“The strange idea that death should be an unnoticeable or unmentionable part of city life was apparently debated in Boston a century ago, when city improvers advocated the removal of the small old graveyards of Boston’s downtown churches. One Bostonian, Thomas Bridgman, whose views prevailed, has this to say,

‘The burial place of the dead, so far as it has any influence, is on the side of virtue and religion . . . Its voice is one of perpetual rebuke to folly and sin. ‘“

— Jacobs, DaLoGAC, 233