When the Greyfriars, or Christ’s Hospital, was set aside for “poor children,” and Bridewell for “the correction of vagabonds,” St. Bartholomew’s Hospital in the City and St. Thomas’s in Southwark were devoted to the care of the “wounded, maimed, sick, and diseased”; and in these four benevolent institutions, which owe so much to the short-lived but truly pious King Edward VI., there was provision made for the burial of the dead. It must be remembered that the quadrangle of Christ’s Hospital, which is still surrounded by cloisters, was the burial-ground of the Greyfriars, but apart from this, for the boys of the school or the officers or servants, there was a small plot of ground set apart as a graveyard at the north-west corner of the block of buildings. This was demolished when the great hall was built, in 1825, and if any of its site remains it is only a limited piece of the courtyard on the north side of the hall and the doctor’s garden. A few tombstones are preserved in the passage leading to the doctor’s house. At this time was formed the additional burial-ground for Christ Church at the western end of the churchyard of St. Botolph, Aldersgate Street. But the churchyard adjoining Christ Church, and even the cloisters themselves, were used from time to time by the Hospital, and it was the custom in the last century for a “blue” to be buried by torchlight. His schoolfellows passed through the venerable courtyards and buildings in procession, two by two, and sang a burial anthem from the 39th Psalm, which must have been a most solemn and touching sight, and was “particularly adapted to the monastic territory” of the Hospital. It will be a sad day when this noble old school is torn from its rightful home in the City of London, and when the boys receive a “modern” education in a trim, new building, and wear the dull tweed suit and the school cap dragged on at the back of their heads; and it is well to impress again and again upon the Charity Commissioners and the Almoners of the Hospital that a very considerable portion of the site will not be available for building upon, as it will come under the provisions of the Disused Burial-grounds Act. The same remark applies with even greater force to the neighbouring hospital, the Charterhouse, where all the gardens and courtyards, including the Square itself and the little burial-ground which is still recognisable as such, have been used at one time or another for interments. I have explained how this came about in a former chapter.

I think it probable that when St. Bartholomew’s Hospital was far smaller than it is now, burials took place in the cloisters, or rather in the large space in the middle of which the western wing was built. In a very interesting old plan of the precincts, dated 1617, there is not only shown the “Church-yarde for ye poore” in two pieces, about where the west wing is now, but also a large ground which is named Christ Church Churchyard, to the south of this, but north of the City wall. The hospital later on used the Bethlem burial-ground, and the ground set aside eventually as the hospital graveyard (for the interment of unclaimed corpses), is in Seward Street, Goswell Road. This was first used about 1740, and, after being closed for burials, it was let as a carter’s yard and was full of sheds and vans. Through the kindness of the Governors, it fell into the hands of the Metropolitan Public Gardens Association, and it is now a children’s recreation ground maintained by St. Luke’s Vestry. The burial-ground of St. Thomas’s Hospital is at the corner of Mazepond; on part of it St. Olave’s Rectory and Messrs. Bevington’s leather warehouse were built; the remainder is leased to Guy’s Hospital, and contains the treasurer’s stables and an asphalted tennis-court for the use of the students. Guy’s Hospital burial-ground is in Snow’s Fields, Bermondsey, and is now a large builder’s yard, but there is a reasonable hope of its being secured before long as a recreation ground. The “unclaimed corpses” from the London Hospital found their last resting-place very near home. In 1849 the whole of the southern part of the enclosure, quite an acre and a half, was the burial-ground, and here, although it was closed by order in Council in 1854, it appears that burials took place until about 1860, one of the present porters remembering his father acting as gravedigger. The medical school, the chaplain’s house, and the nurse’s home have all been built upon it, and it is sincerely to be hoped that no further encroachments will be permitted. The remaining part is the nurses’ and students’ garden and tennis-court, where they are in the habit of capering about in their short times off duty, and where it sometimes happens that the grass gives way beneath them—an ordinary occurrence when the subsoil is inhabited by coffins!

