Going 'to paradise by way of Kensal Green': A most unfit subject for trading profit?

Since the Reformation, the established Church had monopolised the English burial trade. In London, in the 1830s, burial conditions posed a serious threat to public health and a number of limited liability companies were licensed by Parliament to provide new facilities for the interment of the dead on the edges of the city, before the main responsibility was then transferred to local government. The paper examines the changes in government thinking that lay behind these policy shifts and explains why private sector capitalists were unable to meet the various expectations of customers in the London burial market, its own stakeholders and society more generally.