Miasma

                              
                                                  "Miasms arising from churchyards are in general too much diluted by the surrounding air to strike the neighbouring inhabitants with sudden and severe disease, yet they may materially injure the health, and the evidence appears to me to be decisive that they often do so. Among others who sometimes obviously suffer from this cause, are the families of clergymen, when, as occasionally happens, the vicarage or rectory is situated very close to a full church-yard. I myself know one such clergyman's family, whose dwelling-house is so close to an extremely full churchyard, that a very disagreeable smell from the graves is always perceptible in some of the sitting and sleeping rooms. The mother of this family states that she has never had a day's health since she has resided in this house, and that her children are always ailing ; and their ill health is attributed, both by the family and their medical friends, to the offensive exhalations from the Churchyard."

From  : PRACTICE OF INTERMENT IN TOWNS EDWIN CHADWICK, (1843)

'Exhalations'

"The evidence is just as indubitable that exhalations arise from the bodies of the dead, which are capable of producing disease and death. Many instances are recorded of the communication of smallpox from the corpse of a person who has died of smallpox. This has happened not only in the dwelling house before interment, but even in the dissecting room. Some years ago five students of anatomy, at the Webb street school, Southwark, who were pursuing their studies under Mr. Grainger, were seized with smallpox, communicated from a on the dissecting table, though it does not appear that all who were attacked were actually  engaged in dissecting this body. One of these young men died. There is reason to believe that emanations from the bodies of persons who have died of other forms of fever have proved injurious and even fatal to individuals who have been much in the same room with the corpse."

From  : PRACTICE OF INTERMENT IN TOWNS EDWIN CHADWICK, (1843)

Vaults

Mr- Hutchinson, surgeon, Farringdon-street, was called on Monday morning, the 15th March, 1841, to attend a girl, aged 14, who was labouring under typhus fever of a highly malignant character. This girl was the daughter of a pew-opener in one of the large city churches, situated in the centre of a small burial ground, which had been used for the interment of the dead for centuries, the ground of which was raised much above its natural level, and was saturated with the remains of the bodies. There were vaults beneath the church, in which it was still the custom, as it had long been, to bury the dead. The girl in question had recently returned from the country, where she had been at school. On the preceding Friday, that is, on the fourth day before Mr. Hutchinson saw her, she had assisted her mother during three hours and on the Saturday during one hour, in shaking and cleansing the matting of the aisles and pews of the church. The mother stated, that this work was generally done once in six weeks ; that the dust and effluvia which arose, always had a peculiarly foetid and offensive odour, very unlike the dust which collects in private houses ; that it invariably made her (the mother) ill for at least a day afterwards ; and that it used to make the grandmother of the present patient so unwell, that she was compelled to hire a person to perform this part of her duty. On the afternoon of the same day on which the young person now ill had been engaged in her employment, she was seized with shivering, severe pain in the head, back, and limbs, and other symptoms of  commencing fever. On the following day all these symptoms were aggravated, and in two days afterwards, when Mr. Hutchinson first saw her, malignant fever was fully developed, the skin being burning hot, the tongue dry and covered with a dark brown fur, the thirst urgent, the pain of the head, back, and extremities severe, attended with hurried and oppressed breathing, great restlessness and prostration, anxiety of countenance, low muttering delirium, and a pulse of 130 in the minute. "

From  : PRACTICE OF INTERMENT IN TOWNS EDWIN CHADWICK, (1843)

Edwin Chadwick - Interviews (1843)

Detail: Ashill
Parish Church

The following testimony of a lady, respecting the miasma which escaped from one burial-ground at Manchester, is adduced as an example of the more specific testimony as to the perception of its effects. This testimony also brings to view the circumstance that in the towns it is not only in surface emanations from the grave-yards alone that the morbific matter escapes.

You resided formerly in the house immediately contiguous to the burying-ground of chapel, did you not ?

Yes I did, but I was obliged to leave it.

Why were. you so obliged?

When the wind was west, the smell was dreadful. There is a main sewer runs through the burying-ground, and the smell of the dead bodies came through this sewer up our drain, and until we got that trapped, it was quite unbearable.

Do you not think the smell arose from the emanations of the sewer, and not from the burying-ground?

I am sure they came from the burying ground; the smell coming from the drain was exactly the same as that which reached us when the wind was west, and blew upon us from the burying-ground. The smell was very peculiar ; it exactly resembled the smell which clothes have when they are removed from a dead body. My servants would not remain in the house on account of it, and I had several cooks who removed on this account.

Did you observe any effects on your health when the smells were bad ?

Yes, I am liable to head-aches, and these were always bad when the smells were so also. They were often accompanied by diarrhrea in this house. Before I went there, and since I left, my head-aches have been very trifling.

Were any of the other inmates of the house afflicted with illness ?

I had often to send for the surgeon to my servants, who were liable to ulcerated sore throats.

And your children, were they also affected ?

My youngest child was very delicate, and we thought he could not have survived; since he came here he has become quite strong and healthy, but I have no right to say the burying-ground had any connexion with his health.

From  : PRACTICE OF INTERMENT IN TOWNS EDWIN CHADWICK, (1843) p24 [Link]

Edwin Chadwick - "Practice of Interment in towns"

Detail:
Ashill Parish Church
© Godric Godricson

Edwin Chadwick's report on burials is a seminal work that influenced a generation of people in the area of burials.  He reported on a variety of issues relating to burials and some areas are a little 'icky' by the standards of the early 21st Century. For the next few weeks I want to add some snippet's from Chadwick's work which are illuminating and show how far removed our own views on death are compared to the 19th Century. Here is the first snippet.......

“Some years since a vault was opened in the church-yard (Stepney), and shortly after one of the coffins contained therein burst with so loud a report that hundreds flocked to the place to ascertain the cause. So intense was the poisonous nature of the effluvia arising there from, that a great number were attacked with sudden sickness and  fainting, many of whom were a considerable period before they recovered their health.”

From  : PRACTICE OF INTERMENT IN TOWNS EDWIN CHADWICK, (1843) p15