some of the very burial-grounds themselves have since become the sites for streets and houses!

It would not be fair to give the reader the impression that Walker was the first to speak of the unwholesome condition of the London graveyards. Here is a quotation from a sermon preached by Bishop Latimer in 1552: “The citizens of Naim had their burying-places without the city, which, no doubt, is a laudable thing; and I do marvel that London, being so great a city, hath not a burial-place without: for no doubt it is an unwholesome thing to bury within the city, especially at such a time, when there be great sicknesses, and many die together. I think verily that many a man taketh his death in St. Paul’s Churchyard, and this I speak of experience; for I myself, when I have been there on some mornings to hear the sermons, have felt such an ill-savoured, unwholesome savour, that I was the worse for it a great while after; and I think no less—but it is the occasion of great sickness and disease.” And from his time onwards allusions were made, in sermons and discourses, by ministers and physicians, to the dangers of contact with decaying animal substances.

To turn from London for a moment. It is stated in Roger’s “Social Life in Scotland” that when Queen Mary visited Dundee in 1594 she found that “the deid of the Naill burgh is buryit in the midst thereof, quhairin the common traffic of merchandise is usit, and that throw occasion of the said burial, pest, and other contagious sickness is engenderit.” The evil was remedied by granting to the burgh as a place of sepulchre the site of the Greyfriars Monastery.

Sir Christopher Wren, when considering the question of the rebuilding of London after the Great Fire, made some very wise remarks upon the question of intramural interments. He wished to see suburban cemeteries established, and burials in churches and churchyards discontinued, partly because he considered the constant raising of the level of a churchyard rendered the church damp and more liable to premature decay. But Wren’s plans for rebuilding the city were not carried out; they were approved by the King and Parliament, but disapproved by the Corporation; and this scheme of his respecting the practice of burial fell through with the rest. The churches were rebuilt on the old sites, the churchyards were again used, and the sites of several of those churches which were not rebuilt became additional burial-grounds for the parishes. And yet, in the return published in 1833, it is curious to find that only one place is described as being “very full of bodies,” the churchyard of St. John’s, Clerkenwell. There was no great desire on the part of those connected with the parishes to increase their burial accommodation.

Walker stuck to his ground manfully. He gathered round him a few of the leading men of the day, who formed themselves into a Society for the Abolition of Burials in Towns, and he delivered a series of able lectures upon the subject and continued to make inquiries and to expose practices carried on in various grounds. Spa Fields, for instance, was taken as a specimen, and a pamphlet was issued showing how it was the custom to burn bodies behind a brick enclosure, and how the gravestones were moved about to give an appearance of emptiness in certain parts of the ground. It was computed that, by burning coffins, mutilating remains, and using vast quantities of quicklime, at least 80,000 corpses had been put in a space fitted to hold 1,000.

In 1842 and 1843 a Royal Commission was sitting upon the question of the Health of Towns and the Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Classes, and a Select Committee was appointed “to consider the expediency of framing some Legislative Enactments (due respect being paid to the rights of the Clergy), to remedy the evils arising from the Interment of Bodies within the Precincts of large Towns, or of Places densely populated.” The following were the members of the Committee: Mr. Mackinnon (Chairman), Lord Ashley, Colonel Fox, Mr. Thomas Duncombe, Mr. Evelyn Denison, Sir William Clay, Sir Robert Harry Inglis, Mr. Ainsworth, Mr. Beckett, Lord Mahon, Mr. Cowper, Colonel Acton, Mr. Kemble, Mr. Vernon, and Mr. Redhead Yorke; and they sat from 17th of March till 5th of May, 1842, and conducted sixty-five examinations. Amongst the witnesses who gave evidence were clergymen, dissenting ministers, medical men, including Sir Benjamin Brodie and Mr. Walker, sextons, gravediggers, residents in the neighbourhood of burial-grounds and others, with the Bishop of London (C. J. Blomfield). I have already quoted from these evidences in the previous chapter, and they do not vary very much. I will only therefore give a few extracts from the Report of the Committee:—“After long and patient investigation, Your Committee cannot arrive at any other conclusion than that the nuisance of Interments in large Towns, and the injury arising to the Health of the Community from the practice, are fully proved.... No time ought to be lost by the Legislature in applying a remedy.... The Evidence has also exhibited the singular instance of the most wealthy, moral, and civilised community in the world tolerating a practice and an abuse which has been corrected for years by nearly all other civilised nations in every part of the globe.” Then follow resolutions respecting the provision by parishes, either single or amalgamated, of cemeteries; the fees which it would be desirable to charge; the due consideration to be shown to those who desired burial in unconsecrated ground; the exceptions to be made in the cases of some family vaults, of the Cathedral and the Abbey, and of certain cemeteries which had recently been formed, &c., with the final remark: “That the duty of framing and introducing a Bill on the principles set forth in the foregoing Resolutions, would be most efficiently discharged by Her Majesty’s Government, and that it is earnestly recommended to them by the Committee.” And yet it was not until 1852 that Mr. Mackinnon’s Bill was introduced and the Act of Parliament was passed, entitled an Act to Amend the Laws concerning the Burial of the Dead in the Metropolis, commonly known as the Burials Act, 15 and 16 Victoria.

