Cleanliness versus corruption / [Ronald Sutherland Gower].

  • Gower, Ronald Sutherland, Lord, 1845-1916
Date:
1910
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Cleanliness versus corruption / [Ronald Sutherland Gower]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    room, as full as ever it could hold with coffins, piled one over the other, from the very top to the very bottom. Many coffins were even piled up crossways in front of the door, so that no entry could be obtained except by moving them, and others were jammed up together in all possible positions, without the least attempt at order, reminding one much of books packed in a box to be sent away. To the left of this vault there began another, in which there was a great mass of wooden coffins of persons buried anterior to the Act which ordered that no person should be buried except in lead. The faint and sickly effluvia which emanated from these were truly overpowering and poisonous. I did not feel the effects of this till my work was over and the excitement passed off. I was then exceedingly unwell for more than a fortnight, and from the peculiar symptoms was frightened about myself; but, thanks to a kind Providence, I quite recovered my usual health after a time. Mr. Burstall tells me that he also suffered, and that he was obliged, soon after he had finished his work, to leave London for four months. “ John Hunter’s coffin was, I knew, somewhere among this mass of coffins in No. 3 vault. It was my self- imposed task to find it, and the only way I could do this was to inspect each coffin as it was brought out on its way to the catacombs outside the church. I therefore stationed myself at the door of the vault and examined, by the light of a bull’s-eye lamp hung on to the door- post, every coffin as it came sliding down the plank, occasionally climbing on to the top of them—dangerous work, by the way—and looking about among them with my policeman’s lamp to see if I could find the much- wished-for name of John Hunter inscribed on any of the brass coffin-plates.