BURIAL-GROUNDS ACT—METROPOLITAN INTERMENTS. (Hansard, 27 March 1854)

THE BISHOP OF LONDON
rose, pursuant to notice, to call the attention of the House to the great evils which had resulted from the recent measure respecting metropolitan interments. The right rev. Prelate said he had, upon previous occasions, called their Lordships' attention to the sanitary state of the metropolis, but he had now to call their attention to the still more important question of metropolitan interments. He held in his band a petition from the incumbents of sixteen parishes and districts in the eastern part of London, who declared that they were able to prove that the operation of the measure, which had been intended to produce a great improvement in the sanitary state of the metropolis, had to a certain extent increased the evil. Their Lordships were no doubt aware that in the 14th and 15th year of Her Majesty a Bill had been passed for the regulation of metropolitan interments, which had vested in the General Board of Health considerable powers. The Board of Health was empowered to advise Her Majesty to close burial-grounds and to make general regulations with regard to metropolitan interments, which, if the Board had been able to carry them out, would have enabled 1342 them to remedy the existing evils. The regulations which the Board of Health were empowered to carry out were the result of the most careful inquiry, and the result of the experience of the large cities of the Continent where similar measures had been adopted; and although, no doubt, looking to the enormous extent of this metropolis, great difficulties would have occurred in adopting the same system here, yet he believed that if the Board of Health had been cordially and heartily seconded by the Government, those difficulties would have been overcome. But when they proceeded to carry out the Act, the Board of Health met with nothing but discouragement, and obtained no assistance from the Treasury or from Her Majesty's Government, and the Act remained wholly inoperative. Another Bill was subsequently passed, giving power to Her Majesty's Secretary of State for the Home Department to close burial-grounds; but leaving it optional to the parishes to provide cemeteries if they should think fit. The consequence of that anomaly was what the present petitioners complained of. By the order of the Secretary of State nearly all the metropolitan burial-grounds had been closed; the poor man's right of interment has thus been taken away, but no provision had been made for interments elsewhere. Nearly, if not quite the whole, of the burial-grounds in the metropolis were closed by the order of the Secretary of State, but some of the larger parishes had been enabled to provide cemeteries as substitutes. The poorer parishes, however, and especially those in the north-eastern part of the metropolis, had taken no steps whatever to provide means for the interment of the poorer portion of their population, and, in consequence, various evils were created, which fell heavily both upon the clergy and upon the poor. In the first place, the clergy were deprived of a considerable portion of their incomes, amounting, in some cases, to two-thirds. Although admitting, as a general principle, that where measures had been enforced to ensure the public health, the consideration of the question of compensation to parties who might have suffered in consequence of the adoption of a new system was a matter of minor importance, he held that the emoluments and fees arising to the clergy from burials were as much the rights of the clergy as tithes. There could be no question upon this point, that the burial fees were rights to which the clergy were entitled by the law of the land, and had the Bill of the Board of Health 1343 been carried out, there might have been no cause for complaint on this score. Though not desirous of wearying their Lordships with details, he felt himself bound to call their attention for a moment to the case of St. Giles'-in-the-Fields, as a specimen of the injustice occasioned by the present state of the law. The rector of St. Giles' gave up a living of considerable emolument, and bringing him in a large annual income, for the purpose of taking the living he now held, and which he accepted from the Crown under the assurance that he would enjoy from it certain emoluments, amounting to rather more than 900l. per annum. In fact, he gave up a living worth 900l. a year for the purpose of taking that of St. Giles', and he now lost 700l. a year in consequence of the closing of the burial-grounds of that parish. The sixteen clergymen who now petitioned their Lordships were subjected to the same injustice in a greater or less degree. But the injustice to the clergy did not affect the incumbents alone; the number of curates was greatly diminished, and the spiritual care of the poor parishioners was proportionately circumscribed. The closing of the metropolitan burial-grounds was felt not only as a hardship upon the clergy, but it inflicted grievous evils upon the poorer classes of the population. In the parish of St. Giles' there was a population of nearly 40,000, and there were from 15,000 to 20,000 poor requiring the constant care and attendance of a clergyman. As the great reduction of the emoluments of the clergyman holding the living, caused by the closing of the burial-grounds, rendered it impossible for him to keep curates, the consequence was, that the whole of these 15,000 or 20,000 persons had to be visited and attended by one person. The petitioners stated that the burial fees form a considerable portion—in some cases one-half—of their income, and they added that in no one of their parishes had any steps been taken to provide burial-places in lieu of those closed by the order of the Secretary of State. The effect of the closing of the burial-grounds was in most cases to take a large sum out of the income of the clergy, and to reduce the available source whence means were procured for carrying on divine service. He had made every inquiry into the matter, as far as the poor were concerned, and he did not hesitate to say that a great amount of hardship was inflicted upon the poorer inhabitants of parishes in which the burial grounds had been closed. The 1344 expenses incurred by the friends of deceased persons in providing for funerals were now so much increased that in some cases they had been obliged to fall back upon the parish for relief and become paupers. In addition, such funerals were accompanied with a great violation of decency. It was a singular anomaly that almost the only burial-places exempted from the operation of the order were two Dissenters' burying grounds. The effect of the closing of burial-places in populous parishes was this—in