HOSPITAL, ALMSHOUSE, AND WORKHOUSE GROUNDS.
“Such ebb and flow must ever be,
Then wherefore should we mourn?”
WORDSWORTH.
WHEN the Greyfriars, or Christ’s Hospital, was set aside for “poor
children,” and Bridewell for “the correction of vagabonds,” St.
Bartholomew’s Hospital in the City and St. Thomas’s in Southwark were
devoted to the care of the “wounded, maimed, sick, and diseased”; and in
these four benevolent institutions, which owe so much to the short-lived
but truly pious King Edward VI., there was provision made for the burial
of the dead. It must be remembered that the quadrangle of Christ’s
Hospital, which is still surrounded by cloisters, was the burial-ground
of the Greyfriars, but apart from this, for the boys of the school or
the officers or servants, there was a small plot of ground set apart as
a graveyard at the north-west corner of the block of buildings. This was
demolished when the great hall was built, in 1825, and if any of its
site remains it is only a limited piece of the courtyard on the north
side of the hall and the doctor’s garden. A few tombstones are preserved
in the passage leading to the doctor’s house. At this time was formed
the additional burial-ground for Christ Church at the western end of the
churchyard of St. Botolph, Aldersgate Street. But the churchyard
adjoining Christ Church, and even the cloisters themselves, were used
from time to time by the Hospital, and it was the custom in the last
century for a “blue” to be buried by torchlight. His schoolfellows
passed through the venerable courtyards and buildings in procession, two
by two, and sang a burial anthem from the 39th Psalm, which must have
been a most solemn and touching sight, and was “particularly adapted to
the monastic territory” of the Hospital. It will be a sad day when this
noble old school is torn from its rightful home in the City of London,
and when the boys receive a “modern” education in a trim, new building,
and wear the dull tweed suit and the school cap dragged on at the back
of their heads; and it is well to impress again and again upon the
Charity Commissioners and the Almoners of the Hospital that a very
considerable portion of the site will not be available for building
upon, as it will come under the provisions of the Disused Burial-grounds
Act. The same remark applies with even greater force to the neighbouring
hospital, the Charterhouse, where all the gardens and courtyards,
including the Square itself and the little burial-ground which is still
recognisable as such, have been used at one time or another for
interments. I have explained how this came about in a former chapter.
[Illustration: A CORNER OF CHRIST’S HOSPITAL, THE GREYFRIARS’
CLOISTERS.]
I think it probable that when St. Bartholomew’s Hospital was far smaller
than it is now, burials took place in the cloisters, or rather in the
large space in the middle of which the western wing was built. In a very
interesting old plan of the precincts, dated 1617, there is not only
shown the “Church-yarde for ye poore” in two pieces, about where the
west wing is now, but also a large ground which is named Christ Church
Churchyard, to the south of this, but north of the City wall. The
hospital later on used the Bethlem burial-ground, and the ground set
aside eventually as the hospital graveyard (for the interment of
unclaimed corpses), is in Seward Street, Goswell Road. This was first
used about 1740, and, after being closed for burials, it was let as a
carter’s yard and was full of sheds and vans. Through the kindness of
the Governors, it fell into the hands of the Metropolitan Public Gardens
Association, and it is now a children’s recreation ground maintained by
St. Luke’s Vestry. The burial-ground of St. Thomas’s Hospital is at the
corner of Mazepond; on part of it St. Olave’s Rectory and Messrs.
Bevington’s leather warehouse were built; the remainder is leased to
Guy’s Hospital, and contains the treasurer’s stables and an asphalted
tennis-court for the use of the students. Guy’s Hospital burial-ground
is in Snow’s Fields, Bermondsey, and is now a large builder’s yard, but
there is a reasonable hope of its being secured before long as a
recreation ground. The “unclaimed corpses” from the London Hospital
found their last resting-place very near home. In 1849 the whole of the
southern part of the enclosure, quite an acre and a half, was the
burial-ground, and here, although it was closed by order in Council in
1854, it appears that burials took place until about 1860, one of the
present porters remembering his father acting as gravedigger. The
medical school, the chaplain’s house, and the nurse’s home have all been
built upon it, and it is sincerely to be hoped that no further
encroachments will be permitted. The remaining part is the nurses’ and
students’ garden and tennis-court, where they are in the habit of
capering about in their short times off duty, and where it sometimes
happens that the grass gives way beneath them—an ordinary occurrence
when the subsoil is inhabited by coffins!
