was unknown. That was absolutely established in 1866 by the 

 cholera visitation in "Whitechaj^el. It had been discovered by 

 Dr. Snow and Eev. H. Whitehead, who exposed the tragedy of 

 the Broad Street Pump in the cholera visitation of 1854. It had 

 been conjectured that the fact there discovered must have been 

 of wider application, because the districts which had a good 

 water supply went almost harmless. But it was left for that 

 visitation to show that persons drinking New River water escaped 

 the disease, and persons drinking East London water on the 

 opposite side of the street were attacked. An examination of 

 the East London sources being made, a leak was discovered in 

 a reservoir near the Lea, and it was conclusively established that, 

 so far as cholera was concerned, water was the great distributor 

 of that disease. Now if this fact had been kno^vn, the Extramural 

 Interment Act would have shut up almost all churchyards in 

 country places. As a rule, towns and villages have always crept 

 towards the hill-tops, and the church being usually in the centre 

 of the village, was at the top of the hill. Hence the drainage 

 from the churchyard filtered into all the water-sources below. 

 I have before my mind's eye at this moment a country-town of 

 some 6,000 inhabitants ; the church, as usual, set on a hill. 

 At a little depth below tlie soil ran a stiff bed of clay, which 

 of course cropped out lower do^vn ; and here was the most perfect 

 provision for conveying the miasma by means of water and 

 natural drainage all over the town. 



I always myself wondered, during the long controversy as to 

 he burial of nonconformists in churchyards, that no one turned 

 the difficulty by proposing a Commission to shut up all graveyards 

 which were overcrowded or insanitary. "WHiere the former is not 

 the case (for ife is no uncommon thing to find a country churchyard 

 in which every part but the brick graves has been used over 

 and over again, till the earth sliows on the least disturbance the 

 fragments of bones) — where the churchyard is not overcrowded, 

 it is almost always insanitary from the drainage. If this plan 

 had been adopted, no religious difference need have arisen, for 

 cemeteries would have been established all over the country. But, 

 further, there should have been a provision that no dwellings 



