These are difficult times for old cemeteries, long closed and with no dedicated caretaker and groundsmen. When interments take place only occasionally and few people attend their family graves, cemeteries today are quiet places.
Some complain about the lack of care and maintenance provided by local authorities whose budgets are sorely stretched. So, what is the answer for our cemeteries?
Highgate Cemetery in London has long led the way in cemetery conservation and guided cemetery walks. Opened in 1839 by a private company (as most Victorian cemeteries were) by the 1970s the cemetery was no longer a profitable concern and became neglected and vandalised. Today it is run by volunteers of the Friends of Highgate Cemetery Trust supported by some members of paid staff. Highgate remains a working cemetery although space for new burials is running out, which presents more problems.
Abney Park Cemetery in Stoke Newington is another of the ‘Magnificent Seven’ garden cemeteries of London. The cemetery was opened in 1840, again by a private company. In the 1970s the company went into administration and the cemetery was abandoned and fell into disrepair. Today it is thriving as a woodland memorial park and Local Nature Reserve maintained by the Abney Park Trust, a small volunteer led charity, and the London Borough of Hackney.
Our closed Victorian cemeteries pose a problem nationwide. In 1999 the Friends of Lister Lane Cemetery came to the rescue of the Halifax General Cemetery, again after a long period of neglect. This cemetery opened in 1841 and was designed according to the ethos of the period to be not only a burial ground but to provide a public space for walks and outdoor relaxation. The Friends group now cares for the cemetery with support from Calderdale Bereavement Services when funds permit.
Here in Radnor Street Cemetery we have a small team of volunteers who attend to not only the Commonwealth War Graves, but other graves where a fallen serviceman is remembered. Occasionally the Community Payback Team are allocated to the cemetery and always perform valuable work. Sadly, the local authority can only perform the most basic of maintenance and mowing now takes place just once a year.
The summer of 2024 has served up a combination of heavy rain and long, hot sunny days. Today the cemetery is a vision of wild abandonment. A place of serene beauty and perfect for the proliferation of wildlife and biodiversity in this densley populated urban area. For the time being we must try to be patient and rest awhile, as the cemetery residents are so well practised at doing.
You may like to join us for a guided cemetery walk during the Heritage Open Days next month. Meet us at the cemetery chapel Sunday September 15 at 1.45 pm for a 2 pm start.
Sometimes a family leaves a very small footprint in this world and the Bentley family seems to be just such a one. But there is a lot to say about their stylish headstone full of symbolism. The fluted columns represent the entrance to heaven while the furled scroll indicates a life that had more to be lived. The bouquet of flowers express condolences and grief.
This is the last resting place of Pelham Bentley who is buried with his parents. It is likely their names are mentioned on the kerbstone edging.
William Charles Bentley married Sarah Wynn Malley at St. George’s Church, Wolverton in 1877. Like Swindon, Wolverton was established as a locomotive repair shop for a railway line under construction, situated at the midpoint of the London & Birmingham Railway in 1838.
William and Sarah both hailed from Lancashire, William from Bury and Sarah from Lancaster. In 1878 Sarah gave birth to twins, a boy Pelham and a girl Lily. By 1881 they had moved to Swindon where William worked as a Coach Trimmer and the family lived at 11 Harding Street.
By 1901 Pelham was lodging in North Manchester where he was was also working as a Coach Trimmer but by 1911 he was back in Swindon. Aged 32 he was living at 129 Broad Street with his parents and his sister Lily who was an Elementary School Teacher.
Lily married John Wells in Swindon during the December quarter of 1912 but at the moment I can find nothing more about him or them. William died in 1937 and by 1939 both Lily and her mother Sarah are widowed and living at 21 York Road.
The Bentley family were obviously a small, close knit family, the type of ordinary people who worked hard and contributed to the building of Swindon. They do not seem to have left us much to remember them by, except this rather beautiful headstone.
The Matthews family is another story I keep returning to although a recent attempt to track them all down has proved frustrating.
Maria Smith and Jesse Matthews married in 1867 and during 38 years of marriage produced 16 children, 13 of whom survived to adulthood.
Unfortunately, there is no key to this magnificent family portrait taken in around 1893, but it has been possible to identify some of the siblings by later photographs.
