User:AnonNep/draft List of cemeteries in Melbourne

Burial Hill
The earliest burial place was Flagstaff Gardens, or 'Burial Hill', as it was known. Isaac Selby in his 1924 book, The Old Pioneer's Memorial History Of Melbourne, listed the small number of burials he believed to have taken place there as: By 1848, 'the neglected state of the burial ground in the vicinity of the flagstaff' led to a complaint over 'bullocks and pigs feeding on the graves' and 'rooting up the graves, in some of which the mouldering bodies were distinctly visible'. A second report noted that the 'the little cemetery is daily visited by pigs, bullocks, and goats, for the purpose of grazing on the rich grass surmounting the graves' because 'time and exposure have rendered' the paling fence 'insecure'. A successful tender for 'Fence Work' at the 'Burial Ground' was advertised in July 1849.
 * Willie Goodman 'the little son of Charles Goodman',
 * Charles Franks' and his shepherd',
 * 'a seaman on the Rattlesnake',
 * 'the wife of John Ross' and
 * 'the infant child of John Wells'.

Old Melbourne Cemetery
'As you entered our Old Cemetery you passed through a short but beautiful avenue of elms... The convicts were buried just outside the northern end of the Cemetery in No Man's Land'*Craig, Frederick William: 'son of Skene Craig' 1837

''The Cemetery was 834 ft. long and 540 ft. wide; that is, it had an area of 450,000 square feet, and as it was crowded with graves it has been estimated that ten thousand were buried there. Hayter's statistics show that there were in Victoria seventeen thousand one hundred and twelve deaths from 1836 to 1854... Howlitt testifies that he saw 800 graves in 1843.'

As reported in The Argus in February 1849, Alderman Kerr, of the Town Council, proposed "That the Melbourne Burying Ground, from its dangerous proximity to the inhabited part of the City, and from the inconvenience of its position ought not, in the position of this Council to be longer used..." and requested "a sufficient portion of land in a suitable locality to form the future Cemetery of the City". Speaking to the motion Alderman Kerr added that "on the last hot Sabbath in Melbourne, some persons walking in the neighbourhood of the Burial Ground, were compelled to return on account of the stench arising from the dead bodies".

As reported in The Argus in July 1855 : "It is a fact singularly illustrative of the extreme negligence with which the welfare of the community is attended to by those principally responsible for the duty, that numerous burials are still taking place in the Old Cemetery. Surrounded as that enclosure is rapidly becoming by a very dense population, we think there is something about this which is altogether inexcusable. The site was always unsuitable for a burial ground; but it became indefinitely more so as the city rapidly spread towards it, and eventually invested it on all sides. When the new Cemetery opened we thought, and everybody else thought, that interments in the old one would be put a stop to. And in a hot country like this, where people are only too much disposed to low fever and epidemics of various kinds, we can conceive nothing more blameable than additions to a crowd burial ground in a populous neighbourhood, from which burial ground exhalations of a most noisome and dangerous kind are even now known to emanate."

In July 1851, after the Jury at a Coroner's Inquest determined Charles Seago "had himself inflicted the wound of which he died" he was "interred in the unconsecrated portion of the burial ground at midnight".

As reported in The Argus in March 1863 : "Several matters of minor, but still noticeable, importance are to be brought before the City Council... Tenders are to be accepted for erecting buildings on the wholesale market reserve, in Elizabeth-street...Lastly, it is to be decided whether application should be made to the Government to vest the management of the Old Cemetery in the hands of the City Council, as trustees."

Above meeting report - http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/6484184

As reported inThe Argus in January 1870 : "'The remains of the late Mr. J.C. King were conveyed on Saturday to their place of interment, the old Queen-street Cemetery, and deposited in the grave belonging to the family, where two of the deceased relatives had already been buried.''"

Start of land swap deal (dec 1873) - http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-page237475 Resident protest to Minister (pg 5 Col 3) - http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-page237590

2nd reading of bill giving Council the Cemetery land - http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article5931825

Committee report/s to Council on above - http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article5879940

Delegation meeting with Minister - http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article5876764

As above (fobbed off again) - http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-page239231

Letter to Ed - Gardener/Pro-Swap Feb 1875 - http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article11512701

March 1875 - Coucil resolved to move market to Queen site in May 1873 - http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article11514140

Melbourne General Cemetery
As reported in The Argus in May 1850, the Town Council received a letter from the Superintendent 'on the subject of the inconveniance of the present Burial Ground' and that approval had been given to set aside "a portion of ground, forty acres in extent, on a rising ground near Pentridge, about a mile north of the city boundary, as a General Cemetery for all sects of religions".

Churchyard cemeteries
Prior to the establishment of the Melbourne and other general cemeteries in the 1850s some early burials are known to have taken place in churchyards. Surviving churchyard cemeteries include: There are also references on death certificates to a 'Wesleyan Burial Ground' in Brighton, Victoria in 1855.
 * St Andrews Church of England in Brighton, Victoria.
 * St Katherines Church of England in St Helena, Victoria.
 * Scots Uniting Church in Campbellfield, Victoria.

Institutional cemeteries
A cemetery was in use in the grounds of the Yarra Bend Asylum, in Kew, Victoria from 1848 to the Asylum's closure in 1925. It is believed to contain more that 1,200 burials in 400 graves.

During its operation from 1844 to 1924 the Old Melbourne Gaol in Russell Street, Melbourne held 135 hangings and, by law, prisoners were buried within the Gaol walls. In 1929 the remains of bushranger Ned Kelly and murderer Frederick Bailey Deeming are said to have been among those looted by onlookers after the graves were disturbed during building work. These remains, and more during the 1930s, were removed to the prisoners graveyard in HM Prison Pentridge. It was reported that, in lieu of headstones, the initials and date of death of prisoners had been carved into the bluestone wall adjoining the Old Melbourne Gaol graveyard. Some of the Gaol's bluestone blocks were used to construct a sea retaining wall in Brighton, Victoria where the inscriptions are still visible..

In addition to the remains known to have been reburied there the graveyard at HM Prison Pentridge in Coburg, Victoria also held the remains of ten men executed between 1932 and 1951. The prison officially closed in 1997 and archaeological work began in 2006 after the site was sold to a private company for redevelopment.

In 2002 a La Trobe University archaeology team working at Old Melbourne Gaol unexpectedly 'unearthed an intact coffin buried against a bluestone wall in the area of the former gaol hospital' which led to investigation into all suspected burials at both prison sites.