What do we know about Thea Canonero Altieri? Not very much. We have her dates of birth (21.06.1910) and death (29.10.2006) and so know that she was 96 when she died. We know her death was registered in Camden. We know she is buried in Kensal Green Cemetery and that she has an unusual memorial with the Italian epitaph, ‘Al di la delle stelle ci sei tu.’ We know the epitaph is almost certainly a quote from the song “Al di la”, Italy’s 1961 Eurovision song contest entry sung by Betty Curtis. Betty’s real name was Roberta Corti and she died in June 2006. Perhaps Italian radio stations played her back catalogue in homage to the dead singer and evoked someone’s dim memory of an old, obscure Eurovision entry? We are probably safe deducing that Thea was Italian and that she was a nonna and that is probably everything we can know with any certainty. Perhaps she only came to England late in life, to be cared for by her family? Apart from her death I couldn’t find any record of her. Altieri is a reasonably rare surname in London but attempts to trace any possible relatives in North or West London also drew blanks. I found a 1992 article in the now defunct ‘Bedfordshire on Sunday’ free newspaper about a Fiat/Lancia garage in Bedford called Auto Valley Services run by a pair of brothers called Giovanni and Pasquale Toriello and their partner Tony Altieri. The figure on the grave is generally supposed to be based on the Spirit of Ecstasy, the bonnet mascot of the Rolls-Royce. Tony was in the motor trade, has the same surname… it is all a bit tenuous. I am not alone in my failure to discover anything about Thea; Sheldon from the Cemetery Club couldn’t come up with anything concrete either.
This
isn’t the only spectacular modern grave in London where we know nothing about
the occupant. One of my favourite graves is the Vassallo memorial in the East
London Cemetery in Plaistow. We know very little about the occupant except her
name, Angelina Celestina Vassallo, her date of death, the 1st March 1981 and
the fact that she was 65 when she died – all information gleaned from the inscription
on the grave. That is a huge amount of
information compared to what we know about the occupant of the Amos grave in
the City of London cemetery in Manor Park. We have the single name Amos, with
no indication if it is a surname or a first name, and that is it. The grave is
rather fine with a sculptured lurcher and side panels featuring a hare and a
jaunting car and the large headstone a cockerel. There is also an unusual
amount of poetry on the reverse of the headstone but no solid information about
the deceased, just a series of enigmatic clues.
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| The memorial of Angelina Celestina Vassallo in The East London Cemetery in Plaistow |
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| The Amos grave in the City of London Cemetery in Manor Park |
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