On the Laying Out, Planting, and Managing of Cemeteries, and on the Improvement of Churchyards (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1843 edition. Excerpt: ...afterwards. There is also a receiving house (Leichenhaus) to the large cemetery at Munich. (Arch. Mag., vol. ii. p. 136.) The general cemetery at Munich is surrounded by a border of trees and shrubs, with the exception of one end, in which is placed a semicircular building, composed of an open colonnade in front, with vaults underneath. In the centreofthis semicircular building is a projection behind, called the Leichenhaus, containing three large rooms, in two of which (one for males and the other for females) the dead, as shrouded and deposited in their coffins by their relations, are exposed to view for forty-eight hours before they are committed to the earth. The other room is for suicides and unowned bodies. E with cooperative railroad hearses, and other arrangements to lessen expense; which would admit of more ground being spared in the suburbs for public gardens and breathing-places. Nor does there appear to us any objection to union workhouses having a portion of their garden ground used as a cemetery, to be restored to cultivation after a sufficient time had elapsed. The bones in this and in every case where the ground was planted or cultivated would be at least 6 ft. below the surface, and, where it was thought necessary, they might be protected by covering-plates, as already described. Proprietors of land, we think, ought to be encouraged to bury on their own grounds in the free soil; a proper officer, who might be the local registrar, or one of the churchwardens, taking cognizance that the grave was of the proper depth, and that all the other conditions necessary for insuring decency and salubrity were fulfilled. The expense of funerals has last year been considerably lessened about the metropolis by the introduction of...