A Walk from London to FulhamCroker, Thomas Crofton
History
A Walk from London to Fulham
Croker, Thomas Crofton
London (England) -- Description and travel
Proceeding on our road towards Fulham, the next point which claims
attention is the extensive inclosure of the West of London and
Westminster Cemetery Company,—a company incorporated by act of parliament
1st of Victoria, cap. 180. The burial-ground was consecrated on the 12th
of June, 1840, and extends from the Fulham Road to what is called,
generally, “Sir John Scott Lillie’s Road,” and sometimes “Brompton Lane
Road,” which, in fact, is a continuation, to North End, Fulham, of the
line of the Old Brompton Road,—the point, as the reader may recollect,
that we turned off from at the Bell and Horns, in order to follow the
main Fulham Road to Little Chelsea. The public way on the east of the
burial-ground is called Honey Lane, and on the west the boundary is the
pathway by the side of the Kensington Canal. The architect of the chapel
and catacombs is Mr. Benjamin Baud. The cemetery is open for public
inspection, free of charge, from seven in the morning till sunset, except
on Sundays, when it is closed till half-past one o’clock. The first
interment took place on the 18th of June, 1840, from which time, to the
22nd of November, there were thirty-four burials, the average number
being then four per week. It is scarcely necessary to add, that a
considerable average increase has taken place; but the first step in
statistics is always curious.
One of the most interesting instances of longevity which the annals of
the West of London and Westminster Cemetery Company present occurs on a
stone in the north-east corner of the burial-ground, where the age
recorded of Louis Pouchée is 108; but this does not agree with the burial
entry made by the Rev. Stephen Reid Cattley—“Louis Pouchée, of St.
Martin’s in the Fields, viz., 40 Castle Street, Leicester Square, buried
Feb. 21, 1843, aged 107.”
This musical patriarch, however, according to a statement in the ‘Medical
Times,’ {128} was admitted as a patient to St. George’s Hospital November
24, 1842. January 4, went out, and died, about three months afterwards,
of diarrhoea and dysentery.
Another instance of longevity, though not so extraordinary, is one which
cannot be contemplated without feeling how much influence the
consciousness of honest industry in the human mind has upon the health
and happiness of the body. A gravestone near a public path on the
south-east side of the burial-ground marks the last resting place of
Francis Nicholson, landscape-painter, who died the 6th March, 1844, aged
91 years.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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