British Cemetery and Cremation Records from Deceased Online

Following on from last week's introduction to the vast St Pancras and Islington Cemetery, in today's post I explore some of the well-known people who have been buried here since its opening as Britain's first public cemetery in 1854. Mathilde Blind (1841-1896) was born Mathilde Cohen in Germany but sought refuge in London after her stepfather, Karl Blind was involved in the Baden insurrection of 1848. In England she grew up around European refugees and revolutionaries, including Giuseppe Mazinni. Her brother, Ferdinand, committed suicide after failing to assassinate Otto von Bismark. Her political upbringing manifested itself in her poems, and she frequently tackled the subject of social injustice, including her attack on the Highland Clearances, 'The Heather on Fire'(1886). This monument to Blind (see below) was erected by the industrialist Ludwig Mond and features her likeness along with Greco-Romanesque images now partially obscured by ivy. A close frien...

This week, I explore the history of one the largest cemeteries in the UK - St Pancras and Islington Cemetery in North London. St Pancras and Islington Cemetery sits in the London suburb of Finchley. Founded in 1854, the cemetery is now the UK's largest cemetery in terms of numbers of burials with over 800,000 interments. All of these can be seen on the Deceased Online database . The reason why the cemetery is so large is that those buried came from some of the most heavily populated parts of London: St Pancras and Islington. The Ludwig Mond Mausoleum stands in memory of the Mond family of industrialists. Today St Pancras forms part of the London Borough of Camden . In 1854 it covered a large chunk of north London, running from the Gatehouse of Highgate in the north to King's Cross in the south. Islington is St Pancras's neighbour and now stretches from Archway to the City. At the time the Vestry centred around St Mary's Church but, from 1900, Islington would...

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'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...

Looking back over 48 posts on the Deceased Online Blog This autumn Deceased Online will add thousands of burial records from across the UK to the database . These include collections from the north east of England, remote areas of Scotland, urban parts of the Midlands, and further collections from The National Archives . As we look ahead, I would like to say thank you to all those who've read this blog over the past year . I published the first post, " The Conventional Daughter of one of the 19th century's most notorious couples ", just over a year ago on 2 August 2012. Since then the blog has received thousands of hits from readers around the world, including some living in Australia, Canada, Spain, Lithuania and Japan. The first ever post on the Deceased Online blog (August 2012) Over last twelve months I've given updates on new records on the database while exploring some of the well-known names in the collections. Besides these, the blog has featured...

Following on from last week's post, I'm looking further into Deceased Online 's latest collection of burials. These military burials were digitized in partnership with The National Archives .  Two notable institutions in the collection are Haslar Royal Navy Cemetery and the Royal Victoria Hospital in Netley. Both Haslar and Netley (as it was more commonly known) were Britain's foremost military hospitals during the bloodiest years of war in the western hemisphere The Royal Hospital Haslar and Clayhill Royal Navy Cemetery, Gosport, Hampshire The Royal Hospital Haslar dates from 1753. For over two hundred and fifty years Haslar served as one of main hospitals caring for sailors and marines of the Royal Navy and merchant services. Patients came from ships as well as from naval and seamen institutions in nearby Portsmouth and Gosport. The hospital closed as the last official military hospital in 2007. The Haslar Cemetery closed in April 1859 but the neighbouring Cl...

This week we have been adding tens of thousands of military burial records held at the The National Archives to Deceased Online  The death records of ancestors who died whilst serving in the armed forces can be difficult to find. Where service records and musters don't survive, family historians are often unsure of where in the world their military relatives were buried. The families of those who travelled with their military husband or father can also be hard to trace. Families did not always travel with the regiment, but even if they did they are often not named in muster or pay rolls. Thousands of men who served in the Army, Royal Navy and merchant service before 1914 did not die on active service. Some of these men were buried in family plots and may be found elsewhere in the Deceased Online database . Many more died in or near their barracks or in a military hospital. Thousands of these servicemen's burial records are now available to search on Deceased Online . Th...