This article was originally published in the August 2003 edition of Soul Search, the journal of The Sole Society

In London, in the last years of the eighteenth century, the growing population and the high mortality rate, particularly amongst children, resulted in the old parish burial grounds becoming grossly overcrowded.

In 1793 the churchyard of St Giles-in-the-Fields was said to contain “a great square pit with many coffins piled one upon the other, all exposed to sight and smell…. So many foetid corpses, tacked between some slight boards, dispensing their dangerous effluvia over the capital.”

London was late in the provision of proper cemeteries, so some inner London parishes resorted to purchasing land outside their boundaries. St Giles-in-the-Fields eventually acquired a few acres next to the burial ground of St Pancras church in Pancras Road.

The parish of St Martin-in-the-Fields bought land in Pratt Street, St Pancras, and between 1806 and 1856, buried its dead in what became the Camden Town Cemetery. At first, many of the burials were from the workhouse, but in later years they came from many different parishes in London, Middlesex and Surrey. More than 18,000 burials are recorded at the Pratt Street site, of which the following are of greatest interest to us.

Ann Sewel

Aged 62

13 January 1808

John Seywell

Aged 53

11 January 1812

Elizabeth Sewell

Aged 68

20 September 1814

Robert Sewell

Aged 58

9 January 1816

Sophia Sewell

Aged 10 months

28 May 1818

Mary Sewell

Aged 68

14 April 1820

Joseph Sewell

Aged 63

18 June 1834

Ann Sewell

Aged 65½

22 December 1841

Frederick Sewell

Aged 3 weeks

16 July 1846

Thomas Sewell

Aged 7 months

26 August 1852

Alfred Sewell

Aged 10 weeks

2 March 1854