Intramural burial is an evil, no doubt, that varies in its intensity according to the numbers interred; becoming appreciable in its effects on health, so far as the rough measure of statistics can inform us, only when many interments occur annually, or when ground is disturbed wherein much animal matter had previously been left to decay. But, be the evil large or little in any particular case, evil undoubtedly it is in all, and an unmitigated evil.
The atmosphere in which epidemic and infectious diseases most readily diffuse their poison and multiply their victims is one, as I have already often stated, in which organic matters are undergoing decomposition. Whence these may be derived signifies little. Whether the matter passing into decay be an accumulation of soaking straw and cabbage leaves in some miserable cellar, or the garbage of a slaughter-house, or an overflowing cesspool, or dead dogs floated at high water into the mouth of a sewer, or stinking fish thrown overboard in Billingsgate-dock, or the remains of human corpses undergoing their last chemical changes in consecrated earth, the previous history of the decomposed material is of no moment whatever. The pathologist knows no difference of operation between one decaying substance and another; so soon as he recognises organic matter undergoing decomposition, so soon he recognises the most fertile soil for the increase of epidemic diseases; and I may state with certainty, that there are many churchyards in the City of London where every spadeful of soil turned up in burial sensibly adds to the amount of animal decomposition which advances too often inevitably around us.
Nor can I refrain from adding, as a matter claiming attention, that, in the performance of intramural interment, there constantly occur disgusting incidents dependent on overcrowdedness of the burial-ground; incidents which convert the extremest solemnity of religion into an occasion for sickness or horror; perhaps mingling with the ritual of the Church some clamour of gravediggers who have mis-calculated their space; perhaps diffusing amidst the mourners some nauseous evidence and conviction, that a prior tenant of the tomb has been prematurely displaced, or that the spade has impatiently anticipated the slower dismembering of decay. Cases of this nature are fresh in the memory of the public; cases of extreme nuisance and brutal desecration in place of decent and solemn interment; and it is unnecessary that I should revive the record of transactions inconsistent with even the dawn of civilisation.[23]