Queen Victoria's Courier

This stone

was erected by the

Queen

and the

Prince of Wales

 to mark their appreciation of the

long and valued services of

Joseph Julius Kanne

1889

Joseph Julius Kanne, was Queen Victoria's invaluable courier, the director of her continental journeys.

Kanne was the son of Josephine Loewenfeld and Leopold Kanne and was born about 1818 in Austria. An article in the Jewish Chronicle of Oct 1947, tells that Josephine was the daughter of Moses Loewenfeld of Schoenwald who owned a distillery there. While Leopold’s family were originally from Frankfort a Main, a wealthy and influential family.

Josephine and Leopold lived in Pilsen, after Leopold’s death Josephine moved to Prague and died in 1874 and is buried in the Jewish Cemetery there.Joseph then took British naturalisation in 1864 having seen active service in the Crimean War where he had been present at the siege of Sebastopol.

Queen Victoria arrived in Berlin early in the morning on 24th Apr 1888 to visit her daughter. Soon after she heard the news that:
'Poor good Kanne, who had a relapse a week ago after having recovered wonderfully from the first attack in March had become much worse and was in great danger' an hour later the Queen was advised of his death at his private residence in Dover Street, London. She wrote 'For thirty years he had attended me on all my journeys, making all the arrangements in a most admirable manner. He used to think of every little thing for my pleasure and comfort and had a wonderful power of organisation. I can hardly realise that he is gone and he will be such a loss. All my children and people are so grieved'.

His epitaph reads: This stone was erected by the Queen and the Prince of Wales to mark their appreciation of the long and valued services of Joseph Julius Kanne.
In memory of Joseph Julius Kanne, for nearly 40 years one of Her Majesty’s most devoted servants. Died 24 April 1888 aged 70 years.

The London Gazette reported on 26 Jun 1888 that probate was granted on 13 June to Achille Vintras of Hanover Square, Doctor of Medicine. Dr Vintras was the founder of the French Hospital in London.

 

 

Cemetery Vandalised by Town Council

Saffron Walden Town Council Vandalises It's Own Cemetery

It certainly comes to something, when the people to whom you would report this kind of vandalism to, are in fact the culprits of this very act themselves.

Our local newspaper reported, that a visitor to the cemetery had leant on a headstone, which fell upon her and injured her leg.

The knee~jerk response of the town council, was to 'Topple Test' all the other upright stones and those that appeared unstable, were then laid down.

Approximately 200 stones have now been toppled over as a result of the test. Relatives are furious after they were informed by the council, that the cemetery would need to have been closed down, if they had not dealt with the stones in accordance with Health and Safety Regulations.

Labour MP John Mann said ' Excellent guidance has been given to sort out the scandal of Health and Safety zealousness in graveyards but local authorities are snubbing it. What is going to be done to get rid of the nonsense of laying down graves all across Britain ?' 

 The council is currently writing to inform relatives of the steps that were taken with their families headstones and to re~assure them the procedure was done in a caring and dignified way. However, the cost to re~erect a single headstone is approximately £100 and the families are expected to cover these costs themselves.



Monday Mourning ~ Angel and Stars

An Angel amongst the Stars leads this young wife towards Heaven.

In kind Rememberance of

Catherine

the beloved wife of

Frederick Willm. Canham

of Ipswich

who died Nov.8th 1873

In the 23rd Year of Her Age

~

Yes she is dead, but ~ only? ~ in the flesh

Unfortunately the next three lines of this verse were unreadable

Tobacconist of London

To the Memory of

Mr. William Brinkley

Late Citizen and Tobacconist

of London

who departed this life

November 13th 17~39 or 59 ?

Aged 6? Years

Also the body of Sarah Brinkley

the remaining words were hidden

Whilst visiting the Church of St. John the Baptist in Pinner, Middlesex, I discovered this old headstone and was pleased to see that it stated the owners occupation and citizenship ~ I just love these additional clues as to the identities of the occupants.

