About the Work
“London Cemeteries” is an essay published in 1861 in Once a Week, Series 1, Volume V. The contributor is unknown. The work is a polemical and descriptive piece advocating for the removal of burial grounds from the center of London and for the reform of funeral practices. It combines historical reference, statistical argument, sanitary science, and journalistic description to make its case. The essay opens with an ancient legal citation, moves through a satirical account of past opposition to burial reform, presents data from parliamentary reports, and concludes with a detailed examination of the two leading cemetery companies of the era—Woking and Colney Hatch—including their practical arrangements for receiving the dead and accommodating mourners. The text is written in a vigorous, opinionated style, blending moral indignation with practical recommendation.
Context
The essay appears at a moment of significant public debate and legislative change regarding urban sanitation and burial practice in England. The author references the Roman Twelve Tables law—”Hominem mortuum in urbe ne sepelito, neve urito” (neither bury nor burn a dead man in the city)—noting that this wise law fell into abeyance for nearly two thousand years, and that only recently have Englishmen decided in favour of Life against Death, decreeing that living and dead should no longer jostle in great cities. The necessity for living men is Health; for the dead, Silence and Repose.
The text engages directly with the findings of the 1843 Report of the Committee on Interment in Towns, and with subsequent reports by sanitary officials such as Dr. Sutherland and Mr. Holland in the mid-1850s. The author also cites the Acts of 1852-53, which empowered the Legislature to refuse extension of cemetery limits in built-up areas. The essay reflects a broader movement in mid-Victorian England toward sanitary reform, the establishment of large suburban cemeteries served by railways, and the professionalization of funeral arrangements. The author notes that the nation now removes remains from town centres, and affirms “he is not dead, but sleepeth” as part of the nation’s faith, connecting the link between mouldering relics and man’s past and future. The essay also engages with class dimensions of the burial question, particularly the plight of the labouring poor who inhabit single rooms and cannot afford prompt burial for their dead.
Structure of the Book
The essay is organized in three main movements. The first part establishes the historical and moral case against intramural interment, citing the Roman law, satirizing the old arguments in favour of urban burial, and presenting the statistical findings of the 1843 Committee. The second part turns to the practical question of finding space for London’s dead, evaluating the various cemetery companies and their claims, with particular attention to Woking and Colney Hatch. The third part examines the detailed arrangements at Colney Hatch—the mortuary at Maiden Lane Station, the railway journey, the grounds and chapels at the cemetery itself—and concludes with a rhetorical appeal for commercial management of funerals to replace the wasteful and degrading customs of the day. The essay moves from principle to practice, from history to present arrangements, and from criticism to constructive proposal.
Detailed Section-by-Section Summary
Part 1
The essay opens by citing the Roman Twelve Tables law prohibiting the burial or burning of the dead within the city. The author observes that this wise law was neglected for nearly two thousand years, and that only recently have Englishmen decided in favour of Life against Death, decreeing that living and dead should no longer jostle in great cities. The necessity for living men is Health; for the dead, Silence and Repose.
The author then looks back with amusement at the “struggle” maintained for the “Ghoul interest”—that is, the arguments of those who defended intramural burial. He cites Parent-Duchatelet, who fervently maintained that the true Temple of Hygeia was a dissecting-room full of decomposing human remains. Those unable to access such choice spots had alternatives: a chantier d’équarrissage (dead-horse receptacle) or dépôt de vidange (night-soil depot) served as “Madeira or Torquay” for afflicted humanity. Emanations from decomposing animal or vegetable remains were considered the “grand specific.” If amateur sniffing failed, one could become an undertaker’s man or grave-digger. The author cites the grave-digger in “Hamlet” as stouter, more cheerful, and more aged than the hypochondriac prince—the conclusion being obvious: that proximity to the dead was once thought healthful.
