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John Clarke

Historian of Brookwood Cemetery

Cremation & Kensal Green Cemetery

Marking the 140th anniversary of the first cremation at Woking


I attended this one-day event which took place on 23 March 2025. It was organised by Robert Stephenson and the Friends of Kensal Green Cemetery. Kensal Green occupies a unique place in the history of cremation in modern Britain as a number of people connected with the early years of the Cremation Society are buried there. Significantly, the ashes of the first person to be cremated at Woking, Mrs Jeannette Pickersgill, rest in the catacombs beneath the Anglican Chapel.


The day began with a guided walk led by Robert Stephenson and concentrating on some of the names associated with the early years of cremation. The tour included the grave of Shirley Brooks, one of the original signatories of the Declaration supporting the foundation of what became the Cremation Society. The Declaration arose from a meeting of those in favour of cremation attending a discussion at Sir Henry Thompson’s home in January 1874. Those assembled were invited to sign the following statement:


We, the undersigned, disapprove the present custom of burying the dead, and we desire to substitute some mode which shall rapidly resolve the body into its component elements, by a process which cannot offend the living, and shall render the remains perfectly innocuous. Until some better method is devised we desire to adopt that usually known as cremation. [1]


However, since he died later in 1874, Brooks did not live to see cremations begin or to benefit from this alternative method of disposal. The artist John Tenniel (1820-1914) is also buried at Kensal Green and was another of the signatories of this Declaration. The grave of the politician Sir Charles Wentworth Dilke (1843-1911), was also visited. His first wife died in October 1874 following the birth of a son. Her body was embalmed and taken to Dresden for cremation. Among the witnesses were Dilke’s brother, and William Eassie representing the Cremation Society. However, there is no evidence that her ashes lie with her husband at Kensal Green. Lady Dilke’s cremation was carried out in a furnace designed by Siemens of Germany. And so we moved on to admire the fine memorial of Sir (Carl) William Siemens (1823-1883), one of the brothers who founded the great engineering firm. The monument includes a portrait medallion as part of the design.


Possibly the most significant grave we visited was that of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen (1829-1894), the Judge who ruled in the case of Regina v Price in 1884. This took place at Cardiff Assizes and the outcome was significant for the future of cremation in Britain.


Justice Stephen’s memorial at Kensal Green Cemetery



Justice Stephen’s memorial at Kensal Green. His judgement in the trial Regina v Price (1884) allowed the Cremation Society to offer cremations at Woking.





Stephen concluded that:


I am of the opinion that a person who burns instead of buries a body does not commit a criminal act unless he does it in such a manner as to amount to a public nuisance at common law. As for the public interest in the matter, burning, on the one hand, effectually prevents the bodies of the dead from poisoning the living.


Having reached the Anglican Chapel, we paused so that Robert could indicate where, on the raised area surrounding the chapel that marks the catacombs below, the ashes of Mrs Pickersgill rest in the vaults beneath. Public vault 4 is on the front left hand side of this area. We next visited the area beside the chapel which was covered over in the 1840s to form an enclosed area called the ‘Monumental Chambers’. This was used for memorials commemorating those buried in the catacombs and illuminated by roof lights. It was here that the cemetery company erected a columbarium in 1891-92. Unfortunately, the chambers and the columbarium were badly damaged in the Second World War. The remains were demolished in 1953, as recorded on a plaque attached to the exterior wall of the Anglican Chapel.


The last grave of note was that of the novelist Anthony Trollope (1815-1882) who died before Woking Crematorium was opened and therefore was buried. Trollope was another signatory of the 1874 Declaration. In 1882 Trollope wrote an extraordinary novel called The Fixed Period. Set in a dystopian 1980 it deals with euthanasia as a radical solution to the problem of the aged. The ‘fixed period’ was 67 years, at which age a citizen’s ‘deposition’ took place, resulting in their removal to ‘The College’, an institution situated in the town of ‘Necropolis’. This was followed by their ‘departure’ and subsequent cremation exactly one year later, at the age of 68. It was noted that Trollope was 67 years old at the time of his death!


The grave of novelist Anthony Trollope at Kensal Green Cemetery






The grave of novelist Anthony Trollope, author of The Fixed Period.








The morning session finished at the West London Crematorium which was opened in 1939. This was the eleventh crematorium to be built in Greater London. Its design is very distinctive because there are no visible chimneys, these being carefully disguised in the angles of the building. The crematorium garden and its setting are of particular interest as they were designed by Edward White (c1873-1952), who later designed the Glades of Remembrance at Brookwood and whose ashes are buried at its entrance off the North Walk. We were then given the opportunity to see beyond and behind the chapel, where (out of sight of mourners) the coffin is placed on a trolley before being wheeled to the cremator. We were also given access to the cremator and its operation was explained and questions answered.


Following the lunch break, Brian Parsons gave an illustrated presentation on Kensal Green Cemetery’s links with cremation. He made particular reference to the foundation of the Cremation Society in 1874, the cremation of Mrs Pickersgill in 1885, and how her ashes came to lie in the catacombs.


Brian reminded us how Sir Henry Thompson’s pamphlet Cremation: The Treatment of the Body after Death (1874) [2] had set in train a wider discussion of the merits of cremation. It also led to the meeting of friends and supporters of cremation at Sir Henry’s home later in January 1874 which has already been described.


