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17
MORTUARY.
The suit in the Ecclesiastical Court came on for hearing before
Dr. Tristram, the Chancellor of the Consistory Court, on the ioth
January, and occupied the Court for three days. At the end of the first
day, the parties opposing obtained permission to adduce evidence of
there being in the Parish sites which might be purchased, and which
were more eligible than the churchyard. The evidence adduced was
a long affidavit by Mr. Edwin Ward suggesting several sites, and
supporting the objections to the erection of the proposed Mortuary.
Affidavits in reply were immediately prepared and filed. The Chancellor
personally inspected the Churchyard and the sites proposed by
Mr. Ward ; but, as will be seen from his judgment, decided the
Churchyard was the most suitable place.
The judgment of the Chancellor was delivered on the 15th April,
1878, and is printed in the Appendix.
The judgment determined that a faculty might properly be granted
for the erection of a Mortuary in a Churchyard, with a room for
holding post-mortem examinations of the bodies brought there, but
not for rooms for a residence for a keeper, or for holding Coroners'
Courts.
It will be seen that the Chancellor considered the site of the old
Watch House too near the road, but decided to grant a faculty for a
Mortuary to contain separate rooms for infectious and non-infectious
cases, with a room for post-mortem examinations, provided a site for
the Mortuary were selected at a distance of fifty feet from the road.
It will also be seen from the judgment that the Chancellor
considered the parties opposing entitled to, and granted them, their
costs of the opposition, on the issues on which they had been successful,
although they failed on the objection that a faculty could not be
granted for the erection of a Mortuary on a Churchyard.
The judgment of the Chancellor was referred to the Sanitary
Committee for consideration and report.
A proposal by Mr. Merceron to lay out the Churchyard at his own
expense if the Vestry would abandon the intention to erect the
Mortuary on the Churchyard, and erect one on some other site, was
submitted to the Committee. The Committee, after consideration,
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