British Cemetery and Cremation Records from Deceased Online

This Wednesday 21st March, we celebrate the UN's World Poetry Day by looking at the famous and lesser-known poets that we've come across in the Deceased Online database The United Nations designated 21 March World Poetry Day in 1999. Observing the day, according to UNESCO , encourages all of us to, "return to the oral tradition of poetry recitals, to promote the teaching of poetry, to restore a dialogue between poetry and other arts such as theatre, dance, music and painting, and to support small publishers . . . " In doing so, UNESCO recognises, "the unique ability of poetry to capture the creative spirit of the human mind." Like family history, poetry can reaffirm our common humanity by revealing to us that individuals, across the world and across time, share the same questions and feelings. Among the very famous poets in the database are the revolutionary William Blake and feminist pioneer and chronicler of the mid-Victorian period, George Eliot ....

This week, Deceased Online expands its Nottingham Collection with the addition of records from the early Victorian cemetery, Nottingham General. Enter Nottingham's General Cemetery from Canning Terrace and be prepared to step back in time to the late 19th century. Like many of the Victorian cemeteries in the Deceased Online collections, Nottingham General was designed to take the burden from parish churches whose graveyards had become overcrowded. Also, like many other Victorian cemeteries, this was administered by a newly-formed body, the Nottingham General Cemetery Company (1836) . The Grade II listed gatehouse , the chapel and the adjacent almshouses were built between 1836 and 1838 by S. S. Rawlinson . Burial registers were kept from the opening date of cemetery in 1838. Concerns were raised in the 1920s that this municipal cemetery was now overcrowded and from 1929 the cemetery was closed to new burials other than those who owned burial rights. Headstones in ...