THE MORGUES OF LONDON.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume III, Issue 650, 31 May 1882, Page 2

THE MORGUES OF LONDON.

[“PAIL MALL BUDGET.”]

The Parisian Morgue, that dismal Chamber of Horrors, with the jets of water playing over livid corpses, with its awful suggestions of murder and accident and suicide, is a place to be seen once only, but to be remembered for ever. London, also, is not without its morgues; but here they are scattered over a wide area, and are hidden away in remote corners or back slums. To the great majority of Londoners they are unknown. Yet there is no , day passes in which they are wholly without tenants. It those who are dragged lifeless from the river, who fall dead in the streets, who perish by accident, by starvation, or by violence, were laid side by side in one central chamber, the Paris Morgue would not have so much horrible fascination as our own. Between London Bridge and Fulham there are six mortuaries —not showplaces, like the windowed building in the neighborhood of Notre Dame —but small, plain, and unprepossessing. They stand with locked doors and darkened windows, and are visited only by coroners’ juries, by those who have lost relatives or friends, by the relieving officer, and by the sexton. On Saturday the dead body of a man ! was seen floating past Lambeth Pier. It was taken to the mortuary in old Lambeth churchyard, where it lay coffined, with a glass over its face, awaiting identification. The man who showed it to me was accustomed to such sights as the mortuary then contained. “ Oh, I’ve seen hundreds of ’em,” he said ; “ hundreds. We get all that’s found between Nine Elms and Waterloo. Haven’t kept no reckoning. Couldn’t be bothered to do it; leastways, not with all of ’em. Once I had five on one Sunday night—chucked out of a Chelsea boat. There were sixteen from the Victoria Theatre once. That was Johnson’s benefit; some stairs broke down. Are most that come here found in the river ? Oh, no ! Most of ’em are babies, chucked over walls and left in gardens. They are made up in bundles mostly. Have had as many as ten in a week o’ them there things. Do they drag the river much ? Well, sometimes ; when there is a big outcry. Boatmen find the bodies mostly. Do I think anybody is ever chucked over by roughs ? Well, now, that’s a question. P’raps so ; p’raps not. 1 he man here doesn’t look as if he would be likely to commit suicide. What verdicts are found mostly ? Why, like this one, * found drowned.’ That’s 4 all one can say about ’em most times. How’s anybody to know why they got in, or how ?” This body at Lambeth was twice identified, and yet its identity still remains in dispute. A witness at the inquest said the man was his lodger. He had lent him a suit of clothes to work in, and he could positively speak to the clothes. A young woman thought it was her husband. She could not be sure, so long a time had passed since she had seen him. What a story was hers! In 1875 she had been married by special license, and three days afterwards her husband disappeared. Since then she has been seeking for him in vain—waiting for him at home, hoping to meet him in the streets, fearing to recognise him in these mean receptacles of the unknown dead. Such a case is by no means solitary. Every announcement of a “ dead body found ” brings its crowd of anxious inquirers, who go away unsatisfied. This body at Lambeth was that of a strong, hearty-looking young fellow, evidently well nonrished, and with what must have been a cheerful, energetic, self-willed look on his face. Did he committ suicide? Not if there is any basis for the science of Lavater." There is another mortuary over the way at Westminster. It is within a few yards of Parliament House. Do the legislators ever dream that, in their close neighborhood, in a region of ruinous buildings aud bare wharves and muddy shore, swollen corpses are dragged out of the river and packed away on a slab of slate in a back kitchen ? It seems incredible perhaps, but that is what happens at Westminster. No. 20, Millbank street is a house that was once used as a smallpox hospital ; it is now a dwellinghouse and a mortuary. At the back there are sundry short, narrow passages, and presently one arrives at a small room, with a fireplace and a copper, and that slab of slate aforesaid. Here the average of dead bodies is two a week, and the two are frequently lying side by side. This back kitchen; represents a district running fromy Whitehall stairs to the parish of St

Margaret, and has had to find accommodation lor seven corpses in as many days. It is, as the man who keeps it proudly explains, well provided with disinfectants; but it is only a mortuary in a back kitchen after all. The packing of the dead in such a hole is surely a serious danger to the living. Beyond Battersea Bridge lies a fleet of Thames steamers at anchor. Beyond these, again, are great barges that are discharging their cargoes under the shadow of Battersea Church. By the pier wall, and just within the churchyard, stands the mortuary of Battersea —a neat Gothic building with a roof of brown tiles. It has not contained a drowning case for a fortnight past, and the man who shows me the place explains why. “ They generally get among the steamers,” he says. “ Most likely there are some fast in the paddles now, and we may have two or three cases when the boats are moved.” Only about one in three of the bodies recovered from the river are ever identified. Many are beyond all possibility of identification, having floated for weeks possibly up and down with the tide.

Very different are the arrangements at Ewer street, Southwark. Here the mortuary is in a railway arch, and is so fitted up as to suggest that there is often a very large demand on its limited space. Ugly black coffins, all with the familiar square of glass in their lids, piled one above another, are reared up against the walls, or are standing on trestles on the floor. In a recess is a heap of clothes, laden with mud and sand, and a pair of men’s boots covered with green mould. Over the water, at Golden lane, the mortuary is empty. The keeper says he “ never knew such a quiet time.” Yet it is a very large place that is thus, happily, deserted—a place fitted up with offices, and coroner’s rooms, and lavatories, and having, besides the ordinary sheds for the reception of the dead, what is known as the “ mortuary chapel,” where the bodies wait for interment. The London morgues, unlike that of Paris, are not long allowed to contain their dead. When the bodies are brought in there is a speedy inquest, and then a funeral. There is no prolonged waiting for identification, as in Paris—the grave swallowing up such mysteries as time might otherwise unravel. Possibly this is the cause why so many of the recent drowning cases remain unsolved. Every day almost for some time past some dead body has been dragged out of the muddy, mysterious waters of the Thames. Do all such cases come to light ? Are all drowned bodies found and inquired about and decently buried ? Probably not, or why does an announcement of “ dead body found ” attract so many who fear to recognise it in some one whom they have known or loved ? I am by no means the first who has made a pilgrimage around the mortuaries. The dreary road has been trodden by feet carrying heavier hearts than mine. But, even when one has no sorrowful purpose in view, the journey is hard and toilsome. If there were urgent need of a strong argument in favor of a single morgue, it might be found in the difficulties entailed on those who are compelled to visit the mortuaries of London when seeking for their lost friends. They have to travel from place to place

to inquire after unknown churchyards and obscure back streets, to discover i where keys are kept, and generally go through an amount of worry and labor that is more than equal to a day’s hard work. All this is surely a penalty on identification, and may help to explain why the river has its secrets in such safe keeping.