British Cemetery and Cremation Records from Deceased Online

The eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918 has been commemorated this week on its hundredth anniversary. This week's post takes a look at some of the most notable burials in our collection from the First World War. Silvertown Explosion 1917 (West Ham Cemetery, London E7) The  Millennium Mills  in the aftermath of the  Silvertown explosion  - Avery, John, 1917-01-25 ( By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=28065575 ) One of the worst non-military disasters of the First World War took place near the cemetery in Silvertown, East London.  On 19 January 1917, the largest explosion ever to occur in the UK ripped through the former Brunner Mond factory in Silvertown. It had been turned over to munitions production near the beginning of the war, and now manufactured highly unstable TNT. The blast was heard as far away as Southampton and Norwich. A devastating firestorm spread beyond the factory into neighbour...

As Easter is almost upon us, I look for the name EASTER in the Deceased Online database . . . with some surprising results. The origins of the word Easter used as a forename are unclear. Some etymologists believe the name comes from an Anglo-Saxon goddess, Eostre . Others associate it with the Old Testament queen, Esther , whose story is commemorated in the festival of Purim that precedes the Jewish spring festival of Pesach, or Passover. There is also a theory that some girls were named Easter as a variant or misspelling of the more commonly used Esther. The earliest mention of an Easter in the Deceased Online database is Easter Ashcroft , who was buried at St Paul's Church, Bedford on 1 September 1696. As you can see from the scan of the burial register below , this Easter was the daughter of another Easter, the wife of Mr John Ashcroft. Later in the database there are some interesting forename and surname combinations, including Easter Penny , who was buried on ...

As all 430,000 records for Manor Park Cemetery go online, this week's post looks at other East London burials in the Deceased Online database In last week's post, I explored the Victorian heritage of the early sections of Manor Park Cemetery and Crematorium. Unlike that privately-owned cemetery, neighbouring West Ham Cemetery is owned and run by the Newham Council. In fact, it is the only cemetery that the Council owns and manages, and it appears on Deceased Online in the name of   'The London Borough of Newham'. Just a mile west of Manor Park Cemetery, West Ham was founded almost twenty years earlier, in 1857. It was one of the first publicly-owned cemeteries to be created after the Metropolitan Burials Act of 1852.The cemetery's plot covers 20 acres. All of the cemetery's 180,000 burial records can be found in the database . These include private burials and details of over 200 Commonwealth War Graves. George and Catherine Jane Allen (or A...