Brick lined Grave



Caister Saint Edmund

© Godric Godricson



Smells

Ashill Parish Church and Cemetery
© Godric Godricson

"Undertakers state that they sometimes experience, in particularly crowded grave-yards, a sensation of faintness and nausea without perceiving any offensive smell. Dr. Riecke appears to conclude, from various instances which are given, that emanations from putrid remains operate in two ways, one set of effects being produced through the lungs by impurity of the air from the mixture of irrespirable gases ; the other set, through the olfactory nerves by powerful, penetrating, and offensive smells. On the whole, the evidence tends to establish the general conclusion that offensive smells are true warnings of sanitary evils to the population".

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

Chaucer's Tomb - Westminster Abbey

 

Project Gutenburg : Westminster Abbey, by Mrs. A. Murray Smith, Illustrated by John Fulleylove

Lead coffins

"The bursting of leaden coffins in the vaults of cemeteries, unless they are watched and "tapped" to allow the mephitic vapour to escape, appears to be not unfrequent. In cases of rapid decomposition, such instances occur in private houses before the entombment"


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

Jemma Chapman - d. 26th December 1899

© Godric Godricson