God's Acre Beautiful Author:William Robinson Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: BURIALS IN AND AROUND CHURCHES AND PUBLIC BUILDINGS MIGHT BE PRACTISED TO ANY EXTENT. In connection with this part of the subject, it may be well to consider ... more »the opportunities which urn-burial would afford for depositing the inoffensive remains of the dead in our churches—old and new. It would have the great advantage of permitting burials to be carried out in churches and city graveyards to any extent, and for any number of years. For various reasons, many persons would prefer burial in churches or near them; but, as is well- known, the evils of the present system of burial became so horrible and so evidently dangerous in the case of city graveyards and churches, that burial within cities had to be forbidden by law, and not too soon. Thestate of things from which extra-mural burial saved us are again appearing in populous suburban districts. At Highgate, for example, strong undertakers' men have been made seriously ill while at work by the underflowing drainage from the higher parts of the burial-ground. At no distant day, under the present system, the numerous family tombs and graves in our extensive suburban cemeteries must fall into disuse. As extra-mural burial was not made law in London only, but in other large cities Communications have reached us, and observations been made, which compel us to draw serious attention to the condition of some of the cemeteries within the metropolitan district, which are rapidly becoming sources of peril not only to the neighbourhoods in which they are situated, but to the whole metropolis. The emanations from some of the newly-opened graves is so horribly offensive as to occasion nausea among those who attend at funerals. As cases of actual illness, after being present at interments in some of the cemeteries, have occurred, there can ...« less