View Ross Bay European Infant and Children Burials in a larger map
(Wide View of Section F, Ross Bay Cemetery)
I. Introduction and Location:
There’s something eerie and fantastical about going to Ross Bay Cemetery so early in the morning, with the sun still directly to the East, shining dimly behind thick rain clouds. The grass was so soggy, like a marsh-land because the ocean is so close. There’s so much history in this one place, the pathways are clearly divisions of the living and the dead’s religious beliefs, divisions of different socio-economic groups, divisions of the past from the present.
The three members of my Anthropology 392 Monument Analysis group agreed to meet at the center entrance of Ross Bay Cemetery, located on 1516 Fairfield Road in Victoria, Vancouver Island, British Columbia, on Saturday February 5, 2011. We had all come prepared, our work materials consisted of a phone that had a GPS mapping system, a measuring tape, lap top, notepads, cameras and pre-work coffee refreshments because it was so early on a Saturday morning.
Weaving in and out of trees and graves that did not pertain to our research questions and within minutes of being in the Section F I think we had located the first three infant graves that included four individuals!
II. Data Set:
My group and I had discussed previously in class that the scope of our data set would consist of ten children’s grave monuments, located in ‘Block F,’ which is generally known for containing some of Ross Bay’s earliest inhumations of immigrants, prostitutes, and the poor. We realized that this scope could be problematic, considering the section we were interested in consisted of people whose families most likely could not afford inscriptions on tombstones, let alone stone tombstones, thus, infant graves might not have been inscribed. If so, we were open to broadening our search to other sections in Ross Bay Cemetery: after all, there are more than 27,000 burials in the cemetery! It is important to note, that for narrowing the dataset I would count an infant as aged five or younger. In our data set, we discovered only burials of infants no older than age one year.
Detailed Infant Dataset Link
III. Research Questions and ideas:
I had no idea whether or not we would find any infant burials of the historically voiceless poor who lived on Vancouver Island in the early nineteenth-century. If we did come upon this great find some of my research questions I wanted to answer was:
1. Was there a significant similarity in dates and ages of children’s deaths?
2. Was it possible to discover the children’s nationality?
3. What sort of symbols and imagery would be crafted on to infant tombstones?
4. What direction would the tombstone face and was there a pattern in orientation?
*Note that the dataset supplied so much information, I decided to focus my research question on symbolism.
IV. Question Response (Interpreting the Meaning Behind the Imagery on Infant Graves):
The Infant graves analyzed in the Section F of Ross Bay cemetery contained the burials of individuals whose nationality was clearly of Irish and Scottish decent, and religiously identified with Christianity. The earliest interment discovered dated from 1867 and the most recent dated to 1900, none of which contained the infant graves of children over one year of age. What I found most fascinating about the grave monuments was the symbolism and uniqueness of every individual grave. The living and the mourners as Peter Metcalf and Richard Huntington (2008) describes express their social status through the act of burying these children. Evidently, someone cared deeply for these deceased infants, enough to purchase a specially ordered grave marker which contains an inscription and beautiful imagery that commemorate the dead. The infants buried in Section F were not just poverty stricken children abandoned in their internment, they were loved individuals whose families carefully selected appropriate imagery that symbolized the role of the individual, and the family the child had belonged to. Most interestingly, I found that though the imagery selected to be inscribed on the grave markers were unique, there were many similarities, during this thirty-three year period. European Christians of this time were evidently choosing socially acceptable images that professed the faith of themselves and their children. For example, grave three of the data set contained the remains of two infant sisters: Georgina Kate and Annie Gertrude and their mother. The symbol on the front of the monument is a large cross within a crown. Students of gravestone art like Jessie Lie Farber (2005) contended that this imagery in commonly found on nineteenth-century grave markers for women and often signifies “sovereignty over the Lord; triumph over death; Christian faith…[and a] crown of immortality” (Farber, 2005). Clearly, the symbolism selected for the Wolfenden girls was socially acceptable at the time to inscribe on a female grave, and indicated the continuation of the spirits of the two girl infants and mother. To emphasise my point, I believe the imagery respected the dead’s religious beliefs, the families religious beliefs, and played an “important role in defining the corporate group to who he or she [the infant] belonged to in life (Peter Metcalf and Richard Huntington 2008). I emphasize that these people understood that it was important to profess faith and innocence through imagery.
Additionally, another prevalent symbol that was discovered on the infant graves of our dataset was little sculptures of lambs placed on the top of the head marker. This can be seen in data set numbers: 4 (Roswf L. James), 8 (Lillian Johnson), and 10 (Baby). According to Farber (2005), lambs explicate “innocence, the lamb of God,” as told in the Bible. Moreover, this symbol is a common theme in many children’s graves throughout the cemetery. The last major imagery found in Section F’s nineteenth-century graves was plants and flowers: many of which were not distinguishable but according to Farber (2008) this kind of imagery is the most widely used on grave markers in this time period. The meanings can range from love and reward, friendship, remembrance, affection, immortality, purity, innocence, but most importantly profess the followers of Christ.
The last symbolism I noted in the dataset displays the importance of the infants grave orientation the head stones either faced east or west. Without archaeological excavation or further analysis I can only theorize that all these graves have the feet of the infant facing towards the east, to greet the rising sun. This is found throughout nineteenth-century British isle burial ground, and is another indicator of the Christian faith. The problem of knowing whether or not these infants are truly all facing with their feet to the east is explained by Faber (2008): accordingly earlier burial sites were not as crowded as they are today, and sometimes the direction of the head marker facing east or west did not indicate whether the feet were facing east or west. Thus, I believe it is most likely all these infants are facing towards the east. The importance of this symbolism is that in the early nineteenth-century the impoverished Scottish and Irish immigrant maintained Christian tradition, believed that it was important to respect these infants and bury them with love, honour, and respect.
Works Referenced:
Metcalf, Peter and Huntington Richard, 2008. Celebration of Death: the Anthropology of Mortuary Ritual, 2nd ed., New York, Cambridge University Press.
Farber, Jessie Lie, 2005. Symbolism on Gravestones (updated 2005), Available at:
http://www.gravestonestudies.org/faq.htm#SymbolismonGravestones [Accessed 02 Febuary 2011).