This state of affairs is now at an end, except for occasional Parliamentary Committee fights about Clergy Dues. The nation now removes remains from town centres. The author affirms “he is not dead, but sleepeth” as part of the nation’s faith, connecting the link between mouldering relics and man’s past and future. Therefore the dead should not be committed to earth in cities—”after life’s fitful fever, let them sleep well.”
The author then addresses the old Puritan objection that “in burying the dead we killed the living,” meaning objection to delays in cold damp burying-grounds. Similarly, the Great Duke took with him many old companions because they waited hours in St. Paul’s at his last Review. Hundreds of elderly persons are killed annually by funeral attendance, but this is nothing to the “hecatombs” offered yearly through intramural interments.
The author reprints from the Report of the Committee on interment in towns (1843). Metropolitan burial spaces do not exceed 203 acres, closely surrounded by dwellings. Layer upon layer, each consisting of a population equivalent to a large army of 20,000 adults, and nearly 30,000 youths and children are every year “very imperfectly interred.” Within the present generation, upwards of a million dead were interred in those spaces. The question would become “Is London to be the city of the Living, or the city of the Dead?” The dead would gain the upper hand, poisoning water and air. The evil was cumulative; decomposition varies from a few months to half a century. The Committee’s calculations imply that under reasonable conditions, ground may safely be disturbed every tenth year—the field of death must lie fallow for nearly ten years, then may be sowed anew.
Part 2
The passage continues by following the figures of the Committee, noting they can be corrected for intermediate population increase. In 1858, deaths registered in the metropolis were nearly 52,000. Mr. Chadwick suggests taking these at 50,000 annually (noting they are now about 60,000), which would require a space equal to St. James’s Park—about 48 acres—for London’s burial-ground. If burials are renewable in decennial periods, the space required would equal the combined areas of Hyde Park, St. James’s Park, and the Green Park.
The question becomes finding a Hyde Park, a St. James’ Park, and a Green Park at safe distances from the metropolis—about 500 acres, slightly less than Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens combined. The various cemetery companies profess to have solved this question.
Until recently, the London Necropolis, or Woking Cemetery Company, bore away the palm. They purchased 2,000 acres at Woking Common under an Act of Parliament, enclosing and planting 400 acres for a cemetery. Their practice assigns a separate grave for each interment, not disturbed afterward except at the desire of surviving friends for other family members. The soil is dry sand, with graves and walks ornamented by trees, plants, and flowers. Space is allotted separately to the Church of England, Dissenters, and Roman Catholics. The chief objection is distance from town, but Funeral Trains from the terminus at Westminster Bridge complete the journey in about three-quarters of an hour. Until the recent establishment of the Great London Northern Company at Colney Hatch, Woking stood facile princeps amongst rivals.
Kensall Green has served its turn and been overtaken by the town; it is thickly thronged with the dead, and the reasons behind the Acts of 1852-53 will cause the Legislature to refuse extension of its limits. The same applies to Highgate Cemetery, where many Londoners of mark rest. Both are dismissed from future calculations.
Dr. Sutherland, in his Report to the Secretary of State dated 23rd January, 1855, says of the Victoria Park Company: “It is situated in Bethnal Green, near St. James’ Church. The company… contracts with parishes, and they carry on their trade with the usual neglect of health and decency.” This cemetery is exempt from the Metropolis Burials Act. Mr. Holland, in his Report of 26th November, 1855, speaks similarly of the Victoria Park Cemetery. Dr. Sutherland also reports of Abney Park Cemetery: “The surface is tolerably well kept, but underneath it is a mass of corruption in the used part.”
Woking and Colney Hatch possess the highest claims. Woking is on the southern side of the river, connected with the South-Western Railway. Colney Hatch is on the Great Northern Line, a quarter-mile beyond the station of that name, fifteen minutes from London by time; its London terminus is at King’s Cross, in Maiden Lane, close to the principal Great Northern station.
