’475 
PARIS, 
dead.” Mr. Thickneffe was miftaken in one point; there 
was no intermediate earth between the layers of the 
coffins : they were clofely packed, one tier above another, 
in pits thirty feet deep and twenty fquare, and, when the 
pit was full, it was covered with a layer of foil, not more 
than a foot in thicknefs. Thefe foffes communes were 
emptied once in thirty or forty years, and the bones de- 
pofited in what was called Le Grand C’tarnier des Innocens, 
an arched gallery, which furrounded the burial-place, 
having been erected at different times, as a work of piety, 
by different citizens, whole names, and foinetimes their 
efcutcheons, were placed upon the parts which they had 
founded. One of thefe pits, which was intended to con¬ 
tain two thoufand bodies, having been opened in 1779, 
the inhabitants of the adjoining ftreets prefented a me¬ 
morial to the lieutenant-general of the police ; they dated 
that the foil of the burial-ground was railed more than 
eight feet above the level of the ftreets and the ground- 
floor of the adjacent houfes, and reprefented that ferious 
confequences had been experienced in the cellars of fome 
of the houfes. The evil indeed was now become fo great, 
that it could not longer be borne. The laft grave-digger, 
Frangois Pontraci, had, by his own regifter, in lefs than 
thirty years depofited more than 90,000 bodies in that 
cemetery: for many years the average number of inter¬ 
ments there had been not lefs than 3000 ; and of thefe 
from 150 to 200 at the utmoft were all that had feparate 
graves: the reft were laid in the common trenches, which 
were ufually made to hold from 12 to 1500 ! It was cal¬ 
culated that lince the time of Philip Auguftus 1,200,000 
bodies had been interred there; and it had been in ufe as 
a cemetery many ages before his time. 
A memorial upon the ill effects which had arifen, and 
the worfe confequences which might be expefted to arife, 
from the conftant accumulation of putrefcence, was read 
before the Royal Academy of Sciences, in 1783, by M. 
Cadet deVaux, who held the ufeful office of Infpedleur 
General des Objets de Salubrity. The Council of State 
in 1785 decreed, that the cemetery fliould be cleared of its 
dead, and converted into a market-place, after the canoni¬ 
cal forms which were requifite in fuch cafes fliould have 
been obferved : the archbifhop, in conformity, ifl'ued a 
decree for the fuppreffion, demolition, and evacuation, of 
the cemetery, directing that the bones and bodies fliould 
be removed to the new fubterranean cemetery of the Plaine 
de Mont Rouge, and appointing one of his vicars-general 
to draw up the proces-verbal of the exhumation, removal, 
and re-interment j and the Royal Society of Medicine ap¬ 
pointed a committee to explain the plans which fhould be 
prefented for this extraordinary operation, and to fuperin- 
tend a work as interefting to men of fcience as it would 
have been ffiocking to common fpedfators. 
It fortunately happened that there was no difficulty in 
finding a proper receptacle for the remains thus difin- 
terred. “ No great fliock is wanting,” fays Prudhomme, 
“ to throw down all the ftones of Paris into the place 
from whence they were quarried. The towers and domes 
and fteeples are fo many figns which tell tire beholder, 
that whatever he fees above his head has been taken 
from under his feet.” The quarries had been worked 
from time immemorial without any fyftem, every man 
working where he would and as he would, till it became 
dangerous to work them farther ; and it was only known 
as a popular tradition that they extended under great 
part of the city, till the year 1774, when fome alarming 
accidents roufed the attention of the government. They 
were then properly furveyed, and plans of them taken ; and 
the refult was the frightful difeovery, that the churches, 
palaces, and moft of the fouthern parts of Paris, were un¬ 
dermined, and in imminent danger of finking into the pit 
below them. A fpecial commiffion was appointed to di¬ 
rect fuch works as might be required. The neceffity of 
the undertaking was frightfully fliown the very day that 
the commiffion was inftalled,—ahoufein the Rue d’Enfer 
having that day funk down eight and twenty metres 
below the level of its court-yard ! Engineers were now 
employed to examine the whole of the quarries, and prop 
the ftreets, roads, churches, palaces, and buildings of all 
kinds, which were in danger of being engulphed ! One 
fet of workmen were employed in this curious fervice; 
another in exploring the labyrinth of excavations, fome 
of which were under the others, and opening galleries 
between them, that the extent of the peril might be known ; 
and, to prevent future evils of the fame kind, all the quar¬ 
ries which were ftill in ufe in the environs of Paris were 
placed under the infpeftion of the commiffioners, that 
they might be worked upon fome fafe fyftem. Never had 
any men a more arduous or more important commiffion ! 
