Introductory report, suggesting the outline of a scheme for extramural interment : submitted to the Improvement-Committee of the Hon. the Commissioners of Sewers of the City of London / by the Medical Officer of Health.

  • Simon, Sir John, 1816-1904.
Date:
1853
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Introductory report, suggesting the outline of a scheme for extramural interment : submitted to the Improvement-Committee of the Hon. the Commissioners of Sewers of the City of London / by the Medical Officer of Health. 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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    the frequency of applications for exceptional inter- ment ; or, on the other hand, to attract such appli- cations. Even, if you thought it desirahle, you might admit purchasers from other classes than those having right of burial in your municipal Cemetery; —in short, you might manage it commercially, with a view to profit, looking to its proceeds for covering many expenses of the general establishment. With respect to the ordinary arrangement of your ground for public purposes, and the distribution of burials therein, you may estimate that, taking one grave with another, and allowing for the marginal spaces of each, the average size of a grave will be twenty-eight square feet. For illustration's sake, I will suppose the ground to be laid out in plots— say the third of an acre in extent. Each such plot would contain four hundred single graves, mixed adult and young, with what foot-paths might be re- quisite for approaching them. The City mortality of twenty years (assuming this period to be the ordinay leasehold of a grave) might be reckoned at sixty-four thousand deaths; for the accommodation of which number there would be wanted one hun- dred and sixty plots of the above mentioned size— say fifty-four acres of ground. I would propose that throughout each line of every such space, adult and infant graves should, as far as possible, he alter- nately ; and that, instead of filling all the graves together at stated periods (say every twenty years)