Over my 45-year career I met many aged people with a real fear of pauper graves. To put this in context, a pauper was a very poor person or one, historically, in receipt of relief under the provisions of the Poor Law, or of public charity. The language used for burials and graves can have a social implication. Consequently, using words such as pauper can have deep connotations.
Others told me that, close to death, their relatives asked them to ensure they were not placed in an unmarked grave, by which they meant a pauper grave. Some people even stated that they preferred not to go to certain hospitals because they were, originally, the local Workhouse. All too often, the Union Workhouse had a huge and intimidating impact on families. However, this older generation who can recall life before the 2nd World War are now dying themselves.
Prior to the Workhouse, people requested poor relief in the parish where they were legally registered. You had no right to poor relief at any other parish. The claimants were often farmed out locally and there was no designated Workhouse. The real horror was the New Poor Law Act 1834. It set up a Union Workhouse for a group of parishes. This was the system that split married couples into separate dormitories. The process was designed to be unsympathetic and inmates were routinely blamed for their own situation. The records for these institutions are sparse and most of the evidence is found only in newspaper reports.
The Workhouse in Croydon was virtually next door to the Victorian Queen’s Road Cemetery, which I managed for a time. The bodies could be walked across the road and directly to the grave. It was, bluntly, a little too convenient. However, after the Victorian period, newspaper articles highlighted how Workhouses were inhumane and insensitive. That said, the writers still described inmates using words like bastard, vagabond, tramp and lunatic. These words undoubtedly frightened those who saw themselves as poor or perhaps undefended in society.
The legacy of the pauper grave even had an impact when I introduced natural burial in the 1990’s. On cemetery walks, and when talking to people in the cemetery, some said they would not enter the natural burial plot. They said this was because they saw the area as neglected, and the graves as unmarked. This reflects the fact that pauper grave areas were often poorly maintained, not least by private companies in financial constraints. The fact that natural burial graves are ‘private’ and given permanent grave markers, so that they can always be located, had no impact. To them, if it looked like a pauper grave, then it was a pauper grave. The fact that people now understand the benefits of nature and wildness, was not realised.
My focus on pauper graves arose after I watched Ollie Murs locate his Great Grandmother’s grave in Latvia in the BBC programme, Who Do you Think You Are? Indeed, in many of these programmes the finding of an anonymous pauper predecessor brings on a tearful sadness. However, we need to bear in mind that most cemetery burials through Victorian and later times, were in what were called ‘common’ or ‘unpurchased’ graves. These were less expensive graves because up to a dozen unrelated burials might take place in them. The private grave was expensive because the Right of Burial had to be purchased. This enabled them to control all burials in the grave and place a memorial.
I also note that the celebs, when they are taken to a cemetery, lack any understanding of the past. For instance, that the old cemeteries often have extensive open spaces. In other words, there are no memorials even though many burials have taken place. That is because as many as 80% of burials were paupers, interred in unpurchased graves. Any memorial placed was purely temporary, like a wood cross, and were often prohibited by the cemetery authority. The reality is that most of us were paupers. The wealthy, even the moderately wealthy, are the ones we call Victorians. Those 20% dominate the record, and the 80% paupers are unseen, an embarrassment no doubt.
An interesting fact about pauper graves is how the Victorians underestimated their numbers. Many companies had opened a private cemetery and imagined massive sales of private graves and the associated sale of expensive memorials. That did not happen and the lack of income led to the bankruptcy of most companies.
It is interesting to consider that the ancient poor relief was funded at the parish level and never fell on central government. With the introduction of National Assistance and the NHS, the government believed that pauperism would disappear. It did not and benefits now contribute to our serious national debt problem. In other words, we borrow money to give to those in poverty. However, each year an increasing number of people refuse to arrange a funeral and leave it to the local council. These are called Public Health Funerals, and if burial is preferred then many of these will be interred in unpurchased graves. Would they have taken that course had the name not been changed? Calling it a Public Health funeral neatly avoided the word pauper.
Have things really changed? Even now, we are intrigued as to why so many people choose Direct Cremation. Undoubtedly, the cost of funerals is still serious social issue. It may be that people are not short of money but fear having to enter the dark world of funeral directors, of not being in control of a potentially large bill. That was also the Victorian scenario!
A generation after our death, few graves are visited by anybody. That includes those who have an expensive memorial. The truth is that anonymity awaits us all. Looking more positively, we might even consider that the pauper funeral was a low carbon affair that had very little impact on the environment. Should we can applaud that: there need be no shame.
