A Hand Hearse for Peterborough's Poor

Watching the Queen’s funeral, I was reminded of Victorian funerals in Peterborough. The rather hefty gun carrier that was pulled through the streets of London by the ratings amidst the most ostentatious ceremony this country has ever televised could not have been further away in status from an item created for funerals in Peterborough.

In May 1858 Peterborough’s newest cemetery on Broadway received its first burial. Prior to that the dead had been received in the graveyard at the west end of Cowgate (now largely under the Crescent Bridge roundabout). The Cowgate cemetery had only been in use for a few decades, but due to the incredible growth of the city, it quickly filled up. The benefit of the Cowgate cemetery was that it was relatively close to St John’s church, so the coffins could be moved there on the shoulders of pall bearers, should there be no money for a hearse. However, the new cemetery was over half a mile away, meaning a horse-drawn hearse was necessary. This would have been a considerable expense for the city commissioners who were responsible for the burial of those who could not afford to pay for their own funeral.

In February 1859 Peterborough Cemetery Commissioners gave Thomas Brainsby the go ahead to build a hand hearse for them following a sketch he had presented. Thomas was a very well-known carriage builder in the city. His works were situated on Westgate with a carriage entrance on the eastern part of Cumbergate where Boots is now. Whether you needed a ‘Clarence’, a phaeton, or gig, Brainsby’s was the place to go!

The hand hearse was to be used to convey the poorest members of the city to their last resting place in the cemetery. The Commissioners agreed Thomas would build the cart and rent it to the city for each burial, at a fee of one shilling. This was a cheap and efficient way to move coffins to the cemetery without the need to hire a carriage, horses and attendants or any ceremony. One cart: one man. Hearses and mourning coaches could be hired from local hotels or livery stables, or funeral specialists but even the most basic funeral could cost several pounds.

This sparsity of the arrangements for the poor contrasted hugely to funerals for the rich that featured scores of coaches, gigs, and men. Lady Gertrude Fitzpatrick’s funeral procession contained 30 tenants on horses and her favourite horse walking ahead of the hearse. The hearse was followed by six mourning coaches and four more with esteemed local dignitaries inside.

Hand hearses were also known as hand biers and there are several in existence from the Victorian period, so we can get an idea of what it looked like. They usually consisted of a metal frame, often similar to a phaeton carriage in style, with a hinged extending metal pole to turn the front wheels and pull the cart. On top of the metal frame was a slatted wooden frame similar to the base of a bed. The frame was very likely to have had a couple of rollers in it to help manoeuvre the coffin in place and very likely to have had a rail along at least two of the sides of the cart. They all varied in style and features, but I’d like to think that Thomas Brainsby made the most of his skills and created a hand hearse that provided the poorest Peterborians with a handsome final journey to the new Broadway Cemetery.

Unfortunately it was destroyed in the Brainsby carriage works fire of 1861 and the Cemetery Commissioners had to pay for another to be built soon after the original was first used.

Note: the image above has not been identified as a hand hearse but is very similar in style. This is a great example of a hand hearse from 1860

Addendum: Thanks to the wonderful people on Twitter I have seen evidence that there are still some biers in local churches. They're either beautifully restored or in dire need of a little TLC (as are many historical items!) but always worth a lookout if you are visiting a church.

 

References:

 

Heritage Gateway, Historic England Research Records, Broadway Cemetery https://www.heritagegateway.org.uk/Gateway/Results_Single.aspx?uid=1433315&resourceID=19191#:~:text=Broadway%20Cemetery%20was%20established%20in,population%20in%20the%2019th%20century.

  

Cambridge Independent Press, 16 October 1841, p.3.

Peterborough Advertiser, 12 January 1861, p.3.

Image by Bernd from Pixabay