There are eight people buried in the private grave of Joseph Bonomi in Brompton Cemetery, five of his children, his wife and his mother-in-law. The first four of his children predeceased him, all dying within one harrowing week in April 1852; the eldest still hadn’t reached their sixth birthday and the youngest was, at just eight months, still an infant. The epitaph on the rather simple Grade II listed headstone describes Bonomi as a ‘sculptor, traveller and archaeologist’. The only unusual element in the design is the motif, drawn from a hieroglyph, of the god Anubis, in his full jackal incarnation (i.e. not just jackal headed but jackal bodied too) sitting on top of a tomb with battered sides, practicing his guardianship of the dead.
Cemetery records show that the Bonomi grave was originally dug for the funeral of the families four young children. The gravediggers cannot have been pleased when they were told they had to excavate a grave deep enough to take four coffins; the burial records says a shaft 12 feet deep was dug. The Bonomi’s had been married in September 1845 at St Marylebone Parish Church in the Marylebone Road; the groom, at 49, was just 10 years younger than his father-in-law, his bride, Jessie Martin, was just 20. Joseph wasted no time starting a family; the couple’s first child, a boy, was born exactly 9 months after the wedding, in June 1846, and was named Joseph, after his father and grandfather, and Menes, after the Pharoah who united Upper and Lower Egypt into one Kingdom and founded the first dynasty (fellow Egyptologists would have got the reference immediately). Their second son, Cautley Frederick, was born 17 months later, in November 1847. A daughter, named Jessie after her mother, was born in July 1849 and another son, John Ignatius in September 1851. The family were living at 7 Upper Cheyne Row in Chelsea with a couple of live in servants. Through the final months of 1851 and during the start of the new year Joseph had been putting the finishing touches to his book ‘Ninevah and its Palaces’, not only written but illustrated by him, and been seeing it through the presses. It was due to be published at the end of April. In was in this month that all four of his children fell ill with whooping cough. Caused by a bacterium, Bordetella pertussis, this was a fairly common disease amongst children and infants at the time. All common illnesses would have been a cause for concern for parents at the time as without antibiotics, infections could get out of hand and prove fatal. Even so it would have been usual to lose four children to the same disease. On the first day of the tragedy, the 11th April, the Bonomi’s lost their youngest and oldest children, 8-month-old baby John and then Joseph Menes, who was just two months shy of his sixth birthday. Cautley Frederick died on the 15th April. Perhaps in an effort to get her somewhere where the healthy effects of sea air might ease her breathing, 2-year-old Jessie had been removed to Worthing. It did no good; she died there on the 17th April. Two days later the Rev. Albert Badger, chaplain of Brompton Cemetery, presided over the funeral whilst Joseph and Jessie watched all four of their children lowered into the 12-foot grave shaft.
The Bonomis went on to have four more children, the first, a daughter Isabella, was born in March 1853, less than a year after the couple has lost their first four. Then came Cecilia in June 1855, Marion in August 1857 and a son John Ignatius in 1858. At some point, probably after her husband had died in 1854, Jessie’s mother, Susan, had come to live with the Bonomi’s at their new address, 13 Vicarage Gardens in Kensington, close to Kensington Palace (the house still stands). As the headstone explains, Susan was the widow of John Martin, the visionary painter who was famed for his vast and dramatic canvasses showing human beings dwarfed by fantastical landscapes, often undergoing apocalyptic upheavals, deluges, plagues, volcanic eruptions and so on. Thomas Lawrence referred to him, probably enviously, as ‘the most popular painter of the day’. The couple married in 1810; John was 21 but his bride, at 30, was 9 years older than him. They went on to have ten children of which only six survived to adulthood. Susan lived with the Bonomis for about four years, dying herself on 30th December 1858. Cemetery records show that she was buried on January 4th 1859 by Rev Nathaniel Badger and that the grave was dug to a depth of 9 feet.
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Jessie, quite possibly worn out by grief and child bearing, survived her mother by just 9 months before dying herself, at the age of just 34, in September 1859. She was buried on Tuesday September 13. The Rev. Nathaniel Liberty, the chaplain of Brompton Cemetery, officiated at the funeral and her grave was dug 7 feet deep. Her oldest child at the time of her death, Isabella, was still only six and the youngest was just one. With a young family to look after, many men in Bonomi’s position would have hastily remarried but the 63-year-old was probably overwhelmed by grief. Instead, his wife’s older, unmarried sister, Isabella, came to live with him and the children to take care of them and the household. The family moved to a new house in Wimbledon, The Camels. Bonomi found steady employment as the curator of the John Soane Museum in Lincolns Inn Fields and settled into old age, focussing on his responsibility for providing for his young family.
