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In 1838, for example, there was a widely publicized English case in which two gravediggers died, "one as if struck by a cannonball." As the pair was working in the paupers' section of London's Aldgate Cemetery (where sometimes as many as eighteen paupers were buried in the same grave) an explosion occurred.
At the inquest, the reasons for the explosion were debated. Some blamed something called a "galvanic derangement," when galvanized energy fields were supposedly destroyed by the proximity of decomposing bodies. Others were certain the explosion was the result of a buildup of "carbonic acid gases" emitting from adjacent burials. It was widely believed that simply inhaling such gases directly could bring instant death.
That all graveyards were full of "miasmas"--toxic mists carrying poisonous effluvia from decaying bodies that supposedly polluted the atmosphere--was a near universal belief for thousands of years. Surely countless cinematic portrayals of mist-shrouded graveyards are vestiges of ancient fears that flourished in times when the nature of contagion was not scientifically understood.
The extent of overcrowding in many graveyards is exemplified by conditions in a nineteenth-century British cemetery of average size--roughly two hundred acres. St. Martin-in-the-Fields held at least sixty thousand bodies. Potential contagion, poisoning of ground water and other health hazards were obviously the result of too many corpses in too small a space.
I asked Jerry if he thought it was true that our cemetery of five acres, currently holding about fifteen hundred graves, had room for at least six hundred more burials--something my father told me that I have doubted.
"Oh yeah, easy!" Jerry told me. He also noted that in Oregon it is legal to bury a husband and wife in the same grave. "You got to plan it out, though," he added. "It means you've got to dig pretty deep when the first one goes so you can have room for another one later."
Despite the obvious overcrowding in European churchyards, church officials were not in favor of moving burial grounds to rural locales. For one thing, many clerics and sextons depended upon the income they received from the sale of plots and associated services on church property.
Church officials were also convinced that the dead would be forgotten if relegated to outlying areas; that corpses might be unsafe in times when grave robbing, on behalf of medical science, was a real problem. Equally distasteful was the fact that "pagan" civilizations such as the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans had historically located their cemeteries on the outskirts of settlements. The word "cemetery," in fact, from the Greek koimao (to put to sleep)--was usually associated with secular burying grounds rather than consecrated religious ones. Clerics were rankled by the ideas of secularism generated during the Enlightenment; the suspect influence of romantic pantheism, and other intellectual explorations that were seen to undermine church authority.
Church objections were eventually eclipsed by health concerns in the late 1700s when various European metropolitan cemeteries were finally removed to outlying districts. Most notable was Pere Lachaise Cemetery, established on the outskirts of Paris. With its emphasis on Romantic Nature, and conscious design inspired by the ideas inherent in British "landscape architecture," Pere Lachaise would eventually influence American civic leaders who were attempting to address their own overcrowded burial grounds.
Americans put their own stamp on solutions to cemetery
overcrowding, however, by beginning what was known as the Rural Cemetery Movement. In 1831, the newly completed Mount Auburn Cemetery in Boston (now a national landmark) was consecrated by religious leaders as well as hailed by secular supporters, including horticulturists and medical authorities. America's premier Garden Cemetery, soon the principal model for many other nineteenth-century cemeteries in cities across the U.S., sought to emphasize the union of religious and secular concerns: "Eden--the first abode of the living," its founders proclaimed, "Mount Auburn--the last resting place of the dead." The Rural Cemetery Movement was launched; other major cities would soon follow Boston's lead with their own versions of garden cemeteries--among them Brooklyn (Green-Wood Cemetery) and Philadelphia (Laurel Hill).
Superficially, smaller cemeteries like our own would seem to bear little resemblance to places like Mount Auburn and Laurel Hill with their romantic accouterments of bridges and ponds, elaborate funerary statuary, and carefully landscaped "bosky dells." The roads of this little pioneer cemetery are loosely laid out on a geometric grid and do not contain the generous curves, the carefully planned meandering pathways, the deliberate scenic "surprises" designed to delight the eye so abundant in the garden cemeteries established in the mid-nineteenth century.
Still, many of America's graveyards, particularly those established in the first half of the nineteenth century, like this one, share something of the impulse that inspired the Rural Cemetery Movement. They are not located in churchyards and have been deliberately set on the outskirts of towns. Their founders, often fraternal orders that grew out of the forces of the European Enlightenment, have located these burial grounds on hilltops and ridges to make the most of "a beautiful prospect." These burying places are formally called cemeteries as if to define their secular and civic connections as opposed to strictly religious ones. Special trees and other plants, although not chosen by an expert landscaper with a "plan" in mind, have nevertheless been selected with care, often by the families who own plots, and bring heritage roses, lilacs, and special shrubs and trees frequently associated with carefully planned "garden cemeteries."
An early brochure extolling the then suburban comfort of Laurel Hill in Philadelphia promised a place "where the smitten heart might pour out its grief over the grave of a cherished one, secure from the idle gaze of heartless passersby, and where the mourner could rear a flower consecrated to the memory and hope." Similar attributes exist not only in our own cemetery, but in other country cemeteries all over the United States.
(continued on the next page)
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