Ada Maria Matthews
Ethel Sarah Matthews
George Stephens Matthews
Walter W.J. Matthews
Edward Thomas Matthews
Emmeline Dorcas Matthews
Mary Catherine Bramble Matthews
Gertrude Amelia Matthews
Frances Josephine Matthews
Winifred Dorothy Matthews
All of the 10 sisters were apprenticed to trades and at least two became teachers. Eldest daughters Ada and Ethel both emigrated to Canada with possibly a third, Emmeline, joining them.
In 1901 daughter Jessie Ellen Matthews (born in 1876) worked alongside her brother Walter in a Stationer’s shop they ran together at 14 Victoria Street. In 1905, the year her father died in tragic circumstances, Jessie married Stephen William Filtness at the Wesley Chapel, Faringdon Road where the family worshipped. Sadly, Jessie was admitted to the Wiltshire County Lunatic Asylum in Devizes on June 10, 1911 where she died on August 9. She is buried in grave plot E7455 where she was later joined by her mother-in-law Mary Elizabeth Filtness who died in 1912; her husband Stephen William who died in 1931 and his sister Mary Sophia Boxall who died in 1932.
Jesse Matthews died in 1905 and Maria in 1940. They are buried in grave plot E7389 with their baby granddaughter Rosemary Gay who died aged 4 days old in 1929.
My research into the Matthews family continues. Many thanks go to Shelley Hughes who has provided so much information and so many photographs and to Prof John Gregory for his gift of Memories of Another Age – Frances Josephine Gay 1886-1974. Frances was a writer, teacher and founder member of the Richard Jefferies Society. Copies of this book are available in Local Studies, Swindon Central Library. Frances was Jesse and Maria’s second youngest daughter.
In the Summer 2016 edition of Swindon Heritage Noel Beauchamp told the story of the man who drove the GWR’s first train and was a personal friend of no fewer than three railway pioneers, and lived and died in the Railway Village. Here is an extract from that article – Colourful career of the man they couldn’t sack.
He was a personal friend of Sir Daniel Gooch, but there is no getting away from the fact that Jim Hurst was a difficult character.
Official GWR reports reveal a catalogue of arguments, rows, conflicts, accidents and even fights throughout the career of the man who became the company’s first driver.
His first accident occurred in 1836 while he was still working for the Liverpool & Manchester Railway.
Sacked, he was almost immediately hired by Daniel Gooch, then Locomotive Superintendent of the GWR – although when recounting the story to the company magazine, many years later, he gave an entirely different explanation of the circumstances.
He also told the GWR magazines that he had had “some very narrow escapes”, including in 1855 when the engine he was driving exploded and “I was blown up through the air and my mate was killed.”
The first blot on his GWR career came in 1840 when he was reported for driving his engine in a careless manner and colliding with the engine Wildfire, which was severely damaged, along with the tender of the engine he was driving.
The following year he was reported for refusing to work a train with a particular guard he had taken a dislike to: a policeman called Burton.
Jim was fined £2.
In 1842 he was accused of taking passengers for a joyride, and charging them for the privilege.
‘Sundry policemen’ reported him for the offence, one claiming Jim was “in the habit of taking people on the engine to and from Kemble and Cirencester, as many as three at a time … but stopped the engine about three-quarters of a mile from Cirencester and set them down.”
Not for the last time, his friend Gooch stepped in, and Jim was able to produce a leter from one of the ‘passengers’, denying that any payment was made.
So he was off the hook.
The same year he was involved in a serious accident at Kemble in which an engine called Meteor overturned, and the passenger train that Jim was driving ended up in a siding. He later claimed it was caused by a switchman.
In 1854 he was in trouble again.
This time he threatened to take a policeman into a nearby field for a fight and after the matter came before the GWR Board, they fined the hapless driver ten shillings (50p).
Two years later it looked like Jim’s employment with the GWR was over when the Board sacked him for fighting with a porter at Newnham.
However, Gooch had been away at the time, and 10 days after his friend’s sacking he intervened and Jim was reinstated.
At the hearing it was noted by one GWR man that “You can do nothing with Hurst. He follows Gooch’s order.”
