British Cemetery and Cremation Records from Deceased Online

Looking back over 48 posts on the Deceased Online Blog This autumn Deceased Online will add thousands of burial records from across the UK to the database . These include collections from the north east of England, remote areas of Scotland, urban parts of the Midlands, and further collections from The National Archives . As we look ahead, I would like to say thank you to all those who've read this blog over the past year . I published the first post, " The Conventional Daughter of one of the 19th century's most notorious couples ", just over a year ago on 2 August 2012. Since then the blog has received thousands of hits from readers around the world, including some living in Australia, Canada, Spain, Lithuania and Japan. The first ever post on the Deceased Online blog (August 2012) Over last twelve months I've given updates on new records on the database while exploring some of the well-known names in the collections. Besides these, the blog has featured...

Following on from last week's post, I'm looking further into Deceased Online 's latest collection of burials. These military burials were digitized in partnership with The National Archives .  Two notable institutions in the collection are Haslar Royal Navy Cemetery and the Royal Victoria Hospital in Netley. Both Haslar and Netley (as it was more commonly known) were Britain's foremost military hospitals during the bloodiest years of war in the western hemisphere The Royal Hospital Haslar and Clayhill Royal Navy Cemetery, Gosport, Hampshire The Royal Hospital Haslar dates from 1753. For over two hundred and fifty years Haslar served as one of main hospitals caring for sailors and marines of the Royal Navy and merchant services. Patients came from ships as well as from naval and seamen institutions in nearby Portsmouth and Gosport. The hospital closed as the last official military hospital in 2007. The Haslar Cemetery closed in April 1859 but the neighbouring Cl...

This week we have been adding tens of thousands of military burial records held at the The National Archives to Deceased Online  The death records of ancestors who died whilst serving in the armed forces can be difficult to find. Where service records and musters don't survive, family historians are often unsure of where in the world their military relatives were buried. The families of those who travelled with their military husband or father can also be hard to trace. Families did not always travel with the regiment, but even if they did they are often not named in muster or pay rolls. Thousands of men who served in the Army, Royal Navy and merchant service before 1914 did not die on active service. Some of these men were buried in family plots and may be found elsewhere in the Deceased Online database . Many more died in or near their barracks or in a military hospital. Thousands of these servicemen's burial records are now available to search on Deceased Online . Th...

This week, I look at the social and cultural influences on the design of Victorian and Edwardian cemeteries, monuments and headstones Currently, there are around a thousand Victorian-built cemeteries on the Deceased Online database . I have included a number of images from them in this blog. Many more can be found on the website . Mourning practices and artefacts, such as rings and lockets of the deceased's hair, were in common use when Victoria acceded the throne in 1837. But the elaborate funerary rituals we associate with the Victorian era only became widespread from 1861, after the sudden death of Prince Albert. The widowed Queen Victoria began a period of mourning that would last forty years until her own death in 1901. Jet mourning jewellery from the Victorian period By the 1890s, described by Julian Litten as 'the golden age of the funeral', Britons of all backgrounds were were copying the royal manner of bereavement. They wore black dresses, crape, gloves,...

This week I look in detail at some of the entries in the Wakefield Collection Since the launch of the burial registers for the cemeteries of Wakefield Metropolitan District, I have been looking further  into some of those recorded on the Deceased Online database . I was interested to find entries for two young men named James, who were buried on 12 September 1893. Today they are both remembered in Featherstone, Wakefield District and the wider mining community as victims of an unjust attack on a pit protest. The events surrounding their death are now referred to simply as the 'Featherstone Massacre'. In 1893 Featherstone was a small West Yorkshire pit town with two coal mines, Featherstone Main and Ackton Hall. The owner of Ackton Hall was the Bradford textile magnate and inventor, Samuel Cunliffe Lister, First Baron Masham (1815-1906). Like other mine owners in the summer of 1893, Lord Masham tried to protect his interests against a fall in the price of coal by redu...

Around 75% of burial and cremation records for Wakefield Metropolitan District are now on Deceased Online Last week, I looked into the history of the metropolitan district of Wakefield. In this post, I look more closely at its cemeteries and the coverage of their records in the Deceased Online database . Wakefield district contains nineteen cemeteries and two crematoria. Of these 261,000 burial and 134,000 cremation records, a total of approximately 395,000, are being uploaded to the database. Many of the records go back to the mid and late 19th century when the cemeteries opened (see the list below), and range across a wide geographical area. Currently, approximately 230,000 of the total are available. Please note the details in our database coverage section of the website to see which records with dates can be searched now. Below is a screenshot of a Google Map showing the locations of Wakefield Council's cemeteries and crematoria and their proximity to notable cities i...

Records for at least twenty cemeteries and two crematoria in West Yorkshire can now be searched on Deceased Online As reported on our Facebook and Twitter pages earlier this week, we have uploaded nearly 230,000 burial and cremation records for Wakefield Metropolitan District Council to the database . This includes the industrial towns of Castleford, Featherstone, Knottingley, Pontefract and the city of Wakefield. The records date from 1857 for the most historic cemetery, Castleford Old Cemetery. Most of the collection dates from the Victorian period, although the twentieth century Pontefract and Wakefield crematoria are also included. The full list of cemeteries will be explored in future posts. Once the county headquarters of the West Riding of Yorkshire, Wakefield covers 338 square kilometres and has a current population of 325, 600. This encompasses urban and rural areas including Horbury, Ossett, Wrenthorpe, Stanley, Altofts, Normanton, Castleford,...