Elizabeth Lyall Embling – the first woman to be buried in Radnor Street Cemetery

Elizabeth Lyall Embling was the first woman to be buried in Radnor Street Cemetery.

Elizabeth’s funeral took place on September 21, 1881 – the cemetery had been open 6 weeks and 5 days. She is entry number 25 in the chronological registers. In the preceding 47 days there had been the burials of 6 adults – a house painter, an undertaker, an auctioneers clerk, a labourer, a medical student and a baker – and 18 children. The details in the register tell us that she was married and worked as a confectioner. Her husband Benjamin provided the death certificate and the committal was attended by the Rev Godfrey A. Littledale. Elizabeth was 41 years old at the time of her death. She was buried in a public grave plot number A179.

Section A was the first area of the cemetery to receive burials when the cemetery opened. It stretches up the hill as you enter at the Dixon Street gate and turn left and continues to the Kent Road gate and down to the chapel. Today it is an area with numerous trees and shrubs but probably fewer headstones than in other sections of the cemetery. This is an area where many of the early settlers in the railway town of New Swindon are buried. Elizabeth herself was the daughter of one such man.

Elizabeth Lyall Watson was born in Scotland, the eldest daughter of David Watson, a fitter, one of the early railwaymen to arrive in Swindon in the 1840s. Elizabeth appears on the 1851 census living at 7 Reading Street with her parents David and Elizabeth and her four younger sisters. They share the property with Eliza Eames, a 47 year old widow from Ireland, a retired needlewoman, and her two sons Edward 18 and Homan 13. Just these few details tell us a lot about the early days of New Swindon. People had come from all corners of the UK to work at in the Great Western Railway Works and that accommodation was hard to come by causing overcrowding in the company houses.

Elizabeth married Benjamin Embling in the September quarter of 1863. We find the family on the 1871 census living at 23 Queen Street where Benjamin worked as a labourer in the GWR Iron Works. The couple had three children, William 6, David 3 and two year old Elizabeth. Lodging with them was John Beckett, a 22 year old labourer, who worked in the nearby gas works.

And then sometimes the official records reveal inexplicable details. The 1881 census taken on the night of Sunday April 3, 1881 records the Embling family living at No. 9 Mill Street in New Swindon, described as a General Shop. Benjamin occupation is that of shop keeper and he states that he is a widower (this is somewhat difficult to understand as Elizabeth did not die until September of that year). The family number six children – William 16, David 13, Elizabeth 11, Benjamin 8, James 6 and 3 year old Jessie. Benjamin employed 13 year old Margaret Morgan as a domestic servant.

Elizabeth’s death certificate might provide clarification but unfortunately we cannot afford to purchase certificates for the numerous burials we research. So, is this all we can retrieve about the life of this working class woman. There are no surviving letters (if she ever wrote any), no last will and testament, no diary. Perhaps there is a carte de visite photograph somewhere taken in one of the town’s numerous photographic studios. These small photographs survive in great numbers but unfortunately can seldom be identified.

This is a very brief account of one working class woman’s life – the first woman to be buried in Radnor Street Cemetery.