THE SPA-FIELDS BURIAL GROUND.
INTERFERENCE OF THE HOME SECRETARY.
The repeated complaints and representations of the committee of the inhabitants of Clerkenwell have at length attracted the attention of the Home Secretary to the nuisance and practices so long prevalent in the neighbourhood of Exmouth-street, Spa-fields. A communication was made by Sir James Graham to the police commissioners on Saturday, and Captain Hay, the assistant commissioner, on that day inspected the Spa-fields burial ground, accompanied by Mr. Watt, the chairman, Mr. Clarke the secretary, and several other respectable householders. The stench arising from decomposed human bodies was declared by Captain Hay to be insufferable, and the committee were directed to forward such information as they could collect (reduced into writing) for the guidance of Sir J. Graham. A meeting of the committee took place on Sunday, and examinations were taken and forwarded to the Home Office. A meeting of the parish officers has likewise been held at the workhouse in Coppice Row, and Mr. Wakeling, the vestry clerk, has, it is stated, opened a correspondence with the Secretary of State on the subject. The manner in which this extraordinary and revolting work of demolition was first discovered is this–Reuben Room, a grave-digger at the burial ground had a child interred some time since, and upon his discharge he insisted on removing the body, asserting that he well knew after he had left that the coffin would be burnt, the body and limbs severed, and deposited elsewhere. Police-constables Henry Webb, G 106, and Martin, 144, were called in to prevent Room opening the grave, upon which he took the officers to an outhouse, where they saw the lids of several coffins consuming over a fierce fire, and pieces of “human flesh” (to use the officers’ own words) were attached to the coffins the size of their hands. The written examinations sent to Sir James Graham are seven in number. The statements are revolting in the extreme, and almost exceed belief; yet it is right that the public, as well as the Home Secretary, should be aware of what goes on at such places. We subjoin two of these seven depositions:
Rueben Room examined–Was in the employ of Mr. F. Greene as grave-digger in 1837, and continued in his employ for about six years. Our mode of working the ground was not commencing at one end and working to the other, but digging wherever it was ordered, totally regardless whether the ground was full or not. For instance, to dig a grave seven feet deep at a particular spot, I have often disturbed and mutilated seven or eight bodies–that is, I have severed heads, arms, legs, or whatever came in my way, with a crowbar, pickaxe, chopper, and saw. The bodies, some were quite fresh, and some decomposed! I have had as much as a hundred weight and a half of human flesh on what we term the “beef board,” at the foot of the grave at one time. I have often put a rope round the neck of the corpse to drag it out of the coffin, fastening one end of the rope to a tombstone, so as to keep the corpse upright to get at the coffin from underneath, to make room for the flesh of other bodies. The coffins were taken away and burnt, with pieces of decomposed flesh adhering thereto. I have taken up half a ton of wood out of one grave, because I had to take out two tiers of coffins, some of which were quite fresh, and we used to cut them up for struts, used for shoring up the graves. We had as many as 50 or 60 sides of coffins always in use to keep the ground from falling in when digging. We have buried as many as forty-five bodies in one day, besides still-borns. I and Tom smith kept an account one year. We buried 2017 bodies besides still-borns, which are generally enclosed in deal coffins. We have taken them up when they have been in the ground only two days, and used them to light fires with. I have been up to my knees in human flesh, by jumping on the bodies so as to cram them into the least possible space at the bottom of the graves in which fresh bodies were afterwards placed. We covered over the flesh at the bottom by a small layer of mould. I have ruptured myself in dragging a heavy corpse out of the coffin. It was a very heavy one. It slipped from my hold in lifting it by the shoulders. The corpse was quite fresh.
William Penny, Inspector of the G division–In December, 1843, a petition was presented to the magistrates at Clerkenwell Police Court, signed by about 153 inhabitants The magistrates gave me the petition arid desired me to see to it. I did so, and went immediately to a one-story erection in the burial ground called a “bone-house,” where I found a large fire on the floor and in the grate. The fire consisted of coffin boards of full-grown people and children broken up; some were quite sound with pieces of black cloth and handles and plates, and pieces of shrouds were flying about. The smell was indescribable. I have visited the ground many times since, and have found it in the same state. Have repeated experience in my nightly rounds of the horrible stench from the burial ground.
Great excitement continues to prevail throughout the parish and it is understood that an inquiry will be forthwith instituted.
The Lancaster [Lancashire England] Gazette 8 March 1845: p. 2
Chris Woodyard is the author of The Victorian Book of the Dead, The Ghost Wore Black, The Headless Horror, The Face in the Window, and the 7-volume Haunted Ohio series. She is also the chronicler of the adventures of that amiable murderess Mrs Daffodil in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales. The books are available in paperback and for Kindle. Indexes and fact sheets for all of these books may be found by searching hauntedohiobooks.com. Join her on FB at Haunted Ohio by Chris Woodyard or The Victorian Book of the Dead. And visit her newest blog, The Victorian Book of the Dead.
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