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The Victorian way of...death! |
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a trip back in time! |
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In
the second of a series in which Bradford people look back at the
district's hidden history Pete Crosier
- who works at Bradford College - shows that in that city the dead
were not always allowed to lie in peace...
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The
next time you have time to spare, take a walk around Undercliffe
Cemetery in Bradford and look at the monuments and try to interpret
their meaning.
Clasped hands show that a husband and wife are united in death;
columns soar upwards (when complete indicating the deceased led
a full life and when broken indicating the end of the male line
in a family); ivy shows friendship or portrays immortality; the
phoenix stands for the Resurrection; a serpent biting its own
tail represents the ring of eternity. The list is almost endless.
This
all seems very polite and civilised but the reality for the average
Victorian, the Victorian who worked in the mills and the weaving
sheds, the Victorian who was not rich, was so far removed from
all this, that it might have almost been in another time period.
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| "Ineqality
existed in death as it did in life:"The Illingworth
monument at Undercliffe Cemetery |
It is
a story of overcrowded graveyards where the dead were not allowed
to rest in peace. Despite the fact that the word cemetery comes
from the Greek and means to sleep in peace, acts which would today
be seen as totally unacceptable were routinely carried out.
The rich had extravagant monuments to the dead erected on private
plots, which cost from one to ten guineas per plot. The finer
of the graves for important citizens of the town covered a number
of plots - a not insubstantial amount of money, but inequality
existed in death as it did in life.
A handoom weaver earned as little as 35 pence per week in 1854
putting the cost of a plot in Undercliffe Cemetery well beyond
his means. It was for this reason that the directors of Undercliffe
Cemetery provided paupers graves (euphemistically called Company
Graves) for the poor of the town at a nominal cost.
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