Ancestral Tourism 2: Public and Municipal Cemeteries

The emergence of large public cemeteries is a fascinating aspect of our social history, connecting with several other developments of the nineteenth century that will be familiar to local and family historians. The migrations and population booms of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries created not only a lack of housing for the living but also of burial grounds for the dead, and all the more so in the growing industrial towns and cities. The historic churchyard burial grounds posed problems on several fronts: they were generally small, overcrowded, and often laid out haphazardly; and as knowledge of hygiene and sanitation developed, there were concerns about the spread of disease, particularly since in towns and cities, these small burial grounds were generally alongside the church and surrounded by closely packed housing.