1867.] The Public Health. 299 



little creditable to tlie large and wealthy communities of St. 

 Marylebone, Paddington, St. Pancras, Islington, and the parishes 

 of the East of London generally, that they have not stirred in this 

 matter more vigorously. 



The clauses 27 and 28 of the Sanitary Act have already been 

 acted on in London with great benefit. By these clauses the 

 medical officer of health is enabled to remove a dead body, where 

 it lies in the midst of the living, to the parish dead-house previous 

 to interment. The coroner has also the same power to order the 

 removal of bodies to convenient places for the purpose of post- 

 mortem examinations. In Central Middlesex this plan has now 

 been carried out in many instances, and has met with little or no 

 opposition from the relatives of the dead, and hence the saving of 

 much inconvenience to the medical witnesses and of time to the juries. 

 The same clauses of the Sanitary Act, 1866, give power to the 

 vestries to build mortuaries, or dead-houses, for the reception of 

 the dead. If these places were built independent of the work- 

 house, and fitted up with regard to the solemn feelings inspired by 

 death, and made architecturally pleasing to the eye, there is little 

 doubt that large numbers even of the wealthier classes would have 

 recourse to them for the purpose of depositing their dead before 

 burial. Such places should be sufficiently large to receive all the 

 dead of the district in which they exist, and should have a room 

 attached for post-mortem examinations, and another larger room in 

 which the coroner and his jury might assemble. The place should 

 be taken care of by persons who should keep everything scrupu- 

 lously clean, and disinfectants should be applied to the dead bodies 

 in all cases where the slightest effluvium is emitted. Such places 

 might easily be erected on the shut-up burial-grounds throughout 

 London, and would be alike beneficial to public health and credit- 

 able to our civilization. 



The prospects of Sanitary Legislation for 1867 are almost 

 entirely confined to the passing of the Metropolitan Poor Act of 

 1867. The progress, however, of this Bill has been so satisfactory 

 that there is now every reason to hope that it will speedily become 

 law. It has long been apparent that the present constitution of 

 our workhouses and then management by the Guardians of the 

 Poor, however desirous the latter might be of doing their duty by 

 the poor, were open to great scandal. The principal object of the 

 Guardians was to keep down the expenditure of the rates, and as 

 long as this object was attained they cared little for the welfare 

 of the poor. Although subject to the control of the Poor Law 

 Board, that body has always been kept at arm's length by the 

 Guardians, and it was only the investigations of the coroner's 

 court penetrating the interior of the workhouses in London, that 

 at last brought to light the mismanagement and neglect that 



