To find this little grave location so sad [TRIGGER WARNING]

[BlueandPinkSwan]

Our small local churchyard has been cleared by volunteers byself included and old graves of babies and very young children adopted, tidied up and planted with flowers. Looks nice and the little ones are remembered.
I was litter picking and found what I thought was a sheet of glass in some under growth well away from the other graves on the north side of the church, I cleared it to find a small grave with a granite covering of a 3 month old baby. Checked the church yard plans and there is no other burials near this one.
I work with family tree research as part of my job and looked up this child who had an usual name combo, they had no baptism records and buried in the north side where the sun traditionally illuminates for the shortest time of day.
There is so much space on the original church yard plans for burials the year this child was interred but seemingly shut away from other people buried there.
I know you don't have to be baptised to enter heaven but it seems this little child was being cast aside through no fault of their own.
Needless to say, I have cleared brambles and heck knows what from the immediate area, and now little one can have the sun for an hour or two a day shining on them and a small vase of flowers I'm going to replenish each week.
Perhaps should have put on chat but I feel detter for getting it out there.

Anglicans can have as many middle names as the parents wish. In my family two is normal - one from each side of the family. We aren't required to choose a saint's name.

I agree the middle names indicates that the child was much loved.

I am intrigued as to whether the surname was local.

As the child is buried in a Christian graveyard and has had a newer burial marker placed next to the original cross, I think we can be pretty sure that the child comes from a Christian culture that does mark and tend graves (if they can). 120 years later, it is unlikely that there is anyone left to care for the child's grave, but maybe it seems it was tended to once. I think I'd feel pretty happy about someone tending to my child's grave long after we are all dead.

That is completely untrue. While modern Britain has a multiethnic society, it wasn't a blank slate after WW2. It had a culture of its own with the same amount of regional variation that you find in any country. In 1906 it was (and still is) a predominantly Christian country with a Christian constitution. So much so that the maintenance of the churchyard is often the responsibility of the local council and not the actual church.

This is a lovely post about someone doing something quintessentially British - volunteering to tend their local Christian graveyard. Please don't make it about you, your culture or your identity issues.

I don't have "identity issues", how rude!

Religion isn't culture.

Me too 🌺

For my grandparents' grave (in a churchyard) we had a choice of four plots. We chose the one with a view of a favourite spot on the hills.

For my mother's grave (in a cemetery) we had a choice of two or three spots. We chose the one furthest from the giant and very ostentatious gravestones which were not to our or my mother's taste.

I was there for both of those conversations, one in 2002 and one in 2016, so can vouch that some of us definitely get some choice! Not a complete choice, but some options.

Of course you’re not going to buy flowers every single week and take them to a grave of a baby you don’t know. This is for self indulgence only, to brag online about. Please leave the family to grieve in peace.

What respect? The white settler entity america systematically murdered and ethnically cleansed a people, and celebrated doing so.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dehumanization#Native_Americans

Mount Rushmore, a white supremacist monument to this white settler entity, still exists. On it are carved two slave owners, washington and jefferson (the latter also a peadophile who raped his 15 year old African slave, one of the 600 human beings he owned to work his plantation of stolen Native land), lincoln ("I am not, nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people. I as much as any man am in favor of the superior position assigned to the white race") and t.roosevelt ("I don't go so far as to think that the only good Indians are dead Indians, but I believe nine out of ten are, and I shouldn't like to inquire too closely into the case of the tenth").

Adolf Hitler in 1928 on his admiration for america having "gunned down the millions of Redskins to a few hundred thousand, and now keep the modest remnant under observation in a cage", which he would use as a template.

On being dehumanized as "savages" in the white settler declaration, a Native leader: "Any holiday that would refer to my people in such a repugnant, racist manner is certainly not worth celebrating. [July Fourth] is a day we celebrate our resiliency, our culture, our languages, our children and we mourn the millions — literally millions — of indigenous people who have died as a consequence of American imperialism."

https://www.mic.com/articles/121671/native-americans-have-nothing-to-celebrate-on-july-4#.Qst75mbCL

Mutual respect? Give over. That white settler entity is a shitstain on humanity.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/05/facebook-declaration-of-independence-hate-speech

💯 @Genevieva . I find it tiresome that we are no longer allowed to be explicit about what British culture is today, but some seem to think that applies retrospectively too. In 1906 Britain was overwhelmingly Christian, especially for life’s big moments ie births marriages and deaths.

I think you over stepped @BlueandPinkSwan

You’re making this all about you and how it makes you feel sainted but the fact is, you know nothing about the deceased children and you’re making up stuff about their lives to suit your own narrative.

I’d be very angry if I discovered someone interfering with a family member’s grave. I think you should leave well alone.

Rubbish. None of my white British family are Christian so people like you should get back into your little Reform voting boxes and lock the lid after you.

Excuse me. I have never voted Conservative let alone Reform. But denying Britain’s Christian heritage is just ignorant.

In fairness, I think anyone who knew this baby are very, very long dead.

Dear me, what a miserable spirited - and deeply inaccurate, considering - post.

I think it’s normal to sometimes reflect on those who went before us and even show acknowledgment. Maybe buying weekly flowers is a bit of a stretch. I’ve just stayed in a house in Spain that’s about 200 years old and silently addressed the previous occupants to show respect.

What even if the grave was over 110 years ago and it had been neglected and forgotten about?

Why?

But you could find the OP’s other posts which she may not want you or her boss to see ?

I was going to say exactly the same thing, I found it heart wrenching when Tess wasn’t allowed to bury her baby on church grounds.

Agreed. A baby who was unbaptised would probably not have rated a churchyard burial, and a foundling or illegitimate baby wouldn't have rated a headstone at all. There's nothing in what the OP describes that suggests to me that this burial was somehow 'second rate' or indicated any lack of care.

In Ireland, until from the Counter-Reformation until well into the second half of the 20thc, unbaptised babies were not allowed to be buried in consecrated ground, and were buried without fanfare in little set aside bits of land, often in ruins, disused graveyards or churches, megalithic monuments, or borderlands between parishes -- they were also used for anyone else who couldn't be accommodated in consecrated ground, like suicides, shipwreck victims, executed criminals.

My grandfather sneaked his stillborn son into consecrated ground by night, and was still worrying about it and expressing guilt for it on his deathbed.

I saw an inscription on a grave from 1850 that really struck a chord and has stuck with me.

The first lines were
“Think of me as you pass by
where you now stand so once did I…”

It really brought home that life is so fleeting and the thoughts of the lady born in the 1700’s who died in 1850.

I like Samuel Pepys' diaries for this reason. They were 350 years ago, but in many ways it feels as if they could have been written yesterday. To be able to walk in his shoes and to find so much of life then so familiar makes the time that separates us vanish.

I often sit by an unmarked-but-known-about mass grave for infants and newborns. Hundreds of little ones are laid to rest there. Different times and poor families mean they are often to be found at the side of graveyards and older cemeteries. Local school children have spread wild flower seeds to mark the spot of this one but other than that you wouldn’t even know it’s there.

The rest of that cheery verse usually runs

As I am now, so you must be
Prepare for death and follow me.

In my local churchyard in Leicestershire, the gravestone with that on had a skeleton wielding a scythe carved on it.

Yes it did follow with that, I just preferred the start. It all felt very Victorian and dark after that!

It's starting to feel slightly racist, isn't it?