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| The Dissenters Chapel, Kensal Green Cemetery - the catacombs lie below the chapel |
“On
Friday last, between twelve and one o'clock, a constable of the D division, on
duty near the Kensal Green Cemetery, discovered smoke issuing from the
catacombs situate in the Dissenters’ portion of the ground. He raised an alarm,
and several fire engines quickly arrived, but such was the heat which came from
the mouth of the catacombs that a considerable time elapsed before the grating
could be got up. A brigade man was then fitted out with a fire dress similar to
the one now being exhibited at the Polytechnic Institution, and the necessary
air was supplied by the action of the steam engine. He descended, and after
being absent some time returned, and said the vault No. 16 was in flames. The
whole force of the engines was then turned to that spot, and the fire was soon
extinguished. When the steam and smoke had, in a great measure, evaporated, a
party of men descended to No. 16 vault, which had contained ten coffins, some of
which were leaden ones. Five of the coffins were almost totally consumed, and the
others, with one exception, were more or less injured. The stench and the sight
which presented] itself were horrible in the extreme, and altogether
indescribable The wildest conjectures are afloat as to the origin of the fire
but no definite conclusions are as yet arrived at. — The Observer supplies the
following additional particulars:—"It appears that the coffin which had
only recently been placed in the vaults under the Dissenting chapel at Kensal
Green Cemetery and which escaped destruction at the fire which look place there
on Friday night, contained the remains of the late Mr Joseph Parkes, formerly
the celebrated Parliamentary agent. The body was deposited in this vault on
Wednesday under the direction of Mr. Garston, the undertaker, of Welbeck Street
who conducted the funeral, merely as a temporary measure, it being intended by the
deceased gentlemen's friends to have it removed to Hastings when a vault which
is being constructed there is completed. It was placed in the vault in the
Dissenting ground because its removal would not require a "faculty"
but simply an order from the Secretary of State. The vault was exceedingly dry,
so much so that some of the coffins which had been there many years were
falling to pieces with dry rot and the cloth over the wood work hung in shreds
like tinder At the upper part of the vault there is a place for a candle and it
is believed that in lighting this candle, either with a Lucifer or paper, to
show a light when Mr. Parkes's coffin was being put on the bars on which it
rested, the man must have dropped a spark on to the cloth of the nearest coffin
and that it smouldered away unobserved until, coming into contact with the gas
emitted through some aperture in the lead of the enclosed coffin, that ignited
and at once communicated flame to the wood of the outer coffin, and so on to
the others on the same tier. There were five coffins completely consumed, with
their contents, and a part of a sixth; but although the molten lead dropped on
either side and all around the coffin of Mr. Parkes, it was but slightly
injured.”
Essex
Standard Wednesday 23 August 1865
The
son of a manufacturer from the Midlands Joseph Parkes (1796 to 1865) qualified and
practiced as a solicitor and then was drawn into reform politics. He was
disciple of Jeremy Bentham, married a granddaughter of Joseph Priestley the
discoverer of oxygen and was the grandfather of Hilaire Belloc the celebrated
writer. His obituary in The Times said ‘Perhaps no man was better acquainted
than he with the secret history of politics during the last thirty or forty
years. … He held in the great whig army a place, if not of command, yet of
trust and influence.’ By the time his entry in the Dictionary of National
Biography came to be written the verdict was slightly more dismissive, Parkes
was a “busy, enthusiastic, not very able man.” Setting fire to the catacombs at Kensal Green was by far the most interesting thing he ever did.
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