A Troubled Birth - A History of Spital Cemetery
In 1839 it was said that ‘British burial grounds had become a site of national crisis’
The state of burial grounds had become a major concern, here for example.
The Bedford Mercury of 1846 mentions “matrasses of malaria that were aggregated by the practices in the town, such as burying the dead in graves close to the streets, and in confined spaces only fitted for a hot bed of maggots.”
And the Derbyshire Times of January 1889 reported the closure of Ashover Churchyard and, I am sure that the letter that Ashover received would have looked very much like an 1877 letter from the “Home Secretary”, Richard Assheton Cross nd signed by Sir Godfrey Luchington, instructing “that Burials be discontinued forthwith wholly in the Churchyard of St Bridget, Chester.”
And so various church yards received instruction from the Home Office that no further burials (other than in vaults with space within) were allowed.
The Burial Act of 1852 specified that “no order (to cease burials) shall be deemed to extend to people called Quakers, or the Persons of the Jewish Persuasion”. So, the Home Office could not close the burial sites of Jews or Quakers.
In April 1855 the Mayor of Chesterfield, Mr Drabble, wrote to the Home Office requesting that the Government Inspector be sent to Chesterfield again and that the church yards be closed to further burials.
Parliament had passed various Burial Acts which instructed local VESTRIES to provide burial grounds outside the centre of towns.
It seems that VESTRY meetings were effectively the only local government. So, these meetings of Church men and Dissenters that took place in the vestry of the church were empowered to create Burial Boards.
On 16th October 1855 there was a vestry meeting at which a Burial Board of nine persons was formed. They were:-
Reverend George Butt the Vicar of Chesterfield (buried in Calow.)
William Drabble the then Mayor of Chesterfield who was a solicitor. He married twice, firstly to Elizabeth Clayton, and secondly to Elizabeth Clay.
Another member of the Burial Board was Josiah Bradbury Robinson who was a Draper.
Mr William Mark Hewitt who was another Draper, later Mayor.
Buried in TRINITY, Mr Cuthbert Oliver who was invited to Chesterfield by George Stephenson and retired after working on the Ambergate to Chesterfield stretch of railway for many years.
Mr William Edwin Dutton (Draper and lace manufacturer) Wesleyan. His OBITUARY said “He fell prey to that dire disease, consumption.
Mr John Marsden (Grocer and Churchwarden) later Mayor and he has one of the more spectacular memorials in Spital, and has Marsden Street named for him.
Mr James Lingard was a Grocer. He was a Churchwarden.
Mr William Davenport was a hatter.
Three members had to stand down each year and three more appointed.
The FIRST Burial Board consisted FIVE members of the Church of England and FOUR Dissenters. This majority of “Churchmen” became important and controversial.
There is an amazing amount of print in the Derbyshire Times and the Derbyshire Courier about the decisions that were made by the Burial Board.
I will attempt to summarise the criticism of the Burial Board by reference to the words used by Mr Charles Stanhope Burke Busby, solicitor and coroner, and Mayor to be.
In January 1857 these are the points he raised at the Vestry Meeting.
A large number of people had gathered and the FIRST debate was whether they should move into the body of the church which was very cold! Eventually they did so.
Mr Busby complained that Burial Board meetings had been advertised only by notices on Church doors. Not on Chapel doors, not advertised in newspapers.
In particular the meeting at which the decision was made about the amount of MONEY to be sanctioned was ONLY advertised by a notice on Church doors AND was held at 10 o’clock in the morning AND on the day that the populace of CHESTERFIELD were out celebrating the end of the Crimean War!
He suggested that it almost appeared like JOBBERY . THE IMPROPER USE OF PUBLIC OFFICE FOR PRIVATE GAIN.
A letter to the Derbyshire Times in July 1856 even said “It is jobbing, jobbery, jobbed.”
The amount being debated was £6,000 or £7,000 which is in TODAY’s money is £827,000 to £965,000.
Mr Busby next pointed out that the persons who were given the contract to build the Lodge and the Chapels, Bidlake and Lovatt of Wolverhampton, had been consulted BEFORE the competition for who was to build the Chapels, and Mr Busby suggested that this could not have been introduced but by “SOME PRIVATE FRIENDSHIP OF THE CLERKS”. Jobbery?
Mr Busby spoke of a potential Superintendent and Registrar who had testimonials from numerous Reverend gentlemen, yet the job had gone to Mr Chipp whose handwriting was so abysmal this alone should “UNFIT HIM FOR HIS DUTIES”. Ironically when Mr Chipp died his death was not recorded in the ledger, as he wasn’t there to record it!
