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

Isaiah 26:19



The cemetery
A.K.A "The Parish Church"

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 "But your dead will live; their bodies will rise. You who dwell in the dust, wake up and shout for joy. Your dew is like the dew of the morning; the earth will give birth to her dead" Isaiah 26:19

There is something that strikes me when I visit an English Church and that is the proximity of the living and the dead. This proximity brings us back to the idea of Christianity being nothing more than a cult of the dead. In prayer, we cast our eyes upwards and we notice the plaques on the wall extolling the virtues of the departed. We notice the arms and titles of the great landowners and we are reminded that this building is often little more than a charnel house for the  rich and famous.

Indeed, if churchgoers  could develop x-ray vision or a personalised ground penetrating radar we would find the floor of any parish Church as a honeycomb of vaults and tombs fashioned from the 14th Century onwards. The vaults, full of humanity, would stretch as far as the eye can see. In this way we sense both the desire for salvation of past generations alongside their fear that God will seek revenge upon them. Regrettably, this mindset of fear and anxiety is not a modern way to design a building or lay out a cemetery.

The parish Church is a very real series of contradictions. On the surface,  the Church is an apparent place of  serenity and prayer and yet, underneath, there is nothing but death and decay. The line quoted above, drawn from Isaiah, is by 21st century standards a truly creepy statement. The quotation is saying something about the Church as being a 'parking lot' for the dead. The parish Church becomes a place where we are laid down like a fine wine awaiting the time when we rise again and 'pop' like a champagne bottle. The parish Church, rather than being a place of serenity, becomes the loci of a death cult where the living focus on nothing but death and dying. Oh dear, this theology of death seems far removed from the account of the Resurrection containing hope and joy. The cult of death is writ large in our society and the parish Church is the heart of the cult situated in most villages.

I am not convinced that the Church has anything very much to offer to a modernising society and the photograph above is a little charitable to the Church. When I visited the parish the Church had children's toys and games in the main areas. The altar had been moved into the main body of the Church from the east end. The children's toys was a sign that this ancient cult of the dead was striving for a sort of modernity and 'applicability'. However, the Church Authorities had missed the point. Rather than being open, inclusive and modern, the parish Church holds onto the  older ties to death whilst trying to support past errors by appearing 'modern'. The parish Church becomes a whited sepulchre rather than a focus for the community.

I understand the English and their sensibilities. The English easily fall down at the feet of 'tradition' and 'power' before they gently and quietly melt away  away to 'do their own thing'. That the Church has lasted so long in English culture is a testimony to the holding power of this cult of the dead. My greatest hope is that the 'cult of the dead' that passes for a state religion is left behind. Let the parish Church become a creche for the one or two children of the village if that is what the community really wants  although think about this......who would have a Creche in a cemetery?

Cremation

Cremation is a polluting activity

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The British are often pragmatic in nature and frequently elect to be cremated  rather than  to be buried. They perceive that cremation is ‘clean’ and there is a long tradition of cremation. The British  traditionally consider that cremation is better for the environment because the process takes up less physical space and the family don’t have to keep the headstone clean and tidy. In many ways, cremation appears a clean and tidy ‘once and for-all’ solution. For a predominantly Protestant country like Britain, largely unaware of  Catholic teaching, cremation appears a traditionally desirable process.

It's correct that cremated remains don’t take up the same amount of land  that burials require. However, the public do not consider that  the process of cremation releases huge volumes of air pollution and particulates into the atmosphere. I know that this idea of releasing material is a little ‘icky’ but let’s briefly consider what happens when a body is cremated.  When we place a body in the cremator we are placing a lot of material in there. In addition to human remains we are also adding 'wood', textiles and potentially a lot of embalming fluid and chemicals. That sounds very unhealthy as a combination. In effect, if a  human body plus the  coffin  weighs approximately  300 pounds and we are left with a final weight of 2 pounds in  ashes that means a lot of material has gone up the chimney as smoke . We have deliberately sent a lot of solid material up the chimney and created nothing but smoke and water vapour. How do we, on the one hand, believe that we love the departed and honour their memory and, on the other hand, consign them into the upper atmosphere for everyone on Earth to breath and ingest.

Most of the adverse chemicals released in the cremation are created from the foam held in rubber mattress, the polyester fabric of coffin linings, human clothing and the urethane finishes of the coffin itself. The composite 'wood' of conventional coffins is often comprised of fibreboard rather than ‘real’ wood and is held together by complex and polluting glue and oil based resins. We have heard from newspaper reports of the toxins and pollutants dispersed into the atmosphere through the chimneys and such pollutants are a fairly toxic cocktail of heavy metals, hydrogen chloride, dioxins and furans. The metal from our dental fillings are lethal . Crematoria are aware of this pollution and have doubtless taken care of the matter (as far as they can) with the use of filters  The effect of such attempts to contain pollution are probably quite patchy depending on efficiency and local circumstances.

I would suggest that the rise in ‘green burials’ and ‘woodland’ burials are an expression of a concern at the effects of cremation and the pollution that cremations cause. In effect, there can be no more energy efficient way of disposing of the dead than to  open up a grave and reverently place the body in there to await decomposition. Without embalming and using only natural fabrics, the body quickly returns to its constituent materials and soaks into the earth from which it came. So, much better than all that natural gas being consumed to transform a body largely comprised of water into gas and smoke.

If you consider that this article may be incorrect. I challenge people to stand close to a cremator and see what happens  when a funeral party has left the environment. The chamber is fired up and sooner or later there is that faint, vague and sweetish smell of burnt 'wood' in the atmosphere. It's a pleasant smell but one that betokens that the filters aren’t working.

Resurrectionists Great Yarmouth - 1827

"Great excitement was caused in Yarmouth by the discovery that upwards of twenty recently interred bodies had been removed from the churchyard by resurrection men.  “The churchyard was quickly crowded by the population.  Wives were searching for the remains of their deceased husbands, husbands for those of their wives, and parents for their children.”  Three men, Thomas Smith, alias Vaughan, William Barber, and Robert Barber, were apprehended, and committed for trial at Yarmouth Quarter Sessions, whence, on April 1st, 1828, the indictment was removed by writ of certiorari to the Court of King’s Bench.  The case was tried at Norwich Assizes, before Lord Chief Baron Alexander, on August 11th, 1828, when only Vaughan (or Smith) was proceeded against.  Robert Barker turned King’s evidence, and described the method by which the graves were robbed, and how the bodies were sent to London by the wain.  A verdict of guilty was returned, and on November 14th, 1828, the prisoner was brought up for sentence in the Court of King’s Bench.  He urged that he was driven by poverty to the commission of the offence, and was sentenced by Mr. Justice Bayley to six months’ imprisonment in the house of correction at Norwich."

Title: Norfolk Annals  A Chronological Record of Remarkable Events in the Nineteeth Century, Vol. 1     Author: Charles Mackie

William Chilvers Butters d. 2 October 1894

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For research on Butters see this link