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THE CEMETERY, NOW CALLED THE NECROPOLIS, AT EVERTON |
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On Tuesday, the 1st of
February, 1825, the new cemetery, at the top of Brunswick-road, was
opened to the public, and the body of the late Mrs Martha Hope, sister
to Mr William Hope, of Hope-street, Liverpool, in compliance with the
earnest wish she had repeatedly expressed before her decease, was
interred there. This being the first interment in the cemetery, the Rev
Dr Raffles, in compliance with the invitation of the committee, gave an
address, explanatory of the intentions of the proprietors in providing
this very important addition to the existing depositories for the dead;
and the Rev Moses Fisher afterwards conducted the funeral service. |
Notwithstanding the very unfavourable state
of the weather, and the privacy with which it was the wish of the family
of the deceased that the funeral offices should be performed, a large
concourse of persons was assembled, including the committee, and a great
proportion of the proprietors, who attended in mourning. |
The Rev Doctor's address was extremely
appropriate and judicious. After pointing out the evils attendant on the
crowded state of our church-yards, and other places of sepulture in the
town, and remarking on the manifest impropriety of interring bodies in
the interior of places of worship, the doctor adverted, amongst other
advantages proffered in the new cemetery, to the circumstances of every
denomination of Christian being at liberty either to inter in it
with the use of their own ritual, or to dispense with forms altogether;
and to the equal liberty given to all, either to make use of the
services of the resident chaplain or registrar, or to employ their own
minister: he especially pointed out the precautions taken by the
committee of management effectually to preserve the sanctuary of the
dead from violation, and their determination to render the undertaking,
in all its arrangements, as to the laying out of the ground, the exact
register of every interment in it, and the minor but important
regulations of the establishment, worthy of the attention of the passing
stranger, and of general adoption in similar institutions. He concluded
by endeavouring to raise the views of his audience from these secular
considerations to others of a more exalted character, directing their
contemplations to that solemn scene when every one who should be
interred there should, with an assembled world, stand before the Judge
of all, there to hear his final doom, according to the deeds done in the
body, whether good or evil. |
The area of the ground allotted to burials
includes about five statute, about one-half of which will be
appropriated to graves, and the other to vaults. Besides these, the
entire area (within the walls) will be surrounded by family sepulchres,
enclosed in a covered aisle, with a front of masonry corresponding with
the style of the chapel and the residence of the chaplain, and relieved
by iron railings at the openings. This covered aisle not only renders
security doubly sure, but it will afford ample scope for the exercise of
ingenuity and good taste in the erection of sepulchral monuments, and
other memorials of the virtues and excellencies of departed friends. The
whole establishment is vested in twenty-one trustees. |
LIVERPOOL MERCURY, 1st February,
1825. |
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