Sometimes it's easy to just skim the surface and simply take things at face value, to think no further than what we initially see ~ Simply another name and date.

But upon 'digging a little deeper' ~ a good term for graveyard detectives ! ~ I wanted to see what it would have been like to have been a Tobacconist in Georgian England.

Georgian Smokers

Tobacco Advert

Huron Indian myth has it that in ancient times, when the land was barren and the people were starving, the Great Spirit sent forth a woman to save humanity. As she traveled over the world, everywhere her right hand touched the soil, there grew potatoes. And everywhere her left hand touched the soil, there grew corn. And when the world was rich and fertile, she sat down and rested. When she arose, there grew tobacco . . .

A History of Tobacco

  

6000 BC ~ It is believed that the tobacco plant, as we know it today, began growing in The Americas.
1 BC ~ Indigenious American inhabitants begun smoking and chewing tobacco. Peruvian aboriginals used it as an hallucinogenic, inducing enema.
470 ~ 630 AD ~ Aztecs at the Court of Montezuma, smoked tobacco pipes pipes with great ceremony. Whilst lesser Indians, rolled tobacco leaves to form crude cigars. Complex Religious and Political rites developed around the smoking of tobacco.

Christopher Columbus

1492 ~ Christopher Columbus arrives in the New World for the first time. Columbus accepts  gifts from the indigenous natives, but the significance of the 'Pungent dried leaves' was not understood and they were simply thrown away.
Rodrigo de Jerez and Luis de Torres, arrived in Cuba. They noted that the natives wrapped dried tobacco leaves 'In the manner of a musket formed of paper, which they lit, then commenced 'Drinking' the smoke through the other end'.
Jerez became the first European Smoker and brought the habit back to his hometown. The smoke billowing from his mouth and nose so frightened his neighbours, he was imprisoned by the holy inquisitors for 7 years. When he was released, smoking was a Spanish craze.

1556~61 ~ Tobacco is introduced into France and Portugal. Snuff is sent to Catherine de Medici, Queen Mother to Francis II's of France, to cure his migraine headaches. She decrees tobacco be termed Herba Regina.
1564~65 ~ Tobacco is introduced into England by Sir John Hawkins and his crew. Tobacco is used cheifly by sailors, including those employed by Sir Francis Drake. 
Spanish and Portuguese sailors spread the practice of smoking around the world, probably first to fellow sailors. There may have been a community of seafaring tobacco users in England for decades before officials noticed.

 1571~ In Germany, Dr. Michael Bernhard Valentini's 'Exotic Remedies' describes different types of enemas. The tobacco smoke enema was said to be good for the treatment of colic, nephritis, hysteria, hernia, and dysentery.
1573 ~ Sir Francis Drake returns to England from the Americas with 'Nicotina tobacum'.
1577 ~ European doctors looking for new cures, recommend tobacco for toothache, fingernail loss, worms, bad breath, lockjaw and cancer.

Elizabethan Physicians

1584 ~ 86 Queen Elizabeth grants Walter Raleigh a charter for establishing a settlement in America.
Sir Francis Drake introduces smoking to Sir Walter Raleigh
Ralph Lane, first governor of Virginia, teaches Sir Walter Raleigh to smoke the long-stemmed clay pipe Lane is credited with inventing.

Long Clay Pipe

1586 ~ In Germany 'De plantis epitome utilissima' issues cautions on the use of tobacco, calling it a 'Violent Herb'.
Tobacco Arrives in English Society. In July, some of the Virginia colonists returned to Plymouth, smoking tobacco from pipes, which caused a sensation. Tobacco in the Elizabethan age was known as 'Sotweed'.

