British Cemetery and Cremation Records from Deceased Online

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...

Tutor to China's Last Emperor Sir Reginald Fleming Johnston KCMG, CBE (13 Oct 1874- 6 March 1938) was born in Edinburgh exactly one hundred and thirty-eight years ago this week. Reginald Fleming Johnston, pictured with Empress Wan Rong and his fellow tutor, Isabel Ingram, in the Forbidden City (c) Wikimedia Commons Johnston spent much of his life away from Scotland, after entering the colonial service in 1898 and being sent initially to Hong Kong. In 1919, he was appointed tutor to China’s non-sovereign Manchu emperor, Pu Yi, who was then 13 years old. Pu Yi had abdicated in 1912, becoming 'The Last Emperor'. At the time, Johnston and his colleague, Isabel Ingram, were the only foreigners in history to be allowed inside the inner court of Qing Dynasty. Johnston loved China and continued to serve there as a diplomat after Pu Yi was expelled from the Forbidden City in 1924. On his return to Britain, Johnston was appointed Professor of Chinese at the Sch...