By the first half of the 19th century the burial grounds attached to London's churches were becoming overcrowded. Barely buried bodies and broken coffins with their attendant flies created a smell which Dickens called "the uppermost scene" of the city, wrties Kevin O'Sullivan.
To address the problem Parliament authorised the creation of seven commercial cemeteries around London. The first and foremost of these was consecrated at Kensal Green in Middlesex in 1833. However it was not until 1843, with the burial there of the Duke of Sussex, son of King George III, that commercial cemeteries began to gain social acceptance. Subsequently, wonderful mausoleums and statuary were erected as a testament to the lives of the departed.
Kensal Green is now an undistinguished north-west London suburb, but its cemetery provides a remarkable home to the remains of a remarkable collection of people. Among the writers interred in its 44 acres are William Makepeace Thackeray, Anthony Trollope, Wilkie Collins and Terence Rattigan. Charles Babbage, whose inventions pioneered the principles of computing, lies near the great Victorian engineers Marc Brunel and his son Isambard Kingdom Brunel. The tightrope walker Blondin lies there, as does George Grossmith, actor and joint author of the classic comic novel The Diary of a Nobody. More recently the singer Freddie Mercury was cremated in 1991 and his ashes are buried in the cemetery.
Needless to say there are multitudes of Irish people buried there, many now long forgotten. However I doubt whether any Irish graveyard contains such an eclectic collection as the following Irish residents of Kensal Green cemetery.
The composer and singer Michael Balfe was born in Dublin in 1808. At the age of nine he made his public debut as a violinist. By 1823 he was playing in the orchestra of the Drury Lane Theatre and two years later he moved to Italy where he subsequently enjoyed an operatic singing career under the name Balfi. After his return to London in 1833 he began to write his own operas. The most successful of these was Bohemian Girl best known for the "I dreamt I dwelt in marble halls". Balfe died in 1870 and his grave in Kensal Green is fittingly marked with a huge marble obelisk.
A contemporary of Balfe's was Catherine Hayes, born in Limerick in 1818. Hayes became an operatic soprano and rose to fame as a prima donna at Covent Garden and La Scala, Milan. In 1849 she appeared before Queen Victoria and some 500 guests at Buckingham Palace. She died in 1861 at the early age of 42 and was buried in the central avenue of Kensal Green
The painter William Mulready was born in Ennis, Co Clare in 1786. He entered the Royal Academy schools in London in 1800 and went on to have a successful artistic career based especially on narrative and landscape paintings. He also designed the first penny post envelope. He was a member of the Royal Academy and of the Legion d'honneur. He died in 1863 and several of his paintings have subsequently been acquired by the National Gallery of Ireland. His statue in repose covers his tomb in Kensal Green.
Feargus O'Connor was born in Connorville, Co Cork in 1794. He qualified as a barrister at the Irish Bar but late took up politics and as a follower of Daniel O'Connell became MP for Cork in 1832. Having quarrelled with O'Connell, he became leader of the Chartist movement in England, a group dedicated to the advancement of the poor. He was elected MP for Nottingham in 1847.
Chartism failed due to poor organisation and squabbles between its leaders, and O'Connor succumbed to mental illness, eventually dying in 1855. His epitaph at Kensal Green reads: "While philanthropy is a virtue and patriotism not a crime will the name of O'Connor be admired and this monument respected".
John St John Long was born in Newcastle West, Co Limerick in 1798. He trained initially in Dublin as an artist and moved to London, where he continued his career with some success. After two years and without formal training, he started a new career in medicine, establishing a practice in Harley Street. Using quack remedies applied with friction, he treated wealthy clients suffering from rheumatism, consumption and similar diseases. In 1830 after the death of one client, a Miss Cashin from Dublin, Long was found guilty of manslaughter but escaped with a fine. The following year he was found not guilty at the Old Bailey after the death of another of his patients.
Long died in 1834. The epitaph in his domed monument in Kensal Green reflects the feelings of some of his more fortunate patients: "This monumental pile is not intended to mark the career but to show how much its inhabitant was respected by those who knew his worth and the benefits derived from his remedial discovery."
Jane Francesca Elgee was born in 1826 in Dublin. Following the death of Thomas Davis in 1845 she became an ardent nationalist and contributor to the Nation newspaper under the name "Speranza". She married the Roscommon-born surgeon William Wilde in 1851 and became Lady Wilde on his knighthood in 1864. She is perhaps best remembered as the mother of Oscar Wilde. After the death of her husband she moved to London and, in 1896, died there in reduced circumstances. Oscar, famously incarcerated in Reading Jail, was not allowed to attend her burial in Kensal Green. Lady Wilde's pauper's grave lay unmarked for about a century but a fine headstone surmounted by a Celtic cross has been erected in recent years.
The first World War poet Rupert Brooke, anticipating his own death, wrote: "If I should die, think only this of me: that there's some corner of a foreign field that is for ever England". Let us reflect that there are several corners of Kensal Green that will remain for ever Ireland.