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49
DEAD BODIES AND THE MORTUARY.
There is one question of very grave importance connected with the
health of the Borough which has forced itself upon my attention
during the last year. It has been brought to my knowledge, once by
the coroner of the district and from other sources, that it is the
custom of undertakers in the Borough to receive dead bodies on
their premises and to keep them there several days, until it is convenient
for burial to take place. The undertaker is usually not very
particular as to where the body is kept. In one case, I am informed,
the body was kept in a coffin, loosely covered, in the front shop adjoining
the street, in another case in the common passage of the
house at the foot of the stairs (the upper part of the house being
occupied). In another case several bodies of infants were kept
in a cellar; in another the outhouse in the back yard served as
an asylum for the dead. I may here add that in two cases brought
to my knowledge, the undertakers who had possession of the bodies
would not bury them, until they had been paid the cost of the funeral.
That this practice is general may be proved from the following
facts:—In Hackney by the census of 1901 it is shown that there are
4,827 tenements of one room, 7,211 of two rooms, 9,387 of three
rooms, and 7,664 of four rooms, a total of 29,087 tenements of only
four rooms and under. Now it is quite clear that if a death occurs
in a family occupying one or two rooms, it is absolutely impossible
for the body to be kept decently and without injury to health in the
tenement until burial takes place. The same remarks apply to the
majority of the three and four roomed tenements, which are occupied
to their full extent. During 1902 only 8 bodies were taken to the
public mortuary of the Borough to await burial. From this it is
clear that the majority of the bodies of persons dying in tenement
houses of one, two, three and four rooms have been kept on the
premises of undertakers to await burial.
These are not new facts. Similar statements were made before a
Royal Commission appointed in 1893 to enquire into the subject of