Historic Graves at Hampstead Cemetery

Wikimedia, which hosts Wikipedia and an online database of copyright-free media files, is running a competition this month in which it asks photographers to take pictures of historic monuments. I contributed a couple of photos a few weeks ago, and realized that many of the monuments in my area that had not yet been photographed are in Hampstead Cemetery.

So yesterday, on my daily outing with Olga, I brought the camera and filled some gaps in Wikimedia's monuments database. It was interesting to see which graves and headstones are considered most historically significant; I learned a lot about the cemetery and who's buried there.

Above, for example, is the rather nondescript tomb of Dr. Joseph Lister, who developed techniques to prevent infection during medical procedures and is often considered the father of modern surgery. (Listerine was named after him.) Someone left a few chestnuts on his grave, to show they'd visited; Olga thought they might be treats.

I bet I've walked past Lister's grave a hundred times but I had no idea that's who was buried there.

This one, the grave of Parliament member William Randal Cremer, is buried in foliage and in an area where you wouldn't see it unless you went looking. Cremer was a pacifist who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1903 for his advocacy of international arbitration. (Apparently others weren't listening, as World War I broke out not too many years after his death in 1908.)

This, on the other hand, is a very conspicuous monument, probably the cemetery's largest. It was erected by an Italian chef to his wife, Martha Bianchi, who died in childbirth in 1936. On either side of the dark central doorway -- which simply leads to the back of the monument but surely must represent a passage to the beyond -- are relief panels showing the couple with their baby, on the left, and Martha Bianchi being escorted to heaven by angels, on the right.

As if the images above aren't sad enough, the Bianchi family endured further traumas in World War II. The whole harrowing story is here. In the end Cesare Bianchi wasn't even buried with his wife in their monumental plot.

I've photographed this monument before but I never knew the story behind it.

This is the monument of Ardath de Sales Stean, an American dancer who died in 1928 while crossing the Atlantic to England on the White Star liner Homeric. Newspaper accounts at the time said she died after an "operation," so whatever happened onboard the ship must have been sudden and unexpected. More here.

This is probably my favorite grave in Hampstead Cemetery. It's the tomb of Arthur Frankau and his wife Julia. The Frankaus were prosperous dry goods merchants who eventually got involved in marketing tobacco products, and Julia was a novelist who wrote under the pen name Frank Danby. Their son Gilbert also became a novelist, as did their granddaughter Pamela. I love the black granite, the mosaic sun and star, and the clean lines and railings.

Joseph Maas was apparently a renowned opera singer. A tenor, he died in 1886 at the age of 38, after he caught a cold that developed into rheumatic fever.

Here's the Egyptian-style tomb of James Wilson, known as Wilson Pasha, a British engineer who spent more than 40 years working for the Egyptian government.

And finally, there's the beautiful terra cotta Celtic cross grave marker of Joan Moggridge, who was eight years old when she died in 1904. The listing notes nothing about Moggridge or her family; only that the memorial is "a fine example of its type."

These are not all the historically listed graves in the cemetery; there were several more. They made for a very interesting walk!