The places set apart for the burial of the dead are generally called cemeteries, which is a Greek term signifying " a place of rest or sleep," and was applied to common places of interment by the early Christians. Among the Greeks cemeteries were perhaps always without the cities. Among the Romans the tombs were generally placed by the sides of the public roads. It was an enactment of the Twelve Tables that a dead body was not to be buried or burnt within the city (Dirksen, Tafel Ftagmente, p. 657). The prohibition against burning in the city is supposed by Cicero to have been made to prevent risk from fire : the reason for interment not being allowed within the city is not stated. A regula tion of the Twelve Tables appears to have limited expenses at funerals (Dircksen, p. 665); and a law to the same effect was ssed in the time of the Dictator Sulla (Plutarch, Salta, c. 35).
The early Christians followed the custom of the Romans in burying outside of cities ; but they afterwards transferred their burial-places to the vicinity of the churches and within towns, where they have continued to be generally situated up to the present time, the churchyard being the usual place of interment, though, when the church is surrounded by houses, it is by no means a fit situation ; for the putrid exhalations arising during the decomposition of ani mal bodies are injurious to health, and capable of giving rise to, or at least of encouraging, the progress of various pes tilential diseases, of which the most com mon in this country are low nervous or typhus fevers. Thus the situation of cemeteries becomes an important consider ation, in connexion with public health. The advantage, in point of salubrity, of having burial-places removed to some distance from large towns, is now begin ning to be seen, and it is to be hoped that in a few years the practice of burying the dead in this country in the midst of crowded cities and in churches will en tirely cease. Cemeteries should be placed on high ground, and to the north of ha bitations, so that southerly winds should not blow over the houses charged with the putrid exhalations ; low wet places should be avoided, and care should be taken that bodies are not interred near wells or rivers from which people are supplied with water.
There are now many cemeteries in the neighbourhood of London, and also in the neighbourhood of other large towns in England.
The subject of interment possesses con siderable interest in a legal point of view, for it is often of great importance to de termine how long a body har lain in the ground; and by observing the changes which naturally take place in bodies at different stages of decomposition, it is possible in some cases to determine whether certain marks are the result of decomposition or the remains of injuries inflicted before death.
Of late years the subject of interment has attracted much attention in England, and a great amount of information has been collected. Though opinions are not unanimous, the evidence appears to prove that emanations from crowded burial grounds and from the vaults of churches do injuriously affect the health of per sons who live near them ; and that these emanations, when sufficiently concen trated, may produce speedy death. The
general "conclusion that all interments in churches or in towns are essentially of an injurious and dangerous tendehey" (Report on the Practice of Interment in Towne), is at least made a strong proba bility, and strong enough, coupled with other reasons, to justify the legislature in forbidding such interments, and placing all burying grounds under such regula tions as may prevent the effluvia from the dead from becoming detrimental to the health of the living. The Report to which reference has been made contains, in addition to the evidence on the inju rious effects of crowded burial places, much valuable information on the injury to health caused, particularly among the poor, by the delay in interments. The following remark will show the nature and extent of this evil : " In a large pro portion of cases in the metropolis and in some of the manufacturing districts, one room serves for one family of the labouring classes: it is their bed-room, their kitchen, their wash-house, their sitting-room, their dining-room ; and when they do not follow any out-door occupation, it is frequently their work room and their shop. In this one room they are born, and live, and sleep, and die, amidst the other inmates." Among the poor in some parts of London the average time that a body is kept is about a week, which sometimes arises from inability to raise money for the funeral expenses, as well as other causes ; and where there is only a single apartment, the dead and the living occupy it together. The injurious consequences to health from the presence of a dead body, some times in a state of rapid decomposition, in a small ill-ventilated apartment, and particularly when death has been the consequence of malignant disease, can not be disputed; and the moral effect on the living is demoralizing. The expense of funerals is another head which is ex amined in this Report, where it is well remarked that " the expense of inter ments, though it falls with the greatest severity on the poorest classes, acts as a most severe infliction on the middle classes of society" (p. 46). The cost of interment in London varies from 4/. for a labourer to 1000/. for a gentleman : for persons of the condition of a gentle man it is stated that 150/. would be a low average. But these charges do not include anything except the undertaker's bill. The account of the details of an expen sive funeral, " which is strictly the heraldic array of a baronial funeral, the two men who stand at the doors being supposed to be the two porters of the castle, with their staves in black," &c., is ludicrous enough ; but the disposi tion to laugh is checked by considering the pecuniary embarrassment which this absurd display often entails on the sur vivors.