A short history of Suicide in Kensal Green Cemetery

Cases of suicide in cemeteries are not unknown today, but they are very rare. Though they were still unusual events cemetery suicides occurred more frequently in the 19th and early part of the 20th century. The most common reason for choosing a cemetery as a suicide site seems, unsurprisingly, to be the presence of a grave of a loved one, a partner or a parent usually. In their 2017 paper Unusual suicide settings: a forensic-pathological analysis four cases of suicide in cemetery by Boracchi, Clerici,  Gentile et al, the Italian psychiatrists suggest that “victims that commit suicide in such contexts usually keep strong emotional relationship with the deceased person, and probably they cannot start new relationships or fill the void of their personal loss. The suicide in the cemetery (that is universally seen as the place of the reunification between living people and dead people) can also express a public declaration of prolonged grief and sense of abandonment, and so the tragic decision can also permit a final reunion with the lost beloved person.” The Italians also suggest that some suicides may see the cemetery “as the most suitable place to put the end to the life” perhaps because it relieves “relatives the torment of a suicide in the domestic ambient.”  Cemeteries they add, “could be interpreted as a place (external to the home) that is by definition designated to the acceptance of the pain.”

Certainly, this seems to accord with the suicide cases I have looked at previously at Brompton Cemetery. Of the six cases reported by the newspapers at Kensal Green Cemetery between 1851 and 1926 three unusually have no follow up reports from the inquests so that we do not know either the identity of the victim or the reasons for them taking their own life. Three used poison to kill themselves, two cut their own throats with a razor and one shot himself in the head.

On the 22nd January 1851 an inquest was held at the Plough Inn on Harrow Road (opposite the main gate of the cemetery) on the death 6 days earlier of Richard Randell, a gold beater and painter aged 50, of Norton Street in Marylebone. On the 16th of January Randell in a somewhat agitated state, had made his way into the cemetery, and in front of at least two witnesses had cut his throat with a straight razor. The witnesses, including a Mrs Eliza Glue, reluctant to get involved with a police investigation, did not wait around and did not report what they had seen.  Consequently, Randell's body, face down in a pool of coagulated blood, was not found until next day when one of the cemetery labourers called the police.

Inquests were routinely held in public houses in the 19th century.  The body of the deceased was almost always present at the inquest, and was on general view to the public, in this case in an outhouse of the Plough. The article below from the Weekly Times & Echo of Sunday 2nd February 1851 is an almost verbatim reproduction of an article which did the rounds in many of the local newspapers, but the editor has added his own little touch to the original report; the body he says "presented an appalling spectacle, the head being almost severed from the body..." This has to be an exaggeration; the original report mentions two frightful gashes at the throat. It is simply not possible for a suicide to 'almost severe' their head from their body with a cut throat razor. 

Richard Rendell was born in the parish of St Anne's in Soho in 1851 and married Sarah Sims at St Marylebone Parish church in 1826. The couple had no children. He was also buried at St Marylebone, two days after the inquest, on the 24th January. After hearing that "the deceased had been in a desponding state for some time in consequence of disappointments in business", the jury returned a verdict of 'Insanity': 

SUICIDE IN KENSAL GREEN CEMETERY. On Wednesday Mr. H. M. Wakley held an inquest at the Plough, Kensal Green, on Mr. Richard Randell, gold beater and house decorator, late of Norton-street, Portland place, Marylebone, aged 50. The body, which lay in an outhouse of the Plough, presented an appalling spectacle, the head being almost severed from the body. 