Mr Busby had examined the clerk’s minute books and he had never seen a greater chaos, resolutions made one day and changed the next. Steps taken in one direction in one meeting, and the very opposite the next. Blunders at every step. A perfect insult to common sense.
Mr Busby felt that the Board had purchased much more land than they needed and that they had chosen to lay the grounds out as a PARK, as if the DEAD REQUIRED RECREATION. With regard to himself he might say as Cardinal Wolsey had to the Monks at Leicester
“I come to rest my bones among you, Give me a little earth for charity”.
Mr Busby was accused of being “Factious”, (disagreeing with the majority opinion) but his accuser later withdrew that remark.
At the end of Mr Busby’s accusations there was, eventually, a BALLOT of the Vestry in which Mr Busby got 8 votes and there were 89 against!
Aside from being Coroner Mr Busby became Mayor of Chesterfield in 1858 and 1866 and 1867.
So, 8 votes for Mr Busby and 89 against. The Burial Board got its way and one aspect was the allocation of ground to the Church, and to Dissenters. And you can see the result of their decisions.
Initially they had purchased just over 6 acres. The allocation to the Established Church was, the purple area, about 4.75 acres and for Dissenters 1.75 acres, the brown area.
Layout of Garden Cemetery here
Another area of controversy was the burial of Roman Catholic people.
At a meeting in April 1857, they were told that a Roman Catholic Priest, the Reverend Mr Brindle, had arrived “outside waiting an opportunity to address the Board for a grant of land for the Roman Catholics.”
The Clerk (Robert Waller) was requested to “inform Mr Brindle that the Board would hear him AFTER the business now before the Board was decided…….” Despite the fact that the Priest was outside the meeting they discussed whether they would “take any notice” of the application for a portion of the ground. A number of Board members felt that they should.
Mr Dutton said “But they must be buried, poor fellows”.
At this point they decided to invite the Priest into the room, but the Clerk reported that he had gone, and went on to say that they “would prefer not going there at all”.
Regret was expressed by some, but at the end of the day they chose NOT to allocate land for Roman Catholics.
But why had the Burial Board chosen a “Garden Cemetery.”
Perhaps the biggest influence on the design of National Cemeteries was a book by John Claudius Loudon, a Scottish botanist...
He wrote a BOOK “On the Laying Out, Planting, and Managing of Cemeteries and on the Improvement of Churchyards,” published in 1843.
This book not only made suggestions about the layout of cemeteries but also gave hints and tips about how to bury the dead, whether they be Gentlemen or paupers.
For example he shows a vault for the family of a rich person, accommodation for SIX, and a common grave with a “foot” stone.
Loudon’s book went into huge detail about the problems associated with graveyards, and offered solutions, he even gave advice on where to build parsonages in relation to churches.
We should perhaps remember that bacteria as a cause of disease were not recognised until 1884. Loudon quotes Dr Lynch from a Report on “The Health of Towns”.
“The persons living in the houses which abut the burialground of Bartholomew the Less are in the habit of emptying their chamber pots into it; and the surface of the burial ground adjoining is so covered with excrementitious matter floated over from the cesspools of privies that it is difficult to walk across it.
When the cemetery opened it offered FIRST Class, SECOND Class and THIRD class BURIALS.
On Wednesday 19th August 1857 parts of the cemetery were Consecrated by the Bishop of Lichfield, John Lonsdale.
During his speech he expressed his regret that there were differences of opinion with respect to the ground.
Nonetheless the Church retained two thirds of the burial ground.
First class burials, Church or Dissenters, were near the Chapels, and higher up the hill and therefore closer to God.
Second class were down the Hill a bit, and third class were at the bottom of the Hill. Here we have DETAILS of the fees, which are COMPLICATED.
I don’t have the original fees but in 1880 the cost of a grave was...
First class Consecrated £ 3 10s 0d Unconsecrated £ 3 5s 0d
Second class Consecrated 15s 6d Unconsecrated 15s 6d
Third class Consecrated 7s 6d Unconsecrated 7s 6d
For parishioners of Newbold, Walton, Hasland, Temple Normanton or Calow all fees were doubled. (Mr Chipp died half a mile outside the BOROUGH – Debate)
Unusually for Christian burials, which are usually East‐ West, because of the slope, everyone is buried North – South.
Of the first SEVEN burials in the cemetery five were babies less than a year old.