Report from the Select Committee on Improvement of the Health of Towns, together with the minutes of evidence, appendix, and index. : Effect of internment of bodies in towns / Ordered, by the House of Commons, to be printed, 14 June 1842.

Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. Select Committee on Improvement of the Health of Towns.

Date:: [1842?]

Credit: Report from the Select Committee on Improvement of the Health of Towns, together with the minutes of evidence, appendix, and index. : Effect of internment of bodies in towns / Ordered, by the House of Commons, to be printed, 14 June 1842. 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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$Mr. 750. Is it a fly you never saw anywhere else ?—It is a fly I never saw in J. MtcUel Lane, houses away from a grave-yard. ■TT, \ T 75^- You never saw it in the country?—I never saw a fly of the description 18 March 1842. in the country. ^ 752. Are there any about now?—My little boy caught one on Monday or Tuesday. It is a long thin fly ; he showed it to me. 753. Are your neighbours in good health or not ?—I do not know anybody who is particularly in bad health at present; but I associate very little with any persons in the neighbourhood, and I am sometimes not out of the house once in a day; I may not be out all day, according as business runs with me. 754. Lord Ashley.^ Do you think the children running about the streets, in your neighbourhood, look as healthy and rosy as those living further off, not near a churchyard ?—Some look pretty well and some do not; but I do not think you can judge of the health of a child from that. I have a little girl who has as great a colour in her face as any person, and she sometimes experiences a bad state of health. A number of children about the neighbourhood, within the last four or five months, have had the small-pox in a very bad state. Several of them have lost their lives by it, and a very bad sort indeed it was considered to be. Whether it was caused by the grave-yard, I cannot state. 755. Chairman.'] Have you, in the early part of the morning, heard a knock- ing in the churchyard ?—Yes. 756. What did you attribute that noise to?—I know what it was. 757. What was it?—They were destroying the cofiins. 758. In the morning they destroy the coffins?—Before daylight, and as soon as I have got up at daylight, I have looked, and I have seen them at work with handkerchiefs tied over their noses and mouths. 759. Breaking in the coffins?—Yes. 760. Is that to make room ?—Yes. 761. And to make fire-wood, I suppose?—I should say so, for they carry it away in sacks. The men do it as carefully as they can, to prevent people seeing it; but the people who live there, whose windows overlook the place, cannot help observing it. But what made me look more particular than anything was, that I had a child buried there; and if they had broken that grave open, I should have gone and given them in charge to a policeman. 762. In passing by there, have you ever seen a tarpauling put up when they were opening a grave?—Some time ago there was. 763. Why did they put that tarpauling up ?—They did that on Tuesday last, when they opened a grave for the reception of the policeman who was killed in Holborn; he was buried there on Tuesday; the grave was open all night, and they had a tarpauling over that. 764. What was that for?—I suppose to keep out the wet. 765. Not to prevent the public from looking in and seeing the bodies ?—They cannot get there ; there is a railing, and the houses surround it; there is no way for them to get in but over the railing ; if they were curious enough to get over the railing, they might see it. Two or three years ago there was a tarpauling fixed up along the railing; that was when the chief of the bodies were disturbed. 766. And did you hear this knocking or breaking open of the coffins every morning before daylight, or how often ?—I have seen it very frequently; they do not use a pick-axe, but they have got a tool, like the face of a hammer at one end, with a sharp point, which comes down tapering at the other end; it is about nine pounds in weight; that is what they use to break the coffins. 767. That is a more handy instrument ?—It is so. 768. Who is it does this work ?—The grave-diggers; there are generally two of them work together. 769. Did they do this to make more space in this yard, which is already full, or merely for the wood of the coffins ?—To make space to put the dead in I should suspect; because many times I have witnessed it, and so has my wife at the same time. We have remarked a particular spot, and we have said, We will see whether that is disturbed; we have looked out of window, and when they have dug the grave, it has been the top coffin; and in the course of a fortnight or three weeks we have seen them dig a deep grave. What could have become of that coffin, if they did not disturb the bodies ? 770. Colonel$