Police constable Sydney Howard, 161 D, deposed that at half-past three last Friday afternoon a labourer directed his attention to deceased, in Kensal Green Cemetery, whom he found lying on his face in a coagulated pool of blood, on the north side of the cemetery, near the wall, and close to the shrubbery which divided the grounds. A razor was at his side, with which he had inflicted the frightful gashes in his throat. The body was quite cold and stiff, as if he had been dead some time. Mr. Brown, surgeon, was instantly sent for, who pronounced life extinct a long time. At the other side of the shrubbery he found deceased’s great coat, shirt collar, neckerchief, and hat. In the last-named article lay the neckerchief. About seven yards from where the body lay there was another pool of blood. There was a gap in the shrubbery as if some person had found his way through it. In deceased’s pocket were his name and address. He believed the deceased had lain there from the previous day, as the grass under him was quite yellow. Witness, although on duty there on Thursday and Friday, heard no cries of distress.

 Mrs. Eliza Glue, residing at Kensal New Town, deposed that she arrived from Yorkshire on Thursday on a visit to some friends, and at twelve o'clock on Friday she was taking a walk in the cemetery, when deceased rushed towards her, and standing in front of her stared wildly at her a few seconds. He then rushed behind the monument, where he was found, and cut his throat—the blood gushing out. She screamed and ran away, falling over a tombstone in her fright, when she came in contact with a labouring man, who asked her if she were frightened. She replied, “Yes.” When he said, “If you don’t want to be more frightened by meeting the police, you had better make your way out of the cemetery.” She then turned round and saw deceased fall. After which she hurried as fast as she could out of the cemetery.

John M‘Donnell, a labourer, stated that he saw deceased on Thursday, walking towards the shrubbery where the body was found, with his note book in his hand as if sketching the monument.

Mary Edwards, deceased’s servant, identified the razor as her master's, and deposed that he frequently threatened suicide; and that on the day before his death he bid her good bye, saying she would not see him again alive. After which he left home.

Other witnesses were examined, who stated that the deceased had been in a desponding state for some time in consequence of disappointments in business. After which the coroner summed up, and the jury unhesitatingly returned a verdict of “Insanity.”

The first of the unknown cases occurred in February or March 1859. Newspaper reports, almost of all of them with identical wording reported that “a man has committed suicide by taking poison in Kensal green Cemetery, London. The wretched man had formed an attachment to a widow, which was not returned, and when his dead body was found it was lying at the head-stone of the widow's late husband.” (Preston Herald - Saturday 05 March 1859).  In 1872 an ‘unknown gentleman’, the corpse in this case was clearly better dressed and of a higher social class than the unknown ‘man’ of 1859, was found in the cemetery. This report comes from the Fife Herald of 14th November 1872: 

Kensal Green Cemetery. — At noon on Monday the body an unknown gentleman was discovered by some undertakers who were engaged on funeral in Kensal Green Cemetery, London. The body lying was amongst some tombstones, and a single barrelled pistol was found near the head of the deceased.

In 1905, unusually, it was a woman who tried to kill herself. This is from the Illustrated Police Budget of Saturday 18th March:

Throat Cut in Cemetery. One night last week at Kensal Green Cemetery an unknown woman attempted to commit suicide by cutting her throat. She was found by a cemetery-keeper lying in a pool of blood across a grave with a razor in her hand and a terrible gash in her throat. She was removed on the police ambulance by Police-constable 274 X to St. Mary’s Hospital, where she now lies in a critical condition. The woman seems rather over middle age and she was respectably dressed. Her identity is at present quite a mystery. She is not expected to recover.

On Friday 1st December 1916 the Willesden Chronicle reported the sad case of 63-year-old Jeanette Thompson of Waverley Terrace, Westminster (now demolished, it was close to Royal Oak station). The attempts by Paddington Infirmary to save Jeanette’s life verge on cruelty;

