Q & A
Our team of experts offers tips and inspiration EDITED BY CLAIRE VAUGHAN
How do I find burial records for my great grandparents?
Q I am trying to find the burials of my great grandparents. Herbert Eastey Weatherley was born in 1863. He died on 30 July 1914 of chronic pulmonary tuberculosis in Brompton Consumption Hospital.
Did the nature and location of his death predetermine his place of burial? He had been living in Hornsey, so he died quite a way from home.
His wife Emily Maud Weatherley was also born in 1863. At the time of Emily’s death on 4 January 1940, she was living at 19 Chase Side Crescent, Enfield.
Bob Weatherley
ABrompton Consumption Hospital opened in 1842. Its archives are now part of the Barts
Health NHS Trust Archives, located at St Bartholomew’s Hospital in Central London
(bartshealth.nhs.uk/barts
-health-archives). Barts Archives told me that they have no relevant death or mortuary registers with
a record of burial arrangements for the period. Except in a minority of cases, burials
would be arranged by a patient’s family or friends.
There is a guide to online burial records at whodoyouthinkyouare magazine.com/tutorials/cemetery-records-online. The useful websites include Deceased Online (deceasedonline.com), which has mainly cemetery register records, BillionGraves (billiongraves.com) and Find a Grave (findagrave.com).
On Deceased Online, I found burial records for Herbert’s parents, Elizabeth and Charles Weatherley, who died in 1885 and 1886 respectively and are buried in St Pancras Cemetery in East Finchley. However, Herbert is not with them.
Hornsey parish churchyard was closed to new burials in 1892, so Herbert may have been buried in either Highgate or Tottenham cemeteries. You can pay Highgate Cemetery £40 for a grave search or visit the Camden Local Studies and Archives Centre (camden.gov.uk/localstudies) to view Highgate’s registers free of charge.
Tottenham and Enfield cemeteries are administered by Dignity Funerals Ltd. You can email Enfield Council on cemeteries@enfield.gov.uk to ask them to search their records for Herbert’s grave in Tottenham and Emily’s grave in Enfield. There is a charge of £25.40 per search.
Alan Stewart
Was my Waterloo ancestor allowed to bring his wife with him to Ireland?
Q My ancestor James Norris (born 1784 at Sedgehill, Wiltshire) was a corporal in the 3rd Battalion, 95th Rifles at Waterloo. In December 1815, his battalion went to Dublin, then Birr, County O
