Chinese Cemetery Rituals in Victorian Cemeteries

CHINESE CEMETERY RITUALS IN VICTORIAN CEMETERIES

by Carol Holsworth

Ch’ing Ming, a Chinese words meaning, “Sweeping of the Graves”, is an annual Chinese celebration when families gather at cemeteries to leave offerings for the dead spirits and to clean the family graves. This ceremony still occurs in some old Chinese sections in our Victorian goldfield cemeteries during the first week of April.

The Ch’ing Ming festival encourages families to visit both local and distant family graves at least once a year. This is a wonderful tradition that the Chinese have upheld for hundreds of years, even when they have travelled far from China,  because it has  practical and functional community values. Christians also used to have a traditional day called All Soul’s Day when the graves around churchyards were cleaned and repaired.

Chinese ‘Sweeping of the Graves’ occurs in spring in the northern hemisphere just when weeds are starting to appear and dead grass from the previous season is lying about. In Victoria over the past centuries there was considerable concern about summer grass fires which could sweep through a cemetery and cause considerable damage to the wooden headboards and the wooden picket fences surrounding many private graves. So in the early days, the Chinese had to keep the weeds down in their pagan section well before the Ching Ming festival.

 In Bendigo, formerly known as Sandhurst Chinese burials occurred at White Hills, Kangaroo Flat, Bendigo and Eaglehawk Cemeteries as well as at a few unconsecrated burial grounds. It became a well known attraction for Caucasian to go to the back of a cemetery on Sunday afternoon to watch the strange practices of the “Celestials”.

In 1858 a newspaper described the scene “Sunday afternoon is the time which they generally select for honoring their dead after the fashion of their country. The forms which they observe in paying respect to the shades of their ancestors are so repugnant to European ideas, as to treat the greatest disgust and indignation among the European spectators. A crowd of men and boys assemble round the unconscious Mongolians, and express in no measured language their disapprobation of the whole proceedings. The juveniles regard the salaams of the Chinese – their offering of pork, and the discharge of fire-arms, as an excellent farce, while the fathers of the children consider the noise occasioned by such practices as an insult to the dead in a Christian burial ground.”                                          

It is interesting to note that at the White Hills Cemetery in Bendigo was probably the only cemetery in Victoria with a special notice board, written in Chinese, informing the many Chinese visitors of the Cemetery rules and regulations, especially in regard to the burning of incense, the lighting of firecrackers and candles. This cemetery was so close to the Chinese Ironbark camp and therefore had many Chinese burials.

Only one Chinese grave in the White Hills cemetery is now visited at this special time. These visitors do not even use the old funeral tower but bring their own catering size tin-can to burn their traditional paper money offerings right beside the tombstone. I suppose they don’t want to have to walk around all the mounds or through the weeds and sand. Some changes to tradition also occur with the laying of fresh flowers together with the more traditional items.

 No attempt is made by Chinese descendants or any of  the present Chinese community to do any cleaning or sweeping let alone raking or filling in new rabbit diggings. What a shame old traditions are being forgotten or done away with.

Bendigo’s Famous Cricketeer – Harry Bolye

By Rob Upson

Bendigo’s Famous Cricketer  - HARRY BOYLE

 

The date is 29 August 1882.  The scene is the Oval cricket ground in London.  It is the ninth Test Match to be played between Australia and England and in a low scoring game England require just 10 runs to win when the last batsman comes to the wicket. The Australian bowler runs in, bowls at the leg stump and is hit for 2 to square leg.  The second ball just misses the off stump.  The batsman takes a mighty swipe at the third ball and is clean bowled.  Australia wins by 7 runs.

 

Four days later, the Sporting Times published this obituary notice:

In Affectionate Remembrance

of

ENGLISH CRICKET

Which died at the Oval

on

29th August 1882

Deeply lamented by a large circle of

Sorrowing Friends and Acquaintances

R.I.P.

N.B.  The body will be cremated and the Ashes taken to Australia.

 

Hence was born the legend of the ‘Ashes’.    The Australian bowler who captured that last wicket, taking 5 for the match, was one Henry (Harry) Frederick BOYLE. 

 

Harry Boyle was born in Sydney in 1847, but at an early age came to live at Sydney Flat, now known as Woodvale, near Bendigo. The first English cricket team to visit Australia in 1861 played a match in Bendigo and inspired young Boyle and some friends to clear a piece of land opposite the family home and establish the Sydney Flat Boys’ Cricket Club.

