In an attempt to provide a logical structure to arranging and accessing the stories of the people buried within the walls of Jesmond Old Cemetery, we have decided to categorise individuals in a rather broad way, namely by their occupation, profession or whatever ‘event’ they are known or famous for. In doing so, we openly acknowledge that individuals are defined by much more than their job, career or deeds and deserve to also be remembered for being a Father, Wife, Son, Daughter, Brother, Sister, Cousin, a great friend or good person. So, in attempting to address this, in chronicling their lives within their designated category, we have also tried to include relevant information and insight in relation to the ‘whole’ person and their lives outside their occupation, profession or event.
Additionally, in choosing how to categorise the many people featured here, we have to admit that it is a somewhat inexact science and almost impossible (and a bit rude…) to reduce a person’s contribution over a lifetime to a single defining category. As Aristotle said (kind of!!), “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts”…….. but, the ‘parts’ of the lives we have chosen to define them as will, hopefully, make sense to those visiting this website. Just to note, finally, that the category we have allocated to each individual is not ‘set in stone’ and we may well amend and update, dependent on my own changes of mind and external feedback!!
In terms of the resources we use in researching the ‘stories’, we find tons of information from the monuments themselves – the Victorians tended to place much more detail in their monumental inscriptions in comparison to modern day inscriptions. Moving on from this initial information gathering exercise, databases like those provided by ‘FindMyPast’, ‘Ancestry’ and the ‘British Newspaper Archive’ are invaluable in piecing together where people were born, lived, lived with, worked at, died etc. etc. For even more context and detail, we scour all of the local history books we can get our hands on…..a small fortune has been spent in second-hand bookshops, Barter Books, charity shops and online….additionally, the Lit n Phil has been a great source of local information for us.
So, our content is as accurate and real as we can make it – a real labour of detail and love, with an academic flavour to boot. We don’t always get it right, of course, so we are happy to amend or correct our writing in light of feedback and suggestions.
Enjoy…..