Then the Home Secretary was besieged with memorials and letters from those who resided in various parts of London, praying for the Act to be put in force in the burial-grounds in their own neighbourhoods, besides applications for permission to open cemeteries on the outskirts of the town. The same dreary and miserable stories of the overcrowding of graveyards and the indecent practices carried on in them were again brought to light, and it must not be supposed that the grounds in the west of London were any better than those in the centre, the east, or the south. The description given by the memorialists (five medical men) of the burial-ground belonging to St. George’s, Hanover Square, which is situated on the north side of Bayswater Road, together with the letters written about it, could hardly be exceeded. And yet this ground was, or rather is, in a fashionable neighbourhood, close to the Marble Arch, and surrounded by houses let at very high rentals. It is certain that it was a common custom to move freshly-buried bodies from the more expensive part of the ground to the cheaper part, used for paupers and others, thus making room for more graves for which the higher fees were paid. Lawrence Sterne, who wrote “The Sentimental Journey,” was buried here. I hope his remains did not have an unsentimental one.

From west, east, north, and south the same lament was heard, and the same petition came from other cities and towns in England. It was a common topic for the newspapers and journals, and it is hardly possible to look through any of them, published between 1850 and 1855, without finding references to the graveyards, or notices of their being closed by order in Council. An anonymous poem called “City Graves,” appeared in Household Words on December 14, 1850. It has seven verses, of which I will give three:—

On the 13th of January, 1853, Islington Churchyard was closed for burials, and from that time forward the notices were issued for the cessation of interments in vaults and graveyards all over London; and the list which was printed of all the burial-grounds in London still open for interments on January 1, 1855 (and in many of these only the existing vaults were to be used), was quite a short one. By that date eight of the large cemeteries had been opened and were in use.

When once closed for burials the question naturally arose as to what was to be done with the grounds. The following clause was inserted into one of the Burial Acts (18 and 19 Vict.):—

“18. In every case in which any order in Council has been or shall hereafter be issued for the discontinuance of burials in any churchyard or burial-ground, the Burial Board or Churchwardens, as the case may be, shall maintain such churchyard or burial-ground of any parish in decent order, and also do the necessary repair of the walls and other fences thereof, and the costs and expenses shall be repaid by the Overseers, upon the certificate of the Burial Board or Churchwardens, as the case may be, out of the rate made for the relief of the Poor of the parish or place in which such churchyard or burial-ground is situate, unless there shall be some other fund legally chargeable with such costs and expenses.”

Here at once comes in the difficulty of ownership or guardianship, and it is not always understood by the rector or vicar of a church that he, during his incumbency, has the sole right of using any grounds enclosed within the churchyard fence or wall, and that these grounds are not, as is frequently supposed, under the joint control of the incumbent and churchwardens. This is clearly set forth in the following quotations from the book of Church Law, 4th edition, page 322:—

“By his induction into the real and corporeal possession of his benefice in general, a Rector or Vicar becomes invested, in particular, with freehold rights in all the land and buildings which are enclosed within the churchyard fence or wall.”

