390 
PARK AND C EM ET ER Y. 
isfactory city cemeteries and making the 
others less necessary. 
The methods of organizing or controll- 
ing a publicly owned cemetery are usually 
quite simple and need no explanation. The 
management of the park department in our 
large cities can be taken as an example. 
The power may be invested in a commis- 
sioner, in the case of commission govern- 
ment (in which event the commissioner of 
parks is usually the man) ; in a commit- 
tee of the city council, or in a board of 
commissioners composed of three or five 
lay citizens, appointed by the mayor, as a 
rule, which commission is usually com- 
posed of persons especially interested in 
the subject, and is reasonably free from 
party political influence. This plan of a 
cemetery commission has proven very sat- 
isfactory and offers a field of usefulness 
and activity for women with the desire to 
be of public service. Directly in charge of 
the cemetery is the superintendent, who is 
responsible to the commission or commis- 
sioner, and the extent of whose duties 
varies according to the size and character 
of the grounds. 
In the case of a cemetery owned by a 
corporation the superintendent is responsi- 
ble to the officers or directors. In such 
cemeteries the incorporators are usually 
citizens of the community where the ceme- 
tery is established. They may consider 
A MODERN CEMETERY, SHOWING THE 
RESULTS OF CAREFUL ARRANGEMENT 
AND CARE. 
themselves amply repaid by the mere ex- 
istence of satisfactory burial arrange- 
ments or they may expect a reasonable 
return for the time and capital re- 
quired. In other cases the arrangement 
may be more co-operative or mutual, each 
lot owner having a voice in the manage- 
ment or election of trustees, and the land 
sold at a price only great enough to cover 
the expenses of development and main- 
tenance, and provide a fund for perpetual 
care. 
To discuss further the details of the or- 
ganization of corporations or companies 
and methods of procuring the capital would 
be only starting on a large subject and one 
open to much discussion. 
Another class of cemetery really mutual 
in effect is that owned by societies or 
lodges or churches, the Catholic church be- 
ing a good example. Modern methods of 
arrangement and care are often used in 
these, but the tendency, especially in lodges, 
is toward acquiring tracts in larger ceme- 
teries, where the burden of management 
will be shifted. 
EVOLUTION OF THE LONDON BURIAL GROUNDS 
Address by W. A. Cochrane, Superintendent of the HamJ>stead Cemetery, London, at the 
First Annual Congress of the United Kingdom Association of Cemetery Superintendents. 
The first evidence we have of the estab- 
lishment of a cemetery is at the period 
when the Romans first colonized England. 
Indications of vast Roman cemeteries have 
been discovered in various parts of Lon- 
don, and when the city was confined with- 
in the city walls we find that the Romans 
established cemeteries by the roadsides 
leading to the various city gates. Burial 
within the city was prohibited, as the laws 
of the Twelve Tables expressly forbid 
burning or the burial of any dead body in 
any town or settlement. This law was, 
however, general to other nations of an- 
tiquity. 
In the district now known to us as Spital- 
fields, when digging for pot-clay, many 
years ago, urns of various kinds were dug 
up full of ashes and burnt bones ; there 
were also discovered stone coffins with 
bones in them — the remains probably of 
early Britons and Saxons — and some skulls 
and skeletons without coffins, the wood of 
which, it was conjectured, had long' since 
disappeared. 
In 1787 great numbers of urns were dug 
up at about seven feet below the surface 
in Goodman’s Fields, which derives it name 
from one Goodman, who had a farm here 
in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. Stow, in 
his “Survey of London,” states, “at which 
farm I myself (in my youth) have fetched 
many a half-pennyworth of milk, and never 
had less than three ale-pints for a half- 
penny in summer, nor less than one ale- 
quart for a halfpenny in winter, always 
hot from the cow, as the same was milked 
and strained.” All that is now left to 
commemorate this wayside country farm is 
Goodman’s Stile and Goodman’s Yard, 
Stepney. 
Here, also, was found a small monu- 
mental stone, with an inscription declaring 
it to have been erected by his wife to a 
soldier of the Sixth Legion; another sim- 
ilar stone, inscribed to a soldier of the 
Twenty-fourth Legion, was found in 1776 
in a small burial ground at the lower end 
of Whitechapel Lane. These monumental 
stones probably mark the site of Roman 
burial grounds used by the garrison of the 
fort which stood on the site of the Tower 
of London. 
When Sir Christopher Wren was rebuild- 
ing St. Paul's Cathedral, after the great fire 
of London in 1666, he discovered, when 
excavating for the foundation, evidence of 
a vast cemetery. At a short distance from 
the surface were the graves of the Saxons 
lined with chalk stones, or in coffins of 
hollowed out stones ; beneath these were the 
bodies of Britons, placed in rows with 
quantities of ivory or wooden pins of a 
hard wood, about six inches long ; these 
were used to fasten the shrouds in w'hich 
the bodies were wrapped ; and at a greater 
depth, about fifteen feet from the surface, 
were found Roman urns and remains, thus 
indicating that old St. Paul’s had been built 
upon a very ancient cemetery, in which not 
only successive generations but successive 
races had deposited their dead. In more 
modern years the churchyard, though much 
encroached upon and taken to enlarge the 
street around St. Paul’s, was until recent 
times the burial ground for the parishes of 
St. Faith’s and St. Augustine’s, the latter 
being united to that of St. Faith’s after 
the great fire ; here, until a few years ago, 
interments were a daily occurrence. 
After the wihdrawal of the Romans from 
Britain and the gradual conversion of the 
Saxons to Christianity, the growing pros- 
perity caused the erection of churches, and 
the practice of burying within the church 
or in the immediate neighborhood origi- 
nated first with the burial of St. Augus- 
tine under the portico of Canterbury Ca- 
thedral ; the succeeding prelates to St. Au- 
gustine were all buried in the same spot. 
Such practices, once commenced in cases 
of a few, were sure to be extended to the 
many. For even when the superstitious be- 
lief held by the early Christians, that the 
emanations from the bodies of saints exer- 
cised a peculiar virtue upon all those who 
lay near them, had died away, there still 
remained that influence that often per- 
suades the friends of the deceased in the 
selection of the grave at the present time, 
in spite of the many difficulties and disad- 
vantages. 
In the very early days, the burial within 
the church was only for a chosen few, as 
those whose rank, or intellectual, moral, or 
religious qualifications warranted it ; this 
permission was gradually extended to those 
who could or were able to pay the heavy 
ecclesiastical fees levied by the church au- 
thorities for this privilege. 
Before the great fire of London, in 1666, 
there were, within the city proper, ninety- 
eight parish churches, nearly all of which 
have burial grounds; of these only thirteen 
