Brompton Cemetery in the late 19th Century

All records for more than 205,000 burials from 1840 to 1997 at Brompton Cemetery are now on the database.

This week we uploaded the final set of records from Brompton Cemetery. Amongst the new data on Deceased Online are the burial details of some of the most significant and celebrated Londoners of the nineteenth century. 

This year is the bicententary of the birth of John Snow (1813-1858), pioneer epidemiologist and the man who discovered the causal link between contaminated water and cholera. He was also a practising physician, who pioneered anaesthetic methods and administered chloroform to Queen Victoria during the births of Beatrice and Leopold.

Originally from York, Snow was the son of an unskilled labourer. Through hard work and the support of the ragged schools, he qualified as a physician at medical school in London in 1843 and began working in Soho. At the time it was popularly believed that cholera was caught from miasma, or ‘bad air’. In 1849, Snow produced a document, On The Mode of Communication of Cholera which suggested that cholera was due to ingesting a contaminant from the excrement of an infected person, often through drinking affected water. When a cholera epidemic struck again in Soho in 1854, Snow tested his hypothesis. He eventually established the source of the contamination as a water pump on Broad Street. Snow demanded the removal of the handle of the pump and the epidemic declined. This discovery led to the eradication of cholera in Britain and saved countless lives.

Despite his teetotal and vegetarian lifestyle, John Snow died of a stroke at the young age of 45 years and is buried in Brompton Cemetery.

Monument over the grave of John Snow M. D.

Besides the scans of burial records and grave details, all maps of burial locations are also now available on the website, together with photos of a number of the more famous and celebrated memorials.


Read more about the early years at Brompton Cemetery here.

Brompton has many military connections, with both a military memorials area and a memorial to the 2,600 Chelsea Pensioners who are buried there. There is also a high number of Victoria Cross recipients. The Burgoyne family is one of several military families represented in the Cemetery. Field Marshall Sir John Fox Burgoyne (1782-1871) served with the Royal Engineers, fighting against Napoleon and later in the Crimea. He was appointed Commander of the Tower of London in 1865.

Chelsea Pensioners Memorial

Other well-known people who were buried at Brompton between 1870 and 1900 include:

·          Sir Samuel White Baker (1821-1893), Explorer and colonial official

·         George Henry Borrow (1803-1881), Novelist and traveller

·         James Browne (1839-1896), Indian Army officer and military engineer

·         Francis Trevelyan Buckland (1826-1880), Zoologist

·         Henry James Byron (1835-1884), Dramatist

·         John Graham Chambers (1843-1883), Sportsman and deviser of the Marquess of Queensbury rules

·         Sir Henry Cole (1808-1882), Inventor and first director of the South Kensington Museum (now the Victoria & Albert Museum)

·         Joseph Thomas Clover (1825-1882), Pioneer of anaesthesia

·         Thomas Cundy III (1821-1895), Architect

·         Alfred Kirke Ffrench (1835-1872), Victoria Cross recipient

·         Charles Craufurd Fraser (1829-1895), Politician and Victoria Cross recipient

·         Robert Fortune (1812-1880), Plant hunter

·         George Godwin (1815-1888), architect and editor of The Builder

·         Thomas Hancock (1823-1871), Victoria Cross recipient

·         Thomas Helmore (1811-1890), Choirmaster

·         Geraldine Endsor Jewsbury (1812-1880), Novelist

·         Mary Anne Keeley (1805-1899), Actor-manager

·         Nat Langham (1820-1871), Bare-knuckle prize fighter

·         Frederick Richards Leyland (1832-1892), Shipowner

·         Frederick Francis Maude (1821-1897), Victoria Cross recipient

·         Roderick Impey Murchison (1792-1871), Geologist

·         Lilian Adelaide Neilson (1848-1880), Actor

·         Eugene Esperance Oudin (1858-1894), Baritone and composer

·         William Palliser (1830-1882), Politician and inventor

·         John Lysaght Pennefeather (1798-1872), British Army Officer

·         Percy Sinclair Pilcher (1866-1899), Pioneer aviator

·         Blanche Roosevelt (1853-1898), Opera singer

·         Frederic Sullivan (1837-1877), Actor and singer

·         William Terries (1847-1897), Actor

·       Frederic Thesiger, 1^st Baron Chelmsford (1794-1878), Lord Chancellor

·         Charles Blacker Vignoles (1793-1875), Railway engineer

·         Richard Wadeson (1826-1885), Victoria Cross recipient

·         Robert Warburton (1842-1899), Army Officer and administrator

·         Andrew Scott Waugh (1810-1878), Army Officer and Surveyor-General of India

·         Benjamin Nottingham Webster (1797-1882), Actor-manager and dramatist

·         Thomas Spencer Wells (1818-1897), Surgeon to Queen Victoria

·         William Williams, 1^st Baronet GCB (1800-1883), Army Officer

·         John Wisden (1826-1884), Cricketer and creator of eponymous Almanack

·         Bennett Woodcroft (1803-1879), Textile manufacturer and inventor

·         Thomas Wright (1810-1877), Antiquarian and writer

·         Johannes Hermann Zukertort (1842-1888), Chess master

Competition

This is the final week of our competition to win copies of Darren Beach’s essential pocket guide, London’s Cemeteries. We have two copies for the first out of the hat who can tell us the answers to these two questions:

Q1. Name the respected Jewish journalist, writer and broadcaster who died in 2004 and is buried in Brompton Cemetery?  The Times, for which he was a columnist for a number of years, described him in an obituary as "the most famous journalist of his day".  

Q2. Which Pre-Raphaelite painter and poet had his wife's body exhumed in Highgate Cemetery?

Last week’s winning answers are:

Q1.  2013 is the 150th anniversary of probably the world's greatest sporting publication founded by an English cricketer.  Name either the annual publication or the cricketer's name? 

A.  John Wisden, Wisden's Cricketers' Almanack.

Q2.  Who are the father and son Victorian civil engineers buried at Kensal Green Cemetery?  The son built some of the most famous structures and engineering projects of the 19th Century. 

A. Sir Marc Isambard Brunel and Isambard Kingdom Brunel.

Grave of John Wisden

Congratulations to Janet Spink from Dorset and Jane from Derbyshire who won last week! Look out for this week’s winners on our Facebook and Twitter pages.

How to Enter and Competition Rules

• entries by no later than midnight on Wednesday 19 June 2013
• email your entries to: info@deceasedonline.com with heading: 'Pocket guide competition'
• entrants should provide full contact information including full postal address and at least one telephone number
• only one entry per week per person/email address
• each entrant can only win the competition once and win one book
• winning entries will be drawn each week and the winners notified
• judges decision is final
• the prizes will be sent to the winners by post as soon as possible
• the answers to each set of two questions will be published in the blog on the following Friday