Excerpt from "London by Day and Night, or Men and Things in the Great Metropolis", by David Bartlett, 1852, personal collection

Burials in London

We beg the pardon of the reader for saying a few words upon an unpleasant subject -- that of London burials. We shall not give you a pleasant picture of country church-yards, with tall cedars of Lebanon and cypresses, and waving grass over the graves -- alas! no; there is little of beauty and serenity in London church-yards!

And yet the cemeteries are beautiful, but they are far beyond the limits of the town. There is beautiful Highgate Cemetery -- Kensal Green Cemetery and Abney Park -- all pleasant and quiet spots. But it is only the privileged ones who are buried in such places, only the rich and powerful. Wealth in London helps a man after death. It can and does lay his aching bones to rest in a quiet spot, it covers over his grave with flowers, and the songs of birds -- is not that something?

The wealthy are buried here -- where are the poor buried? In Paris, city burials were long ago abolished. It is the same in almost all European towns, but it is not so in London. A few years since, the subject was brought before Parliament, and facts were elicited which created great excitement, and which resulted in good, but the practice still continues with some restrictions. We are the more determined to give our readers an insight into this unpleasant subject, as it is of great importance that the inhabitants of American cities should, before they become older, avoid the errors of European cities.

Many times in our walks about London we have noticed the grave-yards attached to the various churches, for in almost every case, they are elevated considerably above the level of the sidewalk, and in some instances, five or six feet above it. The reason was clear enough -- it wasn an accumulation for years of human dust, and that too in the centre of the largest city in the world.

We soon made the discovery that the burial business (we beg of the reader not to be shocked, for we tell the unvarnished truth) was a thieving trade in London, a speculation into which many enter, and a great profit to the proprietors of the city churches, whether State or Dissenting. Upon reading authorities, we were thunderstruck at the state of things only three or four years since, and which are now only slightly improved. Extra cautions were taken during the cholera year, but since, matters have been allowed to take the old and accustomed channels.

The facts twhich we state are but too true. They were sworn to me by men to be trusted, before a Committee of the House of Commons, appointed by that body to search into this horrible burial trade.

St. Martin's Church, measuring 295 feet by 379, in the course of ten years received 14,000 bodies! St. Mary's, in the region of the Strand, and covering only half an acre, has by fair comparision during fifty years received 20,000 bodies. Was every anything heard of more frightful? But hear this: two men built, as mere speculation, a Methodist Church in New Kent Road, and in a mammoth vault, beneath the floor of that church, 40 yards long, 25 wide, and 20 high, 2000 bodies were found, not buried, but piled up in coffins one upon the other. This in all conscience is horrible enough, but seems quite tolerable in comparision with another case.

A church, called Enon Chapel, was built some twenty years ago, by a minister, as a speculation, in Clement's Lane in the Strand, close on to that busiest throroughfare in teh world. He opened the upper part for worship of God, and devoted the lower -- seperated from the upper merely by a board floor -- to the burial of the dead. In this place, 60 feet by 29 and 6 deep, 12,000 bodies have been interred! It was dangerous to sit in the church; faintings occurred every day in it, and sickness, and for some distance about it, life was not safe. And yet people not really knowing the state of things, never thought of laying anything to the vault under the chapel.

But perhaps the reader will exercise the arithmetical powers, and say that it would be impossible to bury 12,000 persons in so small a space, within 20 years. He does not understand the manner in which the speculating parson mananged his affairs. It came out before the Committee of the House of Commons, that sixty loads of "mingled dirt and human remains" were carted away from the vault at different times, and thrown into the Thames, the other side of Waterloo Bridge. Once a portion of a load fell off in the street, and the crowd picked up out of it a human skull. It was no longer safe to cart away the remains, and yet the reverend speculator could not afford to lose his fine income from the burials, and so his ever-busy intellect invented a novel mode of getting rid of the bodies -- he used great quantities of quicklime! But quicklime would not devour coffins, and so they were split up and burnt in secret by the owner of the chapel. Several witnesses swore to this before the Committee. Said one of them:

"I have seen the man and his wife burn them; it was quite the common thing."

It may be said that this state of things has passed away -- but such is not the fact. We have ourselves looked into an open grave which was filled with coffins to within a foot of the surface of the ground, and that too within ten rods of one of the busiest streets in London. A friends of ours assured us he has witnessed of late, things quite as horrible as any that were related before the Committee of the House of Commons.

It was proved that very many churches of London were in the habit of carting away remains of bodies at intervals to make room for the later dead. St. Martin's, in Ludgate, St. Anne's, in Soho, St. Clement's, in Portugal street, and many others were proved guilty of the practice.

W. Chamberlain, grave-digger at St. Clement's, testified that the ground was so full of bodies that he could not make a new grave "without coming into other graves". He said "We have come to bodies quite perfect, and we have cut parts away with choppers and pickaxes. We have opened the lids of coffins, and the bodies have been so perfect that we could distinguish males from females; and all those have been chopped and cut up. During the time I was at this work, the flesh has been cut up in pieces and thrown up behind the boards which are placed to keep the ground up where the mourners are standing, and when the mourners are gone this flesh has been thrown in and jammed down, and the coffins taken away and burnt."

An assistant grave-digger testified that, happening to see his companion one day chopping off the head of a coffin, he saw that it was his own father's! Another digger testified that bodies were often cut through when they had been buried only three weeks. Another testified to things more horrible than ever Dante say in hell. He says: "One day I was trying the length of a grave to see if it was long and wide enough, and while I was there the ground gave away, and a body turned right over, and two arms came and clasped me round the neck!"

We beg the pardon of the reader for relating such horrible facts -- but they occurred in London, and the cities and towns of America may well profit from them. There need not be such terrible curses attending a crowded state of population, and such will be the case eventually in our own towns unless we take warning.

When one thinks of the thousands in London who must look forward to a burial in the pent-up churchyards in the city, it makes the heart ache. To think of burying a kind mother so -- of following a dear sister to such a grave! Yet thousands from poverty must do so.