#FOWC – Cemetery

FOWC with Fandango — Cemetery

With thanks to Fandango for this prompt

Have you ever seen loads of empty milk bottles standing outside a cemetery by the gates at night? I have. They used to be outside Highgate Cemetery in North London every night. They were right by the gates, which were locked at nights. Highgate is a huge cemetery and Karl Marx is buried there, but we never went to see his grave. At the time we were lving in Hornsey, North London and most nights went for a walk with our dog on Hampstead Heath, which was something else. I never saw a place like it. Everything went on there. Anyway, Highgate Cemetery was next to Hampstead Heath. We decided that there must be some restless ghosts in there who needed their cup of tea to put them to rest. It is an absolutely huge cemetery and, having a penchant for cemeteries, I always wanted to go in, but never got to do it.

In the City of Hull, which is not far from where we live now, there is also a huge cemetery, well several in fact. I did get to go in there, but with a purpose. I had uncovered the story of a man who came from Hessle on the outskirts of Hull who committed rape on three young girls. I was building up a history for my Ph.D as my supervisor instructed me to do, and I uncovered this case whilst looking through the Court Chaplain’s Book in York Library, for 1898. The entry simply gave the name of the man, which was John William Parkinson, aged 28, a blacksmith from Hessle. He was married and he stood accused of the crime of rape. It stated that he was a Primitive Methodist and against all of this the Court Chaplin had written the words “Utter hypocrite.” Given that information, I wanted to find out the whole story, and it took me over a year to do so, but I did it, spending most of my days in Archives and such places. I found that he had gone to Parkshurst Prison, sentenced to 20 years Hard Labour, he got out after 19 years. He then ran a shop in Hull. He had left his wife with three children to bring up on her own and they all did well in their lives despite all. I found out where the graves of all these people were, and I went and visited them. I found only one of the graves of the girls who were raped and I went and put flowers on it. I then found the grave of the man’s wife, Elizabeth, and she was buried with her son and daughter, and her daughter had become a nurse in an Infectious Diseases Hospital in London. She became in fact one of the first State Registered Nurses. The hospital was for children, and in the 1930s she herself died of an infectious disease contracted in the hospital. A Memorial Vase from the hospital still stands on her grave. I placed flowers on that grave too.

I then found the grave of John William Parkinson. It was unmarked, I went and first of all stood on it, then I jumped on it and I won’t tell you what else I did lol.

That was an amazing time for me, and I loved doing that work. But also it involved me in cemeteries, which I am always drawn to. I love them, and I love to read the headstones. Fascinating .