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upon the general Drainage scheme for the Metropolis, will permit the abolition of one of the
greatest nuisances in the Parish, the Hackney Brook open sewer, which in Highbury Yale
runs at a very few feet distance from a number of houses of a low class, in one of which two
deaths from Scarlet Fever have recently occurred.
25. I must not neglect mentioning, among the most important provisions made during the
year against the spread of disease, the construction of a carriage for the conveyance of
patients labouring under Small-pox. Happily, the very small number of cases which have
occurred, has hitherto occasioned but little necessity for its use.
26. I may add, that as the 132nd Section of the Metropolis Local Management Act
directs, as a part of my duties, that I should " point out the most efficient mode for the
ventilation of churches, chapels, schools, lodging-houses, and other public edifices in the
Parish," I addressed a letter, in the month of May, to all the Clergy and Dissenting
Ministers, whose residences I could ascertain, calling their attention, among other things, to
this subject, and proffering my services, as their adviser. There is no question of the
necessity, in several of these buildings, for improvement in this respect; but I have hitherto
received no communication upon the matter, from either the Clergy or their lay-associates.
BURIAL GROUND IN CHURCH STREET.—VAULTS UNDER
THE ISLINGTON CHURCHES.
27. The condition of the Burial Ground in Church-street, known as " Jones's Burial
Ground," and as the " New Bunhill Fields," and the disinterments and other proceedings
occurring there, were, on several occasions, brought prominently under my notice. The
extent of the ground is estimated at 4300 square yards, and, at the time of Mr. Chadwick's
special inquiry in 1843 into the "Practice of Interments in Towns," it is alleged that 520
burials annually took place in it, or at the rate of 585 burials per acre. The land was
appropriated for a Cemetery in 1817, and closed by an order in Council in January, 1855.
If we assume that the annual number of burials mentioned above only took place during
the latter half of these 38 years, and that but half the number took place during the
first 19 years, which would probably be not far from the truth, no less a number than
14,820 bodies are lying in various stages of decomposition beneath the surface of that
ground. And all this organic matter has been, or is being now converted into gases, fœtid,
and deleterious to animal life, which, dissolved in the moisture of the soil, permeate the
latter, become diffused more or less extensively about the neighbourhood of the grave
yard, * or, whenever the encrusted surface of the ground is disturbed, pass out abundantly
into the atmosphere. †
To purify the soil, and at the same time to prevent the rise of miasmata, which must,
even in an undisturbed condition of the ground, have a constant tendency to escape, the
only effectual remedy is careful turfing and planting. It has been announced, that it is the
intention of the proprietors to devote this land to building purposes, and should it be
attempted thus to apply it, I shall appeal to you, as the guardians of the Public Health in
Islington, to interpose.—I warn you that residences, thus founded on putrefaction, will,
with certainty, be tenanted by disease and death.
The indecent exhumations which have taken place during the year on that ground have,
as is known, been a source of much public annoyance. Unhappily, the law which applies
to consecrated cemeteries, will not meet such a case as this; and even your own Local Act,
under the 109th Section of which your Vestry Clerk proceeded by summons on the 25th of
See evidence of Mr. Roe, respecting contamination of a well on the premises of Mr. Jacob Post, in
Church Street.—Chadwick's Report, on Interment in Towns, p. 25.
† At the hearing on October. 25th, at the Clerkenwell Police Court, on the summons of Mr. Jones under the
Local Act for Islington, Mr. Adamson, of Church Street, stated, that his men were frequently struck down
with nausea and sickness by the effluvia proceeding from the ground. A clerk of Mr. Adamson's testified to a
similar effect produced upon himself, as also did a man who was at work near the spot where a grave was
being opened for a disinterment.