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34 ON THE SANITARY CONDITION OF
computed to have been interred within the last half century."
If this estimate be correct then some 17,000 persons other than
parishioners must have been buried there. This burial ground
came to be surrounded by small houses which overlooked the
ground and probably it was felt that this gave a certain amount of
security against " resurrectionists" and would also prevent the
horrible proceedings which took place in many London burial
grounds (as was ascertained by a Committee of the House of
Commons in 1842). This statement is borne out by the fact that
although the ground was closed for burial in 1853 the remains of
no less than 13,500 persons were removed for burial at Woking,
and these were almost entirely the remains of adults although at
least a half of the parishioners who were buried there were young
children. Few people nowadays can realise the horrible conditions
which obtained in regard to the disposal of the dead at the
beginning of the present reign. There were at least six burial
places in close proximity to the Strand, and that they are particularly
described in the Committee's Report is doubtless due to the
fact that Mr. W. A. Walker, F.R.C.S., of Drury Lane, did much
to direct public attention to the state of affairs and took an active
part in obtaining this reform.
The state in which this particular graveyard was, some little
time before its closure, has been pictured so well by Dickens
(" Bleak House " chapter XI.) that it may be well to quote him
in order to show the alterations which have taken place in the
interval. He describes it as a
" Hemmed-in churchyard, pestiferous and obscene, where
" malignant diseases are communicated to the bodies of our dear
" brothers and sisters who have not departed; while our dear
" brothers and sisters who hang about official backstairs—would
" to Heaven they had departed—are very complacent and
" agreeable. Into a beastly scrap of ground which a Turk would
" reject as a savage abomination and a Caffre would shudder at,
" they bring our dear brother here departed to receive Christian
" Burial. With houses looking on, on every side, save where a
" reeking little tunnel of a court gives access to the iron gate—