PARK AND CEMETERY. 
391 
escaped the general havoc which was made 
by the conflagration. Of the churches de- 
stroyed, eighty-five in number, fifty were 
rebuilt, and the remaining parishes were 
united to parishes with churches. 
During the Great Plague, 1665, the burial 
of the dead was a most fearful and diffi- 
the available space was well-nigh exhausted. 
The control exercised by the then burial 
authority in the management of these 
grounds appears to be absolutely nil. The 
sexton seems- to have practically pleased 
himself. He was not subjected to any 
rules, regulations or acts of Parliament as 
295 feet by 379 feet, 14,000 bodies were 
buried in ten years. 
A chapel situated in St. Clement's Lane, 
surrounded by houses, had a cellar sixty 
feet by twenty-nine feet by six feet deep, 
which was used as a burying place. The 
entrance to this cellar was from the inside 
LOOKING TOWARD CHAPEL AND RECEIVING VAULT, CITY OB’ LAWN VIEW, CITY" OP LONDON CEMETERY’. 
LONDON CEMETERY’. 
cult task ; to relieve the churchyards, plague 
pits were established in various districts 
around London for the burial of persons 
dying from this dreadful disease. De Foe, 
in his ‘‘History of the Plague of London," 
gives a graphic description and harrowing 
details of the condition of London at this 
period. Out of a population of 384,000 per- 
sons, 97,306 funerals took place in the year 
1665, of which 68,596 were deaths from 
the plague. This disease was supposed to 
have been imported from Holland, whither 
it had been transported from Egypt in 
some merchandise ; it is said that the first 
death took place in the parish of St. Giles- 
in-the-Fields. 
In previous years there had been visita- 
tions of the plague, which was fatal to a 
number of persons, as in the year 1592 
there were 11,503 deaths from the plague 
with a population of 25,886; in 1593, 10,662 
deaths with a population of 17,844; 1603, 
30.567 deaths with a population of 37,294 ; 
1625, 35,417 deaths with a population of 
51,758; 1636, 10,460 deaths with a popula- 
tion of 23,359. 
The fire of London, though destroying a 
great amount of property and rendering- 
homeless large numbers of persons, thor- 
oughly stamped out this highly dangerous 
disease. 
As London extended into the suburbs 
new churches were built and churchyards 
and burial grounds were established, and 
even allowing for the provision of these 
new burial grounds, the proper capacity was 
often exceeded, and in some of the grounds 
regards to burials taking place in the 
ground under his care, consequently no 
laws were broken. It was possible for any- 
one to establish a burying ground without 
let or hindrance, and a number were estab- 
lished as private speculations; every Dis- 
senting meeting house had its own burial 
ground, and anything in the shape of a cel 
lar was converted into catacombs and 
vaults. From the lax way in which the 
burial of the dead was permitted to take 
place, it was only to be expected that the 
condition of the various places of inter- 
ment degenerated into a scandal too shock- 
ing and revolting to contemplate, and con- 
sidering the very great increase in the pop- 
ulation, and that only a very few of the 
burial grounds exceeded one acre in ex- 
tent, there was, as I have already stated, 
hardly any room left for a burial to take 
place in a decent manner, and the only way 
in which further accommodations could be 
provided was by removing the previous in- 
terments, or the disposal of the remains in 
some other way. 
Parliament at last took notice of the ex- 
isting conditions of these burial grounds, 
and on the 8th of March, 1842, appointed 
a committee to inquire into the whole sub- 
ject. Without going too deeply into the evi- 
dence given before the committee, I will 
only give one of two instances, described in 
the daily papers of that time as “sickening 
and horrible.” 
In a burial ground owned by an under- 
taker named Martin, which only measured 
of the chapel by a trap-door. The rafters 
supporting the floor were not even covered 
with the usual lathe and plaster. In this 
place alone twelve thousand bodies were 
deposited, not one of which had been 
placed in a lead shell. One can only im- 
agine the condition and state of this build- 
ing. 
So much for the privately owned places 
of burial. 
The evidence given by a Mr. W. Cham- 
berlain before the committee was as fol- 
lows : 
“I was first employed by Air. Watkins, 
the head gravedigger of St. Clement’s 
Churchyard, Strand. From that time till 
the year 1836 I never opened a grave with- 
out coming into either coffins of children, 
grown persons, and what we term odd 
sizes, which we have been obliged to cut 
away, the ground being so excessively full 
that we could not make a grave without 
doing it. It was done by the order of Mr. 
Watkins and Mr. Fitch, the sexton of the 
parish, that these coffins should be chopped 
up, and the wood placed against the walls 
and the palings of the ground. We have 
come to bodies quite perfect, and we have 
cut away with choppers and pickaxes. We 
have opened lids of coffins, and the bodies 
have been so perfect that we could distin- 
guish the males from females, and all these 
have been chopped and cut up." 
The practice related in this particular in- 
stance in general to nearly all the other 
burial grounds of this great city of Lon- 