The arrangements at Colney Hatch for separate reception of different parties of mourners are very complete, benefiting the humblest mourners as well as those who could afford the luxury of retirement and seclusion. The company has grappled with the monstrous evil—chiefly amongst the labouring classes—of keeping a corpse for an indefinite number of days in the single room inhabited by a family. A table records inquiries made in the inner ward of St. George’s, Hanover Square, at the time the Committee upon Interments in Towns were pursuing their labours, showing that the great bulk of the labouring classes inhabit single rooms. There is little reason to suppose the state of things has improved considerably since that date.
Part 3
The passage opens by posing a rhetorical question about the inevitable result of keeping a corpse for a week or more in a single small room inhabited by a numerous family, where cooking, eating, and sleeping occur. It states that the experience of those who visit the dwellings of the poor confirms the “terrible stories” in the Report of the Committee regarding such corpse-keeping.
The Colney Hatch Company has addressed this evil by arranging, at their station in Maiden Lane, for a corpse to be removed immediately after death at trifling expense to a reception-room, where friends may have continuous access until the remains are taken to their last resting-place. Precautions are taken there, wiser than any possible in a private dwelling, against the “awful tragedy of a premature interment.” In various German towns—notably Frankfort and Munich—this system has worked well and been acceptable to the working classes. The danger of premature interment is “exceptional indeed”; the real peril is to the living from cohabitation with the dead.
There is no absolute reluctance among the humblest classes to part with remains. It is the want of money for funeral dues that leads, in ninety-five per cent. of cases, to delay in burial. The average price of an adult funeral is 4l.; of children, 30s. This sum must be gathered painfully before the corpse is removed.
For the very poorest person, the Colney Hatch Company undertakes to receive the body at Maiden Lane and keep it a sufficient time free of charge; to remove it to Colney Hatch for 6s., plus 1s. 6d. per head for each mourner’s return-ticket. The lowest-rate common interment costs 13s. 6d. Thus the remains of the humblest London workman may be moved from death-bed to grave at a charge—exclusive of mourners’ conveyance—of 19s. 6d., avoiding all danger of disease to survivors.
The mortuary at Maiden Lane Station is a striking feature. The shell or coffin, on arrival, is placed on a metal chair or plate, slowly lowered by an ingenious mechanical arrangement to the mortuary table, then conveyed along rails to its assigned spot. The apartment is well ventilated and illuminated at night, with watchers attending to take precautions in cases of suspended animation. These arrangements have the direct sanction of the Sanitary Commissioners. If found in accordance with working-class feelings, the rate of mortality in London may soon receive a notable diminution.
In fifteen minutes the train from Maiden Lane reaches Colney Hatch, avoiding the lugubrious procession through streets or suburban roads. At Colney Hatch, one hundred and fifty acres have been enclosed and laid out in walks and beds. The surrounding country is familiar to most Londoners; it is a satisfaction to re-visit graves deposited there instead of in a “reeking and abominable London graveyard.” The journey is practically as though the cemetery were at King’s Cross Station of the Great Northern Railway.
As at Woking, chapels have been erected for Dissenters, and a church for members of the Church of England, for conducting last ceremonies with dignity. The third sketch shows the station with two chapels; the church, whose spire rises some 150 feet, is assigned to the Church of England. There is tranquillity and repose about the scene, scarcely supposed attainable so near “the great Babylon.”
The passage ends with an end to the “vulgar prejudice” that entrusting funeral rites to public companies is indecorous. It asks why an enormous saving should not be effected in the sum of 5,000,000l.—the annual expenditure of England and Wales on funerals and graves—by commercial management. Money wasted on the “mockery and beadledom of grief” might better be devoted to the comfort of the living. Nothing more horrible or disgusting to the true mourner could be conceived than the mourning-coach, weepers, long cloaks, black horses, and sottish misery of professional mutes—except the consciousness that a beloved parent or child’s remains were consigned to a dirty hole in a reeking London churchyard, awaiting insult and desecration.
