The first of a series of lectures delivered at the Mechanics' Institution, Southampton Buildings, Chancery Lane, Nov. 27, 1846, on the actual condition of the metropolitan grave-yards / by Geo. Alfd. Walker.

  • Walker, George Alfred, 1807-1884.
Date:
1847
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The first of a series of lectures delivered at the Mechanics' Institution, Southampton Buildings, Chancery Lane, Nov. 27, 1846, on the actual condition of the metropolitan grave-yards / by Geo. Alfd. Walker. 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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    We have seen how matters are conducted in one of the so-called resting-places for the dead in the eastern part of the Metropolis. Let us now recur to a recent proof of management in the City of London. I condense the facts from the newspaper reports of the evidence taken before Mr. Broughton, the magistrate at Worship Street, in the early part of September last. Several loads of bones and human remains intermixed with pieces of coflSn and coffin furniture, which it was aUeged had been brought from St. Matthew's, Friday Street, had been shot in a field belonging to a Mr. King, at Haggerstone, by a dust contractor, named Gould. John Roe deposed before the magistrate that he worked for Mr. King, in whose field the rubbish, as it was called,- was shot. That the field is an open one, and the public have permission to shoot rubbish there. White, the driver of the cart, after he had pitched on the ground the human material and its adjuncts, asked Roe how much he was to receive for his cart-load of rubbish. He was told he was not to get anything, when he replied that if he had known he was not to have/our pence a load, he should not have shot it there. Holland, a constable of the N division, deposed to finding the wood of coffins stored away in the back yards of five houses at Haggerstone, and also to finding 43 lb. of metal, consisting of plates, handles, &c., of coffins, at a marine-store in the neighbourhood. John Gardiner, of 6, Southwark Street, Haggerstone, who first drew attention to this terrible afi^air, deposed that he saw a number of men, women, and children (there might be 20 or 30 of them) crowding round something in the field. He saw pieces of coffins and lids of coffins, which were very nearly whole, and as sound as if they had not been in the ground for more than two years. He saw human bones in the field with flesh on two of them two inches thick. He saw also a human skull with carroty hair on it. He was no scholar and could not read, but he saw a young man loading a spring-barrow with coffin plates and handles, which he was taking away to sell. His own boy, he understood, picked np some plates, and sold them to the marine-store keeper ; he saw many of his neighbours, and an undertaker living close by, take away the wood of the coffins to use as firewood. One woman who took the wood, and boiled her kettle with it, after- wards threw the kettle of water away, as she could not fancy the water, in conse- quence of its haeing been boiled with the wood from a coffin. Henry Longman, and another boy, chopped part of a coffin in two. Longman sold one lot of coffin plates and handles of coffins for 1 and another for 5 farthings. White, with his mate Roffey, two of the carters employed by the dust contractor, went to St. Matthew's church, Friday Street, Cheapside, at 3 o'clock in the morning, to take away rubbish ; there were present, the street-keeper, the beadle, the grave- digger, and another person. The rubbish was just inside the church door. He had no extra pay for the job. Had some drink, it was gin. In reply to the magistrate, the defendant said he drank the gin in the church. A married woman, named Elizabeth Norris, also deposed to the loathsome