25th July

Jane Allen

26

William Halford

46

26th July

Susanna Oakeley

26

30th July

William Henry White

2

Elizabeth Purser

36

1st August

George Purser

7

Thomas Church

80

2nd August

Hannah Powell

64

Ann Bates

8

William Richards

2

3rd August

John Pritchard

32

Bleven Smith

75

4th August

Elizabeth Embury

42

Susanna Bates

31

5th August

William Purser

3

It was probably from this date that the 'New' burial ground was used. Mrs Lawson records that a woman called Church was one of the first to be buried there and, in the minute book it is recorded that on the 7th the Secretary was instructed to ask the permission of the commissioners for the Building of New Churches for an additional burying ground.

6th August

Sarah Church

63

8th August

William Fereday

63

Elizabeth Fowler

23

9th August

Thomas Bourn

26

10th August

Mary Bourn

25

John Shepherd

26

Jane Ward

2(?)

11th August

William Taylor

53

13th August

Frances Fereday

10

Elizabeth Lane

16

14th August

Mary Sutton

80

William Turner

2

Elizabeth Ferriday

14

15th August

Eliza Mills

23

Joseph Hill

1yr 9mths

James Allen

56

16th August

Lydia Ferriday

55

John Pratt

2

18th August

Henry Stokes

35

21st August

Henry Johnson

2

29th August

John Sandilands

9

The next death recorded in the burial book was on September 13th, 1832. Whether the "cholera" burial ground continued to be used is not known: the churchyard was very full, and discussions about a new burial ground had started in 1830. The extension, under the current mini-roundabout, was not acquired until 1836.

During the equivalent period in 1831 there were 9 burials and in 1833 there were 6.

Mrs Lawson suggests that there were 1or 2 burials in the Baptist churchyard, including Susanna Oakeley's brother, and that there were perhaps others who died from cholera: "the general impression is that the number was between forty and fifty." She says that two of these are recorded in a private list which was kept at the time and that "it is quite possible, when funerals were so frequent and so hasty, that some names of children, perhaps unbaptised infants, may have been omitted. Compulsory Registration of Births, Marriages and Deaths did not start until 1836.

Although Mrs Lawson's Records and Traditions of Upton-on-Severn was written within living memory of the outbreak (36 years), experience of such estimates would suggest that they are often inflated.

Simon C Wilkinson