British Cemetery and Cremation Records from Deceased Online

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...

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...

This week's post looks at the history of Manor Park Cemetery from its opening in 1874 through to the end of the First World War in 1918. We are delighted that almost all the remaining records for East London’s Manor Park Cemetery are now online; the last ones for the period 1875-1898 should be available next week. The entrance to Manor Park Cemetery and Crematorium Manor Park Cemetery opened in 1874. Owned by the Manor Park Cemetery Company, which continues to manage the cemetery and crematorium today, Manor Park was then one of the largest graveyards in London. The Company bought the land in 1872 from neighbouring Hamfrith Farm. The cemetery remains a haven for wildlife, with two woodlands, lawns and gardens of remembrance. The Cemetery Chapel The first person to be buried was a Mr. Wiliam Nesbitt. His burial took place on 25th March 1875, and his headstone can still be found on the right hand side of the cemetery's Remembrance Road. Two years later, the ...

This week, we look in more detail at the great grandfather that Deceased Online user Barry Rees recently found in the database. Last week I mentioned that Barry Rees from Pembrokeshire was one of the winners of our tie-break competition to win a copy of Nick Barratt’s Greater London . Barry’s winning entry revealed that he was only able to find his ancestor’s grave thanks to Deceased Online’s digitized records for Plumstead Cemetery . He also told us that, “I still have his ship’s tool chest and tools.” Barry Rees with his great grandfather's tool chest Barry's great grandfather, Albert Alfred Scott, was born in Woolwich, not far from Plumstead in 1866. However, Barry knew that for much of his life, Albert worked as a ship’s joiner at Sheerness Dockyard on the east Kent coast. As Barry had inherited the ship’s tool chest and tools, he was always keen to find out where Albert was buried. By using the database , Barry discovered not only the grave of his gre...