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Abstract
Since the Reformation, the established Church had monopolised the English burial trade. In London, in the 1830s, burial conditions posed a serious threat to public health and a number of limited liability companies were licensed by Parliament to provide new facilities for the interment of the dead on the edges of the city, before the main responsibility was then transferred to local government. The paper examines the changes in government thinking that lay behind these policy shifts and explains why private sector capitalists were unable to meet the various expectations of customers in the London burial market, its own stakeholders and society more generally.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank David Burkett, Company Secretary to the General Cemetery Company, Jon Newman and Graham Gower of Lambeth Archives for their help in accessing archival materials used in this paper and two anonymous referees for their helpful comments on an earlier version of the paper.
Notes
1. ‘In populous parishes, in large and crowded cities, the indulgence of an exclusive possession is unavoidably limited for, unless limited, evils of a most formidable magnitude take place … [whereby] a comparatively small portion of the dead will shoulder out the living and their posterity’ (Report on the Sanitary Conditions, 1843, pp. 270–271).
2. The library of the London School of Economics on Portugal Street, near Lincoln's Inn Fields, now occupies part of the site of the Green Ground (Kiloh, Citation2006, pp. 15–17; see also Pinfold, Citation1997, pp. 76–89).
3. In practice this number reduced to about 16 distinct offences, the rest being subdivisions of the same offences. In the eighteenth century, nearly 200 offences carried the death penalty (including picking pockets and stealing bread) but Robert Peel and Elizabeth Fry were particularly influential in reducing this number.
4. Jeremy Bentham was the shining exception to the prevailing hypocrisy, leaving his body for dissection and embalming.
5. After they were accused, Hare turned Kings Evidence and Burke was hanged and publicly dissected (see Fido, Citation1988, pp. 170–171).
6. Carden had mounted an exhibition at the Royal Academy in 1824, proposing that a ‘Pyramid Cemetery for the Metropolis’ be built at Primrose Hill (Friends of Kensal Green website, p. 2; see also Curl, Citation1977, p. 32). The French had tackled the problem in Paris nearly a century earlier, closing all the city churchyards in 1765 and setting up four new cemeteries around the perimeter (Ross Williamson, Citation1942, p. 88).
7. The exception was Abney Park, whose founders objected on principle to consecration. It became a limited liability company by registration (rather than Act of Parliament) in March 1881.
8. Kensal Green was 54 acres (plus 15 acres acquired in 1853), Norwood 40 acres, Highgate 38 acres, Nunhead 52 acres, Brompton 39 acres (plus 5 acres bought in 1844), Abney Park 32 acres (the company also bought land for another cemetery at Chingford Mount, in Essex, in 1883) and Tower Hamlets 33 acres.
9. By 1856 share capital inputs at the General Cemetery Company had risen to £87,000 (annual report 1856 General Cemetery Company; directors minute books, Abney Park Cemetery Company D/B/ABN/1/1–2; minutes re general meeting and annual accounts June 1840, South Metropolitan Cemetery Company IV/100/AD3/1–2; see also Wilson, Citation1990, p. 17).
10. In 1844, Brompton promoters acquired a further 4.5 acres of land that gave them valuable frontage onto Fulham Road (minute books West of London and Westminster Cemetery Company, WORK 6/65, 211; Stephenson, Citation2002, p. 5).
11. The improvement was maintained; rates of return across the period 1850–1890 averaged 6.3% (ledger 1837–1873, minutes of general meetings and annual accounts 1864–1890, South Metropolitan Cemetery Company IV/100/AD/3/1, IV/100/AD3/1–2).
12. Curiously the largest shareholder, John Gunter, who owned half the shares, opposed the offer but was outvoted; company decisions were determined by a vote in which each shareholder had one vote, irrespective of the number of shares held (minute books, West of London and Westminster Cemetery Company, WORK 6/67). The company's own records show clearly that the claim was exaggerated and suggest a real level of capital expenditure of about £97,000 (minute books, West of London and Westminster Cemetery Company, WORK 6/67, October 22, December 27, 1851).
13. Thus, the proportionate number of deaths to the population ranged from 1 in 36 in St. Martins in the Fields (where overcrowding was particularly bad) to less than 1 in 50 in Kensington and Islington. Life expectancy could vary in some districts from 35 years for social class 1 to 21 years for social class 4 (Report on the Sanitary Conditions, 1843, pp. 189, 256–266; Report on the Improvement, 1842).
14. London's first crematorium was opened at Golders Green in 1902.
15. Highgate Cemetery is now controlled by Camden, Nunhead and Norwood by Lambeth, Tower Hamlets Cemetery by the local council of that name, while Abney Park is now a local Nature Reserve within Hackney. Kensal Green still functions as a private sector cemetery company and Brompton cemetery is under the control of the Royal Parks.
16. The legal position governing burials in municipal cemeteries was clarified by the Local Authority Cemetery Order (1977), which restricted the right of burial in perpetuity, so that areas containing older graves could be reused for new burials.
17. Official returns made to the House of Commons in 1833 identified a figure of 32,412 interments in the burying places of the established churches in London (including Chelsea, Kensington, Saint Mary-le-Bone, Paddington and St. Pancras in the county of Middlesex), to which must be added about 10,500 for the burial grounds of Dissenters and Jews and general burial grounds. These figures are broadly consistent with those for 1840–1841, set out in the Select Committee report of 1843 (see Report on the Sanitary Conditions, 1843, pp. 274–279; see also Coutts, Citation1992, p. 62, Joyce, Citation1994, p. 34; Rugg, 1992, p. 29).
18. The first of the Bills, to establish a ‘General Cemetery for the Interment of the Dead in the Neighbourhood of the Metropolis’ was passed by Parliament in July 1832. The Reform Bill received its Royal Assent the previous month.