Then, in 1858, Jim found himself fined another £3 for damaging a horse box after running past a danger signal at Farringdon Road, London.
Another bad year in Jim’s career was 1859, when he ran into two engines in two separate incidents.
First he hit the tender of Dart, a Firefly Class loco, for which he was fined 14s 3d (71p), then he wrecked the buffers of Alma, an Iron Duke Class engine.
This time he was ordered to pay the cost of repairs, which would have been carried out at Swindon and amounted to £3 6s 10d (£3.34).
Then, in August 1862, there was another incident, the details of which are not recorded. But it was serious enough for him to be removed, at last, from the footplate, and permanently transferred to Swindon Works. Even Gooch seemed unable to save Jim’s driving career this time, but he still had a job – and would eventually receive a generous pension.
Although drivers were often moved around the GWR, in Jim’s case it seems successive managers at Paddington, Taplow, the Forest of Dean, Cirencester, Totnes, Swansea and Leamington all found that if they couldn’t dismiss him, there was always the option of transferring him to another part of the vast network.
For the last 30 years of his life Jim was a Swindonian, living in the Railway Village and earning, through his pension, more than most of the general workers ‘inside.’
Time ran out for him in August 1892 when he died in his 81st year, and he was buried with his wife in Radnor Street Cemetery.
Strangely, considering he and his family would have been able to afford a memorial, the grave is unmarked, and was only recently rediscovered by the Swindon Heritage team. (Summer 2016).
The burial took place on August 15, 1892 of James Hurst, 80 years old, of 30 Taunton Street. He was buried in grave plot B1641.
How good are you at dating photographs? This one is thought to have been taken around 1920. I have been unable to discover any details about this photograph taken outside W.J. Knee’s shop in Emlyn Square. What clues are there in the fashions? The girl at the centre of the group is holding a photograph – is this someone who has recently died or someone who has left Swindon to work abroad? And finally, is this a gathering of the Knee family?
The following two stories may help us date this photograph.
Postcard reproduction
William James Knee was the eldest of Arthur and Eliza Knee’s large family of 10 children. William was born in Melksham but by the time of the 1891 census the family had moved to Medgbury Road, Swindon where Arthur was employed as a Rivetter in the Works.
William also entered the GWR and in 1911 he was working as a labourer in Newport, Monmouthshire where he was lodging with a relative by the name of John Knee. That same year he left Newport to return to Swindon where he subsequently opened a newsagents shop on the corner of London Street and Emlyn Square.
Death of Mr W.J. Knee -The death has taken place at the Old Manor House, Salisbury, of Mr William James Knee, son of Mr and Mrs Arthur Knee, of 78 Medgbury Road, Swindon. Mr Knee, who was in his 46th year, carried on business as a newsagent in Emlyn square for a number of years. He had a breakdown in health and went to Salisbury for treatment of an internal complaint. He was well known in Swindon and was popular with many GWR employees. A telegram announcing his death was received this morning.
North Wilts Herald Friday January 10, 1930.
William was buried on January 13, 1930 in grave plot D494. His mother Eliza died in 1937 and his father Arthur in 1940 and both were buried with him.
The second story is that of William’s younger brother Dennis Arthur Knee.
Dennis was born in 1895 after the family arrived in Swindon, and at the age of 16 he was working as a Rivetter Carrier in the Works. But like so many men of his generation, Dennis would leave the Works to serve in the First World War. Unfortunately, Dennis’s attestation papers do not survive but we do know that in 1917 he was serving as a gunner with the Royal Marine Artillery on board HMS Vanguard. Dennis died on July 9, 1917 when the Vanguard sunk following a series of internal explosions while on a routine patrol in Scapa Flow. He was 22 years old and one of 843 out of 845 men who died that night.
Acting Bombardier Dennis Knee is remembered on the Portsmouth Naval Memorial.
Please get in touch if you have any further information about this photograph and/or the Knee family.
It took local residents living in the Kingshill area a little while to get to grips with the rules and regulations concerning the new cemetery. And the ever vigilent caretaker Charles Brown was always keen to enforce them.
Joseph Deacon found himself in trouble with the Burial Board barely four months after the opening of the Swindon Cemetery after finding himself locked in the burial ground. But the full story may have been left untold.
