The picture above shows the south-west corner of Hedon Road Cemetery, on the left is the second ‘lodge’ (cemetery-man’s house) and to the right part of the perimeter-wall and roofline of Hull Prison.
As had been the case in churchyards for centuries, burials in municipal cemeteries had to be paid for. From the minutes of the Burial Committee (s.p.b.s) on Hedon Road Cemetery in the 1880s the following is clear;
- Ministers of religion officiating at a burial in the Cemetery charged a fee,
- The Cemetery had an arrangement with a particular minister to officiate if the deceased had no family or if the family had no contact with any minister,
- Charges varied across the Cemetery site with burial sites near the ‘walks’ costing more tan those further in,
- Charges by law for interments in consecrated and un-consecrated ground had to be the same,
- Over time the charges made by the Burial Committee of the Town Council increased in line with inflation, but one remained constant 2s./6d. for the burial of stillborn and very young infants, although the interment could be made anywhere across the site.
On the last particular point a controversy arose in the mid 1890s whereby the Rev. Malet-Lambert (whose name remains celebrated in that of the secondary school, originally a grammar school, immediately north of East Park) of Newland parish complained to the Home Office that Hull’s Burial Committee were treating stillborn and infants who died within a month the same i.e. with a 2s./6d. burial and with no minister or ceremony. Members of the Burial Committee stuck to their guns and claimed that they were acting in accordance with the 1880 Burial Laws Amendment Act. Which, it seems, they were.