A supplementary report on the results of a spiecal [sic] inquiry into the practice of interment in towns made at the request of Her Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for the Home Department / by Edwin Chadwick.

Date:
1843
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A supplementary report on the results of a spiecal [sic] inquiry into the practice of interment in towns made at the request of Her Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for the Home Department / by Edwin Chadwick. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    SANITARY REPORT.—SUPPLEMENT. INTERMENTS IN TOWNS. To the Right Honourable Sir James Graham, Bart., SfC., Sfc., fyc. Sir, In compliance with the request which I have had the honour to receive from you, that I would examine the evidence on the practice of interment, and the means of its improvement, and prepare for consideration a Report thereon, I now submit the facts and conclusions following :— It has been remarked, as a defect in the General Report on the evidence as to the sanitary condition of the labouring population, that it did not comprise any examination of the evidence as to the effects produced on the public health, by the practice of inter- ring the dead amidst the habitations of the town population. I wish here to explain that the omission arose from the subject being too great in its extent, and too special in its nature, to allow of the completion at that time, of any satisfactory investigation in relation to it even if it had not then been under examination by a Committee of the House of Commons, whose Report is now before the public. To obtain the information on which the following report is founded, I have consulted, as extensively as the time allowed and my opportunities would permit, ministers of religion who are called upon to perform funereal rites in the poorer districts : I have made inquiries of persons of the labouring classes, and of secretaries and officers of benefit societies and burial clubs, in the metropolis and in several provincial towns in the United Kingdom, on the practice of interments in relation to those classes, and on the alterations and improvements that would be most in accordance with their feelings: I have questioned persons following the occupation ot undertaker, and more especially those who are chiefly engaged in the inter- ment of the dead of the labouring classes, on the improvements which they deem practicable in the modes of performing that service: I have consulted foreigners resident in the metropolis, on the various modes of interment in their own countries : I have n