Despite already being an old man at the time of his young wife’s death, Joseph survived her by 19 years, dying at his at his home in Wimbledon, The Camels, on the 3rd March 1878. He was buried at Brompton on the 8th, with the Rev Nathaniel Liberty conducting the funeral service. Because there were already 6 people in the grave, the gravediggers only had to dig to a depth of 6 feet. On Saturday 16th March The Illustrated London News published a portrait of the recently deceased Egyptologist and published the following obituary;
THE LATE MR. BONOMI. The death of Mr. Joseph Bonomi, Curator of Sir John Soane’s Museum, in Lincoln’s-inn fields, was announced last week. He was Italian, born at Rome, in 1796; but his father, who had been architect to St. Peter’s at Rome, came about that time to live in England. The son, as he grew up in London, became a student of the Royal Academy and a pupil of Nollekens, the sculptor. In 1821 he was engaged to accompany Mr. Robert Hay to make a collection of Egyptian antiquities, which has since been placed in the British Museum. He stayed in Egypt eight years studying and drawing the hieroglyphics with Hay, Burton, Arundale, and others. In 1833 he went with Arundale and Catherwood to the Holy Land. At Jerusalem they were the first to visit the so-called Mosque of Omar and make detailed sketches of it. Mr. Bonomi had adopted the Arab dress, and he was able to pass himself as an Arab on this occasion. He also visited Sinai, Damascus, and Baalbek. On his return to England he was busily employed in making drawings in connection with works on Egypt, such as those of Sir Gardner Wilkinson, Dr. Birch, and others. In 1812 the great expedition was sent out under Lepsius by the King of Prussia, and Mr. Bonomi was added to the important staff which composed the party. On this second visit to Egypt Mr. Bonomi was two years in that country. A record of this expedition was cut in hieroglyphics over the entrance-passage of the Great Pyramid of Ghizeh. These hieroglyphics were designed and carved by Mr. Bonomi. On his return to England he produced the drawings from which panorama of Egypt was painted and exhibited. In 1853 he assisted Mr. Owen Jones in the works at the Egyptian Courts of the Crystal Palace. In 1861 Mr. Bonomi was appointed Curator of Sir John Soane’s Museum. In addition to illustrating and assisting other labours, Mr. Bonomi produced some original works of his own, such as “Nineveh and its Palaces,” besides numerous papers for learned societies and contributions to scientific journals. Mr. Bonomi married one of the daughters of John Martin, the painter. The portrait is from a photograph by Messrs. T. and J. Holroyd, of Harrogate.
It is interesting that Joseph is reported to have designed and carved a hieroglyphic inscription in the great pyramid of Giza. If you check any reliable reference source it was almost certainly tell you that there no hieroglyphics in the pyramids; this, for example, is what the Encyclopaedia Britannica has to say, “contrary to what one might expect, there are no hieroglyphic texts, treasures, or mummies in any of pyramids of Giza.” And the last known use of hieroglyphs in Egypt is usually accepted as a piece of graffiti on the temple of Philae known as the Graffito of Esmet-Akhom, which was carved on 24th August AD 394. Joseph was a member of the Prussian expedition led by Karl Richard Lepsius during the period 1842-1845. The Prussians decided to commemorate the birthday of King Friedrich Wilhelm IV on 15 October 1842 by carving an inscription in hieroglyphics on one of the western gables above the original entrance of the great pyramid. The inscription was possibly written by Lepsius himself, but it was definitely designed and carved by Bonomi who therefore gives the lie to the commonly stated facts that there are no hieroglyphics in the pyramids themselves and that the last recorded use of hieroglyphics was in 394 of the Common Era.
The last interment in the Bonomi grave was of Joseph and Jessie’s only surviving son, Joseph Ignatius, who had been just one when his mother died, died himself at the age of 72 on the 27th March 1930 at his home at 55 Holland Road, Kensington. The grave was opened to a depth of 5 feet according to the Brompton burial register. According to the 1881 census, the 23 year was already a Lieutenant in the Kings Own Regiment of Foot (later the Kings Own Royal Lancaster) based at Bowerham Barracks in Lancaster. He had already been on active service and fought in South Africa in the Zulu war of 1879. He remained a military man all his life, retiring in 1897. With nothing better to do with his time the now retired Major, finally married. His bride was a Frenchwoman, Jeanne Marie, who was 12 years his junior. Jeanne did not die until 1957, when she passed away in Westminster Hospital. The couple had no children.
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| Photo of the 19 year old Joseph Ignatius Bonomi, standing at the rear of this photo |
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