Poorhouse burials

[hdw]

Is it likely that paupers who died in the Jedburgh Union Poorhouse would have been buried in the Abbey churchyard, or did the poorhouse have its own burial ground?

Harry

[Emjaybee]

My Gramdnother died in the workhouse.
She was buried in an unmarked grave in a corner set aside in the cemetary for "paupers and the babies".

[hdw]

In older graveyards there might be an area known as The Potter's Field, where paupers and strangers in town were buried. This seems to derive from the story in the New Testament, in Matthew 27:7, where Judas flings down in the temple the 30 pieces of silver he got for betraying Jesus, the priests say, we can't just put this back in the treasury, because it's blood money, so they use it to buy 'the potter's field' 'to bury strangers in'.

What made me think of the Poorhouse dead was a story in the paper the other day about a mass grave of infants found by a children's home. At first I thought it was another atrocity story, but it seems they died naturally and were just 'disposed of'. I wondered if something similar happened to workhouse/poorhouse inmates when they died, or if they got a Christian burial in the nearest churchyard or cemetery.

One of my 3 x great-grandmothers died in the Jedburgh Poorhouse in 1868.

Harry

[alan14578]

hdw The Jedburgh Poor records have been recently transcribed  by Border Family History Soc check out    www.bordersfhs.org.uk  for details
alan

[hdw]

I know - I've learned a lot from the CD.

Harry