British Cemetery and Cremation Records from Deceased Online

Tomorrow, Friday 1st August, more records from our Aberdeenshire collection will go online. These records complete the Aberdeenshire dataset of more than 200 burial grounds and cemeteries. Among them there are approximately 250,000 individual burials or names and a total of around 600,000 separate records dating back to 1615.   Dunnottar Castle This new release includes the beautiful coastal parishes of St Cyrus and Dunnottar . Dunnottar is notable for its castle, perched dramatically on a rocky headland overlooking the North Sea.  The castle and parish have an amazing history as the site of royal visits, Jacobite rebellion  . . . and the wedding of my 3x great grandparents, James Jolly and Margaret Henderson in January 1832. As well as the records for the county of Aberdeenshire, the Deceased Online database holds half of Aberdeen City 's records - the other half are coming soon. Neighbouring councils, Angus and Moray are also working with Deceased On...

The Deceased Online database includes diverse records from church burial registers, urban cemeteries and modern crematoria. In this post I look at the history of cremation in Britain and feature some examples from Deceased Online's collections. Although the practice of cremating dead bodies was common in Hindu, Jain, Buddhist and Sikh cultures, cremation did not become legal in Britain until 1885. The Queen's Physician, Sir Henry Thompson (1820-1904), helped to form the Cremation Society of Great Britain on 13 January 1874. Thompson, the Society's first President, was concerned about the insanitary nature of urban burial grounds as well as the lengthy and increasingly costly nature of Victorian burials. The Cremation Society set about funding Britain's first crematorium in Woking, Surrey. Sir Henry Thompson (1820-1904) Not all Britons embraced the new practice. On 26 December 1878, the Vicar of Woking complained to The Times : Sir, -I read lately in the Recor...