Main Arguments
The essay advances several interconnected arguments. First, intramural burial—the interment of the dead within city limits—is a grave public health hazard. The author marshals the findings of the 1843 Committee to show that London’s burial grounds, totaling no more than 203 acres and closely surrounded by dwellings, have received layer upon layer of the dead, with nearly 30,000 youths and children every year “very imperfectly interred.” Within a single generation, upwards of a million dead were interred in those spaces. The evil is cumulative, and decomposition varies from a few months to half a century. The question, as the author frames it, is whether London is to be the city of the Living or the city of the Dead.
Second, the dead have a claim to decent and undisturbed repose. The author affirms “he is not dead, but sleepeth” as part of the nation’s faith, connecting the link between mouldering relics and man’s past and future. Therefore the dead should not be committed to earth in cities—”after life’s fitful fever, let them sleep well.” This is both a moral and a practical argument: the dead require Silence and Repose, which crowded urban graveyards cannot provide.
Third, the living are endangered not only by the poisoned air and water of overcrowded burial grounds but also by the practice of keeping corpses in the single rooms inhabited by poor families. The Colney Hatch Company’s mortuary at Maiden Lane Station is presented as the solution to this “monstrous evil”—chiefly amongst the labouring classes—of keeping a corpse for an indefinite number of days in the single room inhabited by a family. The author notes that the want of money for funeral dues leads, in ninety-five per cent. of cases, to delay in burial, and that the average price of an adult funeral is 4l.; of children, 30s. The company’s low-cost arrangements—receiving the body free of charge, removing it to Colney Hatch for 6s., and providing the lowest-rate common interment for 13s. 6d.—are offered as a practical remedy.
Fourth, the commercial management of funerals is preferable to the traditional system. The author calls for an end to the “vulgar prejudice” that entrusting funeral rites to public companies is indecorous, and asks why an enormous saving should not be effected in the sum of 5,000,000l.—the annual expenditure of England and Wales on funerals and graves—by commercial management. Money wasted on the “mockery and beadledom of grief” might better be devoted to the comfort of the living. The traditional funeral trappings—the mourning-coach, weepers, long cloaks, black horses, and professional mutes—are condemned as horrible and disgusting to the true mourner.
Key Concepts
Intramural versus extramural burial: The central distinction of the essay is between burying the dead within city limits (intramural) and removing them to suburban or rural cemeteries (extramural). The author traces the history of this distinction back to the Roman Twelve Tables law, which prohibited both burial and burning within the city, and argues that modern London has only recently returned to this ancient wisdom.
The decennial fallow period: Drawing on the 1843 Committee’s calculations, the author presents the concept that burial ground, under reasonable conditions, may safely be disturbed every tenth year. The field of death must lie fallow for nearly ten years, then may be sowed anew. This principle underlies the calculation of how much space London’s dead require.
Sanitary science: The essay is grounded in the sanitary movement of mid-Victorian England. The author cites the reports of Dr. Sutherland and Mr. Holland, the sanction of the Sanitary Commissioners for the Colney Hatch arrangements, and the statistical work of Mr. Chadwick. The central sanitary claim is that decomposing human remains poison water and air, and that cohabitation with the dead is a real peril to the living.
The mortuary system: The essay describes in detail the mortuary at Maiden Lane Station, where corpses are received immediately after death, kept in a well-ventilated and illuminated apartment, and watched by attendants to guard against premature interment. This system, borrowed from German towns such as Frankfort and Munich, is presented as a model for London.
Commercial funeral management: The author advocates for the replacement of traditional funeral customs with the efficient, low-cost services of public companies. The essay calculates the potential savings—5,000,000l. annually in England and Wales—and condemns the “mockery and beadledom of grief” as a waste of money that might better be devoted to the comfort of the living.
