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Stony Brook University SSStttooonnnyyy BBBrrrooooookkk UUUnnniiivvveeerrrsssiiitttyyy The official electronic file of this thesis or dissertation is maintained by the University Libraries on behalf of The Graduate School at Stony Brook University. ©©© AAAllllll RRRiiiggghhhtttsss RRReeessseeerrrvvveeeddd bbbyyy AAAuuuttthhhooorrr... Inhume, Entomb, Inurn, Immure: Cemeteries and Constructions of Britishness, 1767-1852 A Dissertation Presented by Sarah Louise Hoglund to The Graduate School in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History Stony Brook University May 2012 Copyright by Sarah Louise Hoglund 2012 Stony Brook University The Graduate School Sarah Louise Hoglund We, the dissertation committee for the above candidate for the Doctor of Philosophy degree, hereby recommend acceptance of this dissertation. Kathleen Wilson Professor, Department of History Joel T. Rosenthal Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Department of History Susan Hinely Lecturer, Department of History Timothy Barringer Paul Mellon Professor of Art, History of Art, Yale University This dissertation is accepted by the Graduate School Charles Taber Interim Dean of the Graduate School ii Abstract of the Dissertation Inhume, Entomb, Inurn, Immure: Cemeteries and Constructions of Britishness, 1767-1852 by Sarah Louise Hoglund Doctor of Philosophy in History Stony Brook University 2012 This dissertation examines the emergence of commercial cemeteries in late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth century Britain, arguing that these spaces of the dead were a key site for the rehearsal of a middle class, British identity. Unlike earlier scholars, who tended to approach the nineteenth century as something like a golden age of burial, hoping to remind the reader of the sacrifices we have made to become thoroughly modern, I have instead attempted to use the cemetery as a way of engaging a series of current issues in the field of nineteenth century studies. Seeking to provide a transcultural, interdisciplinary framing of the early commercial cemetery, I have approached these sites as both empirical and imaginative spaces, presenting them not only as sites, but as idealizing representations of just what it meant to be middle class in Late-Georgian and early-Victorian Britain. To accomplish this, I have analyzed the commercial cemetery, first, in relation to two specific iii bodies of late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth century literature: urban and public health histories and garden and landscape design treatises. For as much as public health debates may reveal about the anxieties that plagued nineteenth-century Britons – undoubtedly an important part of this story – they ultimately tell us very little about the cemetery’s form. As my work demonstrates, the entrepreneurs and promoters behind these new commercial ventures used the language and theoretical underpinnings of the eighteenth century English landscape garden to promote the new burial grounds, surprisingly, as a populist project. Yet the story of burial reform cannot be told without considering Britain’s, and Britons’, relationship to the country’s colonial investment in South Asia. Indeed, one of the central arguments of my dissertation is that imperial examples were central to the development of the cemetery as an integrated aspect of “English” national culture. iv Table of Contents List of Illustrations….……………………………………………………………………………vi Acknowledgments..…………………………………………………………………………….vii Introduction: The Birth of the Cemetery…………………………………………………….…1 1 – ‘Of Garden Burial’: the English Landscape Garden and the Cemetery.……………….13 2 – The Function of the Form: Johns Strang and Loudon and Cemeterial Design..……….47 3 – Monuments and Remembrance ‘Amid the Stranger’s Land.……………………………90 4 – ‘Graves of Departed Happiness’: Anglo-Indian Burial-Grounds go to the Jackals.….125 5 – Hidden Agendas: the ‘Secret’ to Early Nineteenth-Century Burial Reform.………….155 Bibliography..…………………………………………………………………………………178 v List of Illustrations Figure 1 “Merchants Park—Monument to John Knox,” Glasgow Looking Glass 1, no. 3 (9 July 1825): 3 – Source: Glasgow University Library, Special Collections, Sp Coll Bh14-x.8.….……………………………59 Figure 2 James Forbes, “The Mausoleum of Bawa Rahan, near Baroche,” plate 51, vol. 2, Oriental Memoirs (1813) – Source: British Library, Asia, Pacific and Africa Collections, shelfmark 55.c.8………………………………….96 vi Acknowledgments This dissertation, like most, would exist only as a file of notes and half-finished thoughts if it were not for the help and encouragement of a number of mentors, colleagues, friends, and family members.1 Most important among these has been the advice and criticism of my advisor Kathleen Wilson, without whose goading I would never have thought a project of this scope possible. Her thorough reading and perspicuous analysis of each chapter kept this work focused and moving toward completion. I would also like to thank Joel Rosenthal, who also read early drafts of a number of chapters, and listened more than once to my concerns and anxieties about the prospect of