 

He went on to become one of Australia’s most wiliest and skilful medium pace bowlers and with Fred (Demon) Spofforth,  formed quite a formidable bowling combination that could be likened to a Lindwall and Miller or a Lillee and Thomson. 

 

Harry Boyle played a total of 12 Tests for Australia between 1878 and 1884, scoring 153 runs (Avge 12.75) and taking 32 wickets (Avge 20.03).  Of his contemporaries, only Spofforth had a better Test bowling average.   His First Class career spanned between 1871 and 1890, scoring 1711 runs (10.24), including 1 century and taking 370 wickets (15.38).

 

One of the most amazing bowling performances took place in a match between Australia and the M.C.C. at Lord’s in 1878. The M.C.C. team, which included W.G.Grace, was dismissed twice (for 33 and 19) in the same day by Spofforth and Boyle. The former having match figures of 11 wickets for 20 runs and Boyle 8 for 17.

 

Harry Boyle was buried in the White Hills Cemetery, Bendigo and his epitaph reads –

 

Erected in Kindly Remembrance of

Henry Frederick Boyle

(Harry Boyle)

 

By friends and comrades as an expression of sincere regard

and in testimony of his prowess as a true cricketer also of

his honest, truthful and sterling qualities as a man.

 

Born Sydney 10th December 1847

Died Bendigo 21st November 1907

 

This is a most unique tombstone with a cricket bat and wicket carved into the white Carrara marble. His family grave may be found in the area marked B2 on the map of the Self Guided Tour #9 of the White Hills Cemetery published by the Friends of Bendigo Cemeteries in 2009.

This free brochure is available from the Bendigo Library and more details can be obtained at the Bendigo Visitor Centre, 51-67 Pall Mall, (former Post Office).       www.bendigotourism.com

 

White Hills Cemetery

Chinese section

 

 

 

 

Victorian Heritage Register  # H2136  – February 9, 2009

 

We are pleased to announce that our nomination of White Hills Cemetery, Bendigo to the Victorian Heritage Register has been accepted and will be gazetted very shortly.

 It is thanks to the Friends’ hard work over the last 16 years that the heritage values of this cemetery have been accepted. We had to fight against proposed planning changes by the Bendigo Cemeteries Trust which threatened the cemetery’s major heritage features of gates, fences, individual trees and avenues, general layout of denominational areas and paths at a Victorian Civil and Administration Tribunal hearing and a  Ministerial hearing over the last couple of years.

Unfortunately we have witnessed extensive vandalism in the last 15-20 years. The cost of repairs to these tombstones is thousands of dollars more than heritage can bear. Dancing on graves, toppling over tombstones and stealing polished stone is still occurring.

We have done our best but  it is a never ending struggle.

This cemetery is located in north Bendigo, formerly known Sandhurst. It was first the Lower Bendigo burial ground , then the Junction Cemetery, and finally for the last 155 years as the White Hills Cemetery.

 As Bendigo grew, White Hills cemetery with a Catholic sexton was not the chosen final resting place of our most prominent citizens who were mostly Protestants. It was also not popular as public access to the cemetery by road was limited. Some mourners living to the south objected to having to drive their carriages and horses past the large, pagan, Chinese camp at Emu Point enroute to a funeral.

 Burials occurred in separate denomination areas which are still defined by brick lined paths and a few remaining avenues of trees.Few traditional plants have survived due modern methods of weed spraying and maintenance plus the leveling of all grave mounds in the 1960’s except in the Chinese area.

All the old redgum headboards, curbing and fences were burnt in the annual post war clean-ups.

    The open ground around the White Hills Cemetery is being planned as the major burial site for Bendigo in this new century. The other cemeteries are almost full. We hope the public will have some input into these plans. Future plans need to incorporate and enhance some of the heritage features of this cemetery. The present Lawn section with its separate entrance at the rear has done nothing to incorporate or acknowledge that death and history flow on through the years. We should not forget that we have much to celebrate,  remember and to  learn from our past.

