Catholic recusant burial

[Research Ruth]

I was looking for someone else when this caught my eye. On the left hand page just below the entry on December 18. Looks like they buried a Catholic recusant but something like "put in a grave", as though they didn't want to call it a burial. Might be of interest to anybody researching this.

From Ancestry.com. Derbyshire, England, Church of England Baptisms, Marriages and Burials, 1538-1812

[David Outner]

I think that the example you give must represent a reasonable compromise.

It's always difficult to establish whether parish registers record all physical burials or only those where a burial service had been performed.  Practice differed according to the differing views of clergymen.  At one extreme some registers even recorded the burial of stillbirths. At the other extreme some clergymen tried to resist physical burials where no C of E burial service was performed. 

In correspondence in "Notes and Queries" in 1852 it was stated that the established RC practice in Lancashire was for the RC priest to perform a burial service in the house of the deceased, after which the coffin was taken to the churchyard and buried by the sexton in the usual way but without the attendance of a C of E priest.  However, this left open the question of whether the burial should be recorded in the parish register.

[Joney]

There are burials of many Catholics in Liverpool in the 1840s and 1850s  in local C of E parish graveyards, where the registers record the burial, simply adding the word 'Romanist', ie,. Catholic, in the margin or alongside the surname. The same form of entry is used elsewhere, in St Mary's, Prescot for example.The dead still had to be buried somewhere and the local parish graveyard was the most logical place for those who lived in the local area. Remember,  in most cases, it would be the only recognised place of burial that existed.   A Catholic family would not want a C of E burial service for their relative, wherever they were buried.
Before the 1790s, a Catholic church or chapel was illegal. Once a Catholic chapel was legally permitted, it was possible to have a graveyard there, but Catholics chapels remained relatively few in number until the mid to late nineteenth century.

[Research Ruth]

That's fascinating, something I hadn't really given a lot of thought to before. When did they start having municipal graveyards with unconsecrated sections? Victorian times, I guess? The local independent cemetery where my immediate family is buried was established 1850 and that has an unconsecrated section.

[Maiden Stone]

When did they start having municipal graveyards with unconsecrated sections? Victorian times, I guess? The local independent cemetery where my immediate family is buried was established 1850 and that has an unconsecrated section.

Churchyards became full and some were a public health risk to people living nearby. Burial Acts were passed by Parliament 19thC.  which allowed local authorities to purchase land to create municipal cemeteries. A few private burial grounds already existed.
Unofficial and possibly illegal non-conformist burial grounds existed in 18thC. 

[Research Ruth]

Thanks, that's interesting.

[Joney]

Dickens' description of a London burial ground,  packed with bodies only just below the ground surface and consequently spreading disease, might be worth a look. That was in 'Bleak House', but the same situation existed in other centres of population. For example,  the central Liverpool graveyards were closed in 1853, on the advice of Dr. Duncan, who had been appointed to advise on iimproving the health of the population  and fighting diseases such as cholera. There was a famous case of cholera being spread by water from a well in Soho, London in 1854, This went down in history as the Broad Street Cholers outbreak.. The bacteria from a local burial site was finding its way into underground water courses. The doctor, John Snow, (?) who traced the cause of the cholera  outbreak, finally took matters into his own hands and removed the handle from the pump provided, as the authorities were slow to act.

[Research Ruth]

Wow! All sorts of interesting social history. Here's another thing I found out (but wished I hadn't): the man who looks after the cemetery records at St Wilfred's, Calverley told me that at first people were only buried for about 50 years or so, then their bones were collected up and put in a charnel house. So that's what a charnel house is! I never knew. How gruesome and insanitary ...

[David Outner]

"Alas, poor Yorick"  (Hamlet Act V scene 1), whose skull only lasted 23 years undisturbed. There was a recent post on this in the Lincolnshire forum: Lincolnshire churchyard maps.