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The Impact of Legislative Reform on Baptisms, Marriages and Burials 1836–52, with particular reference to London

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 June 2023

W. M. Jacob
W. M. Jacob*
Affiliation:
London
*
*E-mail: wmjacob20@gmail.com.
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Abstract

This article considers, with particular reference to London, the impact of legislation during the second quarter of the nineteenth century on the churches’ practice of rites of passage in relation to births, marriages and deaths. It investigates the religious, political and social reasons for legislation relating to these rites which many contemporaries and subsequent historians considered an attack on the Church of England and evidence of advancing secularization. It shows that despite significant constitutional, social and religious changes during these years, religiously motivated politicians, sympathetic to the established church, achieved legislation introducing general registration of births, marriages and deaths, and providing for more satisfactory burial of London's rapidly growing population in the context of a high death rate. While satisfying some grievances of religious Dissenters, this protected the established church's interests, and evidence suggests that a high proportion of London's population continued to access its rites of passage for baptism, marriage and burial.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 59: THE CHURCHES AND RITES OF PASSAGE , June 2023 , pp. 265 - 288
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Ecclesiastical History Society.

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References

1 Lord Hardwicke's Marriage Act of 1753 and Sir George Rose's Act of 1812 had made modifications to requirements for registration and introduced printed registers. For a detailed discussion of the 1753 Marriage Act, see Outhwaite, R. B., Clandestine Marriage in England 1500–1850 (London, 1995), 75–167Google Scholar; Francis, Keith A., ‘“An Absurd, a Cruel, a Scandalous and a Wicked [Bill]”: The Church of England and the (Clandestine) Marriage Act of 1753’, in Trim, David J. B. and Balderstone, Peter J., eds, Cross, Crown and Community: Religion, Government and Culture in Early Modern Britain 1400–1800 (Bern, 2004), 277–307Google Scholar.

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9 F. H. W. Sheppard, ed., Survey of London, 37: North Kensington (London, 1973), 333–9.

10 Chris Brookes and Elliot Brent, Mortal Remains: The History and Present State of the Victorian and Edwardian Cemetery (Exeter, 1989); Ralph Houlbrooke, ed., Death, Ritual and Bereavement (London, 1989); Deborah Elaine Wiggins, ‘The Burial Acts and Cemetery Reform in Great Britain 1815–1914’ (PhD thesis, Texas Technical University, 1991); Julie Rugg, ‘Rise of the Cemetery Company’; John Pinfold, ‘The Green Ground’; Peter C. Jupp, ‘Enon Chapel: No Way for the Dead’; Julie Rugg, ‘The Origin and Progress of Cemetery Establishment in Britain’, all in Peter C. Jupp and Glennys Howarth, eds, The Changing Face of Death: Historical Accounts of Death and Disposal (Basingstoke, 1997), 76–89, 90–104, 105–19; Mary Elizabeth Hotz, ‘Down among the Dead: Edwin Chadwick's Burial Reform Discourse in Mid-Nineteenth-Century England’, Victorian Literature and Culture 29 (2001), 21–38; Jupp, Dust to Ashes; James Stevens Curl, ed., Kensal Green Cemetery: The Origins and Development of the General Cemetery of All Souls’ Kensal Green, London 1824–2001 (Chichester, 2001); John M. Clarke, London's Necropolis: A Guide to Brookwood Cemetery (Stroud, 2004); Catherine Arnold, Necropolis: London and its Dead (London, 2006); Darren Beach, London's Cemeteries (London, 2006).

11 Thomas W. Laqueur, The Work of the Dead: A Cultural History of Mortal Remains (Princeton, NJ, 2015).

12 See W. E. Tate, The Parish Chest: A Study of the Records of Parochial Administration in England (Cambridge, 1960), 44–50.

13 Machin, Politics and the Churches, 8, 21–2.

14 See: <https//www.anglican.net:doctrines:1604-canon-law>, last accessed 7 December 2022. Canon 68 forbade clergy to refuse burial to any except suicides, excommunicates and the unbaptized, as in the rubric of the Book of Common Prayer Order for the Burial of the Dead.

15 See Bernard Lord Manning, The Protestant Dissenting Deputies (Cambridge, 1952), 261–75.

16 The British Association was founded in 1831 by William Vernon Harcourt, a canon residentiary of York and a distinguished geologist: see Jack Morrell, ‘Harcourt, William Venables Vernon (1789–1873)’, ODNB, online edn (2004), at: <https://doi-org.lonlib.idm.oclc.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/12249>.

17 Cullen, ‘Making of the Civil Registration Act’, 46–9.

18 For the Ecclesiastical Commissions see G. F. A. Best, Temporal Pillars: Queen Anne's Bounty, the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, and the Church of England (Cambridge, 1964), 296–347.

19 Cullen, ‘Making of the Civil Registration Act’, 50–6; Richard Brent, Liberal Anglican Politics: Whiggery, Religion and Reform 1830–1841 (Oxford, 1987), 252–62.

