BURIAL GROUNDS.
REPORT OF THE MEDICAL OFFICER OF HEALTH.
AT A MEETING OF THE HEALTH COMMITTEE, HELD ON THURSDAY, THE 4TH DAY OF JULY, 1878

AT a Meeting of the Health Committee held on April 11th, 1878, it was resolved that the Medical Officer of Health and Borough Engineer report as to the burial grounds in the borough which have not been ordered to be wholly or partly closed, with such particulars as will enable the Health Committee to consider the advisability of recommending the Council to apply for an order in Council to close the same.

     In accordance with the above Resolution, the Medical Officer respectfully reports that he has visited the Cemeteries and most of the burial grounds attached to Churches and Chapels, and appends a table of the number of interments in each ground, which gives an annual average of 2,290, comprising 71 in burial grounds attached to Churches and Chapels, and 2,219 in Cemeteries.
     The Cemeteries are so well known that it is not necessary to give any description of them; but it may be observed that they are kept in excellent order, and that as far as possible every precaution is taken to prevent a nuisance. However favourably situated the Cemeteries may have been when first laid out, they are now surrounded by dense populations, St Mary's and the Necropolis having dwelling-houses adjoining the walls; and it must be admitted that on various considerations, independently of their presumed injurious effect upon health, interments under such conditions should cease. What is stated of the Cemeteries applies with greater force to the burial grounds attached to churches and Chapels; and though the interments in each may be few, yet, taken in the aggregate they become a considerable number, and the opening of new raves in some of the grounds is perpetuating an objectionable practice. When the application for the orders now in force was made, the population of the Borough was 375,955, giving 72 per acre, whilst this year, 1878, the population is 532,681, giving 102 persons per acre, or, excluding the Dock area, 119 per acre. This increase affords strong reasons for the further lessening of the number of interments, and the gradual closing of all intra-mural burial grounds.
     Though there may be some difficulty in directly proving a nuisance to have arisen from the practice as now conducted, yet it is as certain that a deleterious gas has escaped into the atmosphere as that the bodies have wasted or disappeared, and where the graveyards and streets are paved the morbific matter must be diffused through the subsoil and escape with the drainage. Allowing ten years as the usual period for the perfect decomposition of human remains, the annual interment of 2,290 bodies will represent 22,900 bodies constantly decaying in the vicinity of the dwellings of the living, and the injurious effect of such a process for one moment be doubted.
     The Commission appointed to inquire into the practice of interments in towns arrived as the following conclusion: - "That inasmuch as there appear to be no cases in which the emanations from human remains in an advanced state of decomposition are not of a deleterious nature, so there is no case in which the liability to danger should be incurred either by interment (or by entombment in vaults, which is the most dangerous), amidst the dwellings of the living, it being established as a general conclusion in respect to the physical circumstances of interments, from which no adequate grounds of exception have been established: - That all interments in towns, where bodies decompose, contribute to the mass of atmospheric impurity which is injurious to the public health."

BURIAL GROUNDS ATTACHED TO CHURCHES AND CHAPELS IN WHICH THERE HAVE BEEN INTERMENTS DURING THE LAST TEN YEARS.
Churches and Chapels. Where Situated.

No of Interments during last ten years.

 REMARKS.
Ancient Chapel Park Road

126

  
Christ Church Hunter Street

12

 All in family graves. No notice given.
Holy Trinity St Anne Street 23 All in family graves.
St Anne's Overbury Street 38  
St George's Heyworth Street 111  
St James' St James' Place 92  
St Michael's Pitt Street 111 All in family graves.
St Mary's Edge Hill 177  
St Philip's Hardman Street 1 By permission of Privy Council.
St Thomas' Park Lane 2  
Wesleyan Chapel Stanhope Street 1 By permission of Privy Council.
Unitarian Chapel Renshaw Street 11 No notice given.
St Anthony's Scotland Road 1 Interred in a vault

INTERMENTS IN CEMETERIES.
Cemeteries No of Interments during 1867. No of Interments during last ten years. REMARKS.
Necropolis 1196   In public graves, 644. In family graves & vaults, 482. New graves sold, 53. New vaults sold, 8.                   Burials in new graves about 70.
St Mary's 379   52 new graves last year
St James'   6231  
Jews' (Deane Road)   216  

BURIAL GROUNDS IN WHICH THERE HAVE BEEN NO INTERMENTS DURING THE LAST TEN YEARS.
Fabius Chapel Everton Road.
Wesleyan Chapel Moss Street.
St Anne's Richmond Row.
St Andrew's Renshaw Street.
St John's St John's Lane.
St Martin's-in-the-Fields Silvester Street.
St Mark's Upper Duke Street.
St Nicholas' Copperas Hill.
St Peter's Seel Street.
St Patrick's Park Place.
St Peter's Church Street.
St Paul's St Paul's Square.
Scotch Church Oldham Street.
Congregational Chapel Great George Street.
All Saints All Saints' Lane
Friends' Cemetery Hunter Street.
Jews' Cemetery Upper Frederick Street.

J STOPFORD TAYLOR,

Medical Officer of Health.
MUNICIPAL OFFICES,
            May 13th, 1878.