Bridewell also had its burial-ground, where the lazy and evil were interred. It is at the corner of Dorset and Tudor Streets, near the Thames Embankment, and is an untidy yard, boarded off from the street with a high advertisement hoarding, and in the occupation of a builder.

The Bethlem burial-ground had a more interesting history. In 1569 Sir Thomas Roe, or Rowe, Merchant Taylor and Mayor, gave about one acre of land in the Moorfields “for Burial Ease to such parishes in London as wanted convenient ground.” It was especially intended for the parish of St. Botolph’s, Bishopsgate, and was probably used for the interment of lunatics from the neighbouring asylum, besides being used by St. Bartholomew’s Hospital. It was enclosed with a brick wall at the persuasion of “the Lady his Wife,” and she was buried there; and it was the custom upon Whit Sunday for the Lord Mayor and Aldermen to listen to a sermon delivered in this “new churchyard, near Bethlem.” We read that in 1584 “a very good Sermon was preached ... and, by Reason no Plays were the Same Day (i.e., Whit Sunday, as there used to be), all the City was quiet.” But the Churchyard and the Asylum have disappeared, Liverpool Street Station having taken their place, and hundreds of the Great Eastern Railway goods vans daily roll over the mouldering remains of the departed citizens.

Very different to the fate of these hospital burial-grounds is that of another one I will mention. Facing Queen’s Road, Chelsea, is the long, narrow graveyard of the Chelsea Hospital. It is neatly kept, with good grass and trees. Here many a venerable pensioner has been laid to rest, and, although it can no longer be used for burials, it still serves to remind the living of their brethren who have gone before them. There are some fine monuments and epitaphs to very long-lived invalids, two aged 112, one 111, one 107, and so on, and it is one of those quiet and quaint corners of London which form so marked a contrast to the noisy streets close by. One pensioner, who died in 1732, named William Hiseman and aged 112, was “a veteran, if ever soldier was.” It is recorded that he took unto himself a wife when he was above 100 years old. There is something very peaceful about these old men’s graves; the grain gathered in by the “Reaper whose name is Death” was fully ripe:—

On the south side of the Thames there are some other burial-grounds which should be mentioned here. Greenwich Hospital possesses no less than three cemeteries. In 1707 Prince George of Denmark gave a plot of ground for the purpose, measuring 660 by 132 feet. This is on the west side of the Royal Naval School. It is enclosed and full of tombstones. But in 1747 an extra two and a half acres, surrounding the old ground, were appropriated for interments. This space is well kept, containing some fine trees and only a few monuments. The gate from the school playground is generally open. Then there is the Hospital Cemetery in West Combe, nearly six acres in size, and first used in 1857. The burial-ground of God’s Gift College (Dulwich) is at the corner of Court Lane. It dates from about 1700, and is a picturesque, well-kept little ground, with several handsome altar tombs in it. The cemetery of Morden College, Blackheath (founded for decayed merchants about 1695) also exists. It is about a quarter of an acre in size, with about eighty tombstones, but the graves have been levelled, and the ground, though still walled round, forms part of the College gardens.

There were several almshouse graveyards in London, including the “College yard” for St. Saviour’s Almshouses, Southwark, which is now a builder’s store-yard in Park Street, and over which the London, Brighton, and South Coast Railway passes on arches, and one behind the Goldsmith’s Almshouses, now covered by the artisans’ dwellings on the west side of Goldsmith Row, Shoreditch. The frightfully crowded “almshouse ground” in Clement’s Lane formed part of the site of the new Law Courts; while one in Crown Street, Soho, adjoining St. Martin’s Almshouses, disappeared when the French Chapel was built, and has now been lost in Charing Cross Road. In order to enter the almshouses in White Horse Street, Stepney, it is necessary to pass through a graveyard, and it cannot be a lively outlook for the pensioners, who have gravestones just under their windows. It was connected with the Independent Chapel, and first used in 1781.

