Public burials - sad thought

[melba_schmelba]

Having found several ancestors and relatives buried in public graves, usually in municipal cemeteries, they can be buried often with over 10 other people. It suddenly dawned on me, that quite apart from being able to fit people in, the likelihood of a parish or metropolitan council paying for coffins for the poor was well, not very likely. Would I be correct in thinking they would just be put in the graves in body bags in this case ?

[Top-of-the-hill]

  Shrouds might be a politer term!

[melba_schmelba]

  Shrouds might be a politer term!

I suppose so !

[tellx]

An interesting read

https://www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the-arts/history/social-economic-history/what-were-victorian-paupers-graves

including the following paragraph

"The grave was what was termed a deep grave and had been opened for about four weeks. The grave was what is called a pauper's grave. Such graves as these were kept open until there 17 or 18 bodies interred in them; there was only the body of a still-born infant in the one in question. It was not the custom to put any earth between the coffins in those graves, except in case where the persons died of contagious diseases and in that case some slaked lime, and a thin layer of earth, were put down to separate them."

[melba_schmelba]

An interesting read

https://www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the-arts/history/social-economic-history/what-were-victorian-paupers-graves

including the following paragraph

"The grave was what was termed a deep grave and had been opened for about four weeks. The grave was what is called a pauper's grave. Such graves as these were kept open until there 17 or 18 bodies interred in them; there was only the body of a still-born infant in the one in question. It was not the custom to put any earth between the coffins in those graves, except in case where the persons died of contagious diseases and in that case some slaked lime, and a thin layer of earth, were put down to separate them."

Gawd, what an awful tragedy described in that link. Trying to fix one problem of the graves being too shallow, it seems they went to far the other way, 58 feet (17.6m) deep .?!! And two men lost their lives  .
 What it does tell us though is that at least in some cases, the poor did have some sort of coffins, but presumably the cheapest money could buy. But also that often the pauper graves would be left open for months until they were full up. Even in 1838 that seems to have been too much for the locals to tolerate.

[tellx]

https://research.ncl.ac.uk/pauperlives/documents/SocialHistoryConferenceNorthumbriaApril8th2014.pdf

Exclusion, deviance or choice? Pauper burial in Westminster, 1725-1834
Jeremy Boulton, Newcastle University

page 13 / 44 has some basic details

"Cheap coffins and shrouds were provided for all pauper burials.
In 1817 it was ‘RESOLVED that all Coffins used after Christmas day must be made in the House; also that they be made of Deal & coloured black’. Before 1817 workhouse paupers were buried in cheap coffins supplied by local undertakers.
A burial service of sorts was read over paupers. Until 1806 this was a duty of the workhouse chaplain who was paid a flat rate fee"

[Glen in Tinsel Kni]

Quite a few public double oversized plots in the cemetery where many of mine are, they were placed and sized in such a way as to make the cemetery appear less crowded. Ironic that now huge swathes of it appear empty as there are many unmarked plots though it contains around 40,000 recorded burials. There are likely many more as around 20 years worth from one parish aren't recorded in the cemetery register for some reason though the churchyard in question had long since been closed.

[BumbleB]

There is also to be taken into consideration, graves were often owned or rented for a fixed period of time.  If the contract was not renewed, then unconnected people could be interred in that grave.

[Enumerated]

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.