Damaging the Cemetery Fence – Joseph Deacon, 36, carpenter, 6, Albion Street, was charged with committing wilful damage to the rails enclosing the Swindon Cemetery. Mr J.C. Townsend appeared to prosecute on behalf of the Burial Board. On Monday, the 5th inst. The defendant was in the cemetery and went to the Clifton street gates to leave. He was told by John Bastin, a man working there, that the gates were locked, and that he would have to go to the lodge entrance. The gate had been locked by order of the board. Defendant replied to Bastin that he should not go any further round, but should get over the rails. He was told not to do so, but he went up to near the mortuary, and climbed over the rails, scratching off the paint, and telling witness that he could go and tell Brown (the keeper) if he liked. The damage was estimated at 1s – Defendant said he did what he did in a passion. He never heard that the lodge gate was open or he should have gone out by it, that being his nearest road. He should like to know if a person could go through the cemetery? – The Chairman said certainly not; the cemetery was a sacred place and must not be trespassed on. If he was to send defendant to gaol for two months, or fine him £2 and costs, as he could do, every man in Swindon would know that it was a private place. – The defendant said he did not know this. – The Chairman fined defendant and costs, in all £1 8s.
Swindon Advertiser Monday December 19, 1881.
Plaque above No. 9 Albion Street
So how had Joseph come to find himself locked in the cemetery on Monday December 5, and why had he acted “in a passion” as he told prosector Mr J.C. Townsend.
Joseph Deacon married Eliza Wakefield in 1875 at the parish church in Dauntsey. Their daughter Sarah Jane was baptised at Christ Church, Swindon on July 25, 1877 and by the time of the 1881 census Joseph and Eliza with Sarah 3, Harry 2 and one month old William were living in Albion Street.
At the time of the 1891 census Joseph and Eliza’s family had increased with the birth of Julia, then aged 8 years old – but what had happened to little Harry, not mentioned on the census returns of that year.
On October 11, 1881, just weeks before Joseph’s cemetery crime, he had buried his 2 year old son in a pauper’s grave in the new cemetery. Could it be that Joseph was visiting the child’s grave that day when he discovered he had inadvertantly been locked in? Was this why he had acted “in a passion” still mourning the death of his little boy? We’ll never know, but it is worth a consideration.
Numbers 9 and 10 Albion Street
Eliza Deacon died in February 1917 aged 74 years and was buried in grave plot C3416 where Joseph joined her upon his death in 1925. Their daughter Julia was buried with her parents when she died in 1956.
I’ve been on some strange first dates in my time, but this one took the biscuit.
“It’s a lovely day. Let’s go for a walk round the cemetery,” she said, taking the initiative, as women so often do these days. When I was a youngster it was usual to ask a girl to go to the cinema on a first date, not to take a turn round a cemetery.
We paused at a crossroads where the meandering footpaths converged and she pointed out the grave of Trooper Cecil Howard Goodman. I was wearing the wrong glasses so she read the inscription to me.
“To the Memory of Trooper Cecil Howard Goodman 1st Co. Imperial Yeomanry who died November 11 1900 while fighting for his country in South Africa. Erected by his fellow clerks GWR Staff, Swindon, April 1901.”
I mentioned what an unusual headstone it was.
“He isn’t buried here of course, he’s in South Africa,” she said. “The headstone resembles the graves of the fallen soldiers buried in South Africa. There they heaped rocks on the grave to stop the wild animals digging up the bodies.”
How did she know such a bizarre fact?
The chapel was closed, but she could describe it perfectly.
“There used to be some lovely pews in there. Some said they were made in the Works. The council took them away a long time ago. Shame that.” We walked on.
“Poor Mr. Shopland – his was a tragic death,” she said pausing by a grave carpeted in primroses. I really hoped she wasn’t planning on going into detail.
At the end of the path, she stopped at a decorative headstone. Someone else she knew?
“Mr Septimus Hyde.” We paused while she read the inscription. “The story goes that he chose this plot because he could see his house from here.”
I looked around. The gardens on Clifton Street were clearly visible from this point, as the cemetery must be to those who lived in them. I assumed Mr Septimus Hyde must have lived there. I’m not sure how I’d feel about living alongside a cemetery.