WOMAN’S DETERMINED SUICIDE, TAKES POISON IN THE CEMETERY. At the Paddington Coroner's Court on Tuesday, Mr. Luxmoore Drew enquired into the death of Jeanette Thompson, 63, the wife of a horsekeeper, of 7, Waverley-terrace, Harrow road .—Mrs. Thompson, a daughter, of 16, Senior-street, said her mother was a cook in Upper Westbourne-terrace, and was healthy and temperate. She had had fits of depression and had threatened suicide, but never attempted it. A month ago, when witness last saw her, she was very miserable. There was insanity in the family. —Mrs. Varley, of 16, Senior street, said that she had been very strange and unhappy. On the morning that she left her situation she said that she would have gone into the canal only the police were there. On Monday week she saw her, and she said that she did not know where she was going. —Mrs. Chapman, of 7, Waverley-terrace where the deceased lodged, said the deceased ‘must have taken, unknown to her, a bottle of iodine from her dresser—Rev. B. C. H. Andrews, Chaplain of the Kensal Green Cemetery, said that he was walking down the main path of the cemetery on the 13th inst., when he saw a woman, who was walking in front of him, about to drink something from a bottle. He noticed afterwards that it had a red label, and knew that it was poison. He snatched the bottle away and asked what she was doing, but she made no reply. He called assistance, and the police eventually removed her. There was the stain of the poison on her lips.—P.C. 278 X said he took charge of the woman, who had drunk the whole contents of the bottle. She said, "I thought it was carbolic acid. I wanted something stronger than this. I thought I should have been dead before now.” He applied an emetic and she was taken to the station, where she remarked that next time she would take something stronger, as she was tired of her life. She was removed to the Infirmary —Dr, Stewart, medical superintendent, said was very violent, tore herself, and made several attempts to take her life whilst in the institution. She refused food, and they had to artificially feed her. She became so violent that they had to put her in a strait jacket. Witness had examined the body and found long-standing disease of the heart, death being due to syncope, from heart disease and melancholia, and accelerated by the taking of the iodine and the struggles in refusing food. —The jury returned a verdict in accordance with the medical evidence

In the dark, under the wires, I hear them call my name - two John Hardys and Jeffrey Lee Pierce

 

Walking to Paddington Station last November, after spending the morning in Kensal Green cemetery, I found myself with a sudden urge to listen to ‘Miami’ by the Gun Club. In particular the song ‘John Hardy’ was running around in my head. And so I strolled along the canal towpath listening to the album on Spotify. It was only a couple of days later, when going through the pictures I had taken that morning, that I realised that I had photographed the impressive mausoleum of John Hardy Esq. A coincidence? Probably not. I like to think that I am the sort of independently minded person that advertisers and other propagandists waste their time and money trying to manipulate. But if a name on a tombstone can send me unconsciously scurrying to Spotify to listen to a 40-year-old album, I am clearly as open to unconscious influence (and therefore also to malign manipulation) as anyone else.  

Kensal Green’s John Hardy died on New Years Eve 1859 at the age of 82 and left a fortune worth just a little less than £60,000. He was probably born in Kegworth in Leicester in 1777 and lived in Jamaica for many years. Exactly what he was doing there we don’t know, but as his sojourn was long before the abolition of slavery, we can be fairly sure that he was making money out of the plantation economy. In Jamaica he had four children with Panache Archambeau, described as a ‘mestee’ on the children’s baptism records. This term referred to people of mixed ethnicity who were less than one eighth black i.e. had one black and 7 white great grandparents. By 1815 he was back in the UK with his four children and marrying Helene Clementine Auchambau of Kingston Jamaica, at St George’s in Bloomsbury. It seems likely that Helene Auchambau is Panache Archambeau, but we can’t be sure. The couple went on to have two more children. John seems to have become wealthy enough in Jamaica not to have to do another stroke of work for the 44 years he still had to live. Records simply describe him as a gentleman. He lived at number 12 Cumberland Terrace, Regents Park, John Nash’s neoclassical terrace, always a very exclusive address. Zoopla can’t tell us what the property is worth these days because it is now divided into flats. The last one bed flat that went on the market in 2011 sold for £2.35 million.