[Illustration: LONDON HOSPITAL BURIAL-GROUND.]
Bridewell also had its burial-ground, where the lazy and evil were
interred. It is at the corner of Dorset and Tudor Streets, near the
Thames Embankment, and is an untidy yard, boarded off from the street
with a high advertisement hoarding, and in the occupation of a builder.
The Bethlem burial-ground had a more interesting history. In 1569 Sir
Thomas Roe, or Rowe, Merchant Taylor and Mayor, gave about one acre of
land in the Moorfields “for Burial Ease to such parishes in London as
wanted convenient ground.” It was especially intended for the parish of
St. Botolph’s, Bishopsgate, and was probably used for the interment of
lunatics from the neighbouring asylum, besides being used by St.
Bartholomew’s Hospital. It was enclosed with a brick wall at the
persuasion of “the Lady his Wife,” and she was buried there; and it was
the custom upon Whit Sunday for the Lord Mayor and Aldermen to listen to
a sermon delivered in this “new churchyard, near Bethlem.” We read that
in 1584 “a very good Sermon was preached ... and, by Reason no Plays
were the Same Day (_i.e._, Whit Sunday, as there used to be), all the
City was quiet.” But the Churchyard and the Asylum have disappeared,
Liverpool Street Station having taken their place, and hundreds of the
Great Eastern Railway goods vans daily roll over the mouldering remains
of the departed citizens.
[Illustration: CHELSEA HOSPITAL GRAVEYARD.]
Very different to the fate of these hospital burial-grounds is that of
another one I will mention. Facing Queen’s Road, Chelsea, is the long,
narrow graveyard of the Chelsea Hospital. It is neatly kept, with good
grass and trees. Here many a venerable pensioner has been laid to rest,
and, although it can no longer be used for burials, it still serves to
remind the living of their brethren who have gone before them. There are
some fine monuments and epitaphs to very long-lived invalids, two aged
112, one 111, one 107, and so on, and it is one of those quiet and
quaint corners of London which form so marked a contrast to the noisy
streets close by. One pensioner, who died in 1732, named William Hiseman
and aged 112, was “a veteran, if ever soldier was.” It is recorded that
he took unto himself a wife when he was above 100 years old. There is
something very peaceful about these old men’s graves; the grain gathered
in by the “Reaper whose name is Death” was fully ripe:—
“It is not quiet, is not ease,
But something deeper far than these;
The separation that is here
Is of the grave; and of austere
Yet happy feelings of the dead.”
On the south side of the Thames there are some other burial-grounds
which should be mentioned here. Greenwich Hospital possesses no less
than three cemeteries. In 1707 Prince George of Denmark gave a plot of
ground for the purpose, measuring 660 by 132 feet. This is on the west
side of the Royal Naval School. It is enclosed and full of tombstones.
But in 1747 an extra two and a half acres, surrounding the old ground,
were appropriated for interments. This space is well kept, containing
some fine trees and only a few monuments. The gate from the school
playground is generally open. Then there is the Hospital Cemetery in
West Combe, nearly six acres in size, and first used in 1857. The
burial-ground of God’s Gift College (Dulwich) is at the corner of Court
Lane. It dates from about 1700, and is a picturesque, well-kept little
ground, with several handsome altar tombs in it. The cemetery of Morden
College, Blackheath (founded for decayed merchants about 1695) also
exists. It is about a quarter of an acre in size, with about eighty
tombstones, but the graves have been levelled, and the ground, though
still walled round, forms part of the College gardens.
[Illustration: VIEW FROM THE ALMSHOUSES, WHITE HORSE STREET, STEPNEY.]
There were several almshouse graveyards in London, including the
“College yard” for St. Saviour’s Almshouses, Southwark, which is now a
builder’s store-yard in Park Street, and over which the London,
Brighton, and South Coast Railway passes on arches, and one behind the
Goldsmith’s Almshouses, now covered by the artisans’ dwellings on the
west side of Goldsmith Row, Shoreditch. The frightfully crowded
“almshouse ground” in Clement’s Lane formed part of the site of the new
Law Courts; while one in Crown Street, Soho, adjoining St. Martin’s
Almshouses, disappeared when the French Chapel was built, and has now
been lost in Charing Cross Road. In order to enter the almshouses in
White Horse Street, Stepney, it is necessary to pass through a
graveyard, and it cannot be a lively outlook for the pensioners, who
have gravestones just under their windows. It was connected with the
Independent Chapel, and first used in 1781.
