While not strictly Vermont I thought this an interesting article. Ruth The Vermont Tribune, Ludlow, June 21, 1889 A Tomb for 40,000 Dead 6/21/1889 It is Proposed to Build it Above Ground in New York At the invitation of the Rev. D. Howard CROSBY, Alfred BIERSTADT (the artist) and others, the Rev. Charles R. TREAT lectured recently at New York on the new system for the "Sanitary Disposition of the Dead." With the aid of a stereopticon the lecturer gave views of the mausoleums in which the dead of olden times were entombed. Entombing, the lecturer thought preferable to ground interment. He said: King Mausolus sought refuge in death from the cold damp ground in a massive tomb, and sepulchres have born the name of mausoleums ever since. Kings, heroes, saints, and millionaires have followed his example, and there is hardly a cemetery in any land that does not contain these resting places for the dead. Old as the mausoleum is, its use in this country does not extend beyond a family's needs, except in New Orleans, where circumstances have compelled its use. A new plan is offered for the disposition of the dead. It proposes to substitute for a multitude of family vaults a fine building, better in ornamentation, in ventilation, in care and superintendence than many dwellings, with room for thousands of coffins. A building of such magnitude within a city necessarily involves a radical change in the preparation of the remains. Corruption must be banished, or else the health Boards and the public would alike reject it. We will dry the bodies. Extract the moisture and decay will be summarily stayed. The new mausoleum is to be a large, handsome, and massive building, closely resembling in many respects to a well appointed library., plans have been prepared for a building to be erected in this city showing a frontage of 350 feet and a depth of about 100 feet. Such a building would become the last resting place of fully forty thousand. It will be constructed of concrete of the finest quality. The casket spaces or sepulchres will be in tiers of six, and each tier and each sepulchre, as well as the arched corridors and halls, will have walls of concrete. The inner walls will be built up in conjunction with the outer walls, three inches at a time, and the whole will form a monolithic house of concrete, seamless, jointless, and as durable as the everlasting hills. The force that levels it will first have leveled and pulverized every other erection of man. For the purpose of ornament the walls both outside and inside may be faced with polished granite or other durable stone, fastened in the concrete before it hardens. Each casket space or sepulchre will be supplied with an inlet pipe and an exit pipe, and these pipes, thousands in number, are to be brought together in a furnace room in a sub-cellar. The process of burial is simple in such a building. A casket is placed in one of the cells, the head of the sepulchre is filled with a glass door carefully sealed, and the entire space becomes air tight, except where the two pipes have openings. A current of dry air is drawn through the casket to the furnace, where it is purified by fire and then discharged in the upper air, innocuous. This current eventually carries away eighty per cent of the body, which is water or gases. Only the mineral or solid parts are left, and these will remain for all time. Although the body will be reduced to almost 40 pounds in weight, the face remains with out discoloration or material change, the large bones preventing material shrinkage. The feasibility of the new process has been abundantly demonstrated before, and is vouched for by such men as Prof. R. A. WITTHAUS, Dr. Charles Inslee APRDEE, Dr. A. N. BELL, editor of the SANITARIAN, Dr. E. P. FOWLER, Dr. Egbert GUERNSEY, the late Dr. A. P. T. GARNETT, and others. The dry, pure air would not suffocate, and such a thing as a burial alive becomes practically impossible. One horror will certainly be dismissed. The quiet dwellers in such a building will not poison the air, the earth, or the water, and no vandal or ghoul can molest them. Transcribed by Ruth Barton -- Ruth Barton mrgjb@sover.net Dummerston, VT