In looking one day at Rocque’s plan of London (1742-5) I noticed how many burial-grounds and churchyards were marked upon it which no longer existed. I made a table of them, and traced their destiny, and the result of this research was printed in the First Annual Report of the Metropolitan Public Gardens Association, which was issued in 1884. I then went further, and commenced to draw up a list of all the burying-places, of which I could find any record, still existing, or that had ever existed in London. It was no easy task. A return drawn up by the late Sir Edwin Chadwick in 1843, for the use of the Parliamentary Committee which sat to consider questions relating to the sanitary condition of the labouring classes, contains a most valuable, though not perfectly complete, table of the graveyards in actual use at that date. Then there are the returns of the grounds closed by order in Council in 1853 and 1854, and still open for interments in 1855, which are also very useful. There is a return, dated June, 1833, purporting to show all the “Places of Burial belonging to each Parish or Precinct under the Authority of the Bishop of London,” and all the “Places of Burial belonging to Dissenting Congregations within the Bills of Mortality,” &c., with their size, and the annual number of burials in them. This, when I found it, I thought would be a great treasure, but I soon discovered such entries as the following: “Three letters have been addressed to the Officiating Ministers of the parishes of St. Benet, Gracechurch, St. Martin, Ludgate, and St. Margaret, Westminster, respectively; but no return has been received from either.” “The united parishes of Allhallows, Bread Street, and St. John the Evangelist, not being under the authority of the Bishop of London, I have not any return to make.” “I beg to add that there are several other places used as burial-grounds in this parish (Stepney) belonging to Jews, Dissenters, and others, of which I have no official cognizance, and to which, in fact, I have no access,” &c. And with regard, generally, to the second part of the return, the following simple remark is made: “The Secretary of State is not able to ascertain the Places of Burial belonging to Dissenting congregations within the Bills of Mortality.” In 1839 Walker described the condition of 47 of the most crowded metropolitan places of interment, and the Parliamentary Committee which sat in 1842 heard evidence about these and some others. In Maitland’s “History of London” there is a list of 64 burial-places used in the year 1729, and not included in the Bills of Mortality. Some of these are outside London, and some are only vaults under buildings. I have also kept a list of about fifty books which I found of use, although in many of them only a few burial-grounds are mentioned or described. And this, with the addition of various ancient and modern maps and plans of London and its environs, is the material upon which I have had to work. But as it is never safe to take anything on trust, nothing but actual perambulations and inquiries on the spot could show the present size and condition of the burial-grounds, and even several that are marked on the ordnance maps have been built upon since they were published, as, for instance, the German ground in the Savoy, the additional ground to St. Martin’s in the Fields, and Thomas’ ground in Golden Lane, all of which have disappeared.

I have had some curious experiences while graveyard-hunting. At first I was less bold than I am now, and was hardly prepared to walk straight into private yards and look round them until asked my business and driven to retire. “My business” it is best not to reveal ordinarily. If one mentions that one is looking at a place because it was once a burial-ground the fact will generally be stoutly denied, and sometimes in good faith. But it is not unusual for an employÉ innocently to acknowledge that there are bones under the ground upon which he is standing, whereat his master, if he knew of it, would be very angry. For it must be remembered that it is to the interest of the owner of a yard to keep the circumstance of its having been used for interments in the background, and he is not pleased if, when he wants to put up a wall or enlarge a shed, he is stopped from doing so by the enforcement of the Disused Burial-Grounds Act of 1834, as amended by the Open Spaces Act of 1887.

I inquired of an old man once, in a court in Shoreditch, whether he remembered a graveyard existing by the workhouse.

“No,” he said.

I noticed a newer part of the building, evidently a recently erected wing, and asked him how long it had been built.

“Oh, I moind,” said he, “when they was buildin’ that, they carted away a ton of bones.” Here was the evidence I was seeking for.

One day a sleepy old Smithfield butcher, whose work-time was the night, and whose sleeping-time was the morning, was specially kept awake until 10 o’clock in order to see me, as he could remember the extent of a certain burial-ground before it was done away with. The information he was able to supply was very useful, but it was hard to keep him to the point, as the poor old man, once roused to remember the past, would persistently revert to the cottages which used to stand on the adjoining plot of land, and which ought, he said, to have come into his own possession if he had not been in some way defrauded out of his lawful inheritance.

It is often necessary, in order to see a graveyard, to go into one of the surrounding houses and ask for permission to look out from a back window. Such permission is sometimes refused at once, sometimes it is most kindly given. I remember arousing a divided opinion upon this matter by knocking at the door of one of the upper rooms in the almshouses in Bath Street. I wanted to see the ground used as a garden by the inmates of the St. Luke’s Lunatic Asylum in Old Street, and which was at one time a pauper burial-ground for the parish. The old man did not at all like my invading his room, but the old lady was most affable, and had much to say upon the subject. At any rate I saw what I wanted, and made my mental report, but I left the old man grumbling at my unnecessary intrusion, and the old lady in smiles. I hope she did not suffer for her kindness.

If one asks to go into a burial-ground, it is generally imagined that one wants to see a particular grave. I have been supposed to have “some one lyin’ there” in all quarters of the metropolis, and in all sorts of funny little places. I have been hailed as a sister by the quietest of Quakeresses and the darkest of bewigged Jewesses, by the leanest and most clean-shaven of ritualistic Priests, and by the bearded and buxom Dissenter. I remember, however, knocking at the gate of one Jewish ground which the caretaker was unwilling to let me enter. She asked me the direct question, “Are you a Jewess?” I had to say no, but happily I was armed with the name of a gentleman who had kindly told me to mention it in any such difficulty. It answered, and I was allowed in. One day I climbed a high, rickety fence in a builder’s yard in Wandsworth in order to see over the wall into the Friends’ burial-ground. No doubt the men in the place thought me mad,—anyhow they left me in peace.