Perhaps the most interesting of these burial-grounds is one which belonged to the Bancroft Almshouses in Mile End Road. The fate of the asylum itself is well known; it has been replaced by the People’s Palace, and the improvement from an antiquarian or architectural point of view is nil. The recent interest taken in the proposed destruction of the Trinity Hospital in Mile End Road points to the fact that the pendulum of public opinion is now swinging towards the preservation of historical buildings. The graveyard of Bancroft’s Almshouses was a long strip on the eastern side. Part of it has been merged into the roadway. St. Benet’s Church (consecrated in 1872), Hall, and Vicarage were built upon it, and the bones of the pensioners are under the Vicarage garden. The northernmost point of the graveyard is enclosed and rooted over, and forms a little yard where flag-staffs, &c., are stored. But between this and the wall of the Vicarage there is a piece open to the road, with some heaps of stones in it and rubbish. There are, at any rate, four gravestones left, against the wall, and there may be others behind the stones; but I daresay it is only a very small proportion of those who pass in and out of the Palace who have ever noticed this relic of the Bancroft Almshouses.

In a large number of the London parishes it was necessary to have “poor grounds,” i.e., graveyards where bodies could be interred at a trifling cost or entirely at the cost of the parish; for, notwithstanding the great dislike of the poor to “a pauper’s funeral,” and the efforts they will make to avoid it, there always have been cases in which no other sort of funeral can be arranged. Some of the “poor grounds” were attached to the workhouses, others were merely a part of the parish churchyards, while others again were older additional burial-grounds secured by the parishes before the days of workhouses.

The workhouse of St. Andrew’s, Holborn, was in Shoe Lane, and in the adjoining graveyard the unfortunate young genius, Chatterton, was buried. This ground gave way to the Farringdon Market, which, in its turn, has been supplanted by a new street called Farringdon Avenue. The workhouse ground of St. Sepulchre’s, Holborn, together with another additional graveyard belonging to the parish, was in Durham Yard, and the sites of both of them have disappeared in the goods depÔt of the Great Northern Railway. The burial-grounds by the workhouses of Shoreditch, St. Paul’s, Covent Garden, and St. Giles (in Short’s Gardens) have also disappeared; so also has the one allotted to the use of St. James’ Workhouse in Poland Street, which was a part of the old pest-field, although a remnant of the pest-field exists still as the workhouse garden. The original Whitechapel Workhouse was built in 1768 on a burial-ground, and then a plot of land immediately to the north was set aside for a poor ground, and consecrated in 1796. This in turn became the playground of the Davenant Schools, one of which (facing St. Mary’s Street) was built in it. A recent addition to the other school has also encroached on the burial-ground. In 1832 196 cholera cases were interred in an adjoining piece of ground, which was probably what is now used as a stoneyard, and is full of carts. The workhouse graveyard, belonging to St. Clement Danes, was in Portugal Street. The workhouse itself was re-adapted and re-opened as King’s College Hospital, but the burial-ground was used until its condition was so loathsome, and the burning of coffins and mutilation of bodies was of such every-day occurrence, that it must have been one of the very worst of such places in London. It is now the garden or courtyard and approach, between the hospital and Portugal Street. The burial-ground attached to the Workhouse of St. Saviour’s, Southwark (which may have been the old Baptist burial-ground in Bandy Leg Walk which existed in 1729) has a curious history. The workhouse was supplanted by Winchester House, the palace of the bishops when South London was in their diocese, the old Winchester House, nearer the river, having been destroyed. This in time became a hat manufactory, the burial-ground remaining as a garden situated between the building and Southwark Bridge Road. Finally, the site was secured by the Metropolitan Board of Works for the Central Fire Brigade Station, and what is now left of the burial-ground is the garden or courtyard between the new buildings which face the road and the old house behind them. If the paupers and the bishops and the factory hands did not succeed in frightening away the ghosts of the departed, they must have a sorry time of it now when the call-bells from all parts of London bring out the engines and the men who fight the flames.