W.D.C. Denovan – Bendigo Pioneer

Denovan's tomb

Old Unitarian section with chapel

William Dixon Campbell Denovan

 

 

 

W.D.C.Denovan’s tombstone is a low polished Harcourt granite horizontal monument with a Sarcophagus top that is practically vandal proof and has never required any maintenance. These would have been factors Denovan would have carefully considered during his period as Secretary to the Bendigo Cemetery Trust. He never married and did not have a relative in this country except his mother.

The inscription reads – In affectionate remembrance of Margaret Dixon Denovan who departed this life on July 7, 1888 aged 78 years “Beloved by all who knew her” Erected by her son.

The second inscription reads – Sacred to the memory of William Dixon Campbell Denovan who entered the new life on the 13^th July 1906 aged 77 years “And with the morn those angel faces smile which I have loved long since and lost awhile”.

Denovan’s inscription was partially written by himself probably when he purchased this private grave plot for his mother and chose this style of tombstone. He would not have wanted his friends to be left to raise a public subscription for his tombstone, which was a common practise in those days.

The Unitarian section is in an excellent location being very close to the chapel and the main cemetery entrance. The single row of monuments have frontage to a roadway and would have been very suitable for such a prominent man. Because of his spiritual beliefs Denovan could not bury his mother in a Church of England, Presbyterian or Wesleyan section. The only possible site would have been in the Independent section in a very distant corner of the original cemetery grounds where few people promenaded. It is even likely that Denovan himself created this Unitarian section when he became town clerk, as it was not marked on the original plan. At that time it was an open area designed for gardens surrounded by the roadway that allowed the horse drawn carriages to turn around. Later as there were very few Unitarian burials this area became Bendigo’s first lawn cemetery in the 1950’s

W.D.C.Denovan was born in Edinburgh in 1829, the son of a British Consular official. When news of the 1851 gold rush in Australia reached Scotland, he closed his Fifeshire school that he had set up as an18 years old. He boarded a ship at Liverpool and arrived in Melbourne in October 1852.

He first of all headed for the Mt. Alexander diggings and then went on to Bendigo, arriving here in February 1853. It soon became clear to him that the miners deeply resented the license fee. By day, Denovan worked his claims like any other miner but by night was often engaged in activities seeking to redress local grievances by writing to newspapers and speaking at public meetings. On the 26 August 1854, Denovan convened another large meeting of the diggers.  3,000 people gathered near the Criterion Hotel to consider the formation of a league whose main aims were to bring about the abolition of the license tax and to have a goldfields elected representative in Parliament.  This agitation of the Bendigo miners known as the Red Ribbon Rebellion was soon to be followed by other goldfields in the colony.

As reforms were slow in coming, a larger meeting was organised in Bendigo on 14 October 1854. Denovan was subsequently appointed as delegate representing the Bendigo diggers.  On 3 December, he set out on foot for Ballarat to attend a general meeting of all such delegates.  He stayed the first night in Castlemaine and the following morning heard of the fatalities at the Eureka Stockade.  On reaching Creswick, he learned that martial law had been proclaimed within a 10-mile radius of Ballarat and considering that discretion was the better part of valour, returned to Castlemaine.

He returned to Bendigo wearing a red ribbon, a black armband out of respect for the Eureka casualties and a red shirt. Towards the end of 1855 he moved to Ballarat and became involved in journalism, first with the Ballarat Times and then the Ballarat Star.  He then launched, at his own expense, a weekly newspaper called the Nation and Ballarat Advertiser, which, although quite successful at first, put an untenable demand on his personal finances.  After ten months he returned to Bendigo with less than £1 in his pocket.

In 1856, Denovan returned to his mining pursuits after a short stint as a gold buyer for the Bank of Victoria. He was one of the original members of the land league, formed in 1857, that was influential in unlocking the lands of Victoria from the monopoly of the squatters. In 1861 he was elected to represent the Sandhurst Boroughs in the Legislative Assembly.  The mining community, holding him in high regard, paid his election expenses of £147 and subscribed an honorarium of £280.  He found that life in Parliament was no place for a person of limited means and had to resign.  However, while in Parliament he was instrumental in securing a grant of £2,000 for the purpose of surveying and reporting the feasibility of diverting water from the Coliban River to the goldfields.

After Parliament, Denovan went back to mining for a few months and then edited the Bendigo Evening News for two years.  In 1867 he became a stock and share broker and one of the original members of the Bendigo Stock Exchange.  During the next few years he made and lost a lot of money through mining speculation.

