Sub Interment Burial
Looking for information on the practice of Sub Interments.
Here is a link to a page in the Burial order books, 1856-1901 showing the burial of Gertrude Buckley Hutchinson.
The headstone shows two other names that are also buried in the grave. (See Find A Grave page) though no inscription for Gertrude. I don't know of any family relationship between Gertrude and these other men, though I have yet to identify her maternal grandparents.
The payment info at the bottom of the page of the burial order itemizes: Sub Internment for 14 shillings, Removed Sides for 5 shillings, and "do plants" for 3 shillings 6 pence.
Two questions:
- Was Sub Internment common and were unrelated people buried in the same grave?
- What is "Removed Sides" shown on the burial order?
Many thanks for any insight that can be provided.
Grant Sikstrom
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Re: Sub Interment
A "clue" is the "Mode of Interment" above, which reads "Subsequent". So "Sub Interment" means "Subsequent Interment." However, that simply postpones the question, leaving me to wonder what difference there might be between that and other interments. At only 14 shillings, I suspect that the primary purpose of this description is one of charging for the burial - "obviously" it should be cheaper to add a further burial to the "top" of an existing grave - you don't need to dig so deep, the ground has already been broken once... I'm not totally clear on the possible variations because there seems to be several phrases that appear in that spot - not just (say) "Initial" and "Subsequent". There's "Single interment", for instance. Somebody would need to look at all the descriptions and costs to be confident of understanding what's going on.
"were unrelated people buried in the same grave?"
The classic case for this is a "common grave" controlled by the cemetery. Common graves are often and erroneously known as Pauper's Graves - there's no such thing, it's a Pauper's Funeral that people are thinking of. The right of burial in a Common Grave is owned by the cemetery and if a family can't afford to buy a plot for their own exclusive use, then the cemetery will use one of its own Common Graves for the burial - the family still has to pay for the burial. Over the years, each common grave will be used several times for completely unrelated people. Presumably the second and subsequent burials will be recorded as "Subsequent Interment".
So it may be that the (3 different) families of Gertrude Hutchinson, William T Carter and John Sanderson (the latter 2 being the other names on the gravestone) couldn't afford to buy a plot for the family's own use so paid Toxteth to bury them in one of the cemetery's common graves.
I'm not convinced that's the full story though, as the Carter and Sanderson families could afford a gravestone...
So while it's possible that all 3 belonged to one family, it seems more likely (but not certain) that we're talking common grave.
"Removed sides" - I suspect this describes the work that was done on the grave at Gertrude's burial. Maybe the grave had a set of low kerb stones around the edge that were removed at that point. I wonder whether "Do Plants" means that they did the plants on the grave, or whether it means "Ditto Plants", as in "Removed Plants" - that would sound like necessary work to dig out for another burial.
So I'm not totally certain of what's going on - looking for other burials in that grave might provide insight but since it's not indexed, that might be more trouble than it's worth. 😯
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I urge you to go to https://toxtethparkcemetery.co.uk/ and register there. This provides a (free) indexed search (with text only results) to Toxteth Park. It is (thanks guys!) possible to search on the Section and Grave, which for Gertrude are Section H and Grave 867. There are 6 people buried there from 1876 (William T Carter) via Gertrude Hutchinson to George Sanderson in 1904. Number 34 Carter St appears to link Gertrude and one of the other Sanderson burials.
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