becoming, or not becoming, an academic. Without his good-natured nagging, I might have given up long ago. The additional members of my dissertation committee, Timothy Barringer and Susan Hinely, have also provided incredibly valuable feedback on this work, helping me to hone a number of the arguments contained herein, and to see the real potential of this project. From the moment I came to Long Island, the faculty and staff of the History Department at Stony Brook have consistently made my life both easier and more difficult, in the best ways possible. Without the influence and inspiration of scholars and teachers like Nancy Tomes, Sara Lipton, Brook Larsen, Gary Marker, Helen Lemay and Iona Man- Cheong, I would not be where I am today. In addition, as this work will undoubtedly 1 Credit for the title belongs to Evelyn Waugh, who elevated the euphemisms for death and mortuary rites and practices to something of an art form in his 1948 satire of the American funeral industry, The Loved One. vii show, faculty members from disciplines elsewhere in the humanities played a significant role in my development as a thinker. In particular, I would like to thank Mary Rawlinson in the Department of Philosophy, and Nicholas Mirzoeff, once a key member of the Art Department at Stony Brook, for their help and inspiration. This work has also benefitted immeasurably from the generosity of numerous agencies and organizations. I would thus like to give special thanks to the Yale Center for British Art, the Paul Mellon Center for British Art, the Henry Moore Center, the North American Conference on British Studies, and the American Historical Association, without whose support, both financial and institutional this work would have been nearly impossible to complete. A number of friends and graduate students have also been essential to my personal and professional development. Simply put, I owe Jenise DePinto, Yvie Fabella, Terry McLaughlin, Kraig Larkin, Anne Cameron, Sam Maddra, Malini Sood, Sarah Dawe-Bird, Katherine Cole, Terrence and Sam McCormally, John and Kathy Gold, Stephanie and Scott Erbes, Larry and Sharon Peariso, Miranda Townsend, Jonathan Bayer and the late Martin Havran more than I could ever repay. My brother and sister, Mike Hoglund and Rebecca Goebel, deserve thanks as well, for, among other things, not being offended when, even though I was in their neighborhood, I was otherwise occupied. And special thanks to my parents, David and Carolyn Hoglund, whose love and support made it possible for me to see this, and so many other projects, through to the finish. Finally, I must thank Craig Peariso, who, from the beginning, has always been there, regardless of context. viii – Introduction – The Birth of the Cemetery In 1832, the year of Parliamentary reform, and, coincidentally, the death of Jeremy Bentham, a truly (shockingly) utilitarian plan for disposing of the dead appeared in Fraser’s Magazine. After recounting a brief history of burial “styles,” the satirical piece’s anonymous author suggested that the increasing number of dead Londoners could be put to real use. Far from a burden – be it financial, logistical or emotional – the dead in fact presented an opportunity; they offered themselves up for the betterment of the nation as a whole. Britons could only take them up on that offer, however, if cemetery design were fundamentally altered. The author thus enumerated a plan that “combine[d] all the glorious associations of the HEROIC method with the scientific, mercantile, and pious desiderata of the march of intellect in the present day.” Let us suppose a company, formed on the plan of the “NATIONAL CEMETERY ASSOCIATION, funds invested, and a convenient site chosen, as near to London as can be obtained. The proceedings of this company should be – 1. To erect a magnificent rotunda, with chapelries around, for use of the various sects and parties who might wish to perform their own funeral rites separately over the deceased “persons of quality” that would in the Christmas fogs, perhaps, arrive on the same day to honour the cemetery with their custom. 2. To erect a number of gas retorts, with suitable receivers of the various products arising from the “destructive distillation” of the human body, in connexion with the rotunda. 3. To erect machinery for the compression of the gas, and provide elegant, portable, un-shaped gas lamps, on which inscriptions might be engraved, and votive wreaths and tablets hung in the most classical style.1 1 “The Climax of the Cemeteries,” Fraser’s Magazine for Town and Country 5, no. 26 (March 1832): 152. 1 As much as this treatise, like many of the articles that appeared in Fraser’s, was almost certainly a put-on of sorts, it nonetheless spoke to the increasingly common anxiety surrounding the apparent need for burial reform. And the author’s solution, while starkly phrased, encapsulated a great deal of the debate surrounding the issue. Simply put, with churchyards unable to accommodate the increasing numbers of deceased Londoners, designers should take it upon themselves to devise a new space of burial, one that would meet the needs of the living.
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