THE CEMETERY, NOW CALLED THE NECROPOLIS, AT EVERTON
 

     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.