Perhaps the most interesting of these burial-grounds is one which
belonged to the Bancroft Almshouses in Mile End Road. The fate of the
asylum itself is well known; it has been replaced by the People’s
Palace, and the improvement from an antiquarian or architectural point
of view is nil. The recent interest taken in the proposed destruction of
the Trinity Hospital in Mile End Road points to the fact that the
pendulum of public opinion is now swinging towards the preservation of
historical buildings. The graveyard of Bancroft’s Almshouses was a long
strip on the eastern side. Part of it has been merged into the roadway.
St. Benet’s Church (consecrated in 1872), Hall, and Vicarage were built
upon it, and the bones of the pensioners are under the Vicarage garden.
The northernmost point of the graveyard is enclosed and rooted over, and
forms a little yard where flag-staffs, &c., are stored. But between this
and the wall of the Vicarage there is a piece open to the road, with
some heaps of stones in it and rubbish. There are, at any rate, four
gravestones left, against the wall, and there may be others behind the
stones; but I daresay it is only a very small proportion of those who
pass in and out of the Palace who have ever noticed this relic of the
Bancroft Almshouses.
In a large number of the London parishes it was necessary to have “poor
grounds,” _i.e._, graveyards where bodies could be interred at a
trifling cost or entirely at the cost of the parish; for,
notwithstanding the great dislike of the poor to “a pauper’s funeral,”
and the efforts they will make to avoid it, there always have been cases
in which no other sort of funeral can be arranged. Some of the “poor
grounds” were attached to the workhouses, others were merely a part of
the parish churchyards, while others again were older additional
burial-grounds secured by the parishes before the days of workhouses.
The workhouse of St. Andrew’s, Holborn, was in Shoe Lane, and in the
adjoining graveyard the unfortunate young genius, Chatterton, was
buried. This ground gave way to the Farringdon Market, which, in its
turn, has been supplanted by a new street called Farringdon Avenue. The
workhouse ground of St. Sepulchre’s, Holborn, together with another
additional graveyard belonging to the parish, was in Durham Yard, and
the sites of both of them have disappeared in the goods depôt of the
Great Northern Railway. The burial-grounds by the workhouses of
Shoreditch, St. Paul’s, Covent Garden, and St. Giles (in Short’s
Gardens) have also disappeared; so also has the one allotted to the use
of St. James’ Workhouse in Poland Street, which was a part of the old
pest-field, although a remnant of the pest-field exists still as the
workhouse garden. The original Whitechapel Workhouse was built in 1768
on a burial-ground, and then a plot of land immediately to the north was
set aside for a poor ground, and consecrated in 1796. This in turn
became the playground of the Davenant Schools, one of which (facing St.
Mary’s Street) was built in it. A recent addition to the other school
has also encroached on the burial-ground. In 1832 196 cholera cases were
interred in an adjoining piece of ground, which was probably what is now
used as a stoneyard, and is full of carts. The workhouse graveyard,
belonging to St. Clement Danes, was in Portugal Street. The workhouse
itself was re-adapted and re-opened as King’s College Hospital, but the
burial-ground was used until its condition was so loathsome, and the
burning of coffins and mutilation of bodies was of such every-day
occurrence, that it must have been one of the very worst of such places
in London. It is now the garden or courtyard and approach, between the
hospital and Portugal Street. The burial-ground attached to the
Workhouse of St. Saviour’s, Southwark (which may have been the old
Baptist burial-ground in Bandy Leg Walk which existed in 1729) has a
curious history. The workhouse was supplanted by Winchester House, the
palace of the bishops when South London was in their diocese, the old
Winchester House, nearer the river, having been destroyed. This in time
became a hat manufactory, the burial-ground remaining as a garden
situated between the building and Southwark Bridge Road. Finally, the
site was secured by the Metropolitan Board of Works for the Central Fire
Brigade Station, and what is now left of the burial-ground is the garden
or courtyard between the new buildings which face the road and the old
house behind them. If the paupers and the bishops and the factory hands
did not succeed in frightening away the ghosts of the departed, they
must have a sorry time of it now when the call-bells from all parts of
London bring out the engines and the men who fight the flames.
