Lechmere graves and tragedy

[miss marple]

I will just repeat this. Tower Hamlets Cemetery known as Bow Cemetery in Victorian times has more common graves than private graves. it was the cemetery for Eastenders. Common graves can contain up to thirty or forty coffins but no markers. They would fill up pretty quickly . Eastenders would prefer to spend money on a grand 'sendoff' posh funeral rather than an expensive private grave. The burial clubs paid for this.
As there was twenty years between the death of Charles and his wife, his common grave would be filled up. I think she died when the Blitz had started and was living in an old people's home. It would have been impossible to find the exact location of his common grave at the time with the war on and later the cemetery was bombed.

miss marple

[etenguy]

I will just repeat this. Tower Hamlets Cemetery known as Bow Cemetery in Victorian times has more common graves than private graves. it was the cemetery for Eastenders. Common graves can contain up to thirty or forty coffins but no markers. They would fill up pretty quickly . Eastenders would prefer to spend money on a grand 'sendoff' posh funeral rather than an expensive private grave. The burial clubs paid for this.
As there was twenty years between the death of Charles and his wife, his common grave would be filled up. I think she died when the Blitz had started and was living in an old people's home. It would have been impossible to find the exact location of his common grave at the time with the war on and later the cemetery was bombed.

miss marple

I think it is a stretch to draw any conclusions from the burial of Charles Lechmere and his wife. Even if it could proven they were on bad terms, there might be a million reasons why that might be, but I do not think bad terms are even close to being proven.

That is not to say there are not significant reasons to consider Lechmere a suspect. Just not where he and his wife were buried.

[MrBarnett]

By the standards of the day, the Lechmeres were not exactly poverty-stricken. They could have afforded to place Charles in a private plot. They chose not to.

[MrBarnett]

I will just repeat this. Tower Hamlets Cemetery known as Bow Cemetery in Victorian times has more common graves than private graves. it was the cemetery for Eastenders. Common graves can contain up to thirty or forty coffins but no markers. They would fill up pretty quickly . Eastenders would prefer to spend money on a grand 'sendoff' posh funeral rather than an expensive private grave. The burial clubs paid for this.
As there was twenty years between the death of Charles and his wife, his common grave would be filled up. I think she died when the Blitz had started and was living in an old people's home. It would have been impossible to find the exact location of his common grave at the time with the war on and later the cemetery was bombed.

miss marple

Charles Lechmere wasn't an Eastender by birth or ancestry. His father was a member of a prominent Herefordshire family and his mother was the daughter of a butler to the Clive (of India) family.

Did those kind of people prefer a boozy knees-up to a permanent memorial, I wonder?

[miss marple]

What Charles father did was irrelevant, he had died when Charles was a child. Charles lived in the East End, his children were born in the East End, that made him an Eastender. He had working class job, there appears to be no aspirations apart from being hard working and respectable. Many families are descended from 'good families' and for what ever reason may end up in a different social class. The facts are that most graves in Tower Hamlets are common graves because of the expense, money could be better spent on the living. Given the choice between a funeral and a plot, many opted for the funeral, not a 'boozy knees up' that is a stereotype, but horses, a glass hearse, flowers, paying respect to a good citizen.

miss marple

[MrBarnett]

What Charles father did was irrelevant, he had died when Charles was a child. Charles lived in the East End, his children were born in the East End, that made him an Eastender. He had working class job, there appears to be no aspirations apart from being hard working and respectable. Many families are descended from 'good families' and for what ever reason may end up in a different social class. The facts are that most graves in Tower Hamlets are common graves because of the expense, money could be better spent on the living. Given the choice between a funeral and a plot, many opted for the funeral, not a 'boozy knees up' that is a stereotype, but horses, a glass hearse, flowers, paying respect to a good citizen.

miss marple

Most working class East Enders simply couldn't have laid their hands on sufficient cash to bury a family member in a private plot. That does not seem to have been the case with the Lechmere family.

By the time he died, CAL was not in a 'working class job'. He was running a small business and he was able to leave his widow a tidy sum in his will.

In 1887, Charles Booth's researcher described the family as 'v. decent' - not the kind of comment that appears very often in his St Geo E. notebooks.

Lechmere's mother had received a legacy from her father (the Clive's faithful retainer) and ran at least two businesses herself while in the East End.

The Lechmere family could almost certainly have afforded to place CAL in a private plot. They chose not to. We'll probably never know the rationale behind that decision (or who made it) but let's not ignore the facts in an attempt to obscure the possibility that it may not have been an entirely economic one.

[MrBarnett]

I will just repeat this. Tower Hamlets Cemetery known as Bow Cemetery in Victorian times has more common graves than private graves. it was the cemetery for Eastenders. Common graves can contain up to thirty or forty coffins but no markers. They would fill up pretty quickly . Eastenders would prefer to spend money on a grand 'sendoff' posh funeral rather than an expensive private grave. The burial clubs paid for this.
As there was twenty years between the death of Charles and his wife, his common grave would be filled up. I think she died when the Blitz had started and was living in an old people's home. It would have been impossible to find the exact location of his common grave at the time with the war on and later the cemetery was bombed.

miss marple

Miss M,

Can you quantify your first statement? How many Eastenders chose to bury their loved ones in private plots?

Gary

[Fisherman]

What Charles father did was irrelevant, he had died when Charles was a child.
miss marple

No, he had not. John Allen Lechmere left the family when Charles was a toddler, started a new family and lived up until 1879, when Charles was 30 years of age.

[MrBarnett]

Here's some interesting info on CAL's maternal ancestry.

http://www.jtrforums.com/showthread.php?t=27926&highlight=Roulson

I wonder if any of the Clive money filtered down to Charles and his children?

Perhaps it did and that's what enabled Charles to start his own business. One of his daughters seems to have been particularly close to her grandmother, living with her before she married and still living in the same house in 1901 after she married. Perhaps she was left a bit by her old grandma. Who knows how much dosh Charles's widow and his children had at their disposal?

Lumping them together with the majority of Eastenders who were living only marginally above the breadline isn't particularly useful to this discussion.

[Robert]

Doesn't anyone ever leave an untidy sum?

[MrBarnett]

Doesn't anyone ever leave an untidy sum?

Someone whose surname is Tidy, perhaps?

[Sam Flynn]

Doesn't anyone ever leave an untidy sum?

I can think of a few Chancellors over the years.

[GUT]

Doesn't anyone ever leave an untidy sum?

I will leave an obscene amount.



Of debt

[MrBarnett]

I will leave an obscene amount.



Of debt

I'm planning to leave an obscene amount. An old ten bob note folded to show the Queen's bum.

[GUT]

I'm planning to leave an obscene amount. An old ten bob note folded to show the Queen's bum.

10 bob, must be a billionaire.