20 See Brent, Liberal Anglican Politics, 65–103.

21 For Russell's religious sympathies see John Prest, ‘Russell, John [formerly Lord John Russell], first Earl Russell (1792–1878)’, ODNB, online edn (2004), at: <https://doi-org.lonlib.idm.oclc.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/21764>; Brent, Liberal Anglican Politics, 56–63, 137.

22 For Peel's strong Anglican sympathies, see Machin, Politics and the Churches, 48–9.

23 For reports of the numerous parliamentary debates about registration bills, see Parl. Deb. (3rd series), 25 February 1834 (vol. 21, cols 776–89); 3 March 1834 (vol. 21, cols 994–9); 17 March 1835 (vol. 26, cols 1073–1180); 15 April 1836 (vol. 32, cols 1087–92, 1093–1101); 13 June 1836 (vol. 34, cols 130–45, 490–4); 11 July 1836 (vol. 35, cols 79–89); 21 July 1836 (vol. 35, cols 375–6); 28 July 1836 (vol. 35, cols 604–6); 1 August 1836 (vol. 35, cols 689–92).

24 Nicholas Dixon, ‘The Activity and Influence of the Established Church in England, c.1800–1837’ (PhD thesis, University of Cambridge, 2019), 83–5.

25 London, LMA, P82/GIS/A/02/012–013, St Giles-in-the-Fields, Baptism Registers, February 1837 – March 1840, March 1840 – May 1841; P82/GIS/A/03/012–013, St Giles-in the-Fields, Marriage Registers, July 1837 – May 1840, May 1840 – April 1842.

26 See M. H. Port, Six Hundred New Churches: The Church Building Commission 1818–1856 (London, 1961), 25–6, 37.

27 London, Tower Hamlets Local History Library, LC2203, Bethnal Green Churches and Schools Fund Report, 1854 (n.pl., 1854), 94.

28 Report of the Select Committee of the House of Lords appointed to inquire into the Deficiency of Means of Spiritual Instruction and Places of Worship in the Metropolis and in other Populous Districts in England and Wales, especially in tbe Mining and Manufacturing Districts and to consider the fittest means of meeting the Difficulties of the case, 18 June 1858 (London, 1858), 4.

29 Ibid. 67.

30 Ibid. 34.

31 Bethnal Green Churches and Schools Fund Report 1854, photocopy of an unpaginated letter of 25 April 1859 from the rector of St Matthew's, Bethnal Green, to Henry Mackenzie, vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields, pasted into the back cover.

32 Report of the Select Committee of the House of Lords, 200.

33 LMA, P82/GIS/A/04/014–015, St Giles-in-the-Fields Burial Register, March 1838 – May 1840, May 1840 – August 1841.

34 Bridget Cherry and Nikolaus Pevsner, Buildings of England. London 4: North (London, 1998), 607.

35 Rugg, ‘Origin and Progress of Cemetery Establishment’, 111.

36 St Marylebone's burial ground chapel survives as St John's Wood parish church.

37 See Pinfold, ‘Green Ground’, 80–4.

38 For ‘body snatching’, see Ruth Richardson, Death, Dissection and the Destitute (London, 1988).

39 Laqueur, Work of the Dead, 217–27.

40 See Rugg, ‘Rise of the Cemetery Company’, 25–187; see also, for the establishment of a cemetery in a provincial town, Jim Morgan, ‘The Burial Question in Leeds in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries’, in Houlbrooke, ed., Death, Ritual and Bereavement, 95–104, at 96–9.

41 See Rugg, ‘Rise of the Cemetery Company’, 158–87.

42 Robert J. Moulder, ‘Carden, George Frederick (1798–1874)’, ODNB, online edn (2004), at: <https://doi-org.lonlib.idm.oclc.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/59472>.

43 For London joint-stock cemetery companies, see Brookes, Mortal Remains, 11–29; Rugg, ‘Rise of the Cemetery Company’, 204–37. Rugg has pointed out that although London cemeteries have received the most attention from historians, they were exceptional in having a profit motive.

44 See James Stevens Curl, ‘The General Cemetery Company 1833–1842’, in idem, ed., Kensal Green Cemetery, 80–106; Rugg, ‘Rise of the Cemetery Company’, 185.

45 Jupp, ‘Enon Chapel’, 92–7; idem, Dust to Ashes, 26.

46 Rugg, ‘Rise of the Cemetery Company’, 250–79,

47 See Ruth Richardson and James Stevens Curl, ‘George Frederick Carden and the Genesis of the General Cemetery Company’; Curl, ‘The Architectural Competition of 1831–2 and its Aftermath’; and idem, ‘General Cemetery Company’, all in idem, ed., Kensal Green Cemetery, 22–46, 50–77, 80–106.

48 LMA, P82/GIS/A/04/014–015, St Giles-in-the-Fields, Burial Registers, March 1838 – May 1840, May 1840 – August 1841.

49 For Abney Park, see Cherry and Pevsner, Buildings of London 4, 536–7.

50 Rugg, ‘Rise of the Cemetery Company’, 228.

51 John Pinfold, ‘Walker, George Alfred (1807–1884)’, ODNB, online edn (2004), at: <https://doi-org.lonlib.idm.oclc.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/28484>. Only in 1858 was registration of medical practitioners established, but unqualified practice was not prohibited: see Christopher Lawrence, Medicine in the Making of Modern Britain (London, 1994), 16–25, 32–42.

