Rites and Respectability: Burying the dead in 19th century Christchurch

This post is based on a Heritage Highlight presentation at Tūranga 25 June 2026.

Digging rabbit holes

Researching local or family history has more than its fair share of potential rabbit holes – you know, a story you can’t resist digging into without knowing quite where it is going to take you. These particular rabbit holes are ones to do with some of the more unusual aspects of 19^th century burials, interspersed with a little historical context to make it all respectable.

In the beginning…

The first issue of the Lyttelton Times on 11 January 1851 reported on the death and burial of John Williams who collapsed and died on the Bridle Path. Poor Mr Williams’ body had been found by other walkers, and medical assistance called for but to no avail.

“The cause of his death appears to have been of an apoplectic nature, and was probably hurried on by the excessive heat of the weather, and the unusual fatigue, to which, in his praiseworthy endeavours to find a suitable spot on which to locate his family, the deceased had exposed himself.”

Readers were informed that “the remains were brought into town, and buried in the cemetery on the following day by the Rev E. Packe.” Town here refers to Lyttelton, and of course there had been other earlier burials but this is the first mention in the Lyttelton Times, Christchurch’s first newspaper. One can only speculate on the response of Widow Williams (having to now bring up her family alone and start a new life in a completely unknown environment) to that phrase “praiseworthy endeavours.”

As the new settlers moved into Christchurch, the Barbadoes Street Cemetery, then known as the English Cemetery, opened for business in 1851 – if you were Anglican, or at a push, Presbyterian. The cemetery was divided into three sections and originally administered by the relevant church authorities: Church of England, Roman Catholic, and Methodist (or Dissenting Protestants). The first burial recorded in the Church of England burial register is for Brown, no first name, no date, with a second entry for Henry Nipress, buried 9 April 1851, followed by Alice Kent, aged 4, buried on the same day.

Burying the dead…

…is all well and good, but locating the burial plot 175 years later can be a bit of a challenge. Helpfully, we have Canterbury Stories, the digital heritage repository for Christchurch City Libraries. There you can find digitised cemetery plans for some of the older Christchurch public cemeteries, and the Barbadoes Street Cemetery registers from the Christchurch City Council Archives collection. These include registers listing details of interments in the Barbadoes Street cemetery from 1851 to 1973 (the cemetery closed to further expansion in 1884 but burials in existing plots could still be undertaken). The CCC cemeteries database will give you details of cemetery, and block and plot number, but see the library webpages on how to find a burial, and look for other digitised cemetery plans on Canterbury Stories.

There’s a rite way and a wrong way to go about a burying

If there was a sniff of suspicion about a cause of death, an inquest could be held over the body in question. Inquests in New Zealand followed English law, until the Coroners’ Act of 1867 which regulated investigations into sudden or accidental deaths i.e. any person who was slain or drowned, who died suddenly or in prison or while detained in a lunatic asylum, or whose body was found “lying dead”. A vital publication of the time was A Handy Book for the Coroners of New Zealand, written by Supreme Court judge Alexander J. Johnston, and published in 1868. See our earlier post, A Handy to Surviving and Dying within the Law in 1860s Christchurch, for a closer look at the handbook.

The Ordinance for the Registration of Births, Deaths and Marriages came into operation on 1 January 1848 requiring a death certificate from the deputy registrar to the undertaker or person in charge of the funeral. If the burial took place without this, the undertaker had 1 month to register the death, or else would be fined £10. By the 1880s this had changed to a period of 7 days, and a fine of £5. But the undertaking business in the early days of the settlement had a flexible approach – carpenters and drapers could get involved in providing funereal necessities such as coffins and coffin linings. And if you were unfortunate enough to be unable to provide for your funeral and had no rich relatives, you may have been on the receiving end of a pauper’s funeral (no headstone permitted until 60 years had passed).

Some cemetery curiosities, or, why have one when you can have ten?

