§ MR. HALLEY STEWART (Lincolnshire, Spalding)I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department with regard to Nonconformist burials in the churchyard of Seaford, Sussex, whether he has now received information that on the burial of Thomas Walker, in April last, by a Congregational minister, the vicar refused to allow the deceased to be buried by the side of his wife, and required that the interment should take place in a part of the churchyard in which suicides, bodies cast upon the shore, and stillborn children are buried; that on the death of William Clarke, in April last, on the widow expressing a wish that he should be buried by the Congregational minister, the vicar, besides refusing to permit the burial in the family grave which, his relatives assert, had been previously purchased, told the widow that if he were buried without the rites of the Established Church, he would be "buried like a suicide," and "buried like a dog," and that the bell would not be tolled on the occasion; and whether he will cause an inquiry to be made into the facts of these and similar cases, with a view to prevent the 1416 intention of the Burials Act of 1880 being frustrated?
§ MR. MATTHEWSI am informed by the vicar that, no application having been made to him with regard to the position of the grave of Thomas Walker, he gave, the evening before the funeral, instructions for a grave to be prepared on the north side, in which Walker's wife had been buried with the rites of the Church. On the morning of the funeral, a sister-in-law called and asked why the grave was not to be next to her sister's grave. The vicar told her that if timely permission had been asked it would have been readily granted. On this same north side there have been 25 burials with the Church Service since 1880; seven of these have been of bodies cast upon the shores which have been interred with the full rites of the Church. During the same period five persons who have committed suicide and still-born children have been buried, not exclusively on the north side, but in various parts of the ground, in proximity to the graves of relatives. With, reference to the burial of William Clarke, the vicar denies that he refused to allow him to be buried in a family grave—there is no family grave belonging to the Clarkes, who are interred separately in common graves. The vicar denies, having suggested the words quoted, but he did remind the wife of the deceased that she and others had commented in such terms on Nonconformist burials. The vicar says that he held out no threat about the tolling of the bell. He says it is well-known that the bell is never tolled at a Nonconformist funeral. I am unable to gather from the facts as they have been presented to me that there has been any intention on the part of the vicar to evade the law.