Epidemics and Calamities in the XIX Century and its Impact on Manchego Cemeteries

Abstract

The change of the traditional burial place in the parishes to cemeteries arranged outside the towns in the first decades of the 19 Century, It was the result of measures designed to prevent the spread and spread of diseases caused by the emanation of corpses. In addition to this circumstance, the plagues of cholera, typhus, smallpox, as well as the famines that occurred throughout the century, directly impacted the Manchurian cemeteries with the creation of new burial grounds, extensions and changes in the configuration of the existing ones, Establishment of specific State legislation for burials in times of epidemics, taking into account the risk of burial of the living as a consequence of the immediacy and improvisation justified by the circumstances. Municipal measures regarding the number of gravediggers and personnel for the management of corpses. Passage from burial in individual graves to mass graves with alteration of the order and disposition thereof, as well as surveillance and prohibition of access to cemeteries. Measures and determinations that, motivated by sanitary circumstances, conditioned an evolution in cemeteries that in the case of the region of La Mancha has not been sufficiently studied.