Quote:
Originally Posted by Acrylic-bob
Errrm, actually 'T', the Victorian age was characterised by overt sentimentality in all areas of society and nowhere was this expressed more strongly than in matters of mortality and the rituals and parephenalia of death. Indeed, poor Queen Victoria managed to turn mourning into a fashionable and very profitable national industry. From which I am sure that the idea of turning a burial ground, with burials still in it and a churchyard burial ground at that, into an area of, as I said before, facile entertainment, would be abhorent and a cause of national scandal to our Victorian forebears.
I am not being in the least luddite in objecting to the proposal as it currently stands. I just want the bodies removed and reburied before we commence holding performances on top of them. At base, it is a matter of simple respect and courtesy. I am surprised and a little amazed that you cannot see this.
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Oh Dear, A-B I suspect it is you yourself who is suffering from the mawkish sentimentality of the late Victorian age. While I would certainly agree that by the latter part of the Great Queen's reign, the business of burials had developed into what would now be termed a cutting-edge industry and that the process of mourning had become institutionally ritualised, the same cannot be said of the earlier part of her life. While I would not be prepared to specify any turning point – probably somewhere between the death of her beloved Albert in 1861 and the passing of the Burial Grounds Act in the mid-1880’s - then certainly the earlier period was characterised by the wanton destruction of existing graveyards in the name of economic and social progress
A case in point is what occurred here in London in the mid-1860’s. The Midland Railway Company designated a terminus at St Pancras; there was one problem – a cemetery lay in the way. What did they do? They disinterred about 10,000 corpses and reburied them elsewhere. But did they dig up the entire contents of the cemetery? No, just the ones that were lying on top (that of, course, being the common practice right up until the mid-19c). There was, of course, an outcry but that probably had more to do with one of the periodic outbreaks of cholera which was occurring at the time and was linked to the mass exhumation. It did not, of course, stop the railways from further encroaching over sacred burial ground; some years later, they wrecked the St Sepulchres graveyard at Holborn when the viaduct was constructed there. There are numerous other examples, both in London and in other cities and large towns. The crucial point is not that they could be sure of removing all the bodies, but that they actually knew that human remains would be left in situ.
You can of course, argue that the railways were an economic necessity, but what did the Victorians do next? Why, they turned their old cemeteries and their new, out of town ones into their own version of common entertainment – they tidied up the former and they landscaped the latter, all so that they could go for their weekend strolls and picnics while saying hello to their recently and dearly departed, while at the same time, no doubt enjoying some mirth and facile jollity.