In 1877, he was elected to the Bendigo City Council and would have automatically become a Trustee of the Bendigo Cemetery, which was under Council’s control. In September 1879 he was appointed Town Clerk. Denovan’s name as Secretary of the Bendigo Cemetery Trust appeared regularly in the Bendigo Advertiser on each of the Tender advertisements during the period November 1879 to January 1892 when W. Honeybone took over. Denovan supervised and was present at most of the important improvements made at the Bendigo Cemetery except the erection of the Christian Mortuary Chapel and the Chinese mortuary oven/tower.

He was involved in the completion of the dwarf wall and cast iron fence, the main entrance gates, the ordering of the cast-iron white metal number plates, water pipes, path formation, imported soil for the 8 foot garden beds, filling in the Chinaman’s dam after the acquisition of more land at the southern Grave Street end, brick channelling, additions to the Sexton’s cottage and the annual maintenance and painting tenders.

Denovan always had a leaning towards literary pursuits and in 1882 published a book entitled The Evidences of Spiritualism, a subject in which he was deeply interested.  In November 1890 the Sexton suggested that the unused ground remaining in the Unitarian section be opened to other denominations. You can imagine how horrified Denovan would have been at that thought. Denovan was able to refer the Trustees meeting to the Victorian Cemetery Statute, which barred trustees from altering the ground already allocated to a particular denomination.

He also wrote many articles for local and metropolitan newspapers on a wide range of topics and was a prominent member of the Masonic fraternity. Denovan was a man of unblemished character and possessed a reputation for dignity and integrity.  He had experienced the rigours and fortunes of the early pioneers and certainly had an influence in the development of the first fifty years of Bendigo.

By Rob Upson and Carol Holsworth

Copyrght held by Friends of the Bendigo Cemeteries Feb 2009

THE BENDIGO CEMETERY’S BELL

 

 

 

Bendigo Cemetery Bell Post

THE BENDIGO CEMETERY’S BELL

  

Every year in January the annual meeting of the Trustees of the Sandhurst Cemetery at Back Creek was held at the Sandhurst Town Hall. After the meeting all the Trustees would get into Hansom Cabs and proceed to the cemetery to inspect the work of the Sexton and review his recommendations for the coming year.

 

On 24 Jan 1890 the Sexton, Mr. Redpath, presented a strong case for a warning bell on the Mortuary Chapel but it was not approved. the Cemetery Trust had other priorities, including planting large number of trees and maintaining the extensive flower gardens.

 

On June 11, 1898 Mr. Honeybone, Secretary of the Bendigo Cemetery advertised in the Bendigo Advertiser for the supply and erection of a cast-iron bell column with bell. Full particulars were available at the City’s surveyor’s office. F.M. Brown of Bendigo made the successful tender, which included a cast iron Corinthian column, yoke and bell. It was erected  right outside the sexton’s lodge near the main gates. F. M. Brown also cast some of the hitching posts outside the cemetery on Carpenter Street.

 

On January 1^st 1994, 96 years later, the bell was reported missing. In the Bendigo Advertiser article on the 4^th the Cemetery Trust spokesman claimed the bell had been removed for restoration because of wear to the cast.

 

1998 was the Centenary of the Bendigo Cemetery’s bell. This would have been an appropriate date for its return. Many have lamented the empty yoke, where the bell once hung. Ten years later I still wait!

 

Helen Bruinier

BENDIGO MORTUARY CHAPEL – vandalized, disused and forgotten

Chapel main entrance

 

 

Chapel West view

Chapel tower

Pallett family tombstone

Chapel Catholic Exit (north door)

 

Over a hundred and forty years ago the Sandhurst Cemetery Trustees planned to build a chapel in their grounds, now known as the Bendigo Cemetery. They had reserved  a prominent spot for the chapel right in front of the entry gates. A position from where it would be most convenient to conduct funeral services for all Christians.

The Cemetery Act of 1850 allowed the building of a Mortuary Chapel or Church only by Christians at their own expense but in 1854 the Victorian Cemetery Act was amended to allow any religious denomination to build a structure for the performance of their own rites and ceremonies in the burial of their dead.

Obviously the population of the Sandhurst Municipality was not big enough for each of the Christian sects to need, or to be able to finance a chapel of their own. Nor was the cemetery grounds big enough for more than one chapel.