“He must have had good eyesight,” she said, “he lived in Exmouth Street.” She looked at me with a twinkle in her eye. “Come on – I need a drink, and I don’t mean a cup of tea.”
This was the weirdest first date I had ever been on – but what can you expect when you’re pushing 80 – at least I’m not pushing up daisies.
The eldest child of Henry Hyde, a tailor and his wife Elizabeth, Septimus was born in Worcester on May 26, 1846. He married Elizabeth Sturge at St. Peter’s, Worcester on August 2, 1868.
The UK, Railway Employment records, 1833-1956 state that Septimus Hyde re-entered the GWR as a Foreman in the Carriage Body Makers Shop on August 5, 1871. At the time of the 1881 census Septimus and Elizabeth were living at 5 East Street, New Swindon with their three children Frank E., Septimus G. and Robert.
Death of Mr. S. Hyde
A G.W.R. Foreman
Deep regret was expressed throughout the GWR Works, at Swindon, on Wednesday in last week, and especially in the Coach Body Making Department, when it was known that Mr. Septimus Hyde had passed away at his residence, No. 58, Exmouth Street. Deceased, who was born on May 26th, 1846, was during his long service as foreman of the coach body making shop, a very popular official. He was ever kind and thoughtful to his men, willing at all times to hear their troubles and to give them advice. As a foreman he will be greatly missed both by his employes and by the GWR Company, to whom he was ever a very faithful servant. Deceased had been unwell for some time past, suffering from paralysis of the brain, but in spite of his doctor’s orders to stay at home he would be at his post. So late as Saturday the 21st he was in theworks attending to his duties. Later in the day he had a stroke from which he did not recover, and passed away at noon on Wednesday, deeply mourned by all who knew him.
Deceased served his time with the Oxford, Worcester, and Wolverhampton Railway Company at Worcester, a line afterwards taken over by the GWR Company. When out of his time he worked at various places until August 5th, 1871, when he entered the service of the GWR at Swindon. Three years later, on August 8th, 1874, he was appointed foreman of his shop, which position he held till the time of his death. The Royal train used for the Diamond Jubilee and subsequent journeys was made under his supervision. He leaves a grown up family to mourn their loss, his wife having predeceased him.
The deep respect in which the late Mr. Hyde was held in Swindon generally, and in the GWR Works in particular, was evidenced by the large attendance at the cemetery on Saturday afternoon, when the remains were interred in the family grave, where some eighteen months ago the deceased’s wife and daughter were buried. Hundreds of the employes at the works took part in the funeral procession, and a large crowd awaited the arrival at the Cemetery. From the home the body was taken to St. Saviour’s Church, where a short service was conducted by Canon the Hon. M. Ponsonby, who also performed the last rites at the graveside….
The coffin which was of polished elm, bore the following inscription: “Septimus Hyde. Died April 18th, 1900: age 54 years.” A large number of wreaths and tokens of respect and sorrow were sent by his fellow employes and relatives.
All images of the Bodymakers Shop are published courtesy of P.A. Williams and Local Studies, Swindon Central Library
Jane Helena Tuckey photograph courtesy of Peter Guggenheim
The re-imagined story …
Mother went to Mrs Dicks funeral. It was a very quiet affair, she said. Not many at the church and even fewer at the graveside.
“I don’t know why she wasn’t buried at St Mary’s, along with all her family,” said mother. “There’s a long avenue of Tuckey graves in the churchyard there. Great big gravestones enclosed by iron railings. Of course, there was money in the family then.”
A familiar guilty twinge stabbed me.
I used to visit Mrs Dicks most weeks. Mother would send me round with a meat pie or a suet pudding.
“She doesn’t eat very well.”
Mrs Dicks lived opposite us in Hawkins Street. Her husband had died several years before.
“He was a fitter in the Works. Nice man, people said, although a bit of a come down for her. Her first husband had been a wealthy farmer from Chippenham.”
Mrs Dicks’ terrace house was crammed full of great big pieces of dark furniture.
“No doubt from her father’s house in Shaw.”
Sometimes she would open the drawer in the big, old dresser and hand me a tortoiseshell casket and together we would look at her ‘treasures’ as she called them.