Edward Corker Minchin arrived in New Zealand in 1852 on board the Stately, along with his wife Sarah, one daughter and two sons. Edward was very successful in the farming business and spent time between his estates in Canterbury and his interests in England, Ireland and Wales. His purchase of 5 plots in the Barbadoes Street Cemetery is recorded in the Burial Plots book containing the names of purchasers of plots and other particulars. Minchin purchased plots 76, 77, 78, 79 and 88. Presumably these plots were for him, his wife, and the three children. The Minchin plots are marked on the cemetery plan by name, in a row, running alongside Barbadoes Street.

All well and good.

But, as it turned out, no.

There is no date of purchase in the burial plots book, just a receipt number. Minchin paid £2 2s per plot, each measuring 4 ft X 9 ft. It’s likely that he purchased his five plots about 1869, possibly motivated by a concern that he could miss out on securing a resting place for eternity in the best part of the cemetery. But the plots were doomed to remain empty (at least as far as we can tell without further inspection, or should that be excavation?). All five Minchins were buried elsewhere. Edward and his wife Sarah travelled between England and New Zealand several times, then finally returned to Ireland where Sarah died in 1890. Their daughter Rebecca had also died there in 1875. Edward Corker died in 1899 and was interred in the church-yard of Cloughjordan, Tipperary. Son John Birch Minchin died in Middlesex in 1922. William Minchin was the only one of the five to die in Christchurch, in 1891. He was buried in Linwood Cemetery.

So, just the grass.

Then, a new discovery. On an exploration of Linwood Cemetery, a colleague spotted a small detail on the map of Block 5. It appears that on 23 March 1887 Edward Corker Minchin purchased 5 plots in the new Linwood Cemetery, that had opened in 1884.

According to a newspaper report found in Papers Past, Mr and Mrs E.C. Minchin had returned to New Zealand in December 1886 on the Ionic. At the end of February 1887 Edward Minchin was calling for tenders for a house to be built in Richmond. He bought the Linwood burial plots in March and presumably was committing to spending some time here. Then in November 1889 the new house was advertised for sale as part of plans to return to England (possibly influenced by an ongoing dispute with a Mr Rhodes who had a fellmongery business in the neighbourhood). Perhaps Edward had changed his mind about the Barbadoes Street location and wanted a second option, but again no headstones, and no burials. Just grass.

(If you want to know a little more about Edward Corker Minchin and his descendants read this post, From the Cave Rock Hotel Sumner to Harper’s Bazaar )

A last request

When Felix Stening died in February 1887, he left a will with a final note regarding a memorial to himself.

“I direct my said executors to erect a monument over my grave similar to the one now erected in the English Church Cemetery to the memory of H.J. Milsom and to properly enclose my grave in such manner as they shall think fit”

Let’s go hunting. There are two possible H.J. Milsom graves in the Barbadoes Street Cemetery. I think we can discount the 1870 grave as that one is Henry James Milsom (son of Henry Joseph) who died aged 8 months. But Henry Joseph’s grave looks likely.

Using the CCC Cemeteries database we find Felix Stening, not in Barbadoes, but in Linwood – Block 2, Plot 4 – alongside 2 more plots for family members. And yes, Felix did get the memorial he wanted! Even the edging of the plots looks very similar.

New word of the day: Necro-iconology!

The library holds two handy books written by Timaru-based Lynda Seaton: Necro-Iconology: the signs and symbols of death and Messages in Stone: a guide to the meanings of the symbols on headstones, both explaining the meanings of the different symbols on headstones.

Clasped hands symbolised the hands of the deceased and the living clasped in farewell, shamrocks symbolise the Holy Trinity, and roses represent paradise and were portrayed thornless. Other symbols include vines (ivy, convolvulus or grape), anchors, lilies or olive branches, and Freemasons have their own iconology, such as stars, compass, numbers and hearts.

Monumental masons provided a wide range of headstones, complete with symbols – the name of the firm can appear on the bottom right corner of a headstone – Silvester, Mansfield, Parsons, Tait and others. Find more information about monumental stone masons in the Conservation Plan, Barbadoes Street Cemetery, Christchurch from 2009.