many cases dead bodies were allowed to remain in the miserable habitations of the poor for so great a length of time that they became the cause of infection, and thus rendered the order of the Secretary of State a source of disease instead of one of sanitary improvement. He contended, therefore, that the measure, though it might have been introduced for the purpose of carrying out a praiseworthy object, had in its operation created an increase of the evils it was intended to remedy. An instance had been brought under his notice within the last few days, which seemed to intimate that a great insensibility and callousness existed upon the part of the poor, or that they were driven to a horrible extremity with regard to the bodies of their deceased relatives. In the parish of Stepney, some time after the burial-grounds were closed, the stench proceeding from a pool in the neighbourhood gave rise to cholera, and in one house three children were lying dead of that disease, the effluvia arising from the dead bodies, together with the stench from the vast cesspool close at hand, being intolerable. The evil at length became so great that the secretary of the Eastern Counties Railway was appealed to, and gave orders that the pool should be filled up with 40,000 tons of earth. In the course of performing this work several dead bodies and fragments of dead bodies were fished up from the pool. If this were really so it would seem to show that a portion of the poor had been compelled, from seine circumstances or other, to discharge their duty to their friends or relatives by proceeding to the most horrible extremities. He might here add, that he had received several letters upon that point of the question in which the poor were more immediately concerned, showing the distressing position in which the relatives of a person lying upon his deathbed were placed, in consequence of not knowing what they were to do with the body when death ensued. He was not aware whether, under the circumstances, 1345 Her Majesty's Government would object to a Motion for certain returns, and he would, therefore, move that returns be made of the metropolitan parishes, exclusive of the City of London, the burial-grounds of which have been closed or have been ordered to be closed; and of the same, with their several populations, which have not provided for themselves parochial cemeteries or other burial-grounds. He excluded the City of London because the proper steps had already been taken there under the directions of the Commissioners of Sewers; and he thought the suburbs should be made to adopt similar measures. It was for the poor especially that these additional cemeteries were required; for their best feelings were violated, and they were put to a great increase of expense by the operation of a measure which was intended for their benefit, while the danger to the public health from the closing of the churchyards had been greatly aggravated. Having read some documentary evidence in further proof of this statement, the right rev. Prelate was understood to state that he believed it to be a fact that, in some of these cemeteries, when a pauper funeral arrived, there being no clergyman in attendance, an attendant, or a pauper, or any person who could be got, would sometimes put on a surplice, and read a portion of the burial service. This conduct of the parish officers was contrary to the Statute law of the land, for it was expressly provided by the Poor Law Amendment Act, that pauper funerals should be conducted in consecrated ground. Having noticed the evils which result from the lengthened keeping of corpses in the single rooms in which whole families of the poor are obliged to live and sleep, his Lordship said he had brought forward only a few of a very large number of cases with the facts of which he had been made acquainted, and which went to establish beyond all doubt the existence of the evil to which he was endeavouring to direct the attention of their Lordships' House. If it were necessary, he could adduce much further evidence to the same effect; but he thought the facts he had already stated were abundantly sufficient to show that the closing of so many burial-grounds, without at the same time taking care that steps should be adopted by the several parishes to provide other places of interment in their stead, had inflicted great hardship, both upon the clergy and upon the poor; that the decency which had usually characterised this 1346 Christian country had been shamefully violated; and that the present state of things was such as imperatively called upon a Christian Legislature to interfere. He thought the great error had been in not adopting—or, he would not say in not adopting, for the Legislature had adopted the recommendation of the Board of Health—but the evil was, that after the recommendation of the Board of Health had been sanctioned by the Legislature, no help had been given to that Board by the Government of the day, and the measures introduced since had been wholly inefficient to meet the evils complained of. He still thought, as he had always thought, that when the Board of Health became entirely inoperative, the question ought to have been taken up by the Government. No doubt there were great difficulties in dealing with the subject in so vast a metropolis as this; but he was satisfied that there were no difficulties which might not, by well-considered arrangement, be overcome, so that the clergy and the poor might be protected, the violation of public decency prevented, and the danger to the public health—inseparable from the present state of things—averted. The petitioners prayed that their Lordships would take such steps for the immediate remedy of the evils they had pointed out as the justice and necessity of the case might seem to demand. What they meant was that some measure should be passed, making it compulsory upon parishes to provide proper burial-grounds in lieu of those which had been closed. He thought that that step ought to have been taken at the same time with the other, if it was necessary to give way to the popular feeling upon the subject. He did not mean to deny that there had been evils, both in a sanitary and religious point of view, before the Legislature and the Government had interfered, but he believed that those evils had been considerably exaggerated, that a few remarkable instances had been taken as examples of the whole, and that the closing of burial-grounds had been carried out much more comprehensively and more generally than the necessity of the case required. It was not too late even now to make some provision—he would even say for the clergy in lieu of that of which they had been deprived—but still more to make provision for the decent interment of the poor.

