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Twice Told Tales – Cemeteries and Gravestones in the News
September 2013
Compiled by Mike Bieling
It’s been several months since I last offered readers a collection of news links and stories from the
Internet, as I took the summer off to travel and relax. We visited Glasgow in late June for my daughter’s
graduation at the University of Strathclyde, spent four days with her in Dublin, and returned home with
stays in Bath and London. Naturally, we took in as many cemeteries as we could along the way – most
notably Old Calton in Edinburgh, Stirling, Glasnevin in Dublin, and Brompton in London – and I’ve begun
sorting through photos and posting albums on Facebook.
Working in no particular order, I first put up
pictures from our visit to Brompton Cemetery in
London on July 14th. Opened in 1840, Brompton is
one of the earliest of that city’s “Magnificent
Seven” garden cemeteries founded by private
companies in the mid-1800s, and is interesting in
that some of its innovations made it a business
failure that led the British government to take over
the operation of these cemeteries as public services
in 1850. My impression was that it had been
overbuilt with architectural features like
gatehouses, chapels and massive colonnaded
catacombs that had been costly to build and hadn’t
appealed as expected to its clientele. Only about
500 of the many thousands of catacomb loculi, as
shown in my photo at right, were ever sold, though
it seems to me they could still be converted to
columbaria and serve millions of Londoners yet to
come. This link should take you to my Facebook
Catacombs, Brompton Cemetery
Mike Bieling, 2012
album and further comments about Brompton and
its history:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.605496279482651.1073741839.100000668530081&type
=1&l=2150401af0
At last notice, I was working on Memorial Day items, and though the newsworthiness of most of them
has long passed, several remain of interest. I’ll start with an article by Robert M. Poole from the
Smithsonian magazine of November, 2009, and featured on the Smithsonian.com website, about the
origins of Arlington National Cemetery. The property of General Robert E. Lee, the estate was
expropriated by the federal government in 1861, when Lee chose to serve in the army of the
Confederate States of America. The first burials took place there in May, 1864, beginning immediately
beside the Lee mansion, both to punish him for being a rebel and to discourage his return at any time in
the future. After the war, legal wrangling between the Lee family and the federal government over
compensation for the seizure continued until 1883, when Custis Lee accepted a $150,000 settlement:
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/The-Battle-of-Arlington.html?c=y&page=1
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Another article I saw re-posted around this time by a friend was blogger Susan DeMark’s “Mindful
Walker” entry for September 30th, 2010: “In Our Midst: The Prison Ship Martyrs”. It tells the littleknown Revolutionary War story behind the Prison Ship Martyrs Monument in Brooklyn’s Fort Greene
Park:
http://www.mindfulwalker.com/explore-new-york/in-our-midst-the-prison-ship-martyrs
About.com’s 19th Century History Page featured this article by Robert McNamara about the origin of the
24-note bugle call, “Taps”, which was composed for and first performed at a US military funeral in 1862,
during the Civil War:
http://history1800s.about.com/od/civilwar/a/Bugle-Call-Taps.htm?r=facebook
Facebook friend Steve Wisker contributed this Yahoo story, among many others on military and other
forms of memorialization. It describes the work of the Missing in America Project, a volunteer group
dedicated, like the Patriot Guard organization I wrote about recently, to locating the unburied remains
of US veterans in mortuaries and funeral homes across the country and ensuring that they are given a
proper military funeral:
http://news.yahoo.com/100-years-death-2-civil-war-veterans-finally-095921811.html
May 13th brought this Yahoo News story by AP’s Ula Ilnystzky, announcing that Brooklyn’s Green-Wood
Cemetery was celebrating its 175th anniversary with an exhibition at the Museum of the City of New
York called "A Beautiful Way to Go: New York's Green-Wood Cemetery". This exhibition explores the
history of this 478-acre National Historic Landmark and continues until October 16th. The story includes
a series of 14 photographs, both of the cemetery and of the exhibition:
http://news.yahoo.com/nys-largest-cemetery-celebrates-175th-anniversary-062748996.html
