American Pie: Rest In Peace.Com
...Of all the web pages I have encountered, the one that stopped me dead in my tracks, no pun intended, was one for
my home town cemetery! More than just surprise at the actual existence of a cemetery web page, it was the heading that I found so arresting. In a wonderful example of unconscious, graveyard humor, the headline says “Welcome to Sheffield General Cemetery.”...
John Merchant's Web explorations took him on a surprise journey to unhealthier past times.
More of John's varied and invariably entertaining columns can be read by clicking on American Pie in the menu on this page.
These days it sometimes seems that everything and everyone has a web page. I’m an exception, but only because I can’t quite reconcile the cost with its usefulness. If I’d written a couple of novels and wanted to promote them, or had a philosophy to share, I could perhaps justify the expense, but I haven’t and therefore I can’t.
Web pages come in an unbelievable variety of styles and functionality: interactive, non-interactive, user-friendly, informative, and baffling. The ones I find really irritating are what I have come to call the corporate wind-bags, and the very worst of these are the ones that start with swirling graphics and space music that go on for what seems to be minutes. Too late I discover the tiny print in one corner that says “Skip.”
Then there are the others that advertise a product I wish to purchase, but when I get to the point of wanting to know price and availability, ask me to plug in my postal code to find “A Dealer Near You.” Then the dealer near me turns out to be 350 miles away! I guess my favorite web pages are the reference sources that provide me with a wealth of information.
These are the ones I turn to that make my writing task so much easier, and level the playing field when I’m competing with staff writers who are backed by company archives and researchers. “Answers.com,” “Convert Anything,” and “Ref Desk” are just a few that I plunder on a regular basis. I can sit at my desk and be a pundit on just about any topic.
But of all the web pages I have encountered, the one that stopped me dead in my tracks, no pun intended, was one for my home town cemetery! More than just surprise at the actual existence of a cemetery web page, it was the heading that I found so arresting. In a wonderful example of unconscious, graveyard humor, the headline says “Welcome to Sheffield General Cemetery.”
I could easily imagine a reception committee of solemn ushers in long black coats and shiny toppers lining the driveway as I enter, with their black gloved hands extended. But joking aside, the web page contains a rich fund of information. It will tell you about the cemetery’s history from its beginnings in 1836, just after the end of the Napoleonic Wars, to the moon landings in 1970, eight years after which the cemetery was closed for burials.
In addition to the cemetery’s general history, gencem.org also contains a treasure chest of information about its residents. There are 290 pages listing the first 6000 burials, the very first of which was Mary Ann Fish, who died in1836 of “Consumption” at age 24. She was the Cemetery’s lone occupant until, one month later, Mrs. John Whewell, aged 29, joined her. It must have been comforting to have company.
The web page also contains 289 pages listing the plot owners. Some plots contain as many as eleven people. The list of burials provides an amazing wealth of detail about each person, including date and place of birth, occupation, parents and their occupation, and even the name of the person providing the information. But of all the data listed, the column that fascinates me the most is the Cause of Death.
Like many people around my age, I find myself paying more attention to the obituaries in the newspaper than ever I did in the past, and particularly the cause of death. When a friend of my wife’s mother died in her 80’s, my wife asked what she had died of. “What do you think? Old age of course,” her mother retorted. Modern diagnostics and forensic technology today allow a much sharper scientific definition of what people die from, though I wonder how scientific it will seem a century from now.
The listings under Cause of Death on gencem.org are a strong reminder of how far medicine has come since Napoleon’s time. Luke Arnold, a Publican (Pub owner), died of “Water on the Chest.” Perhaps he was so punished for diluting his ale. Mary Creswick, an infant, died of a “Visitation from God.” Andrew Lindsay succumbed to “Bladder Inflammation,” and Sarah Ann Rowley died of just plain “Inflammation.”
In among these vague suppositions as to the cause of death are some very specific and chilling causes: “Small Pox,” “Measles” and “Hooping Cough” [sic.]. Astoundingly, on a page of twenty names, the oldest is only 52, and the average age for all people on the page 8.5! Twelve are aged 18 and under, which speaks volumes about life expectancy in those days. They would have been astounded to know that they would live on through electronic media.
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