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7
care should be exercised as regards the granting of fresh
licenses. They also appointed a sub-committee to ascertain
with me the precise position as regards the distance from roads
and houses of all the cow sheds and slaughter houses in the
district. They also recommended that the sheds should be
examined at an early period of 1869, to ascertain the alterations
required, if any, to render the sheds, &c., as innocuous as possible
to the neighbourhood.
I inspected South Hackney Churchyard, in consequence
of complaints from inhabitants of the neighbourhood. On
examining the ground I found it very full indeed, and therefore
wrote to the Secretary of State for the Home Department,
who directed Mr. Holland, the medical inspector of churchyards,
to meet the vicar and churchwardens in the vestry, as well aa
me, on the 13th day of March. The burial records showed
that between January 1st, 1861 and December 31st, 1867, no
less than 2487 interments had been made there, or at the rate
of 350 a year in one and a half acres of ground. We then went
over the churchyard, and found that there was only space for
four new graves and two vaults, but that many of the old graves
were by no means full; this applied chiefly to the family graves.
After some conversation it was arranged that Mr. Holland
should advise the Secretary of State, " that no interment
should be made in ordinary graves unless there were at least
five feet of ground above the coffin, measured to the level of the
earth. That after receipt of the order closing the ground, no
burial should be allowed except in private graves, and then only
subject to the above restriction, and also that the ground
should not be removed within one foot of the coffin last placed
therein."
I have also inspected Homerton churchyard and Abney
Park cemetery. There have been 206 burials in the two years