West Hartlepool will not receive Sir Henry Thompson well, if
that eminent surgeon's services should be soon required in that borough On Tuesday last, Mr. Turnbull, a convert to Sir Henry Thompson's views on Cremation, brought forward a motion at the meeting of the Town Improvement Commissioners of West Hartlepool, for
the adoption, in the sanitary interests of the place, of the practice of burning the dead. But before the-Commissioners assembled, two hundred women, mostly of lite working-class, got up an extempore . indignation meeting to protest against the expected motion, and saluted Mr. Turnbull when he arrived with cries of "Burn him !" "Stick him in a tar-barrel !" "Give us Christian burial!" "Let him taste it [i.e., cremation] first !"—nor did this rather lively 'deputation' withdraw till the Chairman of the Com- missioners had assured the insurrectionary women that theCommis- sion had no sort of power to adopt Mr. Turnbull's proposal. Even then the 200 waited outside till they were swelled into a crowd of 2,000, and saluted Mr. Turnbull on his departure, after his un- seoonded motion had dropped to the ground, with tremendous hooting3. Science certainly takes much less pains to understand the people, than to serve them. It might have known, by remem- bering the popular horror of post-mortem examinations, that proposals to hasten Nature in the process of destroying even the already mouldering image of our nearest and dearest, would be received with a start of horror. To burn the body of a living enemy would always seem more decent and natural to a mob than to burn that of a dead friend.
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