Class and burial: The essay is attentive to the particular plight of the labouring classes, who inhabit single rooms and cannot afford prompt burial for their dead. The Colney Hatch Company’s low-cost arrangements are presented as a remedy for this evil, and the author notes that there is no absolute reluctance among the humblest classes to part with remains—it is the want of money, not sentiment, that causes delay.
Themes
Health and sanitation: The dominant theme of the essay is the threat posed to the living by the dead. The author presents intramural burial as a public health crisis, citing statistics on the number of interments, the limited acreage of burial grounds, and the cumulative evil of decomposition. The solution is the removal of the dead to suburban cemeteries and the prompt removal of corpses from dwellings.
The dignity of the dead: The essay insists that the dead have a claim to Silence and Repose. The author affirms “he is not dead, but sleepeth” as part of the nation’s faith, and argues that the dead should not be committed to earth in cities. The contrast between the “reeking and abominable London graveyard” and the “tranquillity and repose” of Colney Hatch is a recurring motif.
The critique of funeral customs: The essay is sharply critical of traditional funeral practices—the mourning-coach, weepers, long cloaks, black horses, and professional mutes—which it condemns as a “mockery and beadledom of grief.” The true mourner, the author argues, would find these trappings horrible and disgusting, especially when contrasted with the fate of a beloved parent or child’s remains consigned to a dirty hole in a reeking London churchyard.
Commercial efficiency versus traditional sentiment: The essay argues that commercial management of funerals is not indecorous but sensible, and that enormous savings could be effected by it. This theme reflects a broader Victorian faith in the efficiency of joint-stock companies and the application of business principles to social problems.
Class inequality in death: The essay highlights the particular suffering of the labouring classes, who must keep corpses in their single rooms because they cannot afford funeral dues. The Colney Hatch Company’s arrangements are presented as a remedy that benefits the humblest mourners as well as those who could afford the luxury of retirement and seclusion.
The railway as agent of reform: The essay presents the railway as the enabling technology for the new cemeteries. The funeral train from Maiden Lane reaches Colney Hatch in fifteen minutes, avoiding the lugubrious procession through streets or suburban roads. The journey is practically as though the cemetery were at King’s Cross Station of the Great Northern Railway.
The Author’s Conclusions
The author concludes that the removal of London’s dead to suburban cemeteries is both necessary and beneficial, and that the arrangements of the leading cemetery companies—particularly Colney Hatch—offer a model for the future. The essay ends with a call for an end to the “vulgar prejudice” against commercial funeral management, and for the redirection of the 5,000,000l. annually spent on funerals in England and Wales toward the comfort of the living. The traditional trappings of grief are condemned as a mockery, and the reader is left with the stark contrast between the “sottish misery of professional mutes” and the consciousness of a beloved parent or child’s remains consigned to a dirty hole in a reeking London churchyard, awaiting insult and desecration. The author’s final position is that the dead should sleep well, the living should be protected from disease, and the resources wasted on funeral pomp should be devoted to the welfare of the living.
Significance
The essay is significant as a document of the mid-Victorian sanitary reform movement, applying its principles to the specific question of burial practice in London. It draws on parliamentary reports, sanitary surveys, and the work of reformers such as Mr. Chadwick to make a statistical and moral case for the removal of the dead from urban centres. The essay also documents the emergence of the great suburban cemetery companies—Woking and Colney Hatch—and their innovative arrangements for receiving the dead, accommodating mourners, and providing low-cost burials for the poor. The description of the mortuary at Maiden Lane Station, with its mechanical lowering apparatus, ventilated apartment, and night watchers, offers a detailed picture of Victorian sanitary technology in action. The essay’s critique of traditional funeral customs and its advocacy of commercial management reflect broader Victorian debates about the proper relationship between sentiment, economy, and public health. Finally, the essay’s attention to the plight of the labouring classes—forced by poverty to keep corpses in their single rooms—reveals the social dimension of the burial question and anticipates later reforms in public health and housing.