I have often been assured that there is no possibility of a particular enclosure ever becoming a public garden by those who live, at a low rent, in the neighbouring cottage, on condition that they keep watch over the ground. Alas, before many months are over, they find that the wires have been pulled somehow or other, and that their precious yard is no longer available for their fowls to run in or for their clothes to dry in, but is invaded by their neighbours and their neighbour’s unwelcome children. “They come four times a year to clear away the weeds.” That is the sort of caretaking that some burial-grounds are subjected to; and on the other 361 days in the year all sorts of rubbish is deposited in them.

Twice I have had mud thrown at me, once by a woman in Cable Street, E., and once by a man in Silchester Road, W., but these were wholly unprovoked attacks, in fact mere accidental occurrences. For my general experience has been of the greatest consideration and politeness. I have never been out of my way for the sake of idle curiosity, but have not hesitated to go down any street or court or to knock at any door which was in my way, and I have never had cause to regret it. An appearance of utter insignificance and an air of knowing where you are going and what you want, is the passport for all parts of London; and I have seen young men and maidens, one moment indulging in the roughest play, the next moment step off the pavement to let me pass. The clergy and others always seem to think their own people the very worst. “You don’t know what this neighbourhood is like,” I have heard over and over again, and I am thankful I don’t. But as far as a superficial knowledge of the streets goes they seem to be all much the same—north, south, east, and west—and their frequenters too. To the children, at any rate, one need never mind speaking. Poor little souls; they say “Miss,” or “Mum,” or “Missus,” or “Teacher,” or “Sister,” or “Lady,” but they never answer rudely.

Gravediggers and gardeners in cemeteries are generally communicative people, who do not at all mind stopping their work for a bit, and enlarging on the number of funerals, &c., which they daily witness. They speak of the actual headstones and monuments by the surnames engraved thereon, as, for instance, “Brown,” “Smith,” &c., and will point out a particular grave as “four behind Smith over there, Smith is the tall stone by the path; or if you look next to Wallace which has the shrub on it,” and so on.

It is interesting to trace on maps of different dates the rise and fall of a graveyard. First there is the actual field, which on some particular day was acquired for the purpose. Then there is the burial-ground formed and in use. Then the plot appears to be vacant—put to no purpose, or used as a yard. Lastly buildings are on it, and the graveyard has quite disappeared. One difficulty to be encountered needs much study to overcome; it is the different names by which the same ground is called in different books or plans. For instance, Chadwick mentions in his list one called St. John’s, Borough, whereas the proper name for this same ground is Butler’s burial-ground, Horselydown. As another instance, and there are scores, it may be mentioned that the Peel Grove burial-ground was called in some returns the North-east London Cemetery, in others Cambridge Heath burial-ground, and in others Keldy’s ground. Occasionally a graveyard is described as being “near the free school,” or in some such vague terms, and it needs a knowledge of the districts and the buildings in them, past and present, to be able to locate some of these grounds which I have ventured to call “obscure.”

Since 1883, as complete a list as I could make of the London burial-grounds has appeared in the Reports of the Metropolitan Public Gardens Association, and I have, from time to time, been asked for information about the more obscure ones. In the summer of 1894 the London County Council instructed its Parks Committee to make a return of all the burial-grounds existing in the County of London, with their size, ownership, and condition. Having been applied to for information and assistance, I offered to undertake the work. It involved some additional research at the British Museum, and a fresh perambulation. The offer being accepted I commenced the task in February, 1895, and sent in the return in June, accompanied by 60 sheets of the ordnance survey (25 inch to the mile), upon which the grounds were marked in colours, viz., those still in use blue, those disused green, those converted into public recreation grounds green with a red border. I gave the number existing in the County and City of London as 362, of which 41 were still in use, and 90 were public gardens and playgrounds. This did not include churches and chapels with vaults under them, but without graveyards. It must also be remembered that the area was strictly limited (as it is in this work) to that of the metropolitan boroughs, or the administrative County of London with the City. The cemeteries in the county do not represent all the parochial ones. There are, for instance, those of St. George’s, Hanover Square, and Kensington at Hanwell, the Paddington Cemetery in Kilburn, the Jewish at Willesden, and very many more just outside the boundary, not to speak of a large number in what is called “London over the Border,” which to all intents and purposes is still London, although separated by the River Lea, and governed by the West Ham Corporation.

The kindly notice taken of the return, which was published by the Council in October, 1895, has encouraged me to prepare the present volume, in which there is scope for a general view of the subject, for further historical details, and for particulars of those grounds which no longer exist.

The more public interest is brought to bear upon the burial-grounds, the more likely is it that they will be preserved from encroachments. The London County Council has special powers to put in force the provisions of the Disused Burial-grounds Act, and it has the record of their actual sites on the plans prepared by me. It is for the public to see that these provisions are carried out, not only for historical, sentimental, and sanitary reasons, but also because each burial-ground that is curtailed or annihilated means the loss of another space which may one day be available for public recreation; and considering that land, even in the poorest part of Whitechapel, fetches about £30,000 per acre, it is easily understood of what inestimable value is a plot of ground which cannot be built upon.