provided at a distance from habitations.[8] Other States of Europe
took pattern by these enlightened proceedings, and America was not
slow in making laws upon the subject; but Great Britain, and its worst
offender, London, went on in the old way, without let or hindrance,
until 1850, For fifteen years prior to that date there had been in
progress an agitation against the existing order of things, led by Dr.
G.A. Walker, a Drury Lane surgeon, living in a very nest of churchyard
fevers, who wrote a book and several pamphlets, delivered public
lectures, and raised a discussion in the public press. The London City
Corporation petitioned Parliament in 1842 for the abolition of burials
within the City, and a Select Committee of the House of Commons was at
once entrusted with an enquiry on the subject.

[Footnote 8: In France in 1782-3, in order to check the pestilence,
the remains of more than six millions of people were disinterred from
the urban churchyards and reburied far away from the dwelling-places.
The Cemetery of Père la Chaise was a later creation, having been
consecrated in 1804.]

The following were the official figures shewing the burials in the
London district[9] from 1741 to 1837, and it was asserted that many
surreptitious interments were unrecorded:

From 1741 to 1765 588,523

" 1766 to 1792 605,832

" 1793 to 1813 402,595

" 1814 to 1837 508,162