PARK AND CEMETERY 
19 
FOUNDATIONS FOR MONUMENTS. 
The faulty construction of foundations under country 
monuments when the work has been done by unscrupulous 
stone dealers has been the cause of much of the disfigure- 
ment in the older cemeteries. To provide against this, mod- 
ern cemeteries, build all foundations uniform in depth and at 
a fixed rate of charges. Lake View Cemetery, Cleveland, 
O., has recently issued a neatly printed booklet giving the 
rules of that cemetery governing headstones, monuments, 
vaults, etc., and some interesting thoughts on the subject 
compiled from various sources. The accompanying illustra- 
tion and the following extracts are taken from the booklet: 
FOUNDATION FOR GRAVESTONE, EAKEVIEW CEMETERY, 
CUEVEUAND. 
Headstones shall not exceed fourteen inches in height 
above the ground. 
All erections known as head or foot boards are pro- 
hibited. 
Headstones will be set by the cemetery association upon 
a concrete foundation of a depth equal to the depth of the 
grave and finished at a point one foot below the surface of 
the lawn. 
Headstones shall have a stub one foot beneath the surface 
of the lawn and shall be dressed square upon the bottom, 
i. e., shall have a level bottom bed. 
The charge for building a foundation and setting a head- 
stone shall be $5, payable in advance. 
No monuments or vault above ground will be allowed un- 
less the specifications, plans and location will be first sub- 
mitted to and approved by the executive committee. (The 
committee meets monthly.) 
Foundation for all monuments and vaults shall be built by 
the Cemetery association. They shall be at least six feet in 
depth and of the same size as the lower base of the super- 
structure, and finished two inches below the level of the 
ground at its lowest point. 
The charge for building a foundation shall be thirty 
cents per cubic foot, payable in advance. 
Landmarks or corner stones indicating the boundaries 
of lots shall be set by the superintendentt and shall not be 
moved or altered except upon his order. The charge for 
setting corner stones shall be $1.00 for four stones or les§, 
and they shall be set even with the surface of the ground. 
No fences within the cemetery, either wood or iron, nor 
ccping or curbing of brick or stone will be permitted. 
GRASS UNDER TREES, 
To keep grass green under trees where it does not grow 
readily, Mr. Wm. Salway, superintendent of Spring Grove 
Cemetery, Cincinnati, O., suggests digging up the surface 
of the ground, and sowing English rye grass seed mixed 
with a little red top. Water until about three inches high. 
LIABILITY FOR REMOVAL OF BODY, 
The supreme judicial court of Maine holds, January 29, 
1901, that it is not only the duty of a husband to provide 
a suitable place for the burial of the body of his deceased wife, 
but that he unquestionably has the paramount right to de- 
termine upon the place of her burial. However, when that 
duty has been performed, and the body has been buried 
in the lot of another with the consent both of the husband 
and of the owner of the lot, the husband, the court goes 
on to state, does not have the right, without the consent of 
the lot owner, to enter thereon and remove the body. A dead 
body, after burial, becomes a part of the ground to which it 
has been committed; and an action of trespass may be main- 
who disturbs the grave and removes the bodies, so long, at 
tained by the owner of the lot, in possession, against one 
least, as the cemetery continues to be used as a place of 
burial. Yet under some circumstances a court of equity, 
which, in this country, where there are no ecclesiastical 
courts, ha-s jurisdiction of controversies relative to the place 
of burial of a dead body, may permit a husband to remove 
the body of his deceased wife from the lot of land to another, 
as where the burial was not with the intention or under- 
standing that it should be her final resting place. The case 
before the court, of Pulsifer against Douglass, was in the na- 
ture of an action of trespass to recover damages for an al- 
leged unlawful entry upon the cemetery lot of the party suing, 
and the removal therefrom of the body of her sister, which 
had been buried therein about a month prior to the disin- 
terment. The burial in the lot was apparently with the con- 
sent of the husband. The disinterment and removal were 
done by the party sued for damages, at the request of the 
husband. Under these circumstances, and upon the princi- 
ples of law above stated, the court holds that the party sued 
was liable for a technical trespass, at least, notwithstanding 
he was acting at the request of the husband. At the same 
time, being convinced by the evidence that the removal of the 
body to another place of burial proceeded with due propriety 
and decency, and inasmuch as the body was removed for 
' and at the request of the husband, the court holds that it 
was not a case for the allowance of smart money, but that 
the award should be confined to actual damages, measured by 
the injuries done to the lot, which it assesses at $20. 
AN OBSOLETE CUSTOM, 
A correspondent writes that the undertakers in his 
vicinity are absolute in their rule that the heads of all graves 
must be toward the west, and desires to know whether such 
a rule is generally observed. The custom of burying the 
dead with heads to the west is an obsolete one, in all modern 
cemeteries, and was long since discarded. 
Mr. Charles Broadway Rouss, the blind millionaire mer- 
chant of New York, recently offered to give $10,000 to the 
Mt. Hebron Cemetery Co., of Winchester, Va., towards a 
receiving vault provided the company would raise a like 
amount The proposition met with an immediate acceptance 
and plans are now being considered for a $20,000 chapel, 
receiving vault and lodge. Mr. Rouss has a $50,000 mau- 
soleum in the cemetery and a large soldiers’ monument 
standing near it was also erected by him. 
Funeral reform is now agitating the London newspapers. 
At the cemetery obsequies of the late Rev. Alfred Cave, 
D. D., the following printed notification was handed to the 
mourners at the graveside: “The family specially request 
that gentlemen will not stand by the grave with uncovered 
heads. It is the last thing he would have wished.” An 
exchange says the particular afternoon was bleak and wet 
and the family’s appeal had a timely significance. The 
press reports made the incident a feature and genera 
adoption of the reform is urged on hygienic grounds. 
