True; as I recall there was a religious thing, forbidding what was seen as desecrating a corpse. The church couldn't condone it, but many realized it was going on and sort of looked the other way for the greater good (especially if it were the body of a convicted criminal or another outcast).
As a photo buff, I enjoy going out and taking pictures of some of these places. Very cool stuff but I approach it with ah...reverence? I'm always careful because some cemeteries are actually *private* and that struck me as odd. I mean, who would know if a distant relative wanted to come out for whatever reason that he/she shouldn't be there?
This may have arisen because people have other intentions in these latter days. If I look respectable and they know I'm taking photos, maybe it's no big deal. Kids partying in cemeteries avoid detection by police. They leave a mess or break gravestones, spray graffiti, all that. Drug deals, prostitution maybe? At Père Lachaise they have dogs running around at night, sort of like a junkyard.
You may also be interested to read about the catacombs of Paris.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catacombs_of_Paris
"The practice common then for burying the lesser-wealthy dead was mass inhumation. Once an excavation in one section of the cemetery was full, it would be covered over and another opened. Few of the dead buried in this way had the privilege of coffins; often the casket used for a burial ceremony would be re-used for the next. Thus the residues resulting from the decaying of organic matter, a process often chemically accelerated with the use of lime, entered directly into the earth, creating a situation quite unacceptable for a city whose then principal source of liquid sustenance was well water."
So there's a lot to be said for being careful about where you bury people.
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