One can be sure that I wouldn’t miss the opportunity to mention an article that refers to anyone with as
splendid a name as Colonel John Pollenfex Bastard, MP (1756 – 1816), though this story by Nick Squires
from the Telegraph website of May 17th is not really about him. Instead, it concerns the recent finding in
Livorno, Italy’s , Old English Cemetery, of a long-lost plaque to Francis Horner, MP (1878 – 1817) by the
famed English sculptor Sir Francis Chantrey. Both British politicians died while visiting Livorno for health
reasons, with Horner being temporarily and Bastard permanently entombed there:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/10064276/Long-lost-plaquecommemorating-MP-found-in-Livornos-Old-English-Cemetery.html
The Pop Culture page of the MSN News website of May 17th featured this photo and story about a
funeral home in Eugene, OR, that offers customers a last ride in the back of a three-wheeled bicycle
hearse as part of a “natural burial” service:
http://news.msn.com/pop-culture/funeral-home-has-bicycle-hearse-for-1-last-ride#tscptmf
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The 100th anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War is quickly approaching and countries all
over the world are planning their commemorations and, in many cases, cleaning and repairing
monuments and memorials from the period. This was very obvious during my recent visit to Britain,
where restoration work was going in churches, cemeteries, and streets everywhere. The Great War 100
Facebook page posted this link to this story from the online edition of Queensland’s Townsville Bulletin
of May 23rd, telling about a bronze cast of a monument to Australia’s sappers that is to be installed in
their memory in the Belgian village of Ploegsteert, near Ypres.
http://www.townsvillebulletin.com.au/article/2013/05/23/381991_defence.html
As I’ve commented before, the missing and the dead of World War One continue to be uncovered
almost daily, 95 years after the guns fell silent. Great War 100 posted this link to a Mail Online article
dated June 1st, which describes the recent finding of the remains and personal belongings of some 20
French soldiers near the site of the village of Fleury-devant-Douaumont, which was destroyed during the
Battle of Verdun:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2334354/Archaeologists-unearth-bones-20-French-FirstWorld-War-dead-chance-discovery-hikers-forest-Verdun.html#ixzz2flhd2iiB
Back in mid-April, the io.9.com Facebook page, which calls itself “a daily publication that covers science,
science fiction, and the future”, posted this short article about Victorian-era post-mortem photographs
and an album of more than 30 examples of the genre. To most of us, this practice seems macabre, but,
as pointed out in the comments, photography of the dead is a custom that persists in a number of other
cultures:
http://io9.com/the-strangest-tradition-of-the-victorian-era-post-mort-472772709
The Gravestone Girls recently posted this link on their Facebook page to Smashing Lists, one of the
makers of those Top Ten lists with which the Internet is rife these days. This list of the “Ten Creepiest
Burial Grounds Around the World” from last February includes a number of interesting cemetery
photographs, though judging by the entry for Greyfriars, the texts are as lurid and inaccurate as one
might expect:
http://www.smashinglists.com/top-ten-creepiest-burial-grounds-around-the-world/
The GGs also posted the following link to a blog called the Cemetery Traveler – by Ed Snyder, in which
the author, who is a “photographer specializing in images of cemetery statuary”, shares his interest in
cemeteries and gravestones. On June 7th, Ed posted a review of the book, “An Incomplete History of the
Art of Funerary Violin” (Overlook Press, 2006), by Rohan Kriwaczek, in which he discusses the strange
history of the role of music in Christian funerary rituals. Banned by the early Church due to the pagan
associations of music at funerals, violin music began to be tolerated during the Reformation and thrived
until the mid-19th century, when the Vatican initiated the Great Funerary Purges, aimed at rooting out
Protestant influences. The funerary violin tradition was suppressed, and largely forgotten. Snyder also
talks about a concert of funerary music to be held on June 22nd at Philadelphia’s Laurel Hill Cemetery,
featuring the “Divine Hand Ensemble”, which includes a theramin, string quartet, classical guitar, two
harps, a glockenspiel, a soprano and a tenor:
