Hi my name is Kevin Hicks welcome to my YouTube Channel The History Squad.
Now today's video has been voted in by my Patreon members, hey guys thanks a million,
it's a bit of a dark subject really, it's about the burial practices of Victorian London around
about the 1830s 40s to be precise. The focus is on a Baptist Minister who managed to bury
in excess, they say of 12,000 bodies in the cellars, the basement of his Chapel.
So to Victorian London we shall make. Well actually it's just before Queen Victoria came
to the throne, 1822 and we're going to Clements Lane just off the Strand where a Mr W Howse has
founded a Ministry and purchased a chapel, the Enon Chapel. This is a financial enterprise
because people can worship upstairs and be buried downstairs, at a cost you understand.
Before we start the story of the Enon Chapel we need to lay a little bit of a foundation. The area
that the chapel was located was very poor indeed, it was slums, people living on the breadline from
hand to mouth, it was absolutely awful. If you'd have seen my film about the Victims of the Ripper,
it was that kind of an area. Now if you have children, infant mortality rate was between
30 and 40 percent, that is incredible and so devastatingly sad. One of your family dies,
I've got it written down here. Cost of a funeral for a child one pound, ten shillings and tuppence,
that's £102 in modern English money. If an adult dies that's one pound 17 shillings and tuppence,
that's £126 pounds in modern English money. This was so bad because a laborer made three
shillings and nine pence a day, that's the equivalent of £12.70 in modern money.
So if he has a death in his family and he lives in in a single room, crowded room,
14-15 people in one room he's gonna have to save up to have a funeral,
so the body will be wrapped and stored in that room, under the bed maybe.
And then along comes Mr Howse and the Enon Chapel, he will charge you 15 shillings for a funeral,
half the price of the local churches and what makes this more attractive, no questions asked.
Is your child baptized? What's the cause of death? Nothing like that at all, it's a 15 Shilling
funeral and it's not in the churchyard, that means the body snatchers can't have it so your loved
one doesn't end up on the dissecting table. No, they're going to be stored, buried, call it what
you will in the cellars underneath the chapel, so you can worship above whilst they slumber on
below. It's amazing really when you look into this Enon Chapel, major scandal, 1839. You've
got to ask yourself how do we know so much about it? Well it starts with the commissioner of the
sewers because you see diagonal, running through the cellar of the Enon Chapel was an open sewer.
There had been complaints all the way around the neighborhood of the terrible stench coming out of
the Enon Chapel, so they naturally assumed it was the, the sewers. So the commissioner went down and
what does he find? A scene of abject horror, bodies piled up, coffins piled up, smashed up
coffins and what he suggests to Mr Howse is that he builds an archway over the sewer enclosing it,
and doesn't do anything else! No repercussions about these bodies all over the place, even some
part body parts apparently had floated down the sewer. No, he's allowed to carry on. But what he
did do was he dug out part of the sewer and there were 60 wagon loads of soil that was contaminated
with bone, body parts, human tissue, they were dumped the other side of Waterloo Bridge where
they were constructing a new footpath. Some of it, so they say, was dumped straight into the
River Thames however carelessly, some baskets of this contaminated soil were given to some builders
who were repairing a path and when they emptied out this soil, a human hand appeared. There was
an outcry but still nothing was done Mr Howse continued burying 500 people in the cellars
of the Enon Chapel every year until his death in 1842. Think about that. What did he do with them?
So how on Earth did Mr Howse manage to bury 500 bodies a year in the cellar of Enon Chapel, such
a confined space 59 feet by 12 feet? Well to help us out I've done a drawing, let's take a look.
So here's my drawing, well basically it's a plan of the Enon Chapel cellars, uh if you think about
it 12 foot wide by 59 feet along and only six foot tall. We have an open sewer running through
it which must have been disgusting in its own right. Stacks of coffins from floor to ceiling
and then broken coffin bits waiting to be taken upstairs and be burnt by Mr Howse and his wife in
their house, but then the bone pits and I'll try and explain this a little bit better. You imagine
that is the floor of the chapel, he digs down, he makes these burial pits he then stacks your bodies
one on top of the other, covers them with quick lime and a little bit of soil. Now what I read,
so he's covered them with quick lime but one of the pits must have contained
coffins because one of the witness reckons that as you walked along
the surface of the chapel cellars, you are actually walking, there's somebody walking,
on coffin lids. But he rotated these. So once he got them to rot down into bones he would
take them up and then somewhere along here he would stack all of the bones up, even floating
them along the sewers and discreetly disposing of them by the wagon load into the River Thames.
