Burial Book (1916-20)

Post date: Mar 31, 2014 6:37:9 PM

The attached excel file is a transcription of part of the burial book held at Kent archives (reference P385/23/18). It does not include the cost of individual burials or the officiating clergyman (both of which are recorded) and is only transcribed to 1920- whereas the book goes beyond that date. Some of the burials recorded are of people whose residence was not Wateringbury.

Cause of death is not recorded but it does not reveal any particular indication (such as from a high number of deaths amongst young people) of any severe incidence of The Spannish Flu which caused in Britain approx 250,000 deaths in 1918/19 (and 50 to 100 million more globally).

Deaths in Malling Union are highlighted and there is one in 1921 recorded as Malling Workhouse, even at his date not the politically correct term!

The death of Albert Philemon Rousseau at which Father G. De Bosquet presided is interesting. Albert lived in Canon Lane, described in the 1911 census when he was 71 years of age as a widower and fruit grower. He had been born in France in 1840 and naturalised as a British subject in 1874.

The bodies of soldiers were not brought home from overseas but Tom Smith, who died at Fort Pitt military hospital and was buried in June 1920 in Wateringbury, is an exception.

Cremation had been made legal in 1902 but at this time very few (under 1% nationally) took the cremation option. Cremation was seen as destroying hope of resurrection.