Evening Telegraph (First Edition)
80,000 buried in
Group bids to compile records of cemetery
It didn’t matter if you were a prince or a pauper, in 16th Century Dundee you ended up in one place — the Howff.
That might go some way to explaining why there are so many people buried in the the 2.5-acre cemetery.
Experts have revealed there are more than 60,000 bodies buried there — and believe there could be up to 80,000 in total.
Dundee Howff Conservation Group (DHCG) is in the midst of transcribing burial records and is currently creating a database.
DHCG chairman Simon Goulding revealed the group had accounted for 62,074 people whose resting place was the Howff.
He said: “The burial records held by city archives, currently being transcribed, are from 1772-1860 and there are 57,561 entries for that period.
“Stillborn, premature births and unbaptised infant deaths were not recorded until 1833 — leaving a period of 268 years of unaccounted burials.
“The site was opened in September 1564 and closed in November 1860, and prior to the burial records, we have another source of information which was recorded by the Nine Incorporated Trades of Dundee — mort cloth rentals.
“A mort cloth was a piece of cloth, probably velvet or another expensive material, which was elegantly embroidered with the Nine Trades symbols and used to cover plain wooden coffins.
“The mort cloth records date between 1655 and 1817 but the group only used the information up until and including 1771 as the deaths would then be recorded in the burial books.
“These show that cloths were rented out 4,513 times.
“Unfortunately, there are no records between 1564 and 1654, so that is 100 years of burials is unaccounted for.
“There may be about 80,000 people buried in the site.”
Simon said that the Howff now covered 2.5 acres but it had been extended throughout its history.
There was also a large project in 1834 to tidy up the area, which saw headstones being moved into the regimented format we see today and 200 tonnes of earth brought in to level the ground.
Simon added: “We think the soil added during that period would have raised the level between three and five feet on top of the original burial ground.”
He said burial records show that in some cases gravediggers were so overwhelmed they had resorted to digging burial pits instead of individual lairs, and at one stage more than 100 men, women and children were placed into one of these pits in a twoweek period.
That followed outbreaks of highly contagious diseases such as cholera and measles.
During the early 19th Century, it was not uncommon for the gravediggers to reopen burial plots and bones would be crushed to dust so the plot could be re-used.
The site was closed in November