Public burials - sad thought

[BumbleB]

Yes, I am aware that burials were/are expensive.

[melba_schmelba]

Public graves and pauper graves are not the same thing. There may be some paupers in a public grave, but most of the occupants came from working families who paid their own funeral and burial costs (including the coffin). It was just that a private grave was prohibitively expensive for ordinary working people.

Thanks, I was not really aware of the distinction. I suppose in a city, space was much more at a premium. I assume in a parish churchyard, there were some small charges associated with a burial plot but perhaps nowhere near as much as private or municipal cemetery companies charged, so humbler people could afford their own plot?

[dawnsh]

When a local cemetery to me opened in 1902, the majority of burials were in public or communal graves.

If you have access to Ancestry you can scroll through the images for Abney Park & Greenford in the England & Scotland select cemeteries dataset.

The images are somewhat distressing with the number of entries for still-born, new born infants and young children.

By 1910, you can see their weekly adverts in the British Newspaper Archives or FindMyPast, private graves £2 19s 6d and 10s for adults and 4s for children in unpurchased graves.

If you want to be buried in Kensal Green (one of London's Magnificent Seven) today, plots cost from £19,000 to £26,000 for a 50 year lease

 

[Viktoria]

I Belgium, a grave is rented ,for  as long as it is deemed only bones remain .
Then the family can buy the plot or if not then exhumation takes place!!!!
I remember the funeral of an old English gentleman ,whose grandson was attempting a career in cycle racing .
The family,Mum Dad and Grandad had also cone over to support him.
The old gentleman died suddenly and a very simple funeral.
Some of the English ladies there went to be supportive and translate etc .
During the interment a nearby grave which was opened ,had grave diggers bringing remains out .Leg bones ,ghastly.
It was horrible, we crowded round the small family group so they would not see as there were no screens, it was totally insensitive .

A couple of my grandmother’s babies are in paupers’ graves with twenty or so others not related.
In central Manchester near Victoria Station is Angel Meadow, the worst slum in Europe according to Friedrich Engels , Cholera was always causing great epidemics ,and next to St Michael’s Church  is a communal burial ground with over 40,000 graves,multiple burials .
Mentioned in Mary Barton by Mrs. Gaskell. In “Mary Barton. “.
Very shallow as the graves got  full,skulls lying about so the Corporation had it covered over with York stone flags, recently sold and it is now a grassy plot.
Thus is History destroyed!
 What all those flagstones would be worth!
Viktoria.

[Top-of-the-hill]

   "I assume in a parish churchyard, there were some small charges associated with a burial plot but perhaps nowhere near as much as private or municipal cemetery companies charged, so humbler people could afford their own plot?"
   
   This is something I hadn't thought much about. Most of my ancestors are in village graveyards, and I think it was taken for granted that village people would be buried there. Probably with no grave marker and in any available space until the last 150 years or so! There may have been a small fee, but it would have had to be small.

[Top-of-the-hill]

  Re Viktoria's post - we had a conversation recently with a German lady who lives here on that subject, it seems they do the same in Germany. It ties in to some extent with my comment about the ancestors being buried in any available space, which is what happened for all the centuries before grave markers became common, and the graveyards then started to fill up.   

[melba_schmelba]

   "I assume in a parish churchyard, there were some small charges associated with a burial plot but perhaps nowhere near as much as private or municipal cemetery companies charged, so humbler people could afford their own plot?"
   
   This is something I hadn't thought much about. Most of my ancestors are in village graveyards, and I think it was taken for granted that village people would be buried there. Probably with no grave marker and in any available space until the last 150 years or so! There may have been a small fee, but it would have had to be small.

I definitely think in some registers, I have actually seen the charge(s) mentioned, even itemised i.e.  'payment to vicar, verger, gravedigger etc.', perhaps in a London parish register. Sometimes in older registers I see 'affidavit made' next to most burials, but not sure what this was about!?
  Below is a thread I made earlier this year about what are the oldest gravestones that are still legible that exist. I wonder if it took some time as feudalism started to end in the 14th century for enough people to become reasonably well off enough to afford gravestones.

https://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=857072.msg7256239#msg7256239

[Rena]

  Re Viktoria's post - we had a conversation recently with a German lady who lives here on that subject, it seems they do the same in Germany. It ties in to some extent with my comment about the ancestors being buried in any available space, which is what happened for all the centuries before grave markers became common, and the graveyards then started to fill up.

I had a similar conversation with my German cyberpal years ago, and he said the same thing, when I asked him about my family's burial plots. 

I was also trying to research 19th and 20th century German army recruits with the same surname as my ancestry but there was no trace of them at that time, although there may be in a digital database now.   

[Top-of-the-hill]

  "Affidavit made" relates to the requirement (late 18th century?) that people should be "buried in woolen". Supposed to help support the wool industry.