A Hotbed of Disease.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XXIII, Issue 7294, 19 August 1898, Page 4

A Hotbed of Disease.

" A Melbourne Plague Spot." " 200,000 Festering Bodies," "The Need for a New Cemetery,;i " A Disgraceful - State of Affairs." Such are the headlines to a column article in the Age regarding the metropolitan cemetery. "The Melbourne General Cemetery," remarks.thab journal, " was opened, in 1853, the area allotted for burial purposes being, about 60 acres.; "With the : of the city after, the "gold rush subsided, it' was realised that larger burying r spacß would be required, and an additional-40 acres was added to the original concession, making, in all 100 acres. No further land has. been acquired by the trustees- since, despite the enormous growth of the city, but happily the congestion at Melbourne has been relieved to some extent, by the. creation of burial grounds at St. Kilda. and at Kew. To say .that Melbourne cemetery is absolutely' full now is nob an exaggeration. From a merely sanitary, point of view it is an outrage on civilisation to go on interring bodies in the midst of a great population in already scandalously overcrowded. a The state of things at Melbourne can only be described as awful.' ; There have been nearly 200,000 interments on that 100 acres ; of ground..- Bodies have been planted there to the extent of ; 2000 to the acre ; and in the: more V crowded part%, every square yard. ( .of 'earth. , represents .%i body, as ccffins nave : been., laid .on 'top of; one another until -.. they have, reached: within a few feeb of the surface. The. conditions prevailing are really so hor-; rible, that to tell the story in all its ghastlydetail ' would cause.a public t panic: , Eastern customs in, the dispbsal:o£, the dead have accounted ■ for tilence and black; death, ; and other horrors that have ; ,solved the population problem in Asiai-—We take-the utmost precaution to prevent this, death-dealing infection: from coming ; intO i our midst. Yet here : we are in the heart, of the.greatest city .in; Australia breedings corruption and. the; seeds 'of disease that may repfoducev de-| spite the boasted sanitation' of the 19th ' century, the appalling scenes witnessed in London in the plague of 1666.