750 LAWS OF MARYLAND. [CH. 312

various church bodies or religious societies establish them, the
ultimate result in far too many cases is, after the lapse of a
generation or two, we have decaying, ill-kept and neglected
sanctuaries; and

WHEREAS, A short walk of inspection out of Baltimore City
or in any of the towns or cities of the Counties, or along the
county roads in nearly every direction discloses unsightly burial
plots overgrown with weeds and brush, exhibiting broken bot-
tles, overthrown grave-stones, tottering monuments and rutted
driveways, and this, despite the fact that all sorts of money
has been paid for what is called, by a legal phrase, "perpetual
care" and

WHEREAS, In answer to the question put to any competent
legal authority the answer invariably received is that the words
mean virtually nothing. There are no means of enforcing such
care after a generation or two have passed, and we find as a re-
sult many burial spots left without care open to the incursions
of heartless vandals; and

WHEREAS, Many cemeteries give way in the course of time to
the encroachments of a rapidly growing city, streets will be
laid out and paved and houses for the living will rise upon areas
once held sacred by loving heirs as the resting place of gen-
erations that have gone before; and

WHEREAS, There are many men now living who have as boys
seen coffins protruding with their ghastly remains out of the
hillsides of a once beautiful cemetery on Jefferson Street in the
City of Baltimore, a few blocks east of Broadway, where are
now public streets and avenues and solid blocks of residences;
while some of those boy's have played with skulls that came
from the ground close to Broadway itself, that is now occupied
as the site of the great Johns Hopkins Hospital. These same
sights have prevailed, as probably, many persons now living can
attest, in all sections of the City of Baltimore as well as in
every county of our State; and

WHEREAS, It is proper that respect for our ancestors should be
encouraged in its laudable designs and that the asylums of the
dead should be held sacred and not disturbed and be interfered
with; and, therefore,

SECTION 1. Be it enacted by the General Assembly of Mary-
land, That an unpaid commission of twelve citizens, as follows: