Gangsters, the most inebriated woman in the world, flatulent Lord Mayors and Olaudah Equiano; Chingford Mount Cemetery, Old Church Road, E4

 

Chingford Mount was opened as a non-conformist burial ground by the Abney Park Cemetery Company in 1884 when the 32 acres of the company’s first cemetery in Stoke Newington were starting to become a little overcrowded.  “Forty-four years ago-on the 28th May, 1840 the Lord Mayor of London opened the burial-ground at Abney-park,” reported Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper on 25 May 1884, “with the marvellous growth of the Great City, so rapid have been the funeral marches to the grave, that its thirty acres are being swiftly swallowed up. Accordingly, the limited company to which the ground belongs has secured a fresh estate of seventy-eight acres, and thirty-three of them having been enclosed for the purpose of sepulture, another Lord Mayor yesterday opened what is to be known as Chingford Mount Cemetery. It occupies a fine position on the first hill beyond the valley of the Lea, and is approached by good roads from Clapton, Tottenham, and Walthamstow. A grand avenue of elms opening on the ivy-covered ruins of old Chingford church forms a picturesque feature of the locality.” The tree lined avenue is still there, the original elms have gone and been replaced by London planes.

The cemetery was formally opened by the flatulent Sir Robert Fowler, twice Lord Mayor of London, in a ceremony which he enigmatically described as “sad and interesting”. (Frank Harris demolished Sir Robert’s reputation in ‘My Life and Loves’. The learned mayor was described in the first D.N.B. as “a perfect storehouse of quotations from orators and poets, Greek, Roman, and English” but Harris characterises him as “a large man who must have been five feet ten at least in height and much more in girth” who at a society dinner “ate like an ogre…. smacking his lips and hurrying again to his plate, intent on cutting and swallowing huge gobbets of meat while the veins of his forehead stood out like knotted cords and the beads of sweat poured down his great red face!” The result of the gourmandising was an attack of fetid flatulence that drove the hostess, “as pale as death”, from the dining room in search of fresh air.)  According to Lloyds Weekly “After the chaplain, the Rev H. Varley, had read some appropriate passages of Scripture, Dr. Llewelyn Bevan delivered an address, referred to burial customs in ancient times, and pointing out how the harsh restrictions with respect to those who had died unbaptised, who had committed suicide; or were ex-communicated, had led to the divisions which were now to be found in " God's Acre." We have only to look back a hundred years to find a tax on burials, the impost being levied on a sliding scale, by which four shillings was paid for a "common person," and as much as fifty pounds for a duke. Wise reforms have stayed man's tyranny from being carried down to the grave, but there is ample room for improvement in our burial customs. Would not the opening of this new cemetery afford a timely opportunity for the introduction of more simple ways for showing reverence for the dead?”  Chingford certainly offered a simpler, and cheaper, way of burying the dead; fees at Abney Park were 20 shillings for a child and 40 shillings for an adult and a private cost £3 3 shillings, but at Chingford children could be buried for a little as 4 shillings and adults from 10 and private graves started at £1 1 shilling. Further enticement to use Chingford were Sunday burials, banned at Abney Park, but available there from 1887; “this concession to the wishes of many East End residents is evidently already fully appreciated, especially by working-class people and middle-class traders, many of whom find exceedingly inconvenient to leave their employment and business during the week-days in order to attend the funerals of their deceased relatives,” said the  Hackney and Kingsland Gazette of 2 March 1887, “these are times when East-enders can ill afford to lose day’s wages, even for so needful a purpose; and the Sunday interments, which, as above stated, have already commenced, will sure to prove a great boon to the bereaved.”

There are no outstanding monuments at Chingford Mount, Dr Llewelyn Bevan would be pleased to note that simplicity became an indelible feature of the cemetery. Meller and Parsons in London Cemeteries praise the trees rather than the memorials, “some of them are magnificent,” they say, especially the avenue of planes. The cemetery was used for a couple of mass reinterments following closure of burial grounds elsewhere. In the late 1930’s Ram’s Episcopal Chapel was scheduled for demolition;

Over 200 years ago, shortly after George II became King, an Irishman disagreed with the churchwarden of Hackney (London) parish church. He wanted to occupy pew 13. They refused to let him do so. Mr. Stephen Ram, banker, son of Sir Albert Ram, of Dublin, therefore, built his own church some few hundred yards away. Every Sunday since then services have been held, but Ram's Episcopal Chapel, Homerton, is now a dangerous structure, and it to be demolished. (Beeston Gazette and Echo - Friday 22 July 1938)

The burial ground of the chapel was emptied of its occupants who were all reburied in Chingford.

In 1898 The famous Whitefield Tabernacle in Tottenham Court Road was demolished and rebuilt on a larger scale. This meant removing the bodies from the burial ground, including that of John Whitefield’s wife Elizabeth. The St. Pancras Gazette of Friday 24 January 1908 ran a story commemorating the 10th anniversary of the new tabernacle;

The rebuilding of the chapel in 1898 necessitated the removal of a large number of coffins and human remains, under a license issued by the Home Secretary. In excavating underneath the back part of the chapel, extensive vaults were found. These had at various times been cleared out, and the coffins placed in three large brick chambers in the rear, which were then bricked up. One of them had been thus closed for 65 years, and another for over 40 years. On opening those chambers 200 coffins were found, of all sizes and in all conditions. They had been placed in piles one upon another, and those towards the bottom were in many cases crushed out of shape.

The front part of the chapel enclosed a large piece of ground, in which many graves and brick vaults had been made. Some of the wooden coffins discovered here were very sound, but contained nothing but bones in nearly every instance. One iron coffin was found quite intact except for rust. Here also was discovered the mummified body of a woman, resembling marble in appearance, and as hard, but very light in weight, apparently having undergone some system of embalming. There was no plate remaining on the coffin.

The coffin of Mrs Whitefield (1768) was quite sound. It was made of solid cast lead, half an inch thick, with the handles and plates soldered on. It was exceedingly heavy. The whole of the coffins and remains were placed in large packing cases, close upon 300 in number, and reinterred at Chingford Mount Cemetery, Mrs Whitefield's being placed in a separate grave.

The lead coffin containing the remains of the Rev. A. M. Toplady (1778) was discovered in an earth grave as sound as when first deposited there. Being at an unusual depth it was not removed, but remains under the floor of the new basement hall encased in concrete, the exact spot being marked by a suitable tablet.

The last resting place of Olaudah Equiano, the one-time slave who became a writer and abolitionist, was a complete mystery until 2018 when Professor Vincent Carretta of the University of Maryland discovered his burial entry in the register of Whitefield’s Tabernacle. According to the register he was buried on 6 April 1797 in the chapel burial ground. Unless his coffin was missed during the clear out of 1898 then his mortal remains are now buried in a mass grave in Chingford Mount. 

The most famous graves in the cemetery belong to the Kray Family; twins Ronnie and Reggie, their brother Charlie, mother Violet and Reggie’s first wife Frances who committed suicide in 1967 at the age of 23. The Kray’s are of course England’s most famous gangsters; small time petty crooks who used violence and intimidation to become big time crooks and who became national celebrities as night club owners when crooked landlord Peter Rachman sold them a gaming club in Knightsbridge, Esmeralda’s Barn in the early 1960’s. When they weren’t hobnobbing with celebrities at their club, intimidating their rivals or extorting money out of anyone with a business interest in the West and East Ends, they were indulging hubris by killing anyone who got on their nerves, most famously George Cornell at the Blind Beggar in Whitechapel, allegedly for having called Ronnie a “fat poof”. Then there was Frank ‘the mad axeman’ Mitchell who the Krays sprung from Dartmoor prison in December 1966 but killed when he became a tiresome nuisance. And finally Jack ‘the hat’ McVitie who Reggie stabbed to death at a party in Evering Road in Hackney. McVitie was a member of the Kray gang and his death caused disquiet in the ranks – they must have all wondered who might be next. The answer was no one – Scotland Yard arrested the twins in May 1968 and they spent the rest of their lives behind bars becoming national anti-heroes in the process.   

In 1898 one Jane Cakebread was buried at the cemetery. According to the South Wales Daily News of 10 December “The funeral of this notorious old lady was mournful in its desolation at Chingford Mount Cemetery on Friday morning. The body of the woman whose name was known to many thousands of persons in all parts of the country was consigned to the grave with but one mourner, and he was Mr Thomas Holmes, the North London Police Court missionary, who had for years striven to do her good in life. He carried with him a simple wreath of flowers, and placed it reverently upon the coffin, which bore the plain inscription Jane Cakebread died Dec. 3, 1898. Aged 64." And why was 64-year-old Jane Cakebread notorious? Because she was, according to the London newspapers, the most inebriated woman in the world. She had an astonishing 281 convictions for drunkenness or disorderly conduct and spent almost 12 and a half years in total behind bars because of her alcoholism. When imprisoned she would sing her favourite hymns or recite portions of the Bible.  Her memory was sharp; she could quote two chapters from the Book of Job.   She prayed on her knees, only to rise from those prayers and spew obscenities.  Lady Henry Somerset tried to save her by taking her into her temperance home. Cakebread created chaos and was thrown out after three weeks. At her next court appearance Lady Henry suggested to the magistrates that the inebriate needed a psychiatric assessment. Her response when she was removed to Hackney Infirmary was to try and bite one of the guards and to kick Dr Gordon, the medical officer in the chest, breaking two of his ribs. She was eventually confined to an asylum where, deprived of liberty, fresh air and gin, she died.   

A better-behaved ‘old’ lady had been buried at the cemetery in 1887. This account is from Aberdeen Press and Journal of Thursday 24 February;

DEATH OF "MOTHER KETTLE." - Mrs Flanders, alias "Mother Kettle," whose face was familiar to thousands of men, women, and children, who have of late years visited Epping Forest, died a few days ago, and at the end of last week her remains were interred in Chingford Cemetery. The deceased, who was said to be the only licensed female driver of public conveyances kept for hire, could always be seen during the summer months in charge of a waggonette drawn by a pair of horses, in good condition, and well harnessed, and she knew all the favourite spots in the Forest. She was specially pointed out to the Queen when Her Majesty opened the Forest, and "Mother Kettle" was very proud of the distinction with which she had been honoured. Deceased was only 52 years of age.

The Shame of Being a Bastard, Folkestone's mysterious recluse; Captain George Anthony Lindsay Wilson (1832-1905) The catacombs, Kensal Green Cemetery

 Captain George Wilson was presented several times to Her Majesty at court

Rumours about the true identity of the reclusive George Boreham had been circulating in Folkestone’s polite society for years but when he died at the age of 74 on 22 January 1905 the whispers turned into full blown, public speculation. Some said that he was the Tichbourne claimant, others claimed that he was refugee French nobleman.  Some of the rumour mongering was sensationalist; that Boreham was Major Murray, who had been found guilty of justifiable homicide in 1868 when he had killed a blackmailing solicitor called Roberts in what became known as the Northumberland Street murder. Boreham was not Sir Roger Tichbourne, nor a French aristocrat or the disreputable Major Murray but his true identity, when revealed, caused almost as big a shock.  The man who had relinquished his former identity, abandoned friends and family, changed his name and hidden himself away in one of the most unfashionable places on the Kent coast would have been appalled to see his carefully guarded privacy invaded whilst his body was still barely cold in its coffin. Within hours of his demise the Folkestone, Hythe, Sandgate & Cheriton Herald had their reporters on the case and before he had been dead a week were outing him, detailing their findings on the front page under the headline “Romance of High Life; Folkestone’s Mysterious Recluse; His Identity Revealed; Former Society Favourite Dies In A Basement.”;

Much mystery has surrounded a gentleman who took up his residence here about thirty years ago, Rumour, as usual, has been busy, and in this case, as the years passed, the most extraordinary tales were woven. Perhaps there was some reasons for this, for every effort was made to hide the identity of him who passed away at No. 13 Alexandra-gardens, on Sunday last, at the age of 74. Even after death the same system of secrecy was adopted. Why should the public be curious?  

The newspaper thought that the shadowy solitary’s property investments in the town, almost 30 ‘valuable’ houses, many of which had been left standing empty, were sufficient reason to justify their unmasking of the recluse as being in the public interest. And so a reporter had been despatched to see John Andrew, Folkestone’s Registrar of Births, Marriages and Deaths, to offer the usual legal fee to inspect the register; “but the official sheltering himself behind what he stated to be his instructions, firmly but courteously declined to allow the book to be consulted.” The reporter next called upon Messers Hambrook and Johns, Undertakers, the firm that had been put in charge of the funeral arrangements. They also declined to divulge any information. Councillor Payer of the borough council, who was known to be one of the few people who had ever exchanged more than just a handful of words with the recluse cheerfully admitted to the paper that he was aware of his identity but refused to name him as he had promised to keep it a secret; “a promise is a promise and I mean to respect it,” he told them.

The old Kent port of Folkestone where George lived for 30 years

Eventually it was, as is so often the case, an anonymous informant who gave the newspaper the deceased’s real name. In the town he had been known as George Boreham for almost 30 years, the name borrowed from an old manservant of his. By this name he had conducted all his business in the town and by this name he was recorded on the census returns of 1881 and 1891. The many property investments that so perturbed the local newspaper were not transacted in his name; he placed all his trust in his housekeeper, Mary Campbell, an unmarried woman 11 years his junior and purchased his many houses in her name. If the relationship between the pair was another subject for the local gossips, this is not mentioned in any of the newspaper accounts.  Boreham’s real name was George Anthony Lindsay Wilson and he was the son of General Sir John Wilson, a British army officer, a veteran of the Peninsular War and twice acting Governor of Ceylon.  

