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New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 5274, 19 February 1878, Page 2

Cynics have ever delighted in sneering at the patchwork' character of oitr civilization, of contrasting our triumphs in art, literature, and science with the many marks of barbarism. Such cynics would in Wellington praise our huge buildings, our railways, telegraphs, museum, our luxuriously furnished house*, and would contrast them with such sighs of ignorance as our lack of house ventilation, the absence of any good means for carrying away our sewage, and our lilthy practice of burying our dead in the midst of the, houses. A description of those anomalies, if carefully executed, would not a little startle future generations. It,really is astonishing that oar City Councillors have not stirred in the matter. They agree to spend upwards of £IOO,OOO on sowers and more than £IO,OOO on a Town Hall, but they hesitate about tho trifling cost of a new cemetery. The townsfolk have hoped and hoped that some efforts would bo made, but year after year rolls away and nothing is done. Some of our Councillors aro loud in their professions of doing all they can for the city’s good, yet they wholly pass by so weighty a matter as this. Strange, 100, is tho fact that the ratepayers have not pressed thorn to do something. Perhaps tho real reason of this utter lack of energy is to bo found iu their crass ignorance. Even savages aro wiser than we: tho red Indian buries his dead far from his wigwams; tho Maoris hid their dead in caves remote from their pas. Some savages bum the corpses, others set them

afloat ! in canoes, many placed them in trees, a few bury them in the earth.or beneath huge mounds. Yet always and everywhere the dead were laid to rest far from the living. Doubtless in most cases these modes of burial arose out of religious or superstitious fancies ; but in some they sprang from a belief that the Dear presence of corpses brought sickness and death to the living. Many towns at Home have learnt, aftei ranch sorrow and sickness endured, that the burial of their dead in their midst is most hurtful to the living. The slowly putrefying corpses contaminate soil, air, and water during many months, —in many cases during years. Chemical analyses of graveyard air show that it is loaded with carbonic acid, with carburetted and sulphuretted hydrogen, with ammonia, and often will) most deadly animal vapors ; sometimes even cyanogen (the basis of prussic acid) and phosphoretted hydrogen are found. It has been proved times without number that people who live in houses near cemeteries are very apt to suffer from diarrhoea, from malignant fevers, and if attacked by cholera generally die. Our cemeteries are on steep hills, the rain which falls on the upper parts therefore soon leaks through the coffins, becomes saturated with various poisons, and quickly trickles out of the ground at a slightly lower level. The soil below the cemeteries is rapidly being impregnated by putrid subsoil water and fetid subsoil air. Month by month and year by year this foul process is spreading—is filling the soil with pestilent organic material. These foul organic matters mayliedormant, be harmless for many years, and then be wakened into fearful activity. Houses will be built on this saturated land, and as a basis for them piles must be driven into the soil, which will make holes that will act like inverted chimneys for the escape of subsoil gases and vapor. Every house will have several chimneys, whose fires will warm the air, causing an indraught of subsoil gases and vapor through the fissures made by the piles ; thus every house acts as a ventilating shaft to the subsoil gases, and is filled with unhealthy air. London and other large English cities have suffered so severely from graveyard air that they have been forced, often at very great cost, to close the old cemeteries, and to remove their contents to new and dearly purchased grounds outside the towns. To us the cost of a new ground would not be great, and might easily be defrayed by small burial fees. It has been found that in England necropolis companies are safe and pay well. It might happen that even if the City Council bought fresh ground a strong resistance might bo made to any efforts at removing the old coffins to the new ground, for many would dislike the idea of their loved ones being disturbed. If this opposition were strong a middle course might be adopted. The Council might shut up the old grounds, forbidding any fresh interments, insisting that in future all should be buried in the new grounds. If the Councillors still refuse to heed the people’s wish, they should be forced to do something. Meeting after meeting should be held, and most urgent remonstrances be addressed to them. The people have trusted too long in their Councillors, they should now act for themselves. Councillors like to do large, showy work; works that will be monuments of their industry; but they glance carelessly at our frightful death-rate, and think little of the loved ones killed, of the anguish endured by the living. Look at our death-rate, which is so much greater than that of mighty London, with its bad climate, its overcrowding, dirt, poverty, and vice. Note the number of children who die yearly: we take not the slightest heed of their number, and pay no attention to a plague which is heavier to us than that which smote all the first-born in Egypt. We do hope and trust that something will be done. The City Council should set about it at once. Every day that they delay the cost grows, the danger increases; every day that they waste in idle, feeble hesitation is precious tune lost, time during which our water and soil are becoming fouler; time during which disease germs are being stored; time during which the people suffer sickness, sorrow, and death.