British Cemetery and Cremation Records from Deceased Online

Finding Suffragettes in the Deceased Online Database Today, Tuesday 6th February 2018 , marks 100 years since the Representation of the People Act received royal assent. The passing of this Act of Parliament reformed the British and Irish electoral system, enabling almost all men and some 8.4 million women to vote in national elections. Emmeline Pankhurst c.1913 (1) Although single and widowed female ratepayers had been able t o vote in local municipal elections since 1869 (married ratepayers 1869-1872), the struggle for to extend the franchise to women nationally was hard fought. After John Stuart Mill MP's failed attempt at amending the Reform Act 1866 with the   presentation of the first mass women's suffrage petition to the House of Commons on 7 June  1866, women in the capital grouped together to form the London Society for Women's Suffrage . The movement grew across Britain, and in   1872 , women formed the National Society for Women's Suffrag...

In this week's blog post, I mark International Women's Day 2016 by highlighting some of the most transformational and celebrated women in the Deceased Online database. Today, Tuesday 8th March, is International Women's Day 2016 . This year's theme is gender parity in the spheres of society, the economy, culture and politics. While work is still needed to help today's women advance equal to their numbers in these areas, there remains much to celebrate in the achievements of women in the past. Society Mary (Morris) Knowles (1733-1807) is buried in Bunhill Fields , London. Although she was a significant social reformer and radical thinker of the late 18th century, she has been overlooked in recent times.  Self-portrait done in needlwork of Mary Morris Knowles, c.1776 ( Royal Collection ) Born into a prosperous Quaker family in Staffordshire in 1733, the young Mary Morris grew up a strong-minded girl and was well-educated in the Classics, po...

This week we continue our competition to win copies of Darren Beach’s handy pocket-sized guide, London’s Cemeteries. Darren’s book is the perfect companion to Brompton Cemetery and many of the other London cemeteries featured in the Deceased Online database . Our first winners, Carlos Amenguel Jackson from Mallorca and Rosemary Rowley from Macclesfield, were delighted to receive their prize copies. We hope to be adding the final set of Brompton records next week. Romanesque statues in Brompton Cemetery Recently, I caught up with Darren to find out more about his interest in cemeteries. He told me, ‘I've always been interested in London - my home town - and especially the awe-inspiring feel you can sometimes get from the traces left by its previous inhabitants. I don't really mean artefacts in museums, more the 'living' stuff in the streets with which we can look at social history, such as old railway lines, Roman ruins, and of course cemeteries. I...