1861 Bedlington Cemetery Napier Family

[Maggie/915]

Imagine this poor family . The death of so many children is a tragedy. 

[Canny lass]

Tragic!

...and all within the space of a couple of years - some of them within weeks of each other. Hard times, the latter half of the 1800s, with poor living conditions and epidemics of Typhus and whooping cough. 

[HIGH PIT WILMA]

Tragic isn't the word for it is it?...makes me wonder if,at that time,it was so commonplace,that they would expect at least one part of their family to die young,and also if they became so despairing,that they just accepted it, whole communities would be affected by plague etc,we were the lucky ones to have been born and immunised against so many of these terrible diseases.

St Cuthbert's Church has a few VERY interesting headstones from the old ages..the oldest I can think of is one where I took photos of in the 1960's,pleased I did cos last time I saw it,just a few years ago ,it had weathered so much,that the inscription was barely legible.

It has a Skull and crossbones in the centre,with Gargoyle's carved at each side of the Skull..and it was dated 1760 if I remember correctly.

I have often wondered what was the cause of death,and why such a gruesome looking Headstone?[ Death by plague?...or similar?]

When our two Sons were just wee Bairns,we  went to Scotland a lot of times for Summer Holidays.

One place we stayed at was up in the Mountains called "LeadHills"...an old Leadmining village...absoloutely ancient.

We went to the Churchyards,while we visited the old Churches,and almost every headstone had lists of very young children,who had died from Lead poisoning..a lot of them were employed from six years old,to climb up and sweep the flues clean,cos an adult wouldn't be able to fit into the narrow flue ways.

Made me wonder..why didn't they just build them so adults COULD get into them!! 

Stinks of greedy Mine-owners,employing cheap or free child labour.

That place had an eerie presence that Cath and me both felt..it was creepy..dilapidated looking buildings...not a soul to be seen..the whole area just one big slag heap,not like coalmining where at least we had a big pit heap....but just ONE!..this place was slag heaps everywhere we looked around us..obviously ancient and no organised transport system like rope haulage or owt like that to transport the slag waste.

We never went back!!  

[Canny lass]

14 hours ago, HIGH PIT WILMA said:

It has a Skull and crossbones in the centre,with Gargoyle's carved at each side of the Skull..and it was dated 1760 if I remember correctly.

I have often wondered what was the cause of death,and why such a gruesome looking Headstone?[ Death by plague?...or similar?]

As a child i was often in Eyemouth on family holidays. We kids were fascinated by what we called "the pirate's graveyard" because of all the skull and crossbones figures on the tombstones. We genuinely believed that this was where pirates were buried. However, we were later told by a scot that this was in fact a very popular thing to put on Scottish tombs (and even on crucifixes in churches) as a symbol of mortality - a reminder to the onlooker that we are not immortal and would go the same way as the bloke in the grave. Others preferred to display the symbol for immortality - an angel/cherub or just a pair of angel's wings. Really shattered my childhood illusions!