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Archiver > INDIA > 1998-01 > 0884727038


From: Aubrey Ballantine< >
Subject: South Park Street Cemetery in Calcutta
Date: Tue, 13 Jan 1998 16:30:38 -0500 (EST)


I have a copy of the "Register of graves and standing tombs from 1767" for
the South Park Street Cemetery in Calcutta, which lists births and deaths.
If anyone would like information on relatives who may be buried in the
cemetery, let me know. Please note that this is the older cemetery, and it
contains burials prior to 1890.

Opened in 1767, this old cemetery replaced the yard of St. John's Church in
the ruins of the old fort, in which the founder of Calcutta, Job Charnock
and his successors are buried. The "new" cemetery stood some distance from
the settlement which was centered on the Dalhousie Square area, between
Mission Row on the east, and the Hooghly river on the west. The burial
ground was then amongst irregular marshy fields and patches of jungle,
located along what was known as Burial Ground Road. It was later renamed
Park Street from the private deer park built by Sir Elijah Impey, whose
house was located on the present site of Loreto Convent in Middleton Row.
The area around what is now Free School Street was nothing more than a
bamboo forest, and it is reported that Warren Hastings hunted tiger here
towards the end of the eighteenth century.

As a matter of interest, the cemetery contains the tomb of Colonel
Vansittart, whose wife was a descendant of Oliver Cromwell. Other graves of
note are those of Lt. Col. Robert Kyd, the distinguished botanist and
founder of the East India Company's Botanical Gardens down the river; Lt.
Col. James Lillyman, who supervised the building of Fort William; two sons
of Charles Dickens; and many others such as Charles Short and Sir John
Royds, after whom streets in Calcutta were named. One of the most
interesting monuments is that of Major-General Charles Stuart who was known
as "Hindu Stuart". He became a Hindu and used to walk from his residence in
Wood Street every morning to bathe in the Hooghly. When he went on leave to
England he took with him many images and idols of Hindu deities and
performed religious rites there. His tomb is surmounted by an elaborate
edifice with stone carvings of deities. Lucia Palk, the heroine of Kipling's
sketch "Concerning Lucia" in his City of Dreadful Nights is also buried
here; and there are one or two links with Thackeray, who was born in Free
School Street.

Aubrey Ballantine

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