British Cemetery and Cremation Records from Deceased Online

This week's blog is an edited version of our recent newsletter, sharing some of the secrets behind the Deceased Online Database Deceased Online  began as a joint partnership between Manuscripti Ltd and Gower Consultants Ltd. The two companies provide scanning and computer management systems respectively, with many years of experience serving the bereavement services industry. Since then Deceased Online has processed and provided millions of burial and cremation records, memorial inscriptions, and much more to the general public and for the ongoing management of those cemeteries and crematoria. Finding empty grave spaces where cemeteries appear full is another critical part of our work. Above: Cemetery Registers Our process begins with scanning the physical registers held by individual cemeteries and crematoria offices. These are usually municipal records, but we do also provide services to private cemeteries and crematoria. These registers contain a record of everyone buri...

Deceased Online this week launches a new collection from the historic industrial city of Salford  Agecroft Cemetery, Salford Salford is renowned as one of the world's first industrial cities. Its proud industrial history includes pioneering social support for workers, including the introduction of the world's first free public library. As a settlement, Salford dates back to the Neolithic Age, and Ordsall Hall , a haunted Tudor house is evidence of its existence as a village on the River Irwell. By the 18th century, Salford had a small population. However, this was soon to change with the Industrial Revolution. By 1801, the area was home to  29,495 individuals, many of whom worked in the expanding cotton and silk factories or on the docks of the Manchester Ship Canal . A hundred years later in 1901, thanks to the local textile industry, this had grown to  296,210.  Sadly the early 20th century saw a decline in Salford's industry as a result of overseas compe...

Exciting news this week from Deceased Online as almost 50,000 records from the Oxford cemeteries, Botley, Rose Hill and Wolvercote, are uploaded to the database  The calm acres of Wolvercote Cemetery in Oxford Deceased Online is delighted to announce that almost 50,000 records from Botley, Rose Hill, and Wolvercote cemeteries in Oxford , from 1894 to 2016, are now available to search on   www.deceasedonline.com . Records for the fourth Oxford City Council cemetery,  Headington Cemetery, have been digitised and will be released at a future date. Botley Cemetery is situated in   North Hinksey Lane,  Botley,  Oxford OX2 0LX. The city of Oxford is celebrated across the world for its universities, academic innovation, and medieval architecture. On television, it is the home of fictional detectives Morse , Lewis, and Hathaway. Its situation in the beautiful county of Oxfordshire, on the banks of the Thames, and close to magnificent Blenheim ...

Thank you to all those who visited the Deceased Online team at last week's Who Do You Think You Are? Live in Birmingham Jamie and the team stayed busy over the three days of this year's show Jamie and the team from  Deceased Onli ne  are all back home now, resting their feet after a fun few days in   Birmingham's NEC   at  Who Do You Think You Are? Live . As usual, our stand (198) saw a constant flow of visitors keen to find their ancestors in the Deceased Online database . We love meeting database users and would like to thank everyone who dropped by to see us on Thursday 6th, Friday 7th and Saturday 8th April. We had a hectic but happy three days helping countless family historians with their brickwalls. Across the arena, there were loads of great bargains and special offers unique to the show. Deceased Online was no exception and we were delighted that so many of you were keen to take up our special WDYTYA? Live offer of a 6 month subscription for jus...

This week Deceased Online adds records from three more cemeteries in its Calderdale Collection. The latest cemeteries are all market towns in West Yorkshire. In this week's blog I explore further the history of the area, touching on the collapse of the textile industry and its effects regionally. View of Elland by Dave59 at English Wikipedia - Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons by Mtaylor848 using CommonsHelper., CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7497912 As I wrote in my introductory post on the Calderdale Collection , this borough of former mill towns, moorland and waterways lies at the foothills of the Pennine Hills. Until the late 20th century, its economic life was dominated by textile industries. Calderdale comprises small towns whose cotton, worsted and wool mills were powered across the centuries by the fast-running waters of the River Calder. The latest additions to the Deceased Online database are for the cemeteries of Elland, Ludden...

Coming soon to Deceased Online are the burial and cremation records of the London Borough of Lewisham in South East London. As a taster of some of the fascinating people to be found in the collection, this week I look at the short life of circus horse trainer, Helmuth Barth. Lewisham lies to the south of central London landmarks like Canary Wharf Everyone at Deceased Online is very excited about the forthcoming release of records for the inner London Borough of Lewisham . Burial and cre mation records will be added to the database throughout September and October this year. They include full digital scans of original burial and cremation registers ( computerised records from the late 1990s) , grave details including all those buried in each grave, and maps indicating the sections for each grave. T he Lewisham Collection includes records from: Brockley Cemetery (records from 1858 - 1999) Ladywell Cemetery (which adjoins Brockley, records from 1858 - 1999) Grove Park ...

From Portsoy on the north coast to Laurencekirk on the Angus border, from Braemar in the Cairngorms National Park to Peterhead on the eastern coast, Deceased Online 's collection for Aberdeen City and Shire covers a wide variety of burial records. In this post, I look in detail at some of the burial records available and explain how to use them in your family history research. Aberdeenshire is Scotland's fourth largest council region. Its vast area encompasses 24 Munros (mountains over 3000 feet), 208km of coastline, more than 129 whisky distilleries, over 300 castles, 18 sites of Pictish stones, stunning golf courses, fishing ports and magnificent royal estates. All of this signifies the county's rich heritage. Over the centuries, the area has been home to crofters, landowners, servants, fishermen, merchant seamen, distillers, inns and the royal entourage. My crofter ancestors moved around the Mearns through the 18th and 19th centuries. Their offspring included farmers ...

This week's post examines the different types of records you can find in the Deceased Online database. This blog should help you understand the sorts of records we include and some we don't. Primarily, Deceased Online specializes in burial and cremation records and especially statutory records from local councils across the UK. There is no other website which includes these types of records on a national basis. 1. Are all cemetery records held by local authorities? No. Cemeteries in Britain may be owned and managed by councils or may be in the hands of a private or charity organisation. Our database holds information about burial/cremation records and other records held by local authorities along with private cemeteries and crematoria and other records from local and national archives. Most of the burial records currently on our database are held by local councils. These include cemeteries in the following local authorities: Wakefield Metropolitan Borough, West Y...

This week we mark the completion of the digitization of the records of Manor Park Cemetery and Crematorium All 430,000 burial and cremation records for Manor Park in East London are now online and available to search on the Deceased Online database . One of the (very large) burial registers from 1875-1898 This week we added burial records from 25 March 1875 to 15 December 1898. These records include scans of the burial registers, as well as maps of the grave sections and details of the occupants of each grave.  High numbers of deaths in this period led to the Cemetery being quickly filled with graves and headstones. This twenty-five year period saw around 160,000 burials, many due to a continually increasing population and the extreme levels of poverty in London’s East End. Amongst the dead were thousands of children, including young infants. The page below, from the burial register of August 1889, shows the burial details of ten children. One was only 36 h...