Prospectus of the General Cemetery Company : for providing places of interment, secure from violation, inoffensive to public health and decency, and ornamental to the metropolis : with papers illustrative of the subject.

  • General Cemetery Co.
Date:
1830
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Prospectus of the General Cemetery Company : for providing places of interment, secure from violation, inoffensive to public health and decency, and ornamental to the metropolis : with papers illustrative of the subject. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    IS and our places be supplied by others; and if we begin the remedy now, by adopting a plan of burial at a distance from the metro- polis, we may, before another generation shall have passed away, correct the evil. As to the prayer of this petition, though I am not in favour of pyramids for such purposes, yet I think any plan would be an improvement upon our present system. Mr. Spottiswoode. — The petitioner does not speak of a pyramid; he speaks of a cemetery, something similar to that of Pere-la- Chaise. The petition was then read, and ordered to be printed* Friday, May 14, 1830. Mr. Spottis'woode.—Sir, I am desirous of correcting a mistake which has gone abroad as to what I said of the parish of St. Giles, in presenting a petition yesterday. I find that the worthy rector supposes me to have given his parish a worse character than it deserves with respect to its burial-ground. Had I said any thing whatever on its present state, my respect for the talent and zeal of that reverend gentleman would have led me to absolve him from the responsibility; but those Honourable Gentlemen who were then in the House will recollect that I merely quoted St. Giles's as having long remained an instance of the kind of nuisance of which I was speaking, and I drew my evidence from the parish- ioners themselves. That ground is now in a much better state, and there is probably no parish in the town which has taken more pains upon the subject. They have purchased a new ground at an enormous expense, and have allowed the old ground to remain untouched for many years; so that it is, perhaps, for the present, in as harmless a state as a burial-ground in the heart of the town is likely to be.