‘Tho’ lost to sight, to memory dear’: pragmatism, sentimentality and working-class attitudes towards the grave, c.1875-1914

Abstract

This essay explores the significance of the grave within working-class cultures of death and bereavement. Drawing on little-used municipal burial board records from the northwest of England, it analyses a culture of trading in grave space alongside the apparent neglect of grave space in the aftermath of burial. I argue that attitudes towards burial space were informed by pragmatism. This need not conflict, however, with sentiment. Indeed, placing the private grave within a broader context of attitudes towards pauper burial and forms of commemoration outside the cemetery, working-class attitudes towards the grave indicate not so much a culture of ambivalence towards the dead, but, rather a flexible and diverse culture of loss.