“The rights thus acquired carry with them the exclusive right of access to the Church, and also (saving any established right of way) to the Churchyard, so that no one can lawfully exclude him from them, nor enter them of their own right, but only by his permission, so long as Incumbent.”

Yet it is the Burial Board or the churchwardens who are to see that a burial-ground or a churchyard is kept “in decent order,” and to repair the walls and fences; and if a churchyard is not kept in such order, or is used as a storing yard or for any other unsuitable purposes, both the incumbent and the churchwardens are evidently in fault. But although there have been some cases of gross neglect the London churchyards have, on the whole, been kept fairly well as far as the walls or fences and the tombstones are concerned. A few have certainly degenerated into little less than rubbish heaps, but others have been maintained with great care. The Burial Boards have been conscientious in this respect pretty generally over London, but there are not very many disused burial-grounds under the control of the Burial Boards. A few churchyards, chiefly in the City, have been curtailed for the widening of roads, or altogether sacrificed for railways or new streets; a few additional parochial burial-grounds have also disappeared, and a few, but very few, have been misappropriated and let or sold as builders’ yards, &c. The case was, however, far different, where an unconsecrated burial-ground was in private hands or belonged to three or four chapel trustees, for then the temptation to raise money on it was very great. Nearly all the private grounds and a large number of the Dissenters’ grounds were turned to account, as I have already shown in Chapters VII. and X.

So the churchyards remained, useless, closed and dreary, no one went into them, the children gazed through the palings and their parents deposited wastepaper, dead cats, rotten food, old clothes, &c., in them, and it was twenty years after they had been shut up before any of the disused graveyards were converted into public gardens. It must, of course, be borne in mind that, when first closed, these grounds were very unwholesome, but twenty years did, at any rate, a good deal towards ameliorating their condition, and now that another twenty years have passed we may safely say that no evil effects can accrue from letting people walk about in them, people, that is, who already live with these grounds in their midst. And there is no more sure way of hastening their improvement than by importing fresh soil and planting trees, shrubs and flowers.

The closing of the burial-grounds included the closing of the vaults. There is hardly a church in London, and but few chapels, with a graveyard attached, which had not also vaults used for interments under the building, and there are many churches and chapels which had vaults but not graveyards.

The earliest burials took place in the churchyards, the south side being always the favourite. It seems originally to have been customary to bury only stillborn infants, felons and suicides on the north side of the building. It became a fashion of later times to bury in or under the church, and the first place used was the porch. But when once the custom was established the inside of the church became the privileged place, and the most honoured dead were laid nearest the altar. The ancient crypts, such as those at St. Bartholomew’s and Clerkenwell, were not, I imagine, originally intended for burying in, although coffins were put in them later on. But the vaults, such as those under the City churches and the parish churches outside the City, were expressly made for the purpose, a few having been used for beer or wine instead of bodies.

Many vaults were private, such as “Lady Jersey’s Vault” and “Holden’s Vault,” both in St. Bride’s, Fleet Street, and in this same church there is a “Doctor’s vault.” St. Clement Danes and other churches have a “Rector’s vault,” and St. Saviour’s, Southwark, can boast of a “Bishop’s vault.” The bodies from under some of the City churches which have been pulled down were moved to others; the coffins from St. Michael, Crooked Lane, were divided between St. Edmund King and Martyr and St. Mary Woolnoth, and those that went to the latter place have had a second removal, the vaults having to be cleared out a few years ago. In many places there were vaults under the vestries, the adjoining schools, almshouses, the sextons’ houses, &c., and at Lambeth, among the places of interment closed by order in Council, was a “vault under the station-house.” A list of the London churches and chapels which were provided with burial-vaults, but not with graveyards, will be found in Appendix C. It is not unlikely that many of these will have, in time, to be cleared out. In some cases the coffins or remains have already been collected and reinterred in cemeteries, the one at Woking having been especially favoured. They are very liable to become a nuisance, and are far more dangerous to the living than the human remains under the plots of ground open to the air.