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1865 burials

28 Aug 2024 • Rebecca Thomas

What can we learn from the Hammersmith Archives regarding burials in the year that the cemetery opened?

The burial registers for Fulham Cemetery cover the period from 1865-1960 and are held in the Archives at Hammersmith Library, where the earliest are available on microfiche. Delving deeper into the archives and transcribing every burial registered in 1865 has helped us to gain us a greater sense of the community the new cemetery was to serve.

104 burials took place between the cemetery’s opening day, 3 August and the end of December 1865. The register tells us the names and ages of those interred, as well as their address, where the body was removed from, the date of interment, whether or not they were buried in consecrated ground, and provides an additional column for comments. The full transcript is reproduced below this article.

What were the ages of those buried in 1865?

As may be expected, the age profile shows a high infant mortality rate, with 53 of those interred dying before their fifth birthday, the youngest living only a few hours. However if they survived infancy, a person may reasonably have expected to live into their seventh or eighth decade, with the next cluster occurring of people dying in their sixties. And it will be interesting to see whether this profile changes in later years which witnessed the increasing industrialisation and urbanisation of Fulham.

Age profile of the 104 burials in 1865

What were the earliest burials?

Many of the histories of Fulham (e.g. Féret) state the fact that the first burial, which took place on the opening day, was that of an infant, Sarah Smith, aged 7 months, and the more dubious claim that the thirteenth person to be buried, Ann Salter, was 100 years old. I have included Ann Salter as a centenarian as that is the age given in the register, I remain skeptical however. The West London Observor of 12 August 1865 reported that Fulham Union Workhouse Master’s Journal contained an entry “of the death of an inmate named Ann Salter, aged 98, during the past week”. This younger age also squares with the entry on the 1861 census where Ann is listed as a widow living at Brook Green and gives her age as 93.

Where did these people live?

The addresses from where the bodies were removed are reminders of the changing landscape of Fulham. Sixteen of those interred were of Fulham Union Workhouse which stood in close proximity to the new cemetery, on the site now occupied by Charing Cross Hospital. The majority were buried at the expense of the parish, although there is a comment next to 22 years old James Murphy, stating that he had been “buried at the expense of relatives”. No further details are known but ‘to be put away on the parish’ was considered by many in the 19th century to be a social stigma and strenuous efforts were made to avoid it. In total 28 people were to suffer this indignity.

Another institution to feature is the Almshouses of the Butchers’ Charitable Institution which was established in 1840 and stood next to St John’s Church, Fulham Broadway.

The Almshouses of the Butchers’ Charitable Institution, at Walham Green, Fulham

Eight of the bodies were removed from various medical establishments including St George’s, Guys, St Mary’s and Brompton hospitals. At the time, St. Bernards’ Hospital in Ealing was known as Hanwell Pauper and Lunatic Asylum and was at the cutting-edge of therapeutic treatments for those with mental health problems. This must have been the case for John Foy, a 55 year old garden labourer from Ireland, and 68 year old Mary Ann Strutton from Chelsea who was listed in the 1861 census as a ‘monthly nurse’, i.e. a nurse who looked after mothers and newly born babies in the first month.

Why were some buried in unconsecrated ground?

Sixteen of the burials were in unconsecrated ground. For the youngest of these it is likely that their deaths occured before baptism could be arranged. It would appear that some parents hastened baptism where it was clear that their child was dying. William Bennet Cattel was baptized just eight days before his burial but was still interred in unconsecrated ground.

There are only two adults in the 1865 register who were buried in unconsecrated ground - William Meehan and Elizabeth Lovett. There are several reasons why burials took place in unconsecrated ground, including the deceased’s religious beliefs, and where someone had taken their own life. It would be interesting to know more about either of these individuals, in particular Elizabeth who was twenty years old when she died and whose body was removed from ‘The Reformatory’, a prison located between Burlington Road and Fulham Road. Also known as ‘Fulham Refuge’, it was where women who had originally served their sentence in Millbank Prison were sent with a view to them being reintegrated into the wider community.

What kind of people were buried here during the first year?

Finally although not all the burials were of the poor there is little evidence that in its first year Fulham Cemetery was seen as a preferred burial place for those in the middle or upper classes. Most of the adults that can be traced on the census are labourers and gardeners rather than the business owners and dignitaries whose names we find on the gravestones from the latter part of the century.

All of the burials from 1865 have been placed on findagrave.com. Sadly, the register for this year does not specify the location of the burials and we have yet to identify any grave marker which relates to any of the individuals interred.

[Webmaster's note: We have not found any headstones with dates earlier than the 1880s.]

Author: Rebecca Thomas
August 2024