London, England, City of London and Tower Hamlets Cemetery Registers, 1841-1966

Source Information

Ancestry.com. London, England, City of London and Tower Hamlets Cemetery Registers, 1841-1966 [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2017.
Original data: Images produced by permission of London Metropolitan Archives (City of London Corporation). The City of London gives no warranty as to the accuracy, completeness or fitness for the purpose of the information provided. Images may be used only for purposes of research, private study or education. Applications for any other use should be made to London Metropolitan Archives, 40 Northampton Road, London EC1R 0HB via – www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/lma. Infringement of the above condition may result in legal action.

About London, England, City of London and Tower Hamlets Cemetery Registers, 1841-1966

This Collection

The City of London and Tower Hamlets Cemetery Company, one of the earliest such companies in London, was enabled by an Act of 1841 to acquire land for the burial of the dead in the parishes of St Dunstan, Stepney, and St Leonard, Bromley-by-Bow. The cemetery opened in Southern Grove, Mile End, later that year. It was very popular, particularly with people from the East End, but in the twentieth century, the cemetery suffered from problems of over-crowding and neglect.

The cemetery was laid out in a series of squares of equal size (except where the boundaries of the cemetery rendered the square smaller). Each square contained a number of graves or burial plots and may contain both private and public graves. The numbers of the graves rarely run sequentially: adjacent numbers are unlikely to be next to each other and may not even be in the same area. Private graves were those bought from the company by individuals and public graves were for those who were unable to buy a plot.

This collection comprises records from daybooks and burial registers for the cemetery and spans the years 1841 through to 1966.

Parts of this description have been taken from the London Metropolitan Archive's website. You can find out more about their collections on this page.

If you wish to visit the Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park, please first contact The Friends of Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park.