http://thecemeterytraveler.blogspot.ca/2013/06/funerary-music.html
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Knowing of my interest in the Vikings, a friend forwarded me this link to an abridged article by Jueri
Peets, posted on the World Archaeology website on April 2nd, about the Salme Ship Burials, the earliest
known Viking burial, uncovered in 2008 in the village of Salme on the island of Saaremaa in Estonia. Two
related ship burials have been found, dating to 750 AD, the beginning of the Viking era, and carrying the
remains of more than 40 individuals:
http://www.world-archaeology.com/features/estonia-salme-ship-burials/
On July 18th, Livescience.com featured this story about plans announced by Leicester Cathedral in
England for a $1.5 million reburial of the remains of King Richard III, which were found just over a year
ago under a car park on the site of a medieval monastery in that city:
http://www.livescience.com/38271-richard-iii-reburial-leicester.html
It would appear that Leicester Cathedral has changed its original plan for Richard III's re-interment, from
placing him under an existing cenotaph slab to his memory in the choir, to erecting a standing
monument in a chapel-like alcove with stained glass windows. This seems to have flowed from a
realization that Richard’s tomb will attract a great number of visitors to the city and the cathedral, who
will expect to see something impressive. No doubt the city of York thought much the same thing, and
according to the Globe and Mail’s news website of August 16th, a group that represents the Plantagenet
descendants of Richard, who want to see him reburied in Yorkminster Cathedral, were successful in
having a judge put Leicester’s plans on hold and order a judicial review into how this decision was made.
This all seems rather like the competition among medieval abbeys for saints' relics to attract pilgrims
and their cash. This squabble should prove interesting:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/judge-warns-against-legal-war-of-the-roses-part-2-overremains-of-richard-iii/article13810185/
And in a related story from Yahoo News of July 29th, a year after uncovering Richard’s remains,
archeologists working at the site announced that a second high-status burial had been found in the
Leicester car park that was once the site of a Greyfriars monastery. Believed to be at least 100 years
older than the King’s interment, the heavy stone sarcophagus was opened to reveal a lead-wrapped
body inside, which has been taken to the University of Leicester in an effort to identify the remains:
http://news.yahoo.com/medieval-coffin-king-richard-iii-holds-another-coffin-152525581.html
The History Blog archives for July 2013 also included an item about this mysterious second high class
burial, with additional details and a link to the University of Leicester’s own press release about it:
http://www.thehistoryblog.com/archives/date/2013/07
The successful search for the long-lost remains of Richard III seems to have inspired the hunt for other
missing monarchs as well. This item from the BBC News web page for Hampshire and the Isle of Wight of
August 5th describes an application to the Diocese of Winchester by that city’s Hyde900 community
project, to submit remains found in an unmarked grave in St. Bartholomew’s Church in Winchester to
scientific analysis. They hope to determine whether they are those of King Alfred the Great, the first
“King of the Anglo-Saxons”, who died in his capital there in 899. This version of the story included the
most detail about Alfred and the proposed study, and I’m glad to report that the application
immediately received approval:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-23529567
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This story from the Guardian’s website describes the unveiling on August 8th, the 50th anniversary of
Britain’s notorious Great Train Robbery, of the monument in London’s Highgate Cemetery to gang
member Bruce Reynolds, who died in February of this year. The monument incorporates a bronze cast
of Reynold’s death mask, taken by his son, sculptor Nicholas Reynolds, who also took the death mask
used on the memorial to Malcolm Maclaren, late manager of the Sex Pistols, buried nearby in 2010. This
version of this story is the only one that included a picture of the sculpture in question, along with its
creator, though it doesn’t mention the technique involved:
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/aug/08/bruce-reynolds-ashes-great-train-robbery
Mike Bieling lives in Duncan, B.C., and can be reached at oldcemeterian@shaw.ca