This meeting led to the creation of the Cremation Society, which then approached several cemeteries for permission to build a crematorium. Ultimately it was through the London Necropolis Company that an acre of land was acquired at St John’s, Woking, which became the site for a crematorium. In 1879 Prof. Paolo Gorini (1813-1881) was commissioned to build a cremator and chimney on this site. [3]


But was it lawful to cremate a body? The case of Captain Thomas Hanham proved helpful to the Cremation Society at this time. Hanham’s wife and mother had died in 1876 and 1877 respectively, and both had expressed a wish to be cremated. Hanham kept their bodies in a specially built mausoleum on his estate at Sturminster Newton. Although Hanham approached the Cremation Society asking if its crematory at Woking could be used to cremate them, the Society decided it could only allow this once cremation was legal in Britain. Hanham therefore built his own crematorium at his home and the cremations took place in October 1882. No action was taken by the Home Office. When Hanham died in November 1883 he too was cremated in his private crematorium.


The next and more famous case was that of the 83 year old doctor and druid William Price. By his son Jesus Christ (otherwise Jesu Grist) Dr Price hoped to begin a new line of Welsh druids. Unfortunately, his son died in January 1884, aged just 5 months. Dr Price then attempted to cremate his remains on the top of Llantrisant Hill. The police intervened, Dr Price was arrested, and the case went to court. At the end of the trial the judge, Sir James Stephen, delivered his all-important pronouncement that cremation was legal provided no nuisance was caused to others in the process. Following this ruling, in January 1885, the Cremation Society sent notices to the newspapers that their crematorium at Woking was available for the use of anyone requesting it.


Thus the stage was set for the first cremation to take place. Little is known about Mrs Jeannette Caroline Pickersgill (née Grover, 1815-1885). At the time of her death she was described as being ‘well-known in literary and scientific circles’. We do know that she was the widow of the late Henry Hall Pickersgill (1812-1861), a subject and portrait painter. She was born in Amsterdam and occasionally exhibited works at the Royal Academy between 1848 and 1863. Her subjects included Tintagel Cornwall, The forfeits, Italian peasant girl and Fruit. [4]


Mrs Pickersgill died at home on 20 March 1885 of broncho-pneumonia and asthenia, aged 71. She was a member of the Cremation Society, although she had joined only a couple of months before her death. According to the records at St John’s crematorium, Mrs Pickersgill was cremated on 26 March and the process took 1¼ hours. It was witnessed by her Executor and the Hon. Secretary of the Cremation Society, Mr William Eassie. Her body was ‘cremated in a shell and the ashes removed by the friend’.


The replica casket commissioned for the reception of the Pickersgill ashes





The replica casket commissioned for the reception of the Pickersgill ashes. The brass plate reads: ‘Jeannette Caroline Pickersgill / 1815-1885 / The first person to be cremated at / Woking Crematorium on 26 March 1885 / And also / William Crellin Pickersgill / Cremated at Woking on 6 October 1887 / This replacement case was constructed / to mark the 140th anniversary / of the first cremation at Woking’






It had been assumed her ashes were then deposited in the Pickersgill family grave in Barnes Cemetery, since her epitaph appears on the memorial along with the statement ‘and was also cremated’. But the cemetery registers have no record of the ashes having been deposited in the family grave. Brian Parsons came across a clue to their whereabouts in the records of the firm of William Garstin, now held in the Westminster Archives. On checking the details of William Crellin Pickersgill’s funeral arrangements he noticed a reference to a fee for depositing ashes in the catacombs at Kensal Green along with a charge for ‘polishing box and engraving plate’. A check of the Kensal Green registers then revealed this box was deposited in catacomb B, public vault 4, with two sets of ashes on 27 October 1887 - three weeks after William’s cremation at Woking.


Further investigation of the catacombs showed that the box was located high up on the fifth tier. The wooden shelf which had supported it had rotted away causing damage to the box. This did however reveal the ceramic urn inside along with an inscription plate for Mrs Pickersgill. [5]


To mark the 140th anniversary of their deposition at Kensal Green it was decided to commission a replacement casket and replace the rotten shelf with a stone one. Enquiries to the Church authorities showed that no special permission was required to do this as the ashes were not being disturbed. Kevin Denham, a carpenter based in the Borders, agreed to construct a replica case and this was on display in the West London Crematorium chapel before, during and after Brian’s lecture. The cost of the replacement brass plate attached to the front of the case was sponsored by the London Association of Funeral Directors. The new casket was subsequently placed in the catacombs, along with the urn of ashes, on 1 April.




Notes


(1) Some of the other signatories are listed at

https://www.cremation.org.uk/history-of-cremation-in-the-united-kingdom#declaration


(2) This pamphlet is available online at https://archive.org/details/b21704430


(3) Further details on Prof. Gorini’s early cremators can be found at http://www.museogorini.com/cremazione_eng.php


(4) See the original Dictionary of National Biography entry for her father-in-law, Henry William Pickersgill (1782-1875), and the revised entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.


(5) It remains unclear where Mrs Pickersgill’s ashes rested between March 1885 and October 1887.


Acknowledgements


I am grateful to Brian Parsons and Robert Stephenson for checking the facts contained in this article and for their involvement in arranging such an interesting programme at Kensal Green on 23 March.


Further Reading


Parsons, Brian. ‘The Cleansing Fire. Cremation and Kensal Green’ The Friends of Kensal Green Cemetery Magazine Vol. 78 (July), pp.9-15, 2015.


Parsons, Brian. Committed to the Cleansing Flame. The Development of Cremation in Nineteenth Century England. Reading: Spire Books, 2005.


Parsons, Brian and Jupp, Peter C. From Dust to Ashes. The Development of Cremation in England and Wales, 1874-2024. 2nd ed. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2025.


Parsons, Brian. ‘From Welbeck to Woking: William Garstin and the First Cremations’ Pharos International Vol. 71 No. 1, pp.3-8, 2005.


Parsons, Brian. ‘Well-known in Literary and Scientific Circles. Who was Mrs Pickersgill, the first person to be cremated at Woking?’ Pharos International Vol. 85 No. 4, pp.16-21, 2019.


Copyright © 2025 by John M. Clarke. All Rights Reserved