52 Pinfold, ‘Green Ground’, 84, quoting House of Commons Select Committee Report, Parliamentary Papers 1842, QQ. 1109–18, 2412–13, 2437–41.

53 The Builder 4 (1846), 281, quoted in Curl, Victorian Celebration of Death, 135.

54 For Chadwick, see Peter Mandler, ‘Chadwick, Sir Edwin (1800–1890)’, ODNB, online edn (2004), at: <https://doi-org.lonlib.idm.oclc.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/5013>.

55 A Report on the Results of a Special Enquiry into the Practice of Interment in Towns, made at the Request of Her Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for the Home Department, Parliamentary Papers 1843, vol. 12, col. 509.

56 Sir John Simon, City of London Medical Reports: Special Report on Intramural Interments (1852), in E. Royston Pike, ed., Human Documents of the Victorian Golden Age (1850–1875) (London, 1967), 286–7.

57 See Rugg, ‘Rise of the Cemetery Company’, 204–37.

58 H. C. G. Matthew, ‘Mackinnon, Sir William, baronet (1784–1870)’, ODNB, online edn (2021), at: <https://doi-org.lonlib.idm.oclc.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/17619>.

59 John Wolffe, ‘Cooper, Anthony Ashley, seventh earl of Shaftesbury (1801–1885)’, ODNB, online edn (2004), at: <https://doi-org.lonlib.idm.oclc.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/6210>.

60 John Wolffe, ‘Inglis, Sir Robert Harry, second baronet (1786–1855)’, ODNB, online edn (2004), at: <https://doi-org.lonlib.idm.oclc.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/14406>; E. M. Forster, Marianne Thornton, 1797–1887: A Domestic Biography (London, 1956).

61 Jupp, Dust to Ashes, 26.

62 See Cullen, Statistical Movement, 39–41.

63 ‘An Act for consolidating in One Act certain Provisions usually contained in Acts authorizing the making of Cemeteries’, 1847 (10 & 11 Vict., c. 65).

64 Extramural Burial. The Three Schemes: I The London Clergy Plan. II The Board of Health or Erith Plan. III The Woking Necropolis Plan, with some General Remarks on the same (London, 1850), 3–9.

65 Anita McConnell, ‘Broun, Sir Richard (1801–1858)’, ODNB, online edn (2004), at: <https://doi-org.lonlib.idm.oclc.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/3595>.

66 Clarke, London's Necropolis, 1–22. Clarke appears unaware of Broun's notoriety and his financial sharp practices.

67 See Boyd Hilton, ‘Whiggery, Religion and Social Reform: The Case of Lord Morpeth’, HistJ 37 (1994), 829–59; R. K. Webb, ‘Smith, (Thomas) Southwood (1788–1861)’, ODNB, online edn (2004), at: <https://doi-org.lonlib.idm.oclc.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/25917>.

68 Brookes, Mortal Remains, 43.

69 David Frederick Smith, ‘Grey, Sir George, second baronet (1799–1882)’, ODNB, online edn (2004), at: <https://doi-org.lonlib.idm.oclc.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/11533>. When in London, Grey spent Sunday afternoons visiting the poor of St Giles-in-the-Fields.

70 ‘An Act to Make Better Provision for the Interment of the Dead in or near the Metropolis’, 1850 (13 &14 Vict., c. 52).

71 See William Cunningham Glen, The Metropolitan Interments Act 1850: With Introduction, Notes, and Appendix (London, 1850); Extramural Burial, 27–34.

72 Manning, Protestant Dissenting Deputies, 307.

73 H. C. G. Matthew, ‘Hall, Sir Benjamin (1802–1867)’, ODNB, online edn (2004), at: <https://doi-org.lonlib.idm.oclc.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/11945>.

74 See Parl. Deb. (3rd series), 15 April 1850 (vol. 110, cols 354–60), 3 June 1850 (vol 111, cols 677–710), 11 June 1850 (vol. 111, cols 1068–79), 14 June 1850 (vol 111, cols 1283–92).

75 Brooks, Mortal Remains, 45–7.

76 Jonathan Parry, ‘Manners, John James Robert, seventh duke of Rutland (1818–1906)’, ODNB, online edn (2004), at: <https://doi-org.lonlib.idm.oclc.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/17951>.

77 ‘Burial Act’, 1852 (15 & 16 Vict., c. 85).

78 Parl. Deb. (3rd series), 28 June 1852 (vol. 122, cols 1348–51).

79 ‘London Necropolis and National Mausoleum Bill’, Parl. Deb. (3rd series), 8 June 1852 (vol. 122, cols 190–2). Lord Ashley succeeded to the earldom on his father's death in 1851.

80 For a detailed account of Brookwood's establishment, see Clarke, London's Necropolis, 1–15.

81 Wiggins, Burial Acts, 125–8.

82 Clarke, London's Necropolis, 16–22.

83 Report of the Select Committee of the House of Lords, vii.

84 Ibid. 200.

85 Ibid. 49.