The pillars which had been left by the quarriers in their 
blind operations, without any regularity, were in many 
places too weak for the enormous weight above, and in 
moft places had themfelves been undermined, or perhaps 
originally ftood upon ground which had previoufly been 
hollowed. In fome inftances they had given way ; in 
others the roof had dipt and threatened to fall; in others 
great maffes had fallen in. The great aqueduft of Ar- 
cueil paffed over this treacherous'ground ; it had already 
fullered fome (hocks, and, if the quarries had continued to 
be neglected, an accident mull looner or later have hap¬ 
pened to this water-courfe, which would have cut off the 
fupply from the fountains of Paris, and have filled the 
excavations with water. •» 
Such was the ftate of the quarries when the commiffion 
was appointed in i777,underM. Charles Axel Guillaumot 
as inipedlor general. The thought of converting them 
into a necropolis originated with M. Lenoir, lieutenant- 
general of the police; and the propofal for removing the 
dead from the Innocents was the more eafily entertained, 
becaufe a receptacle fo convenient, and fo unexceptionable 
in all refpedls, was ready to receive them. That part of the 
quarries under the Plaine de Mont-Souris U'as allotted for 
this purpofe, a houfe known by the name of La Tombe 
Ifoire, or Ifouard, (from a famous robber, who once infefted 
that neighbourhood,) on the old road to Orleans, was pur- 
chafed, with a piece of ground adjoining; and the firft ope¬ 
rations were to make an entrance into the quarries by a 
flight of feventy-feven fteps, (the depth being feventeen 
metres,) and to fink a well from the furface, down which 
the bones might be thrown. Meantime the workmen 
below walled off that part of the quarries which was de- 
figned for the great charnel houfe, opened a communica¬ 
tion between the upper and lower vaults, and built pillars 
to prop the roof. When all thefe neceflary preliminaries 
had been completed, the ceremony of bleffing and confe- 
crating the intended Catacombs was performed with great 
folemnity, on the 7th of April, 1786; and on that fame 
day the removal from the great charnel-houfe began. 
This work was always performed at evening; the bones 
were brought in funeral cars, covered with a pall, with 
priefts in their furplices following and finging the fervice 
of the dead. 
The removal of the bones from the Holy Innocents 
was continued during the cooler months, while another 
fet of workmen was preparing the quarries to receive 
them ; and the bufinefs ol exhumation was completed in 
January 1788. The utmoft order prevailed in carrying 
on the different works, the arrangements of which fre¬ 
quently prefented a truly pidiurefque appearance. The 
vaft number of flambeaux and of rows of torches which 
were every wdiere burning, and Ihed a dim funereal light 
around the furrounding objects; croffes, tombs, and 
epitaphs, intermingled; the filence of the night; the 
thick cloud of fmoke that concealed the place where the 
labourers were at work, w'hofe operations could not be 
diftinguilhed, and who appeared to flit along like ffia- 
dows ; the various ruins caufed by the pulling down of 
edifices; the fubverfion of the foil in confequence of the 
exhumations; all together formed a feene moltimpreffively 
awful, The folemnity of the fpeftacle was augmented 
by religious ceremonies j by the conveyance of coffins; 
by 