The 1881 census return showing George living as a boarder in one the houses he bought in Mary Campbell's name

George has been born in 1832 but was not baptised until 5 January 1835 at St James in Westminster. His mother was Elizabeth Lindsay from Berwick in Northumberland. She was 24 when George was born, his father was 55. George was later told that his mother had died when he was a baby but his father brought him up with the help of his rather beautiful unmarried aunt, his mother’s sister. His father was wealthy, as well as a successful military career he was the sole heir of his own father, and the family lived at one of the grand, new villas in Westbourne Terrace.  George was educated at Rugby and Oxford and on going down from the university he took a commission in the Guards. He was presented at Buckingham Palace on several occasions and the Queen even gave him a small oil painting of a dog which later hung on the wall of the living room in Alexandra Gardens. By the age of 24 he was planning to be married and seemed to have a settled and prosperous future ahead of him in the military and as a family man in his own right. But disaster struck. His father died after a short illness in 1856 at the age of 76. George would no doubt have got over the shock of his father’s death, it was what was revealed in the old man’s will that completely changed his life.  

What his father had never told him was that he had never married his mother and that he was illegitimate. The will contained not only this bombshell but also revealed that his mother was alive and well and pretending to be his aunt. As he looked at his attractive, relatively young mother the scales fell from George’s eyes and he realised that his father had been raising his bastard whilst living in sin with his mother. He never got over the shock and felt obliged to abandon his mother, whom he never spoke to again, and to quit his place in society. Marriage was now out of the question and his imminent wedding was called off. He moved out of London to an estate in Brentwood in Essex. According to the Daily Mirror (Friday 27 January 1905) he “neglected his mansion and estate at Brentford, allowing his horses and cattle to roam about in a state of primitive nature, and as a result was placed for a brief period in an asylum.” Records show that he was admitted to the Essex Asylum at Warley in 1870 but the family solicitor battled to get him released into the care of a local doctor. In the 1871 census return he is listed as living at 11 High Street in Brentwood, a ‘visitor’ in the house of Joseph Earle, a general practitioner. Shortly afterwards he moved to Folkestone where, according to the Mirror, “for a time he stayed at the Clarendon Hotel, where he became attached to a governess named Miss Campbell, who alternately acted as his housekeeper and secretary, living with him till the last. He never married, but lived in the utmost seclusion, although he became notorious for strange freaks of philanthropy. For instance, he would often buy a whole row of stalls for a local theatre or other entertainment and give the tickets away indiscriminately.” The paper also said that “he became known as the "old gentleman of Alexandra-gardens," shunned public gaze, and seldom went out except at night, in a bath-chair.” The Shields Daily News (Monday 18 September 1905) claimed that when he moved to Folkestone it was apparent that “he was a man of considerable wealth, as he lived in good if quiet style, and was frequently seen driving down the Lees in a smart turn-out with two ponies.  Then suddenly he changed his mode of life. He turned a vegetarian, was more seen on the Lees, and never left his residence until after dark.”

The Essex Asylum at Warley near Brentwood

The Folkestone, Hythe, Sandgate & Cheriton Herald reported that he was secretive to the last and that there was no announcement of his funeral arrangements. As they had placed a reporter on surveillance outside the undertakers they were able to report that;

Shortly after ten clock last night, a “Herald” representative visited Alexandra-gardens having followed a single-horsed hearse. This drew down into Oxford-terrace, and a few minutes later eight bearers carried a massive oak coffin out of No. 13, Alexandra-gardens and deposited it in the hearse. This was then driven down Victoria-grove into, Shellons-street and Grace-hill, to the undertaker’s offices where the coffin was laid on tressels for the night. The brass plate the coffin bore the inscription: ‘‘George Lindsav Anthony Wilson. Died January 22nd, 1903. aged 73 years,” The remains will be interred in the Catacombs, Kensal Green, to-day. The body will be taken to the Metropolis by the 9.15 train from the Central Station.

George made no will and so his considerable fortune passed to the Crown. Luckily Mary Campbell, who was the legal owner of his property portfolio in Folkestone, was adequately taken care. His father was also buried at Kensal Green. His mother's last resting place is unknown. 

George's last resting place in the Catacombs at Kensal Green