3o8 



LIFE IN MONTREAL 



[Chap. VII. 



the city statutes in the previous summer. The Roman Catholic 

 Fabrique being in want of money, owing to the rebuilding of a 

 church, their agent in 1867 offered for sale the ground of the 

 Catholic Cemetery in Dorchester Street, which had been disused 

 since 1854. "The bones (unless otherwise made away with) were 

 carted in loads to the Cote des Neiges Cemetery : the putrid 

 matter from the only partially decomposed bodies, and the soil 

 saturated with it, after having been exposed to the sun, were 

 buried in the same ground, which was thus supposed to be 

 prepared for building lots ; while the coffin-boards were piled 

 on the surface to dry. These piles were afterwards burnt on 

 the spot ; but the stench from this process produced such 

 remonstrances from the neighbours that the police were obliged 

 to interfere : " they were removed to the lowest part of the city ; 

 and some of them being used for cooking purposes, many 

 cases of sickness were the result. The Committee brought 

 the matter before the Recorder's Court. The burnings were 

 stopped ; and so was the exhumation, during the summer 

 months; but it was resumed in the autumn. In 1869, the 

 Association recommended the purchase of the ground by the 

 city. In 1870, they reported that " the old Catholic Cemetery 

 is still on sale for building lots, although one purchaser on 

 digging a foundation was obliged to desist from the violence of 

 the stench. . . . The [city] Council authorized a Committee to 

 treat for the purchase of it, but nothing was done ; the attention 

 of the public being engrossed by plans for parks in the out- 

 skirts. . . . Breathing places in the city are far more important 

 to health than parks outside it, although there is no reason why 

 we should not have both. The land being already offered for 

 building lots, and the locality being tempting, it behoves the 

 Council to move in the matter without delay, if they would save 

 us from the danger of a pestilence. Most of the cholera 

 corpses were interred here. One of the most virulent attacks 

 of cholera in London occurred where the ground of an ancient 

 cemetery had been opened. * In Bristol, the plague broke out 



* Philip afterwards wrote: — "The Golden Square cholera epidemic 

 was traced to the water which had percolated from a burial-place unused 

 for more than a century." 



