Metropolitan Interments Act 1850

Metropolitan Interments Act 1850
Act of Parliament
coat of arms
Parliament of the United Kingdom
Long titleAn Act to make better Provision for the Interment of the Dead in and near the Metropolis.
Citation13 & 14 Vict. c. 52
Territorial extent United Kingdom
Dates
Royal assent5 August 1850
Commencement5 August 1850
Repealed1 July 1852
Other legislation
Repealed byBurial Act 1852
Status: Repealed
Text of statute as originally enacted

The Metropolitan Interments Act 1850 (13 & 14 Vict. c. 52) was an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom which regulated burials in the metropolitan area of London, England. The legislation directed the General Board of Health to act in the Metropolitan Burial District defined in the act. The board was a public body empowered to purchase eight existing large cemeteries around London and provide a burial service for a wide area. It was based on the recommendations of Edwin Chadwick. Before it was fully implemented, it was repealed by the Burial Act 1852 (15 & 16 Vict. c. 85). Only one cemetery was purchased, that is still in public ownership and now known as Brompton Cemetery.

Background

The issue of burials and the link to disease came to public attention following the 1839 publication of Gatherings from Graveyards by George Walker. As a follow up to the 1842 Report on The Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Population of Great Britain by Edwin Chadwick, which made recommendations for improvements to sanitary conditions, A Supplementary Report on the results of a Special Inquiry into The Practice of Interment in Towns was published in 1843. The General Board of Health had been created by the Public Health Act 1848. The 1848 act was based on Chadwick's recommendations regarding sanitation. The problem of dangerous and inadequate burial grounds was most severe in London. The Metropolitan Interments Act 1850 followed his recommendations on burials.

Provisions

The Metropolitan Burial District was created from the cities of London and Westminster, the borough of Southwark and adjacent parishes listed in schedule A. The General Board of Health was made a body corporate and given powers to enact the legislation.

It was able to buy land, including existing cemeteries, to provide burial grounds within and outside the burial district. They could enter into contracts with railway companies to provide carriages to transport bodies and mourners. The board was empowered to lay out the grounds, construct buildings and chapels. They could appoint chaplains. Every burial ground had to include a non-consecrated part. The act prohibited intramural burials.

The board could make recommendations for burials to cease in existing places, including those of churches, chapels, churchyards and burial places in the district. Residents of parishes in the district where burials had been discontinued had the right to be buried in grounds provided by the board. Burials could continue regardless of the provisions of the legislation at St Paul's Cathedral and Westminster Abbey with permission of the monarch.

Implementation

It was estimated it would cost £750,000 (equivalent to £87,293,149 in 2025) to purchase the eight large privately-owned cemeteries around London. Only one cemetery was purchased using the powers of the act, the West of London and Westminster Cemetery, that has remained in public ownership and is now known as Brompton Cemetery.

Subsequent developments

The whole act was repealed by section 1 of the Burial Act 1852 (15 & 16 Vict. c. 85), which came into force 1 July 1852, before it had been fully implemented. The powers of the General Board of Health were reduced to a regulatory role.

Metropolitan Burial District

The area of the Metropolitan Burial District was given in Schedule A of the legislation:

  • In Middlesex:
  • In Kent:
  • In Surrey:

Notes

  1. ↑ Section 78.
  2. ↑ The Acts of Parliament (Commencement) Act 1793.
  3. ↑ The legislation authorised the purchase of Highgate, Nunhead, Victoria Park, City of London and Tower Hamlets, West of London and Westminster, South Metropolitan, Kensal Green and Abney Park cemeteries.
  4. ↑ Westminster and Duchy of Lancaster parts
  5. ↑ Westminster and Duchy of Lancaster parts
  6. ↑ Including St James and St John
  7. ↑ Part in Middlesex
  8. ↑ Not including Penge.
  9. ↑ Part of Deptford

References

  1. ↑ "Gatherings from Graveyards". Cemetery Research Group. Retrieved 25 June 2026.
  2. ↑ "Report on Intramural Interments". Cemetery Research Group. Retrieved 25 June 2026.
  3. ↑ "Death in the city: the grisly secrets of dealing with Victorian London's dead". The Guardian. 3 February 2020 [23 Jan 2015-01-23]. Retrieved 20 September 2026.
  4. ↑ "Public Health Act 1848 and the General Board of Health". Policy Navigator. Retrieved 24 June 2026.
  5. ↑ McClean, David; McClean, Penny (September 2022). "Shared Burial Grounds". Ecclesiastical Law Journal. 24 (3): 295–308. doi:10.1017/S0956618X22000321. ISSN 0956-618X.
  6. ↑ "Report on Intramural Interments". Cemetery Research Group. Retrieved 24 June 2026.
  7. ↑ Cunningham Glen 1850, p. 1.
  8. ↑ Rugg, Julie (2013). "Constructing the grave: competing burial ideals in nineteenth-century England". Social History. 38 (3). Taylor & Francis, Ltd.: 328–345. doi:10.1080/03071022.2013.816167. ISSN 0307-1022. JSTOR 24246599.
  9. ↑ Cunningham Glen 1850, p. 2.
  10. ↑ Cunningham Glen 1850, p. 5.
  11. ↑ Cunningham Glen 1850, pp. 4–5.
  12. ↑ Cunningham Glen 1850, pp. 25–26.
  13. ↑ Cunningham Glen 1850, p. 6.
  14. ↑ Cunningham Glen 1850, p. 7.
  15. ↑ Cunningham Glen 1850, p. 8.
  16. ↑ Henson, Louise (2000). ""Phantoms Arising from the Scenes of Our Too-Long Neglect": Charles Dickens, Victorian Chemistry, and the Folklore of the Ghost". Victorian Review. 26 (1). Victorian Studies Association of Western Canada: 6–23. ISSN 0848-1512. JSTOR 27793426.
  17. ↑ Cunningham Glen 1850, pp. 9–10.
  18. ↑ Cunningham Glen 1850, pp. 11–12.
  19. ↑ Cunningham Glen 1850, p. 15.
  20. ↑ "Metropolitan Interment Act". Cemetery Research Group. Retrieved 24 June 2026.
  21. ↑ "Burial Act 1852", legislation.gov.uk, The National Archives, Vict/15-16 c. 85
  22. ↑ Rugg, Julie Joyce (2020) Nineteenth-century burial reform: a reappraisal. Histoire, Medecine et Sante. pp. 79-95.

Bibliography