The Gun Club’s John Hardy ‘was a vicious little man’ who carried two guns, ‘shot down a man on the West Virginia line’ and after being baptised ends up being taken to the hanging ground for his sins. It is a traditional American folk song, the original version of which is often said to have been composed by John Hardy himself, a black man who was executed for murder in January 19th 1894 at Welch in West Virginia. There are many, many recorded versions of the song including those by the Carter Family, The Kingston Trio, Leadbelly, Burl Ives, Pete Seeger, Manfred Mann and Joni Mitchell.  The legendary ethnomusicologist and folklorist Alan Lomax in ‘The Folk Songs of North America’ (1960) wrote that “Hardy was tried during the July term of the McDowell County Criminal Court, found guilty and sentenced to be hanged. While awaiting execution in jail, he is said to have composed this ballad, which he later sang on the scaffold. His ballad appears to have been based upon certain formulae stanzas from the Anglo-Saxon ballad stock.” It seems extraordinary, unbelievable almost, that any man could possess enough sang-froid to burst into song at his own execution. And would white law officers in 19th century West Virginia grant a condemned black man enough time to sing about himself just as they were about to hang him? Surely not.

In the West Virginia Archives there is a photograph of Hardy’s execution. He stands on an impressively sturdy scaffold, in bright winter sunshine, dressed in a shabby three-piece suit holding a fedora or a Stetson in his hand. He is a tall, well-built man, taller than the sheriff and the hangman who lean against the scaffold. All three are looking at the camera; Hardy does look remarkably composed for a man about to be publicly executed.  The rope with which he will be hung is wrapped multiple times around the crossbeam, the noose out of sight, hidden behind him. In the background of the picture are a small part of the three thousand strong crowd that witnessed his execution. The Wheeling Daily Register of January 20, 1894 gives details of Hardy’s hanging the previous day:  

WILDE, W. VA., January 19. – John Hardy, for killing Thomas Drews, both colored, was hung at 2:09 p.m. to-day. Three thousand people witnessed his death. His neck was broken and he died in 17 ½ minutes. He exhibited great nerve, attributed his downfall to whiskey, and said he had made peace with God. His body was cut down at 2:39, placed in a coffin, and given to the proper parties for interment. He was baptised in the river this morning.

Ten drunken and disorderly persons among the spectators were promptly arrested and jailed. Good order was preserved. Hardy killed Drews near Eckman last spring in a disagreement over a game of craps.

Both were enamoured of the same woman, and the latter proving the more favored lover, incurred Hardy’s envy, who seized the pretext of falling out in the game to work vengeance on Drews, who had shown himself equally expert in dice as in love, having won money from Hardy. Hardy drew his pistol, remarking he would kill him unless he refunded the money. Drews paid back part of the money, when Hardy shot, killing him. Hardy was found guilty at the October term. 

‘Miami’ was released on Chris Stein’s Animal Records label in September 1982. In April the following year the Gun Club toured Europe and I interviewed Jeffrey Lee Pierce and Jim Duckworth at, if I remember correctly, the head office of Chrysalis Records which was somewhere in the West End at the time. I was keen to meet them; I had loved their first album ‘The Fire of Love’ but was taken aback by ‘Miami’ as it was such a different record. On the first album they sounded like the Cramps but the new one went to a whole different place, country-blues, folk, a bit rootsy at times, it was not what I had been expecting. But ‘Miami’ turned out to be a classic grower and the more I heard it, the more the record got its hooks into me. To this day it remains my favourite Gun Club album. I was 22 years old at the time of the interview and my writing skills were rudimentary to say the least.  The printed interview appeared in a short-lived weekly music paper published by Northern & Shell, a company owned by an abrasive entrepreneur called Richmond Desmond who started owning music titles like International Musician and Recording World and Home Organist before acquiring UK distribution rights for Penthouse and building a soft-porn media empire (he eventually became the owner of Express Newspapers and Channel 5 and detested being labelled a pornographer).  My juvenile feature isn’t sufficiently interesting to merit posting in full.

