British Cemetery and Cremation Records from Deceased Online

Recently, I looked at the etiquette of mourning in the Victorian and Edwardian period, and the influence of Queen Victoria. This week, I examine alternative approaches to the Victorian funeral. Queen Victoria was the head of the Church of England until her death in 1901. Thousands of Victorians followed her example after the death of Prince Albert by arranging elaborate Anglican funerals for their loved ones. Although the Church of England was the official religion, according to the Religious Census of 1851, it was not followed by the majority of the population . Non-conformist forms of Christianity were increasingly popular in the latter half of the 19th century and would have a significant impact on the funeral practices of their adherents. In 1851, non-Anglican Christians included Scottish Presbyterians, Independents, Baptists, Society of Friends, Unitarians, Moravians, Wesleyan Methodists, Calvinistic Methodists, Sandemanians, New Church, Brethren, Roman Catholics, Catholic and ...

This week, I look at the social and cultural influences on the design of Victorian and Edwardian cemeteries, monuments and headstones Currently, there are around a thousand Victorian-built cemeteries on the Deceased Online database . I have included a number of images from them in this blog. Many more can be found on the website . Mourning practices and artefacts, such as rings and lockets of the deceased's hair, were in common use when Victoria acceded the throne in 1837. But the elaborate funerary rituals we associate with the Victorian era only became widespread from 1861, after the sudden death of Prince Albert. The widowed Queen Victoria began a period of mourning that would last forty years until her own death in 1901. Jet mourning jewellery from the Victorian period By the 1890s, described by Julian Litten as 'the golden age of the funeral', Britons of all backgrounds were were copying the royal manner of bereavement. They wore black dresses, crape, gloves,...