Judith Batchelor explains how to search for your 19th-century ancestors’ burial records
Until the 19th century, most British people were buried in the churchyard of their parish – but a rapidly growing population meant that space was running out, particularly in cities. Overflowing churchyards posed a public hazard to health, and the recycling of graves was increasingly frowned upon. There was also a growing demand for burial outside of the Church of England (and Church of Scotland) in burial grounds that were not affiliated to any religious denomination. As a result, many large private cemeteries, offering both consecrated and unconsecrated land, started to appear from the 1820s.
Situated outside of dense urban areas, they offered a more pleasant and sanitary environment with landscaped gardens and grand architecture. This trend for large, out-of-town cemeteries was accelerated by a series of Burial Acts passed in the 1850s that prohibited burials within city limits.
The legislation also led to the establishment of a national system of burial-board cemeteries, funded by the poor rate: the tax collected by a parish to provide poor relief. In these cemeteries, private burial plots could be purchased at more affordable rates and common (public) graves were provided for the poorest. Dug to a great depth, common graves could contain the bodies of many unrelated people.
Register Information
Each cemetery kept its own burial registers. The amount of information recorded varies, since there was no standard format, but typically the registers will note the grave number; the name, age and date of death of the deceased; their address; the date of burial; and the name of the person who performed the ceremony. There will also be some reference to the location of the grave in the cemetery, whether it was in consecrated or unconsecrated ground, and if it was a private or common grave. Nonconformists were generally buried in unconsecrated ground.
In addition, separate registers were often kept to record the purchase of private burial plots. These registers provide the name and address of the original purchaser, the location of the plot, the price that was paid, the date of the purchase, and the grave number. The register was then subsequently updated with the names and ages of occupants who were later interned, and the dates when the grave was reopened. The details can be cross-referenced with the entries in the burial registers. When a burial plot was purchased, the right of burial in the grave was reserved for one family. So relatives were
