A supplementary report on the results of a spiecal (sic) inquiry into the practice of interment in towns made at the request of Her Majestys' Principal Secretary of State for the Home Department, / by Edwin Chadwick.

  • Great Britain. Poor Law Commissioners.
Date:
1843
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A supplementary report on the results of a spiecal (sic) inquiry into the practice of interment in towns made at the request of Her Majestys' Principal Secretary of State for the Home Department, / by Edwin Chadwick. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

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    the House of Commons, at whose instance privileges were conferred upon the shareholders: no new precautionary measures or im- provements, such as are in use abroad, appear consequently to have been introduced in them; the practice of burial has in general been simply removed to better looking, and in general, better situated places. The conclusion, however, from the exami- nation of these places (which will subsequently be reverted to) is, that if most of the cemeteries themselves were in the midst of the population, they would, even in their present state, often contribute to the combination of causes of ill health in the metropolis, and several of the larger towns. § 21. It has been considered that all danger from interments in towns would be obviated if no burials were allowed except at a depth of five feet. But bodies buried much deeper are found to decay; and so certain as a body has wasted or disappeared is the fact that a deleterious gas has escaped. In the towns where the grave- yards and streets are paved, the morbific matter must be diffused more widely through the sub-soil, and escape with the drainage. If the interments be so deep as to impede escapes at the surface, there is only the greater danger of escape by deep drainage and the pollution of springs. Dr. Reid detected the escape of deleterious miasma from graves of more than 20 feet deep. He states— In some churchyards I have noticed the ground to be absolutely satu- rated with carbonic acid gas, so that whenever a deep grave was dug it was filled in some hours afterwards with such an amount of carbonic acid gas that the workmen could not descend without danger. Deaths have, indeed, occurred occasionally in some churchyards from this cause, and in a series of experiments made in one of the churchyards at Manchester, where deep graves are made, each capable of receiving from 20 to 30 bodies, I found in general that a grave covered on the top at night was more or less loaded with carbonic acid in the morning, and that it was essential, accordingly, to ventilate these grave-pits before it was safe to descend. This I effected on some occasions by means of a small chauffer placed at the top, and at one end of the grave a tube or hose being let down from it to the bottom of the grave. The fire was sustained by the admission of a small portion of fresh air at the top, and the air from the bottom of the grave was gradually removed as the upper stratum was heated by the fire around which it was conveyed ; and when it had been once emptied in this manner a small fire was found sufficient to sustain a perpetual renewal of air, and prevent the men at work in the grave pits from being subject to the extreme oppression to which they are otherwise liable, even when there may be no immediate danger. A mechanical power might be used for the same purpose ; and chemical agents, as a quantity of newly slaked lime, are frequently employed, as they absorb the carbonic acid. From different cir- cumstances that have since occurred, it appears to me probable that nu- merous examples of strata or superficial soil containing carbonic acid may be more frequently met with than is generally suspected, and that while in churchyards the presence of large quantities of carbonic acid may be fre- quently anticipated, its presence must not always be attributed solely to the result of the decomposition of the human body. The amount of carbonic acid that collects within a given time in a deep grave pit intended to receive 20 or 30 bodies, is much influenced by the