REPORT OF PRELIMINARY PROCEEDINGS UNDER THE METROPOLITAN INTERMENT ACT.
This paper gives a summary of the proceedings of the General Board of Health to the end of 1850. Besides the inquiries made in London, two gentlemen were sent to Paris to investigate the method of interment adopted by the French authorities. MM. Husson and Lecomte, of the office of the Prefect of the Seine, afforded every facility for the inquiry : the practical suggestions thus obtained were valuable, but they are not specified.
Fifteen estates were tendered to the Board for cemeteries. The average price per acre demanded was 1231. ; the actual price varying from 20/. to 280/. An estate of 800 acres was offered at 45/. ; it was admirably adapted for the purpose with but one exception-it was thirty miles from London; and the expense of transit would have made it dearer to the public as a free gift than a cemetery at the price of 45/. per acre if it were only twelve miles distant. The Board enumerate various requisites for a cemetery, besides this one of reasonable proximity to London. The soil should be favourable to the rapid and vigorous growth of appropriate vegetation : some land would cost more to cover it with this vegetation than the price of the site itself. There should be two approaches by rail- way, that the caprice of directors or the strikes of employes on one line
might not stop the conveyance of funerals. After the enumeration of the desiderata ftir cemeteries, the Board remarks-
" It is not therefore surprising, that amongst the fifteen tenders of land which were offered to the Board for cemetery pnone should have exhibited such a peculiar combination of specialurcra3neations as to induce us to recommend their purchase. But our attention was not confined to offered sites only. Several parts of the Royal property in the neighbour- hood of London, as well as various promising tracts of laud belonging to private individuals, were examined and valued. Amongst the public lands surveyed were Eltham Wood, near Shooter's Hill, on the Old Dover Road, Epping Forest, Epping Lower Forest, and Hainault Forest. The private lands surveyed and valued are not specified, for obvious reasons ; but the result of these independent inquiries has been highly satisfactory. We are now fully prepared to recommend a definite course as to where a new ceme- tery should be planted, what land should be purchased for that purpose, and what yrice should be given for the land."
An inspection of the Metropolitan graveyards was directed, that decision might be made on the order in which they should be closed, and all the cemeteries were surveyed. The means of transit to the latter were also considered. The Board conclude, that wherever a river or canal communication exists it should be used as an additional means of access for funerals. Circulars were despatched to ascertain the amount of compensation claimed by those having an interest in parochial burial- grounds ; but the answers were so unsatisfactory that it was resolved to take oral evidence, and compare it with documents. In rather more than a month, the claims of fifty parishes were examined and reported upon.
Some cemeteries did not furnish information so freely as was hoped; others refused it altogether. So the Board ordered an independent examination and valuation by its officers. The reports received convinced the Board of the necessity of purchasing all the Metropolitan cemeteries as " places of temporary interment." The Board complain that the act of Parliament by no means confers the powers implied in the scheme they originally presented.
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