My interview didn’t get off to a good start with the band because I arrived late. Jeffrey, sitting astride a chair with his arms folded over the backrest, and bearing a striking resemblance to a young Marlon Brando, seemed particularly pissed off by my unpunctuality and could barely bring himself to look at me. Jim Duckworth, who was eating a tube of Smarties, was a little more friendly. The press officer, knowing the band had an album and tour to promote, did their best to dispel the awkward atmosphere and get the conversation going, but it was hard work. For 25 minutes we discussed band line-up changes and how much money and studio time their record company had given them to make each of their records. Then the band had to go, they were due to catch a train to Leeds from Kings Cross to play gig. I was bundled into the front seat of the car to continue the interview.

Jeffrey Lee Pierce photographed on 19 April 1983 at Chrysalis Records - photographer unknown

Years later, in a piece called ‘Gun Club Days’ Jim recollected his 8-month stint with the band. He remembered, he said “some guy from a magazine watching us in amazement as we rattled on about a bunch of bullshit that seemed funny and significant while we were all drunk, but God help me I can’t recall any of it now.” That was pretty much my reaction as I sat helpless in the front seat of the record company car as Jim sat in the back reciting a monologue into my tape machine about various brands of American candy and their innate superiority to Smarties. Then he started talking to Jeffrey about Rockabilly, “a real vacuous music, isn't it? It's really awful. Is the stupidest shit.” Telling stories about Eddie Bond, the man who auditioned an 18-year-old Elvis in Memphis and told him not to quit his job as a truck driver. A few months later Elvis cut ‘That’s alright Mama’ for Sam Phillips and Eddie was soon begging him to become lead singer for his band. Elvis was no longer interested in the job. Jim recalled going to a rockabilly barn dance put on Bond. “no one showed up, so they let you in for free. This guy starts showing us Eddie Bond souvenirs and we just start laughing. Then this fucker puts a pen in our hand saying ‘That’s Eddie over there leaning against that pole, Go on and have Eddie sign that for you. I was saying I don't want to have Eddie sign that for me, he looks like a jerk. He gave us three pens and three pamphlets and made us go get Eddie to sign them, gave me a copy of Rocking Daddy and told me to get Eddie to sign it.”

“Where's Warren Smith these days?” Jeffrey asked. Smith was another early rockabilly star who had a couple of minor hits with Sam Phillip’s ‘Sun’ label before disappearing into obscurity. In the early Seventies he served 18 months in an Alabama jail for robbing a pharmacy. “Oh, he's dead,” says Jim, “Yeah, Warren died, but the famous story is  that just before he died, he asked for a comb so he could do his pompadour one last time.” Warren Smith was 47 when he died of a heart attack. Jeffrey talked about meeting a guy from the Hondells at a party. The Hondells were a surf rock band whose cover of the Beach Boys ‘Little Honda’ reached number 9 on the billboard chart in 1964. “What the hell was his name?” Jeffrey wondered, “He didn't do anything either. He can't even talk about it. It doesn't remember any of it. It’s all so miniscule to him. Oh, did I do something? Did I make that record?” Jim laughs but Jeffrey seemed thoughtful; the evanescent nature of rock fame.

At Kings Cross I showed Jeffrey and Jim where to catch their train and as they had half an hour to spare, I helped them negotiate the perils of the British Rail buffet. The other customers stared at the two Americans, who suddenly looked incredibly exotic in the dowdy restaurant. Jim ate two yoghurts and rattled on about TV and his previous gigs with Alex Chilton and Panther Burns. He occasionally questioned Jeffrey about the identity of that “dildo thing on your plate. Oh, it's a sausage. God, you wouldn't get me putting that in my mouth.” When their train was due I walked them to the platform entrance. Jeffrey, who had been silent for the past 30 minutes, took me by surprise by shaking my hand and mumbling “sometimes I feel like an observer in all this. I watch it all happen but I don't really care about any of it. I've got a few ideas about what I'm going to do when it's all over, but till then I'll just see what happens.” He let go of my hand, adding “nice to meet you,” before turning and marching along the platform to catch his train.

Jeffrey Lee Pierce died of a stroke on the 31st March 1996 at his father’s house in Salt Lake City, Utah. He was 36 years old.