1 87 1.] THE CATHOLIC CEMETERY, 309 



afresh on opening the land where the corpses had been buried 

 fifty years before." 



In the last Report, 187 1, it is recorded that, owing to the 

 stench from fresh exhalations, " the Secretary [Philip], assisted 

 by Mr. S. J. Lyman, set on foot a requisition to the Mayor, 

 requesting him to call a public meeting of the inhabitants to 

 consider the propriety of purchasing the ground for a public 

 square. This requisition was headed by the Metropolitan, the 

 two last ex-Mayors, several of the most distinguished clergy, 

 physicians, and other leading citizens, and in three days 

 received nearly 900 signatures, representing all our nationalities 

 and religious bodies." This public meeting was crowded, and 

 the resolutions were passed unanimously : the Mayor promised 

 to convene a special meeting of the Council, and at length the 

 ground was purchased, enclosed, and planted : it is called 

 Dominion Square.* This desirable object was greatly pro- 

 moted by the newspapers : " The Canadian Illustrated News " 

 had several pictures, from time to time, revealing the horrors of 

 the excavations. Philip's name does not appear amongst those 

 who moved the resolutions at the meeting ; but he was made 

 Secretary of the Citizens' Committee, and it was greatly owing 

 to his energy and persistence through many years that the 

 Council were compelled to take action. At one of the meetings 

 at which he had been rousing public indignation, a medical 

 gentleman, who had purchased one of the lots, sarcastically 

 inquired whether he were a doctor of medicine, since he seemed 

 to speak with such authority on questions of health ! Philip 

 replied that he had been a sanitary worker for a long period, 

 and his experience was that those whose profession it was to 

 heal diseases had not, as a body, been prominent in the pre- 

 vention of disease. In 1875, ne wrote to the President of the 



* The conduct of the Fabrique was contrasted with that ' 'of the owners 

 of the Emigrants' Fever Cemetery at Point St. Charles. They not only 

 railed it in, and erected a monument at their own expense, but they trans- 

 ferred the ownership to the Metropolitan, that it may remain consecrated 

 for ever to the memory of the six thousand victims of the Irish famine 

 and fever of 1847-8, who hoped to have made Canada their home, but who 

 set foot on our snores only to die." 



