CORRESPONDENCE.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume VIII, Issue 2215, 9 February 1886, Page 2

CORRESPONDENCE.

.—♦ ■"■■'■■• .CEMETERIES. To the Editor. Sir—The proposal recently broupht before the Auckland City Council to abolish burial grounds and substitute for them cement receptacles for the dead, shows that there is a feeling, and a very proper one, arising in this colony against the present system of the disposal of the. deceased, .It is somo twelve years since the Dialectical Society of London brought the question of cremation prominontly before the public. Many ablo speakers cjealt with, the various arguments in favor of oremation rather than inhumation, and combated' with great fairness all the arguments that had been advanced against it. The sontimental and religious objections were dealt with, and the question was argued on its merits as preventing that poisonous malaria which results from surface burial, and the equally diliteriotis result to sewerage and springs when the grave was deep. Sir Henry Thompson's attack on the presont system, and his advocacy of cremation, received general publicity in, tJne ■' Contemporary Review/' o,f that period, and \m copied, into, many of the daily journals, whilst Mr Phillip.H. Holland, M.R.C.S., Medical Inspector of Burials in England and' Wales, took the opposite side. The latter stated, "•That the real danger from a. wc)l-.situ,atcd cemetery, large m proportion to. the number, of its burials, is not greater tha.n from a well-, managed railway, and it wp,u]d bo hard to find 'in, either, any' but the rarest instances of injury sustained, except from palpable mismanagement," Now Sir it has been indisputably demonstrated before select committees of the House of Commons in England, that the burial of the dead in spots surrounded -by the living was most injurious to the health of tho community, and invariably productive of low fever of a typhoid character. It can be proved now as it has been over and over again that certain gases aro evolved from decomposing bodies, which, act as deadly poison on the human constitution, Sir H. Thompson tells us that " the process of decomposition has a disagreeable, injurious, often fatal influence on the living man, if sufficiently exposed to it." Thousands of lives have been cut short by the poison of slowly decaying, and often deseased animal matter. Even the purification of somo of the inqst jiiß.igiuh.c.enti animals lp suffloedtq destroy even the noblest, Sir Willjam Benjamin Brodio, explained to a Parliamentary Committee that tho gas evolved from putrid bodies is chiefly sulphuretted hydrogen, a gas so noxious and deadly that the admixture ot only one part of it with five hundred parts of atmospheric air is almost immediately fatal. It was also proved' beyond tho shadow of a doubt that the escape of this noxious effluvium from the surface of burial grounds is. under any circumstances inevitable. These exhalations may be imperciptible to the smell, but they are not, on that account, loses existent anfj injurip,i|B,. Even load cuffing oih> noj prevent' the'es,oap:a of these terrible gases from decomposing bodies, for they are envolved with suoh foroe and in sueh quantities that the lids of suoh coffins, notwithstanding the atmosphere and earth pressure, become canvex and are ultimately burst open. These poisonous gases must be generated, and layers of earth, many feet in thickness, can no more intercept the transmission of gases to tho surfaco than they can by their density prevent the infillcration of water. !fhq the ftljer through a permeable medium. 'What can we Say then of the cemetery in our midst, In winder time tho graves cannot be sunk more then a few feet deep before water is readied, and the soil is of a gravelly nature. The gases must in course of time pass into tho atmosphere, and if the gas be impeded from coming to the surface by the depth of the soil, thoro is only the greater danger of its escape by deep drainage, and the pollution ot springs. The only improvement for this state of things is cremation. But, sir, I fear it WJU take years to breajj dowp tho prejudice that stands in {jho w.ay"'qf 'such 'H reform. We might then lopk round fpr some means of lessening the danger that arises to our town from the presont position and nature 'pf our cemetery. I wphM reQommend that we should secure a cemetery slto on a hjgh ground some mile or two out qf the town, whore the poisonous gasses would be blown about to the four corners of tho heavens, and robbed of its'power to hurt or destroy. There should also be the compulsory and constant use of quick lime at burials, so as 'to secure rapid decompoaition. 1 cannot trespass on 'your space any further with such an unsavoury subject, and can only urge its importance as an excuse for troubling you at all. I am etc.,