It is important to note that unlike other townships the Councillors of Sandhurst were also the Trustees of the Sandhurst Cemetery. G. A. Fletcher who was the Town clerk and Town surveyor also held the dual roles of the paid Secretary and paid Surveyor of the Sandhurst Cemetery. In April 1872 Fletcher wished to know whether as secretary of the cemetery he should renew their cemetery savings deposit of £500 or call for tenders for the desired chapel for which he had years earlier prepared some preliminary drawings and calculations. The trustees gave him instructions to draw up the requisite plan and drawing specifications ready for tendering.

In July 1872 a very small advertisement appeared in the Bendigo Advertiser calling for Tenders for the erection of a Mortuary Chapel for the Trustees of the Sandhurst Cemetery. The specifications called for local Axedale bluestone to be used for the building as the Council considered it to be the best in the colony, capable of being split, sawn or polished. Tenders were received from Mr. Edwards and Mr. Pallett, the latter’s being accepted at £1087. Pallett got permission to substitute Harcourt granite as transportation from Axedale only 12 miles due east was too difficult at the time. In fact the Mclvor road was in such a terrible state that each of Mr. Ingham’s bullock teams could only do five trips a week in summer, and the road was almost impassable in winter.

The Chapel was built in the shape of a cross with the main entrance to the east but with side exit doors to both the north and the south. This was an excellent design as it allowed coffins to be brought straight into the chapel from the hearse through the south side door while the mourners came in the front door. The large carriage way then curved around to allow the horses drawing the hearse and carriages to turn around in a circle and line up facing the main gates ready later to leave the cemetery grounds. After the service was over the coffin could then be carried out either through the north or south door depending on whether the grave was in the Roman Catholic or Protestant sections. This practice made sure  there was no mixture of the Catholics or Protestants whether alive or dead.

The chapel building is of a Gothic revival design, symmetrically planned even with two magnolia trees planted on either side of the front gabled portico. The four arches of the roof gables are surmounted with Celtic crosses with a small finial over the portico similar in design to those on top of some elaborate tombstones. There never was any electric lighting in the chapel as all services were held between the hours of 10 am and 4 pm and there was ample light coming through all the beautiful stained glass windows.

The mortuary chapel must have made a great difference to funeral services which previously had been held at the grave site. No longer did mourners have to stand out in the blazing sun or suffer from the wind and rain that blew in over Quarry Hill. Undertakers did not have the elaborate private establishments that they have today. Most people died in their own homes and a day later the funeral procession started directly from the home to the cemetery.

The Bendigo Advertiser often gave detailed descriptions of funeral corteges, the number of carriages, the numbers walking behind the coffin, the names of the prominent people attending plus the number of floral tributes. Crowds often collected outside the cemetery gates waiting for them to be opened to let the horse drawn vehicles through.

The Chapel was opened with great fanfare. The Trustees who were also the sitting Councillors were good at these sorts of functions and relished the opportunity of all the pomp and ceremony. The different religious ministers would have been present to consecrate the building as it was to be used by all sects except, of course, the Jews and those pagan Chinese. George Pallett the contractor was finished by the middle of 1873 but in fact the chapel was never fully completed as finances were insufficient for a bell to be hung in the tower.

The chapel has weathered well but required upkeep, like all buildings. The cemetery accounts show numerous items for painting and repairs such as 6 new pews in 1891. In the 1900′s there used to be 2 cast iron garden seats with wooden slats, on either side of the portico for the public to use while waiting for the tram to arrive at its Carpenter Street terminal. As well, there was a plaque in the chapel gardens that stated “NOTICE any person taking flowers or any thing off graves will be prosecuted.”

Up until the late 1950’s the sexton in charge of the cemetery lived in the cottage right by the main gates. When his services were discontinued the Chapel was left open for many, many years, and used by all sorts for odd day and late night activities. Finally in late 1994, after all the original multicoloured lead light windows on the four sides of the chapel  were completely vandalized the Trustees padlocked the front door. It is unfortunate that a new use for this old style chapel with its weathered slate roof, granite walls and buttresses has not been found as it is such a valuable addition to the significant buildings in Bendigo.

by Carol Holsworth

You are visiting Bendigo Heritage Cemeteries  blog site of the Friends of the Bendigo Cemeteries Inc. All Contents are copyright by the authors. Jan 2009