§ THE EARL or ABERDEEN
admitted the importance of the statement which had been made by the right rev. Prelate, and 1347 expressed his opinion that a case had been made out which called imperatively for the intervention of the Legislature and the Government. No doubt the evil intended to be remedied by recent measures was a very great one, and the public feeling had arrived at such a point as to compel attention to the more prominent cases which had been brought forward for discussion. But in attempting to remedy that evil it was quite clear that great injustice and great hardship had been inflicted, and he fully concurred in the opinion that it was necessary some steps should be taken in order to put an end to a state of things which was disgraceful to this metropolis. He did not object to the production of the returns now moved for.

§ THE EARL OF SHAFTESBURY
said, he wished to impress upon Government the absolute necessity of doing something. The present state of things was most injurious to the clergy, and, at the same time, inflicted great hardship upon the poor. The clergy were deprived of fees which were secured to them by Act of Parliament, which deprived them of Easter dues and small tithes. One incumbent had had his income reduced from 950l. to 200l. a year, with a population of from 15,000 to 20,000. That was one view of the case. Another view was that it severely affected the great mass of the poor. It was well known that under the old system, the poor refrained from burying the bodies of their relatives for several days, but under the new system, instances were known of the bodies having been kept ten, twelve, fourteen, and even eighteen days, without interment, and that in a room in which eight or nine persons lived. If this were allowed to go on, he did not hesitate to say that they would be allowing the construction of 10,000 fever nests in different parts of London, and that when the cholera arrived it would be most fearful, and would produce one of the most terrible calamities that could befall any nation. He trusted, therefore, that Government would take into their consideration the necessity of taking prompt measures to remedy these evils.

§ EARL GREY
thought that more ought to be done than laying this petition on the table, and suggested that the right rev. Prelate should move for a Select Committee to inquire into the facts, and to ascertain what would be the safest, the readiest, and the most effectual mode of applying a remedy to this great evil.

§ THE EARL OF HARROWBY
was of opinion that it was necessary to provide not only places of interment, but places to which the dead might be removed as speedily as possible out of those crowded rooms to which reference had been made. They had to make arrangements for a population of nearly two millions and a half, crowded together within a comparatively small space, and if they were to listen to every objection urged by every interest that might be interfered with, or to every outcry raised upon the ground of centralisation, they would not be doing their duty. For a population of two-and-a-half millions they required some great central action. They could not afford to leave anything to chance. Whether it were a question of sewerage, or draining, or water supply, or any other matter which affected the health or general interest of the community, they must not leave it to a scramble between different authorities; for what might do very well in a place of small population would not do at all here. The former measure upon this subject was concocted with especial reference to a possible visitation of cholera, and he hoped, before the cholera actually came, opportunity would be taken to deal vigorously with the subject, and that something effectual would be done.

THE BISHOP OF LONDON
said, it had been his intention to make the Motion suggested by the noble Earl near him (Earl Grey); but he had felt so convinced that—after the statement which he should be able to make, and after the inquiries, which he had no doubt had been made by some Members of the Government themselves—he had felt so convinced that they would take up the subject, and deal with it promptly and wisely, that he hardly thought it worth while to press for the appointment of a Committee. The statement which had been made by the noble Earl at the head of Her Majesty's Government had justified that conviction; and after the assurance he had given, that the matter should be taken up by the Government, and a measure framed which should answer all the objects which no former measure had answered, he felt himself perfectly secure in leaving the matter in their hands.