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BURIALS WITHIN THE CITY LIMITS, FORBIDDEN
Thousands Attend Cemetery Consecration
On this day July 3, 1855 Bishop John Thomas Mullock consecrated Mount Carmel Cemetery, St. John’s. Bishop Mullock wrote in his diary on this day:
“ Today I consecrated the cemetery at Quidi Vidi. Thousands were present. The weather awfully hot. Temperature 84 degrees in the shade.”
Up to the year 1849 all burials for all denominations were made in the town’s cemeteries. The Roman Catholic’s buried their dead in the Long’s Hill Cemetery located on what is now the site of the parking lot of St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church (The Kirk).
Discontent about the state of cemeteries within the boundary of the town of St. John’s began to surface shortly after the great fie of June 1846.
One of the effects of the Great Fire was reported in the Journal of the House of Assembly on July 14, 1846. The report stated:
“ Troops of starving dogs, infesting the town have become dangerous as well as to the living as to the dead, they have commenced desecrating the tombs of the cemetery …. And may be seen gnawing the bones of those who have been buried …. Pigs and goats infest in great numbers …. And the gravestones and monuments of the deceased are daily violated.”
On July 15, 1849 a Proclamation was issued by Governor, Sir J, Gaspard LeMarchant “forbidding any more burials with the city limits.” The Governor was responding to the fears of town residents that epidemics such as cholera and typhus were resulting from the internment of the dead in the town. The argument was that as bodies of the newly interred decomposed in the town cemeteries, their diseases were seeping into the wells that were the source of the water supply for town.
Governor, Sir J, Gaspard LeMarchant argued “as a very obvious method of improving the sanitary conditions of this town, I recommend having an act passed prohibiting any internments in the limits of this town…. “
In 1848, the Benevolent Irish Society took possession of John Dowsley’s property on the road to Bally Haly Farm, at the top of Kennas Hill, next to Sir William Archibald’s Retreat Cottage. In July 1849 Bishop Michael Anthony Fleming purchased ten acres of land adjoining Dowsley’s, facing Quidi Vidi Road for the purpose of a cemetery. He joined the two lots and made one large burial ground known as Mount Carmel Cemetery.
Cemetery Masses
The Archdiocese of St. John’s Cemetery Committee each year encourages individuals and families to remember those that have gone before them by taking time to attend to their family cemetery plots.
This year family and friends of the deceased in the cemeteries in the St. John’s area are encouraged to make a special effort to attend to the resting places of their loved ones.
For more information on this and other related subjects contact the Archives of the R.C. Archdiocese.
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