Then one day Nellie Fitch came with me.
I usually went to Mrs Dicks on my own but this day Nellie was sitting on our front wall.
“She can smell the pie.”
Nellie Fitch wore shoes with holes in them and her winter coat was too small for her. Nothing unusual about that. During the war most of the kids in Rodbourne wore hand me downs. But then she told me she often didn’t eat.
We didn’t have much, but I always knew I would have a cooked dinner. Nothing fancy mind, but mother was a good, plain cook and she knew how to make a little go a long way.
Nellie’s dad was away fighting the Hun, she told me.
“Nellie’s father disappeared years ago,” said mother. “And so has the layabout she thinks is her father.”
Mrs Dicks opened her front door to a small hallway, just like the one in our house and all the other houses in Hawkins Street.
She was pleased to see me, but less so to see Nellie. I don’t think it was her dirty clothes and shabby shoes that bothered Mrs Dicks. I imagine it was more the fact that now Nellie would know she accepted food from neighbours. Mrs Dicks tried to keep up appearances. She had come down in the world and keenly felt her loss of status. But to me she was just another little old lady who wore old fashioned dresses and spoke in a posh voice.
“Good morning girls. How lovely Violet. Please thank your mother,” she said as she took the warm basin into the kitchen. “Tell her I will settle up with her at the end of the week.”
She always said the same thing. No money ever changed hands, my mother wouldn’t have expected any and Mrs Dicks had none to give.
“Come into the kitchen girls. I was just making a cup of tea.”
If Nellie was hoping for a piece of cake or a biscuit she would be out of luck.
Nellie probably wondered why I spent time with the posh old lady in her dark and dreary house where there was nothing nice to eat.
Mrs Dicks would tell me about the house in Shaw where she had grown up with her eight sisters and her brother. How they played in the orchard at the back of the house and on Sundays they would walk all the way to the church in Lydiard Millicent. She would bring out her photograph album and tell me about the people; bewhiskered old men and wasp waisted ladies.
And sometimes she would bring out the tortoiseshell box and show me the beaded bag she took to dances when she was a young woman, and the diamond tiara that became a pair of dangly earrings at the click of a pin at the back. There was an amethyst ring that had belonged to her grandmother and brooches and pins.
Please don’t bring out the tortoiseshell box today, I silently pleaded. But the atmosphere was awkward with Nellie there. We were probably the only two quiet children in Rodbourne that morning.
I watched Nellie’s eyes grow as wide as saucers as she peeped inside Mrs Dicks’ tortoiseshell box, and she looked at me and smiled. Not a big, open smile, but something sly.
I never wanted to visit Mrs Dicks after that.
“I don’t have time to go calling in on Mrs Dicks,” my mother complained when she had to deliver the meat pie.
Nellie got a new winter coat that year, and a new step father.
“They’re not married,” said my mother. “She’s never marries any of them.” And then they moved away from Rodbourne.
The facts …
Jane Helena Tuckey was born on March 15th 1848 at Langley Burrell, the fourth daughter of Robert and Ann Tuckey.
The 1841 census returns for Yatesbury record wealthy bachelor farmer Robert Tuckey living with Ann Trotman, an unmarried servant and her four year old daughter.
Perhaps Tuckey family opposition to this mismatched alliance delayed a wedding. By the time the couple did get around to walking up the aisle at St. Saviours in Bath they had two daughters and Ann was pregnant again.
But by 1851 Robert had come into his inheritance and the growing family moved into Shaw House along what is now called Old Shaw Lane in West Swindon.
In 1872, shortly after the death of her father, Jane married farmer John Clarke, thirty years her senior, and moved to nearby Kington St. Michael where John farmed 381 acres. With 20 farm and house servants on the payroll, this was a big establishment.
Then in 1882 John Clarke was found dead in one of his fields having suffered a fatal heart attack and Jane’s life was to change dramatically.
In 1884 Jane married Francis Dicks. Her second husband, seven years her junior, was a fitter employed in the GWR works. The couple with Jane’s girls moved into 37 Hawkins Street, Rodbourne where a further two children were born.
In the small terraced house Jane’s lifestyle was far removed from the comfortable childhood she had enjoyed, playing in the orchard at Shaw House.
