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40
INTRAMURAL BURIAL.
to Parliament, for prohibition of further intramural
sepulture, I would recommend that authority be
obtained by the City, for its several parishes to
procure the decent removal to extramural cemeteries
of such coffins as already occupy their vaults;
or, failing this measure, I would recommend that
all coffins now lying within vaults, be walled up in
their present resting-places, with uniform impermeable
masonry. For very obvious reasons I
should prefer the former plan to the latter.
Intramural burial is an evil, no doubt, that
varies in its intensity according to the numbers
interred; becoming appreciable in its effects on
health, (so far as the rough measure of statistics
can inform us,) only when several interments
occur annually, or when ground is disturbed
wherein much animal matter had previously been
left to decay. But, be the evil large or little in any
particular case, evil undoubtedly it is in all, and an
unmitigated evil.
The atmosphere in which epidemic and infectious
diseases most readily diffuse their poison
and multiply their victims is one, as I have already
often stated, in which organic matters are undergoing
decomposition. Whence these may be derived
signifies little. Whether the matter passing into
decay be an accumulation of soaking straw and cabbage
leaves in some miserable cellar, or the garbage
of a slaughter-house, or an overflowing cesspool, or