Of the parochial “poor grounds” not adjoining workhouses a few are worth noticing. St. Saviour’s, Southwark, in addition to the workhouse ground, the College or Almshouse ground, and the churchyard itself, which was from time to time added to, curtailed and used for markets, possessed still another graveyard, the famous Cross Bones ground in Union Street, referred to by Stow as having been made “far from the Parish Church,” for the interment of the low women who frequented the neighbourhood. It subsequently became the parish poor ground, and after having been in use, and very much overcrowded, for upwards of 200 years, it was closed by order in Council dated October 24, 1853. In a report upon the state of this ground the previous year, it is stated that “it is crowded with dead, and many fragments of undecayed bones, some even entire, are mixed up with the earth of the mounds over the graves,” and it “can be considered only as a convenient place for getting rid of the dead, but it bears no marks of ever having been set apart as a place of Christian sepulture.” The Cross Bones ground passed out of the hands of the rector several years ago and was sold as a building site, but building operations were opposed and stopped. Schools were erected in it before it was closed for burials. It has been the subject of much litigation, and it now stands vacant, waiting for some one to purchase it as a playground, and used in the meantime as the site for fairs, merry-go-rounds, and cheap shows.

The “poor ground” for the parish of St. George the Martyr, Southwark, is a square plot of land, now a little public garden, in Tabard Street. It was originally the burial-ground of the adjoining Lock Hospital before that building was removed in 1809 to Knightsbridge, whence, later on, it was again removed to Harrow Road. It is said by some that the little cemetery was even older than the hospital, and may have been used for interments during no less than eight centuries. The Cripplegate “Poor ground,” or the “upper churchyard of St. Giles,” was in Bear and Ragged Staff Yard (afterwards called Warwick Place) out of Whitecross Street, and was first used in 1636. It was very much overcrowded, so much so that it was more than once shut up for a few years as full, but always re-opened again. A part of the site is now occupied by the northern half of the church of St. Mary, Charterhouse, and by its mission-house, there being only a tar-paved pathway round these buildings to represent the rest of the ground. The church was built in 1864. There are human remains within six inches of the surface of the ground, several having been dug up and put in a vault which is under the mission-house, and the entrance to which is closed with a very large flat stone, bearing the date of 1865. The mission-house is giving way already, and it has large cracks in it, for a vault of this kind is not a good foundation.

The parish of St. James’, Clerkenwell, had a very small “poor ground,” in Ray Street, which was bought in 1755 for £340, and was consecrated eight years later. It was 800 square yards in area, and was approached through a private house occupied by a butcher, “who had his slaughter-house and stable at the back, and immediately adjoining the burial-ground.” In about the year 1824 it was found that several bodies had been exhumed and placed in the stable; this caused a scandal in the neighbourhood, and the man and his business were ruined. When Farringdon Street and the Metropolitan Railway were made, the site of the ground in Ray Street, together with Ray Street itself, entirely disappeared; and the “sleepers of the railway are laid over the sleepers in death.” The burial-ground had already been done away with, the Clerkenwell Commissioners, according to Pinks, having taken it for public improvements, when they collected the remains into one spot and erected a plain mausoleum over them.

In early days it seems to have been the custom for patients entering the large hospitals to pay a sum of money down for possible funeral expenses, except in cases of sudden accident. Later on a security given by a householder was considered sufficient, but now no such arrangement is needed. The sum demanded at St. Bartholomew’s was 17s. 6d., and at Guy’s £1 was paid. At Westminster Hospital and at the Lock (Hyde Park Corner), from which some patients may have been buried in what is now called Knightsbridge Green, no security was asked; but at the Bethlem Hospital an entrance sum of £100 had to be paid for board, funeral expenses, &c. In case of death at a London hospital at the present time, the friends or relations of the deceased are expected to remove and bury the body, and this has often led to a good deal of difficulty, one body being claimed by various people, because the person who buries it can often secure the insurance money. Bodies which are now unclaimed (and at St. Bartholomew’s there are about eight in a year) are buried in a cemetery at the cost of the hospital.