Widowed for the second time in 1903 she survived on an income derived from taking in a lodger.
Mrs Dicks died on November 26, 1918. She was buried in plot B1494, a pauper’s grave in Radnor Street Cemetery.
There is a world of difference between enjoying a drink and taking a bottle of whiskey to bed and I wonder what propelled Mary Bailey from the one to the other.
Drunkenness was the scourge of the 19th century working classes. Even in Swindon where the much lauded Great Western Railway Company provided wrap around care ‘from the cradle to the grave’ there was still want and destitution for those who fell through the cracks of society.
Temperance societies encouraged people to abstain from drink and to take the pledge of a lifetime of sobriety. By the end of the century Swindon numbered around 18 such organisations, including the GWR Temperance Union with around 3,000 members, however it is unlikely Mary joined their ranks.
A Fatal Taste for Alcohol
A sad case came from Coroner W.E.N. Browne, on Monday in an inquest concerning the death of Mary Baily, wife of a GWR fitter of 11 Hawkins Street, New Swindon.
The deceased who was 49 years of age, was stated by a neighbour to be of intemperate habits. Her husband on Friday night went to bed at 10 o’clock, and thinking his wife was asleep did not disturb her. He arose at five o’clock on Saturday morning and found his wife dead and quite cold. A whiskey bottle was found beneath the bed. Dr. Duffield stated that death was due to asphysxia, cause by the woman lying on her face in a helpless condition ensuing upon an over-dose of alcohol.
Gloucester Citizen Tuesday November 28, 1899.
Drinking fountain erected by the Swindon United Temperance Board in Regent Circus 1893
Mary Christianna Dance was born in Stratton, Gloucestershire and baptised on February 4, 1849, the eldest of John and Jane Dance’s eight children. She married Thomas Bailey in 1871 and by 1881 they were living at 11 Henry Street (later renamed Hawkins Street) with their 8 year old son Thomas, and Mary’s brother Charles. Both men worked as carriage fitters in the Works.
So what happened to Mary between 1881 and 1899, or had her problem with alcohol begun long before? Did she try to control her drinking, or was she aided and abetted by her husband Thomas, whose comments at the inquest appear ingenuous when compared with the neighbours observations.
Mary was buried on November 28, 1899 in grave plot C109, a privately purchased grave, which might come as some surprise. In 1908 she was joined by Tryphena Bailey, Thomas’s second wife and then in 1937 by Thomas himself.
Many thanks to David Lewis and his book Between the Bridges – The Early Days of Rodbourne.
There are 33,000 burials in Radnor Street Cemetery but rather fewer memorials. The spread of headstones vary in the different sections with E and D sections the most densely populated and dotted across the cemetery are 104 distinctive Commonwealth War Graves headstones.
When the Burial Board published a list of fees concerning interment in the new cemetery in 1881 it included the following statement:
All inscriptions and plans of monuments, tablets, and stones, to be erected in the Cemetery or chapels to be submitted to the Board for its approval.
The majority of the headstones in Radnor Street Cemetery are simple and stylish, but have a closer look and you will find some fascinating detail.
Victorian Swindon had strong links with Freemasonry and this headstone (see below) has examples of Freemasonry symbolism, including the Square and Compasses, which depict a builder’s square joined by a compass.
Ivy trailing across a headstone symbolises friendship and immortality.
Fruits in many varieties are symbolic of the fruit of life, while grapes and leaves represent Christ and Christian faith.
An anchor and/or chains have various meanings, apart from the obvious naval one, and include the severance of the body and soul. There is also a connection with the International Order of Odd Fellows, another popular organisation here in Swindon.
The Commonwealth War Graves headstones all carry the regimental insignia of the deceased service personnel. This is the badge of the Royal Army Medical Corps.
Flowers have various meanings for example the rose is symbolic of love and virtue. A rosebud can indicate the death of a young person. The problem is trying to identify what the variety of flower is on a weathered headstone.
The bird/dove has various meanings including that of eternal peace.
And the letters IHS seen on many headstones in the cemetery, come from the Greek spelling of Jesus and symbolise the first three letters – Iota, Eta, Sigma.
Radnor Street Cemetery 