On
the 24th December, thanks to a half day holiday granted by my employers, I made
what is, for me at least, fast becoming a tradition; the Christmas Eve cemetery visit. We moved offices earlier this year and I am now lucky enough to work in
Willesden, a location that my colleagues complain endlessly about as unless you
live in North West London it can take be tricky to get to. It is also dirty, dangerous and dismal, they
say. I have spent most of my adult life
working in the parts of London that most people go out of their way to avoid
and to me Willesden doesn’t seem that bad. I live in East London and I can’t
say I particularly enjoy the hour and a half trek to and from the office on the
overcrowded Central and Jubilee lines every morning and evening. More than
balancing out the negatives for me is the fact that Willesden has more
cemeteries within striking distance of the office than anywhere else I have
ever worked. Within 10 minutes walk of
my workplace on the High Road are not one but two Jewish cemeteries as well as non
denominational Willesden New Cemetery (opened 1891). Only slightly further away
is North West London’s oldest Parish church, St Mary’s founded circa 938 with its
churchyard and Willesden’s Old Burial Ground. Paddington Old Cemetery isn’t far
away either, virtually a straight walk of not much more than 20 minutes down
Brondesbury Park. Or, almost as close but far more enticing, Kensal Green and
its two cemeteries, All Souls and St Mary’s, a brisk 30 minute stroll away or a
mere 10 minute bus ride on the 302. In London they say you are never more than 6
feet away from a rat or a mile away from a cemetery. Willesden is particularly
blessed with both though I’m not sure if there is a connection. My colleagues
appreciate neither.
I
may have been spoilt for choice but there is only ever going to be one winner
for me in any competition between cemeteries; I walked to Kensal Green. It was
a dull day, a gunmetal grey sky threatened rain and leached the colour out of
what little was left of the afternoon. The weather forecast had promised breaks
in the cloud and intermittent sunshine but there was no sign of any relief to
the thoroughly depressing day. The cemetery was less busy than last year, there
were a few dedicated souls visiting the graves of their departed loved ones but
nowhere near as many as last Christmas Eve. Visitors to Kensal Green are, in my
experience, always impeccably well behaved. I noticed a solitary rough sleeper
in the portico of the old catacombs a couple of years ago but I have never seen
discarded drug paraphernalia, had to steer clear of groups of inebriated street
drinkers, stumbled across grown men clinched in intimate
embraces in the undergrowth or seen any other sign of the variety of ways
Londoners find to enjoy themselves in some of the more disreputable cemeteries.
It hasn’t always been this way though; a
correspondent who signed himself A Mourner for the Dead, wrote to the editor of
The Times on April 13 1857. “I, on Good Friday, went [to the cemetery at
Kensal-green] to pay a tribute of respect and affection to one not long
departed,” the troubled Mourner wrote and “in approaching the tomb I found a
large assemblage of persons collected, whose behaviour and language were little
suited to the solemnity of the place. The ground was strewn with oranges, nuts,
&c, laughter, and opinions passed of those who slept quietly there jarred
on the feelings of those who went to weep, to pray. I ask you, is this fit, is
this becoming in a Christian country? The cemetery of Pere Le Chaise is not
looked on as a tea garden, unjust remarks on the dead are not heard, decency is
observed; but with us, how different!” The Mourner beseeched the editor to use
his powerful influence to stop “sanctuaries for the dead becoming scenes of riot
and disorder.”
Such
scenes were probably rare in the 1830’s when the cemetery first opened and the
activity of the public was closely monitored by the company’s watchmen. In 1832,
the year the cemetery was founded (the first burial was a year later) the Whig
Government of Earl Grey had passed the Anatomy Act designed to curb the rampant
illegal trade in human corpses by allowing licensed teachers of anatomy access
to unclaimed bodies (of the poor obviously) from hospitals, prisons and
workhouses. It was common practice before (and for some after) the passing of
the act for burial grounds to employ watchmen to make sure that the dead were
not disturbed by the activities of the resurrection men and it would have been
no different for the new cemetery. The Naval & Military Gazette of 10
August 1833 contains the fascinating titbit that the watchmen employed by the
General Cemetery Company were armed. “On Wednesday night,” it says, “as one of
the watchmen employed at the New Cemetery at Kensall Green, was discharging his
gun as usual on relieving guard, the barrel burst, and blew his right hand off
from the wrist. He was immediately taken to a surgeon in
the neighbourhood,
and thence to the Middlesex Hospital.” As far as I am aware burial ground
watchmen were not usually armed with anything more dangerous than a stout
cudgel. The General Cemetery Company was clearly determined to discourage body
snatching or any other unseemly activity from its new model cemetery.
My
trawls through the newspaper archives looking for other stories relating to pistol
packing watchmen in the cemetery has failed, so far, to turn up anything at
all. For how long watchmen went armed on their nightly patrols is still a
mystery. The threat from resurrection men would have receded as the provisions
of the new anatomy act started to take effect in the late 1830’s. At some point
the danger of an employee blowing his own hand off would have been a greater
risk to the company than body snatchers tarnishing the reputation of the cemetery
by making off with a newly buried corpse. When that point was reached the
management of the cemetery presumably retired its arsenal and took a less belligerent
approach to protecting its property. Later press stories relating to guns and
the cemetery are generally relating to suicides such as the ‘unknown gentleman’
whose body was found by undertakers conducting a funeral in the cemetery on 11
November 1872. “The body was lying amongst some tombstones,” reported the Scotsman
of 12 November, “and a single-barrelled pistol was found near the head of the
deceased.” No further details were reported. People who commit suicide in
cemeteries generally have some intimate connection with someone buried there
and generally kill themselves at the grave side. Sometimes the relationship between
the suicide and the buried can be quite surprising; this was certainly true of
another unknown man whose story was reported in Wigan Observer and District Advertiser of 11 March
1859. He had taken his own life with a dose of poison. “The wretched man had
formed an attachment to a widow, which was not returned,” said the paper “and
when his dead body was found it was lying the headstone of the widow’s late
husband.” What an interesting conversation the pair of them must have had in
the afterlife.
Excellent photos. I especially like that rather majestic sphinx.
ReplyDeleteThank you Jenny!
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