Yorkshire Almanac Eliza Hawley inaugurates Sheffield’s new crematorium at the City Road Cemetery

24 April 1905: Eliza Hawley inaugurates Sheffield’s new crematorium at the City Road Cemetery

Sheffield’s Grade II-listed crematorium (Bilbo 2010/04/13).

Sheffield Daily Telegraph. 1905/04/24. First Cremation in Sheffield. Sheffield Daily Telegraph. Reproduction by kind permission of Chris Hobbs. Get it:

Unedited excerpt

If an excerpt is used in the book, it will be shorter, edited and, where applicable, translated.

CITY AND SUBURBS.
FIRST CREMATION IN SHEFFIELD,
The new Corporation Crematorium at City Road Cemetery, Sheffield, was used for the first time yesterday, when the body of Mrs. Eliza Hawley, of 14, Birkendale, Upperthorpe, was cremated. The event aroused great interest, and the chapel attached to the crematorium was crowded with people, who, however, saw little more than is possible at an ordinary funeral service. The body was enclosed in a shell of canary wood, which was placed on the catafalque, near the doors leading from the chapel to the cremation chamber. The Rev. H. F. Greenwood conducted the service of the Church of England, and, as the committal sentences were being read, the coffin was drawn by mechanical means into the cremation chamber. There a heat of about 1,800 degrees Fahr. was employed, and the body was reduced to ashes in about an hour and a half. The cremation was success fully carried out, under the supervision of Mr. J. Platts (cemetery superintendent), and others present in the chamber were Dr. Reckless (Mrs. Hawley’s medical attendant), Councillor Alfred Taylor (chairman of the Burial Grounds Sub-committee of the City Council), Councillor Wardley, Mr. Gibson (representing the Town Clerk), and Mr. C. M. Hadfield (architect). The ashes were deposited in an urn, which is to find a resting-place in the north arcade. The arrangements for the funeral were carried out by Messrs. Joseph Tomlinson and Sons (Ltd.). Another cremation will take place tomorrow.

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

Comment

Chris, as ever, is a mine of information. I for my part wonder why her estate didn’t go to her husband.

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Comment

Chris, as ever, is a mine of information. I for my part wonder why her estate didn’t go to her husband.

Something to say? Get in touch

25 May 1728: King Jessop, the fighting rector of Treeton (Rotherham), is buried at Sheffield, and remembered for his punch and his parody

7 September 1874: A bell-ringing contest at All Saints Church, Wath upon Dearne prompts an outraged editorial in the trade journal

1 February 1893: Alderman Herbert Bramley (Liberal) can’t see why Sheffield, on the 50th anniversary of its municipal charter, should want to become a city

27 October 1866: Dr Hook, Dean of Chichester, writes to his wife from his old vicarage in Leeds

22 October 1674: Barbara Lee dies and – says her epitaph – is then buried upright under the fireplace of St James’ Church, Norton, Sheffield

29 November 1880: A Sheffield inquest deals less with the death of James Brady than with the storage of his corpse

14 April 1792: The ballad of Spence Broughton, hung this day at the York Tyburn for robbing the Sheffield and Rotherham mail

11 March 1864: An inhabitant of Bacon Island survives the Great Sheffield Flood

26 December 1570: Edmund Grindal, Puritan archbishop of York, orders the removal of rood-lofts (and their superstitious images), and the erection of pulpits

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Comment

At some stage in 1571, either on the eve of or during a metropolitan visitation to his wayward flock, Grindal issued yet more injunctions:

By the heeding of which injunctions one may observe, how old Popish customs still prevailed in these northern quarters, and therefore what need there was of this general visitation; as the frequent use and veneration of crosses, months minds, obits and anniversaries, the chief intent whereof was praying for the dead; the superstitions used in going the bounds of the parishes; morris dancers and minstrels coming into the church in service-time, to the disturbance of God’s worship, putting the consecrated bread into the receiver’s mouth, as among the Papists the Priest did the wafer; crossing and breathing upon the elements in the celebration of the Lord’s Supper, and elevation; oil, tapers, and spittle in the other sacrament of Baptism; pauses and intermissions in reading the services of the Church; praying Ave-Maries and Pater-nosters upon beads; setting up candles in the churches to the Virgin Mary on Candlemas-day, and the like.

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