He had an entire production line going, but the stench from all of these bodies rotting
in the coffins, the decomposition in the bone pits it must have been unbelievable.
We actually have a witness to the vault under the Enon Chapel, his name was George Walker, nicknamed
George ‘Graveyard’ Walker. Mr Walker was actually a surgeon and an advocate of Public Health, he
campaigned tirelessly for better burial practices. Now he left us a statement, a witness statement of
what he saw in the vaults under the Enon Chapel and I've got part of one here, this is what he
said. “Vast numbers of bodies have been placed here in pits dug for the purpose, the uppermost of
which were covered only by a few inches of earth. Soon after internments were made a peculiarly
long, narrow, black fly was observed to crawl out of many of the coffins this insect a product of
the putrification of the bodies was observed on the following season to be succeeded by another
which had the appearance of a common bug with wings. The children attending the Sunday school
held in this chapel in which these insects were to be seen crawling and flying in vast numbers called
them “body bugs”. We have another witness to the state of the Enon Chapel, he was actually a member
of the congregation, he was a cabinet maker and he attended the chapel from 1828 to 1835. Now he
made a statement to a parliamentary committee with regards to what had gone on and this is a
copy of what he said. “At the time I attended it there were internments and the place was in
a very filthy state. The smell was most abominable and very injurious. I frequently gone home myself
with a severe headache which I supposed to have been occasioned by the smell, more particularly in
the summertime, also there were insects something similar to a bug in shape and appearance only with
wings about the size of a small bug. I have seen them in the summertime, hundreds of them flying
about the chapel. I have taken them home in my hat and my wife has taken them home in her clothes. We
always considered that they proceeded from the dead bodies underneath.” Can you imagine that?
In 1842 the Baptist Minister Mr Howse dies, so the burials cease and in 1844 a Mr Fitzpatrick
takes up residence in the Enon Chapel but he finds that the kitchen ceiling is too low so he employs
a builder, on his day off, on a Sunday to come and do some alterations in the kitchen. The builder
lifts all the flagstones up because he's going to dig down into the floor to make more room in the
kitchen, as soon as he lifts up the flagstones, you've guessed it he finds bones. Well this is an
enterprising builder and Mr Fitzpatrick is in on it as well so they clear all the bones out of the
ground and then dig a hole even deeper than the floor level they want for the kitchen, put all
of the bones into there, fill it in and then lay a new kitchen floor, job done. Well it would appear
that Mr Fitzpatrick wasn't that happy with his new kitchen in Enon Chapel after all because he moved
out, but we do know that come 1847 the chapel was acquired by a group of teetotallers who reopened
Enon Chapel as a dance hall and their tagline, you've got to love this, was ‘Dancing on the
Dead’. Now there hand out, their bill if you like, read “Enon Chapel. Dancing on the Dead. Admission
three pence. No lady or gentleman admitted unless wearing shoes and stockings.” What a great advert.
It's amazing how this ends up because George ‘Graveyard’ Walker in 1848, purchased the Enon
Chapel and promised to give all of the bodies buried in there a decent burial. But he didn't
do it discreetly. He was a bit of a showman, he invited the public in, no charge but contributions
were accepted, they will help for the reinterment of the bodies. To encourage people to come, he
had attendants walking up and down the local area with a skull in their hands that would encourage,
or entice, your death lovers of Victorian London to come and have a look. In fact 6000 people came
down to Enon Chapel, climbed down into that cellar to view the great pyramid of bones.
The highlight of being on tour was when the visitors got to gaze upon the shriveled face
of the long dead Mr Howse his body must have been placed down in the cellar amongst all of
those bones. That's what you call Poetic Justice isn't it? But all of those remains were reinterred
in Norwood Cemetery and to this very day they lie there still, sadly in an unmarked grave.
Sadly this is just the tip of the iceberg. The scandal of the Enon Chapel was just one scandal
amongst many concerning the private burial places of the city of London,
we haven't even touched on the boneyards yet, so stay tuned, there's more to come.
Well I hope you found our little film interesting. Bit of a dark subject that's for sure. If you did,
like, share and subscribe and don't forget to turn on the all notification button but before I go,
a quick shout out to some of our new Patreon members, David Lewis, Alexandra Lofgreen and
someone who signs themselves simply as David. Welcome aboard guys, bye for now.