British Cemetery and Cremation Records from Deceased Online

This week we welcome a post by Society of Genealogists’ trustee, Amelia Bennett, who was delighted to solve her own family’s mystery in Deceased Online’s Southwark Collection. Nunhead Cemetery My 2 x great grandmother Caroline Lageu was adopted in 1873, when she was 13 years old, by Alfred Strivens Hudson and his wife Ann . Her biological parents had died tragically young after falling on hard times. Caroline’s mother, Caroline Lageu senior, died of consumption in 1869.   Her husband, Thomas’ luck was dropping even before then, having started at a pub just off the Strand, then one on King Street (now Kingly Street between Regent Street & Carnaby Street), then out to Walworth, and finally ended up at a pub on Well Street, Hackney in east London. I had searched for some time for the burials of Caroline’s biological parents’ (my 3x great grandparents), but found nothing. The search was complicated by the fact that Lageu is such an unusual surname that it is almost...

This week, I am delighted to introduce a guest blog by actor, Paul Rider, who, when using the Deceased Online database to  search for his great grandfather's burial record, chanced upon his great aunts' entries too . Paul Rider is an actor well known for both Shakespearean stage roles (including at London's Globe Theatre) and to a wide range of radio and TV appearances including Doc Martin, Eastenders and French and Saunders. Although he now lives in South London, he hails from the West Midlands and has been fascinated by researching his family history. He contacted us recently to tell us how, after three decades of searching, he made some great personal family history discoveries through the records on www.deceasedonline.com . Here's Paul's story: For some time I'd been researching my family and in particular looking for the grave of my great grandfather, Richard William Rider . I’d examined birth, marriage and death registers when they only existe...

This week Deceased Online completes its collection for the London Borough of Southwark with the addition of records from Honor Oak Crematorium   Honor Oak Crematorium In August this year, I wrote about the difficulties faced by the poor of Southwark and Camberwell in South London throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries. Many of these people were later buried in the Victorian and Edwardian cemeteries of Camberwell Old, Camberwell New and Nunhead . The records of all three (including register scans, grave details and cemetery grave section maps) have been searchable on the Deceased Online database for several months. The last set of records to be added to the Southwark collection, for Honor Oak Crematorium , dates back to 1939 and covers 150,000 names. The crematorium, located next to Camberwell New cemetery, was designed by architects William Bell and Maurice Webb . The latter was the son of Sir Aston Webb , who owned the company which designed Camberwell New Cemete...

This week Deceased Online uploaded a new collection for Camberwell Old and New Cemeteries. Inspired by a memorial in the New Cemetery, in this post I explore how the online database can help locate burial places of those interred in paupers' graves. Like me, you may have ancestors who were buried in common graves . These were often referred to as "paupers' graves" as they were the resting places of those whose loved ones could not afford to pay for a burial and headstone. Many had no loved ones at all.    Deceased Online this week added burial records for Camberwell Old Cemetery and Camberwell New Cemetery . Like Nunhead Cemetery , these burial grounds lies in the modern London Borough of Southwark . The use of Southwark place names has changed over the years. Parts of Camberwell on an 1881 census entry, for example, may be known as Peckham today.  Southwark was a highly populous area in the Victorian and early 20th centuries. The three cemeteries that are...

Today Deceased Online launches the burial records for the Magnificent Cemetery of Nunhead in South London. Below I explore the history of the cemetery and highlight some of the notable burials in this new collection. Nunhead is one of London's Magnificent Seven Cemeteries that were laid out around the edge of the capital in the mid-19th century. Located in the populous London Borough of Southwark SE15 , in the words of the Friends of Nunhead Cemetery (FONC) , Nunhead is "the most attractive of the seven". As early as 1878, the writer and genealogist Edward Walford (1823-1897) was celebrating the beauty of the site as follows: Nunhead Cemetery, covering an area of about fifty acres, occupies the summit of some rising ground, whence a good view is obtained of the surrounding neighbourhood. The cemetery was consecrated by the Bishop of Winchester in 1840, and is beautifully laid out with gravel walks, and thickly planted with trees, shrubs, and flowers. The chapel...