A tree of life and death . . .
QUESTION Why is there a tree outside St Pancras Old Church in London surrounded by tightly packed gravestones?
St PancraS Old church dates back to at least the norman conquest and is the site of many historic events.
Mary and Percy Bysshe Shelley planned their elopement there while visiting the grave of her writer mother, Mary Wollstonecraft.
In charles Dickens’s a tale Of two cities, it’s the scene of a ‘fishing’ expedition — body-snatching to provide corpses to sell to medical schools.
In 1865, the Midland railway line was being built over part of the churchyard. arthur Blomfield — an architect and the son of a former Bishop of London — was deputed by his father’s successor, Bishop archibald campbell tait, to supervise the exhumation of human remains and dismantling of tombs.
all the removals were to be carried out at night behind hoardings.
Blomfield engaged his apprentice, thomas Hardy, to oversee the works. this was the same thomas Hardy who would write Far From the Madding crowd, the Mayor Of casterbridge and tess Of the d’Urbervilles.
Hardy’s duty was to attend the churchyard each evening to make sure the exhumations were being carried out in a proper fashion.
He checked that intact coffins were raised correctly and that bodies whose coffins had disintegrated were reboxed. Some coffins were reinterred elsewhere in the graveyard, while more than 8,000 were moved to new suburban cemeteries, including Highgate or Kensal Green.
When Blomfield met Hardy years later, he asked him: ‘Do you remember how we found the man with two heads in St Pancras?’ they had opened a coffin containing a skeleton and an extra skull.
Hundreds of gravestones were stacked around one of the graveyard’s ash trees, creating a monument to the dead, the Hardy tree.
His 1882 poem the Levelled churchyard was surely inspired by this: ‘We late lamented, resting here, Are mixed to human jam,
Jacob Moore, Llandudno, Caernarfonshire.
QUESTION Why are there ten million more women than men in Russia?
tHe contrast in life expectancy between russian men and women is extreme. In 2016, the life expectancy for russian women was 77.1 years, but only 66.5 years for men. and 25 per cent of russian men die before the age of 55, compared with only 7 per cent of British men.
Studies have shown this is caused mainly by excessive consumption of vodka, but smoking may also be a factor.
alcohol and Mortality In russia, an extensive review for the Lancet, asked 151,000 men and women how much vodka they drank and then kept track of their lives for up to a decade.
Of the 8,000 deaths among this group, most were men who consumed more than three litres of vodka a week. Men were also far more likely to be heavy smokers.
the deaths were from alcohol poisoning, accidents, violence, suicide and diseases linked to alcohol.
P. A. Collins, Worcester.
QUESTION Was a famous figure who had been convicted of forgery depicted on an Australian banknote?
FrancIS GreenWaY was a 19th century Bristol-born architect convicted of forgery who was sentenced to transportation to a prison colony in australia. He designed some of new South Wales’s most prominent buildings, earning him a place on the $10 note.
Greenway was born in Mangotsfield, Glos, on november 20, 1777. He became an architect of some repute in Bristol, designing the city’s clifton club, an exclusive private members’ establishment. However, he developed a reputation for being arrogant and intolerant to criticism.
In 1809, Greenway upset so many people that he became bankrupt. In 1812, he was sentenced to death for forging a financial document. this was commuted to 14 years’ transportation.
new South Wales Governor Lachlan Macquarie, in dire need of skilled men, commissioned Greenway to build the Macquarie lighthouse at Dunbar Head in Vaucluse.
Greenway’s beautiful building introduced a new aesthetic, marking a change from the largely utilitarian buildings of early 19th century Sydney. In 1816, he was appointed acting civil architect.
Greenway’s unpleasant personality eventually caught up with him. Macquarie accused him of charging high fees while on a government retainer, and he was dismissed by the next governor, thomas Brisbane, in 1822.
By 1835, he was destitute, advertising in the Sydney Gazette that ‘Francis Howard Greenway, arising from circumstances of a singular nature, is induced again to solicit the patronage of his friends and the public’.
He died in 1837, aged 59. the whereabouts of his grave is unknown.
In 1966, australia adopted the australian dollar in place of the pound. the $10 note featured author and poet Henry Lawson and Greenway, along with images of several of his buildings, on the reverse.
In 1993, Greenway and Lawson were replaced by bush poet Banjo Paterson and writer Dame Mary Gilmore.
Tom Davies, Gerringong, New South Wales.
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