The Law of Burial

PREFACE

ΤΟ THE FIRST EDITION.

are

THERE more than a hundred and twenty

public Acts of Parliament relating in whole or in part to matters connected with the burial of the dead. They contain provisions dealing with the interment of bodies, the establishment of burial boards, the providing, enlarging, and repairing of burial grounds, churchyards, and cemeteries, and the preservation of order therein, the regulation of burial ceremonies, registration of burials, the burial of the poor, of suicides, murderers, and drowned persons, the removal of bodies, the closing of burial grounds, and the conversion of disused burial grounds into open spaces, the superintendence of tombstones and monuments, the destination of fees, the establishment of mortuaries, and other matters more or less connected with the subject of burial.

Most of these matters are dealt with piecemeal by Acts amended and re-amended, or in connection with other subjects. Hence a difficulty has been experienced in deciding which Acts, out of this chaos, should be printed in full and which should be shortened to one or more sections, or merely alluded to in a note, so as to give the fullest information possible within the compass of a work

of moderate dimensions. Those Acts relating exclusively to burial in general, or to the burial of classes of persons in particular, and to burial boards or burial grounds, are of course printed in full. The Church Building Acts have almost the same application to the providing of churchyards as to the building of churches, and it has been thought advisable to set out most of those Acts slightly abbreviated. On the other hand, the Acts

relating to the poor contain, as a rule, specific sections dealing with burial, and in most cases it has been sufficient to set out such sections only. Of the Acts dealing with other matters, such as registration, preservation of order, establishment of mortuaries, the conversion of closed burial grounds into open spaces, etc., some have been set out in full and some abridged, as has appeared suitable.

In the introductory chapter the common and civil law relating to burial has been fully dealt with. The decided cases on the subject up to the present term have been noted, and references given to all the leading series of reports.

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