South Park Street Cemetery

South Park Street Cemetery is a quiet, eight-acre enclave defined by a high brick wall that shields it from the surrounding city's constant movement. Opened in seventeen sixty-seven, it was established as a deliberate response to a desperate public health crisis. During the eighteenth century, tropical diseases and poor sanitation created a mortality rate among the European population of Calcutta that far exceeded the capacity of the original burial grounds near the old fort. To avoid the constant, demoralizing sight of funeral processions traveling through the settlement, the East India Company chose this remote location, which was then a landscape of marshy fields and jungle.