Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 April 1875 — One Way to Dispense With Cemeteries. [ARTICLE]

One Way to Dispense With Cemeteries.

Dr; Frank Richardson, writing to the London Times, give* the following extraordinary account of a village in the North of England: “The interesting letters which have appeared in your columns during the last week or two upon the mode of committing ‘ Earth to Earth* tempt me to send yoa the following instance of a district In which that unpleasant process is postponed in a singularly unusual manner. The large parish of Alwinton-with-Holystone is situated npon the southern slopes of the Cheviots, includes the upper vale of the Coquet, and extends about twenty miles in length and several in breadth, comprising 44,472 acres. Its population has decreased from 1,396 at the census of 1861 to 1,272 at that of 1871. The occupations of its inhabitants are almost equally divided between the tending of sheep and the cultivation of cereals upon lands which rest in nearly similar proportions upon freestone and porphyry. During the year 1874 six deaths occurred in this parish, being at the rate of 4.7 per thousand—one of those deaths being that of an unfortunate young • shepherd who perished in the recent snow-storm. This mortality was lower than usual; during the previous ten years the number was 106 —an annual average of 7.9 per thousand. Of these 106 deaths there were 16 between 70 and 80 years of age, and, curiously, 29 above 80 years, considerably more than one-quarter of the total deaths thus occurring in people above eighty years old, or 273.6 per 1,000. Now, is there anything exceptional in the ages of the inhabitants to account for this low deathrate? The aged and very young, among whom proportionally the mortality is highest, exist in large numbers. Within two miles of my house I know nine octogenarians, and a tenth—our parish clerk —died last week at; the age of eightythree. In this village of Harbottle, with 120 inhabitants, there are thirty-seven children under fourteen years of age, and during the last twenty years no child has died, and for nearly four years no one until the case just mentioned. I may add another instance of the large proportion of children existing and their immunity from death. A farmer in this parish and his three shepherds, who have occupied their present situations "early thirty years, have among them 47 children, and not a single death has occurred in these families. The inhabitants have abundance of plain, substantial food, excellent water, good residences as a rule, and regular but not severe work in a pure, bracing atmosphere, and are highly intelligent and generally abstemious. I am indebted to the Rev. A. Proctor, who has been upward of forty years the esteemed vicar, for the corroboration of the statistics of the parish which I have now given you.”