A Light Look at a Grave Subject
St Nicholas' churchyard - photo by Scott Hortop
English churchyards are a record of local history, reflecting not only the lives of the departed but also the attitudes to death of the times when they were erected. As a commuter for nearly 40 years I have walked through St. Nicholas Churchyard thousands of times past the gravestones recording this history but to which most of us spare only a passing glance. They are worth a second look. How many of us, I wonder, would deserve the epitaph earned by one Richard Faithful Gardiner who died in 1885:
His life was spent in usefulness
A husband kind and friend most true
We mourn his loss, but hope his gain
E'er long we'll meet in Heaven again
What a vast change there has been to attitudes to death since the Victorian age. Where now would you see on a present-day tombstone this touching belief, recorded on the tombstone of Mary Smithers who died in 1888:
No more shall Satan tempt my soul
Corruption shall be slain
And tides of pleasure o'er me roll
For me to die is gain
A more famous tombstone and one familiar to many residents is the one to "La Belle Pamela", Lady Edward Fitzgerald, known to French literature as Pamela and reputed to have been a daughter of the French royal house of Orleans. Her husband Lord Edward Fitzgerald was an Irish patriot, who, fired by the French Revolution, rushed over to Paris and was later shot in Ireland resisting arrest. Lady Fitzgerald then fled to France. Her tombstone has inset in it a fragment of marble from her original tombstone in Montmartre, which was shattered by a German shell in the 1870 war with France, and bears the inscription:
Pamela Ladye Edward Fitzgerald Par Son Ami le Plus Devoué L.L.
Her "most devoted friend" was the Duc de la Force.
A footnote to history is that in quiet, peaceful Thames Ditton we had one of the earliest cases of body-snatching. We all know of Burke and Hare in Edinburgh in the 1820s but in 1784 two local men, Peter Pratt "victualler" and William Scott "yeoman", dug up the body of one George Papps for sale to surgeons for dissection. We wonder today about the apparent leniency of some punishments for crimes but what are we to make of the fine of only 6s 8d for these two men, when fresh corpses at the time fetched £10- £12? Did this have anything to do with the fact that both men were churchwardens?
25,000 gravestones are lost each year in England through "tidying" of churchyards and vandalism and together with the increase in cremations we will lose much of this insight into local history with its humour, touching records of affection, and social commentary. Where will we see again epitaphs such as this on a Speyside ghillie's grave in Scotland:
"If whisky be the water of life, then why am I lying here?"
or:
"The mortal remains of Robert Millthorp.
He lost his life by inadvertently throwing this stone upon himself while in the service of James Raywood, who erected it in his memory".
There was obviously no Health'n Safety regime in 1826.
Let the last word go to William Shakespeare, on his own tomb:
"Good frend, for Jesus sake forbeare
To digg the dust encloased heare.
Blest be ye man that spares thes stones,
And curst he yt moves my bones."
John Lyon