Inquest No. 1: Inquest or Inquisition?

And now a closer look at two inquests, one from 1859 which was carried out under the old English law, and one in 1881, which was conducted under the New Zealand legislation.

Dr Henry Fleetwood had been married only a week when he was accused of committing fraud, and the threat of public exposure must have been too much for him. After his meeting with his accuser, Fleetwood had gone to the White Hart Hotel where he had asked for a glass of water, stirred into it 8 grammes of strychnine and proceeded to drink it down, announcing to the room what he had done. Medical help was summoned but it was too late. The inquest returned a verdict of “Felo de se.” or “felon of himself” – a medieval term used in the case of suicide. A closer look at the report of the inquest (or inquisition, as it was termed) reveals the very formal language employed at the time.

On the seventh day of December the said Henry Fleetwood, not having the fear of God before his eye but being seduced and moved by the instigations of the devil he the said Henry Fleetwood to himself did give and administer a certain poison to wit strychnine … and as a felon himself did voluntarily feloniously and of malice aforethought killed and murdered against the peace of our said Lady the Queen her crown and dignity.

Very much a crime against the Queen, so accordingly Dr Fleetwood was buried without any formality, at midnight, in a hole in the ground outside the boundary of the Barbadoes Street Cemetery.

Inquest No. 2: The Doctor, the Coroner, the Solicitor and the Police Inspector

The headline of the Globe article says it all – sensationalist baby farming case, and the inquest likely to be adjourned to allow for “ferreting out” the details of the baby’s identity.

Dr Ovenden attended the death of a baby girl, aged 6 months, on 10 May 1881. She was well nourished and well cared for but had a delicate constitution and had died of “consumption of the bowels by natural causes.” Dr Ovenden declared he could not issue a death certificate as he was unable to obtain a name for the baby, or the names of her parents, from either the nurse or the solicitor who had been paying the nurse for the care of the infant. Ovenden informed both the police and the coroner that he was unable to issue a death certificate, but as sanitary officer, he was required to ensure a timely burial.

Hence the inquest which formalised the cause of death but raised other questions. At the inquest the coroner, Mr Dudley, agreed that he could not register the death without a name. He believed that more information was needed about the baby’s identity in case there were any suspicious circumstances such as concealment of birth, and illegitimate birth or smuggling or stealing the child, “or the child might have been put away because of property coming to it.” The inquest was adjourned to allow police to carry out more enquiries. In the meantime, speculation was rife and not helped by Mr Dudley’s wide-ranging imagination.

The inquest resumed on 19 May, but it appeared the baby had been buried in the meantime, as shown in the transcription from the burial register of St Bartholomew’s in Kaiapoi – under the name “Mary Elizabeth”, given to her when she was baptised a month earlier.

At the reopened inquest Coroner Dudley announced that Inspector Broham of the Christchurch police had been able to identify the child, which allowed the death to be registered and the body buried, and that the baby had a legal mother and father. Pressed by the jury, Dudley divulged that the mother of the baby was Edith Duncan, but baby’s name, and father’s name were still unknown. The jury quibbled over signing the inquest report without the baby’s name but eventually signed off on the death of a “female child, name unknown”. We could speculate and try and identify the mother, with a high likelihood that she came from a family of high social standing who were anxious to avoid adverse publicity, but that’s another story.

I want what she’s having

Keeping Felix Stening’s memorial request in mind, let’s look at some of the options for your ancestor’s choice of grave decoration. You could have a draped urn, a cherub, a book, or a rugged cross, along with a grapevine, or an anchor or clasped hands. Don’t forget to have memorials for both wives, making sure your own memorial cross is much bigger.

Or you could have a mausoleum. Or if you really like singing, your favourite hymn, complete with musical score and verses, could be engraved on your headstone. An angel is an uplifting option, but beware, they can easily fall.

Last point made by a character in the fifth series of Fargo

When a man digs a grave, he has to fill it

Otherwise, it’s just a hole in the ground.