Of the parochial “poor grounds” not adjoining workhouses a few are worth
noticing. St. Saviour’s, Southwark, in addition to the workhouse ground,
the College or Almshouse ground, and the churchyard itself, which was
from time to time added to, curtailed and used for markets, possessed
still another graveyard, the famous Cross Bones ground in Union Street,
referred to by Stow as having been made “far from the Parish Church,”
for the interment of the low women who frequented the neighbourhood. It
subsequently became the parish poor ground, and after having been in
use, and very much overcrowded, for upwards of 200 years, it was closed
by order in Council dated October 24, 1853. In a report upon the state
of this ground the previous year, it is stated that “it is crowded with
dead, and many fragments of undecayed bones, some even entire, are mixed
up with the earth of the mounds over the graves,” and it “can be
considered only as a convenient place for getting rid of the dead, but
it bears no marks of ever having been set apart as a place of Christian
sepulture.” The Cross Bones ground passed out of the hands of the rector
several years ago and was sold as a building site, but building
operations were opposed and stopped. Schools were erected in it before
it was closed for burials. It has been the subject of much litigation,
and it now stands vacant, waiting for some one to purchase it as a
playground, and used in the meantime as the site for fairs,
merry-go-rounds, and cheap shows.
The “poor ground” for the parish of St. George the Martyr, Southwark, is
a square plot of land, now a little public garden, in Tabard Street. It
was originally the burial-ground of the adjoining Lock Hospital before
that building was removed in 1809 to Knightsbridge, whence, later on, it
was again removed to Harrow Road. It is said by some that the little
cemetery was even older than the hospital, and may have been used for
interments during no less than eight centuries. The Cripplegate “Poor
ground,” or the “upper churchyard of St. Giles,” was in Bear and Ragged
Staff Yard (afterwards called Warwick Place) out of Whitecross Street,
and was first used in 1636. It was very much overcrowded, so much so
that it was more than once shut up for a few years as full, but always
re-opened again. A part of the site is now occupied by the northern half
of the church of St. Mary, Charterhouse, and by its mission-house, there
being only a tar-paved pathway round these buildings to represent the
rest of the ground. The church was built in 1864. There are human
remains within six inches of the surface of the ground, several having
been dug up and put in a vault which is under the mission-house, and the
entrance to which is closed with a very large flat stone, bearing the
date of 1865. The mission-house is giving way already, and it has large
cracks in it, for a vault of this kind is not a good foundation.
The parish of St. James’, Clerkenwell, had a very small “poor ground,”
in Ray Street, which was bought in 1755 for £340, and was consecrated
eight years later. It was 800 square yards in area, and was approached
through a private house occupied by a butcher, “who had his
slaughter-house and stable at the back, and immediately adjoining the
burial-ground.” In about the year 1824 it was found that several bodies
had been exhumed and placed in the stable; this caused a scandal in the
neighbourhood, and the man and his business were ruined. When Farringdon
Street and the Metropolitan Railway were made, the site of the ground in
Ray Street, together with Ray Street itself, entirely disappeared; and
the “sleepers of the railway are laid over the sleepers in death.” The
burial-ground had already been done away with, the Clerkenwell
Commissioners, according to Pinks, having taken it for public
improvements, when they collected the remains into one spot and erected
a plain mausoleum over them.
In early days it seems to have been the custom for patients entering the
large hospitals to pay a sum of money down for possible funeral
expenses, except in cases of sudden accident. Later on a security given
by a householder was considered sufficient, but now no such arrangement
is needed. The sum demanded at St. Bartholomew’s was 17s. 6d., and at
Guy’s £1 was paid. At Westminster Hospital and at the Lock (Hyde Park
Corner), from which some patients may have been buried in what is now
called Knightsbridge Green, no security was asked; but at the Bethlem
Hospital an entrance sum of £100 had to be paid for board, funeral
expenses, &c. In case of death at a London hospital at the present time,
the friends or relations of the deceased are expected to remove and bury
the body, and this has often led to a good deal of difficulty, one body
being claimed by various people, because the person who buries it can
often secure the insurance money. Bodies which are now unclaimed (and at
St. Bartholomew’s there are about eight in a year) are buried in a
cemetery at the cost of the hospital.
------------------------------------------------------------------------