Public health and private sentiment: The development of cemetery architecture and funerary monuments from the eighteenth century onwards

1989/10/01 by Harold Mytum · 1 citation
Arts and Humanities · #Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis

paper · doi:10.1080/00438243.1989.9980107

Abstract

Abstract With the rapid increase of city populations, the traditional forms of body disposal within European towns became a threat to public health during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Once initial conservatism and vested interests were overcome, a new form of mortuary behaviour developed. This involved large cemeteries with private plots and their attendant memorials, following on models already applied in the colonies. These changes certainly led to a reduction in the risks to public health, but shifts in the attitudes to death also hastened the abandonment of crowded city centre graveyards. The cemeteries offered much more scope for exhibition of material success and remembrance of the dead.

Citations

• Death's Heads, Cherubs, and Willow Trees: Experimental Archaeology in Colonial Cemeteries

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