English borough, at a time when it might have been expected that a sense of common danger would have suppressed for the time class jealousies. Up to the date of the event to which reference is made, the little town had itself escaped the epidemic, which, however, was making considerable havoc in several places not very distant. One day a woman, a tramp, or a person not much above the level of a tramp, came to the borough, was taken ill there in a mean lodging-house, and speedily died. It was soon ascertained that she had come from a town where Asiatic cholera had established itself, and the doctors affirmed that she had died of that disease.
Now the local authorities were, to do them justice, quite on the alert. Immediately after the death occurred, the mayor and corporation met in their hall and deliberated on the situation. To carry the body from the lodging-house where it lay to the churchyard would have involved the taking it through the principal streets. Even though some of the streets might have been avoided by using a circuitous route, the churchyard could not be reached without passing through one or two streets – and the old burial-ground was dangerously near to a large number of houses. Medical opinion was decidedly against burying the woman in the churchyard; and happily, as it seemed, there was an alternative to that proceeding, for there was an enclosed piece of ground about half a mile off, and quite without the town, on which had formerly stood a chapel, and where a tower was yet standing. This piece of ground was consecrated, and it could be reached from the lodging-house without traversing more than a very small part of one of the streets.
The town council therefore thought that they had in every way taken prudent and reasonable order when they decreed that the grave should be dug in the piece of ground near the tower, and that the funeral should take its way thither, where all rites would be duly performed. It was lucky, as they thought, that this consecrated area was available; the safety of the living could be regarded without disrespect to the dead; the burgesses thought that they had discreetly settled an unexpected and menacing difficulty.
If, however, they thought that they were to receive the thanks of the community, they were grievously deceived. No sooner was it known that the burial was to take place near the old tower, than the lower orders of people, putting aside all concern about the cholera, grew vastly excited at the thought of carrying the body to this ground, which had for long been unused for interments. They said that, if it had been a well-to-do citizen that had so died instead of a friendless stranger, no authority would for a moment have thought of ordering the burial to be effected elsewhere than in the churchyard. They collected in angry groups about the streets (it was on a Sunday), and ultimately gathered in an immense mob about the house where the body was lying, declaring that the burial should be in the churchyard, and nowhere else.
The disappointed magistrates and councillors, when they understood how ill their arrangements had been received by a large part of the community, repaired to the scene of tumult, and endeavoured to convince the populace that what had been ordered was for the common good of all, high and low – that the danger was a very serious one – and that, as good citizens, all
