Old Sunderland's standing-room-only cemetery with 100,000 burials

Sunderland Echo

A tranquil spot by the former Holy Trinity Church in Sunderland's east end - now culture venue Seventeen Nineteen - was once a cemetery where 100,000 people were buried. Today, there are only three visible gravestones - one for a hero who may not be buried there at all.

Transcript

00:00 The graveyard here beside Holy Trinity's church in Sunderland's East End, it's now called

00:04 1719, is deceptively tranquil. It's a very empty place, it's peace and quiet itself.

00:12 There are only three visible headstones in here, however, an estimated 100,000 people

00:18 lie in there.

00:19 So how did 100,000 bodies come to be here? The churchyard covers roughly the same area

00:24 as two football pitches. A nearby notice claims it was the country's largest. Nevertheless,

00:29 100,000 is a huge number, even for two football pitches. How did they manage to bury all those

00:36 folk? How come so many died?

00:39 Firstly, the graveyard was used for 135 years. It opened for business, as it were, alongside

00:45 the church in 1719. The last burial was in 1854. By then, legislation had forced Sunderland

00:51 into creating purpose-built cemeteries, Bishop Williamouth and Mayer Knolls.

00:56 Still, that averages annually at 740, a great many for the population of Sunderland at the

01:02 time, considerably less than it is now. One reason for this high mortality rate was cholera.

01:08 Very popular, sweeping regularly throughout the population until 1860.

01:13 The logistics of packing 100,000 people into here are very interesting, or to put it another

01:18 way, gruesome. Many of the 100,000 aren't in coffins, they would make their final journey

01:23 here in one, but were placed inside the grave and then the coffins reused. This sadly was

01:30 the fate of many inhabitants of a nearby workhouse.

01:33 19th century coffin maker, the delightful Jackie Hewitt, had a one-size-fits-all approach.

01:39 Every coffin this charming artisan produced was designed for a 5 foot 8 inch body. The

01:45 deceased who had carelessly grown beyond that height had their ankles broken and their feet

01:51 tucked in. Lovely. Eventually it was conceded that the graves should have been daber.

01:56 The first diggers were not thinking 135 years ahead. A partial solution was to move the

02:02 bodies upright. It is standing room only.

02:06 Previously many headstones could be seen. Virtually all of them have been removed, in

02:11 fact there are only three, helping to create the illusion that very little ever happened here.

02:16 This obelisk stands in honour of John Dixon, pharmacist and bigwig. The monument doesn't

02:21 exactly bombard the reader with information, stating that Dixon died aged 32 in 1852 and

02:27 was "followed to the grave by a large number of friends and inhabitants". Quite what they

02:33 mean by inhabitants, we wouldn't like to say.

02:35 The second visible grave is this one, it's that of the Reverend Robert Grey, 1787 to

02:41 1838 and he was venerated for his tireless care for the many cholera victims. He lies

02:47 here with his four children. As we said the graveyard is actually officially Grey Memorial

02:52 Gardens and Grey Road in Hendon, it's in that direction, not very far, is named after him too.

02:57 But there's no doubt who gets top billing in this graveyard. This is the headstone of

03:02 the Sunderland swashbuckler Jack Crawford. Born in the East End in 1775 he was press

03:07 ganged into the Royal Navy in 1796. On October 11th the following year aboard HMS Venerable

03:14 he was involved in the Britain vs Netherlands Battle of Camperdown off the Dutch coast.

03:18 As the battle roared the colours and signal flags on Venerable's mast were downed by

03:23 cannon fire. To quell fears of surrender Jack Crawford clambered up the main mast and nailed

03:29 the flags back up in an "is that all you've got" gesture to the enemy. Hence the phrase

03:34 "nailing your colours to the mast". He was later presented to George III and given £30

03:40 annual pension. Not bad then. However he died penniless in Sunderland in 1831 and was buried

03:47 in a pauper's grave. But after a public whip round in 1888 he was given the impressive headstone we

03:53 can see today. It bears the inscription "The grave of Jack Crawford, the hero of Camperdown" yet

03:58 doubts remain as to whether he actually rests here. Key aspects of Jack Crawford's life are

04:03 disputed but as proof either way is now impossible there seems no harm in believing the most appealing

04:08 version. The graveyard has an association albeit almost certainly apocryphal with the infamous

04:14 grave robbers Burke and Hare. I'll give you a little bit about them. William Burke and William Hare,

04:19 two Williams, were Irishmen born in the 1790s. They moved separately to Edinburgh in the 1820s.

04:25 They met and began to sell human corpses to an anatomist for experiments. After selling the first

04:31 body, a man who had died of natural causes, they realised that demand outstripped supply. Their

04:36 simple but highly questionable solution to this age-old economic quandary was to murder at least

04:42 15 people then sell them to remarkably incurious members of the medical profession. There's a sign

04:48 on Sunderland's nearby town moor which says William Burke and William Hare were thought to

04:52 practice their trade in Sunderland. There is no evidence that Burke and Hare ever committed

04:57 murders in Sunderland but it's still got a story. But there is at least one authenticated instance

05:02 of body snatching at this site. On December the 24th 1823, on one of his less merry Christmases,

05:08 a Captain Hedley buried his 10 year old daughter Elizabeth here. Five days later for uncertain

05:14 reasons he wanted to move her to another part of the churchyard. But Elizabeth's coffin was found

05:19 empty along with the body of a two-year-old it had been removed. Suspicion fell upon two strangers.

05:24 Observed for a month, hanging around at funerals and not just for the buffet.

05:28 They were John Thompson of Dundee and John Weatherley of Renfrew. Elizabeth's body was

05:34 found at the pair's lodging covered with straw, wrapped and addressed to Mr James Jamieson of

05:40 Leith Street, Edinburgh. There is little to be said for Thompson and Weatherley other than their

05:45 touching faith in the efficacy of the royal meal. Human teeth and some receipts were also found. The

05:49 body of a Mrs Corner was also realised to be missing from the yard. They were therefore presumed to

05:54 bear responsibility for that too. Public anger at perceived leniency towards criminals is nothing

05:59 new. The pair were tried at Durham Sessions, sentenced to three months imprisonment and fined

06:04 sixpence each. A final mention must go to Mr Page who was Holy Trinity's official gravedigger

06:10 in 1822. This one-legged gentleman could often be seen around Georgian Sunderland hobbling along on

06:16 his crutch followed by his faithful assistant pushing a coffin barrow. He lived in Coronation

06:22 Street not far from here and above the 'kitty cells' as they were known where drunks and vagabonds

06:27 would be locked up awaiting their court appearances. Mr Page was distinctly unpopular among the drunk

06:32 and vagabond community as he was often keeping them awake by possibly deliberately clumping

06:38 around noisily upstairs as he walked around on his crutch. Details of how a one-legged man

06:43 managed to dig graves have been lost in the midst of time.

06:46 you

06:47 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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