Elizabeth I

1600 ~ Sir Walter Raleigh persuades Queen Elizabeth to try smoking.
1602 ~ In an English publication, an anonymous doctor states that 'Tobacco works by evaporating man's 'Unctuous and Radical Moistures' ~ as it is used to cure gonorrhea by drying up the discharge'.
This process, if continued, could only end by drying up 'Spermatical Humidity,' rendering him incapable of propagation.
Experience also showed that tobacco left men in a state of depression, 'Mopishness and Sottishness,' which with time, damages memory, imagination and understanding.
1603 ~ English Physicians are upset that tobacco is being used by people without a physician's prescription and complain to King James I.
1606 ~ Spanish King Philip III decrees that tobacco may only be grown in Cuba, Santo Domingo, Venezuela and Puerto Rico. Sale of tobacco to foreigners is punishable by death.

Philip III of Spain

1610 ~ Sir Francis Bacon writes that the use of tobacco, is a custom hard to quit. 

1613 ~ John Rolfe and his wife Pocahontas grow the first commericial crop of 'tall tobacco' in Jamestown, Virginia and the first shipment of Rolfe's tobacco arrives in England. The Virginia colony enters the world tobacco market, under English protection.
1614 ~ King James I of England makes the import of tobacco a Royal monopoly, available for a yearly fee of £14,000. 'There be 7000 shops in and about London that doth vent Tobacco'

John Rolfe and Pocahontas

 1614 ~ King Philip III of Spain requires all tobacco grown in the Spanish New World, to be shipped to Seville in Spain. He establishes Seville as the world center for tobacco and the production of cigars. Cigarette use begins here, as beggars patch together tobacco from used cigars, and roll them in paper.
1610 ~ In England, the first tobacco vending machine is invented. The 'Honor Box' allows a user to deposit a penny to open a lidded small box, and scoop out a pipeful of tobacco.
1617 ~ Dr. William Vaughn writes about the perils of smoking:
Tobacco that outlandish weede
It spends the braine and spoiles the seede
It dulls the spirite, it dims the sight
It robs a woman of her right
1618 ~ Sir Walter Raleigh, popularizer of tobacco in England, is beheaded for treason. Upon Raleigh's tobacco box, found in his cell afterwards, is the inscription, 'Comes meus fuit illo miserrimo tempo' ~ 'It was my comfort in those miserable times.'

Sir Walter Raleigh

1619 ~ In Jamestown, Virginia, John Rolfe writes in his diary about the arrival of the first Africans. 'About the last of August came in a dutch man of warre that sold us twenty negars.' They were needed for the booming tobacco crop, but as they had been baptized as Christians, they could not be enslaved for life, but only indentured, like many of the English colonists, for 5-7 years.
Tobacco is being used as currency and continues to be used so, for 200 years in Virginia, and 150 years in Maryland.

The first shipment of women arrive in Jamestown, they are to become wives for the settlers. A prospective husband must pay for his chosen wife's passage with 120 lbs. of tobacco.

1624 ~ Pope Urban VIII threatens excommunication for snuff users, sneezing is thought too close to sexual ecstasy.

Pope Urban VIII

1624 ~ New York City is born with the town of New Amsterdam being established on lower Manhattan. Greenwich Village was a Native Amercian Indian village known as Sapponckanican ~ 'Tobacco Fields', or 'Land where the Tobacco grows'. The Dutch continued the tradition in the 17th century and tobacco farms lined both sides of what is now Christopher Street.

1628 ~ In Persia Shah Sefi punishes two merchants for selling tobacco by pouring hot lead down their throats.

1630 ~ Sweden learns to smoke.

1632 ~ Massachusetts forbids public smoking.

1633 ~ In Turkey, Sultan Murad IV orders tobacco users executed as infidels. As many as 18 a day were executed. It was rescinded 10 years later by Murad's successor.

Sultan Murad IV

1634 ~ Russian Czar Alexis creates penalties for smoking ~ 1st offense is whipping, a slit nose, and transportation to Siberia. 2nd offense is execution.

Czar Alexis

1638 ~ In  China the use or distribution of tobacco is made a crime punishable by decapitation. The  Jesuits introduced Snuff into China by the mid-17th century, it became popular and continued to be so through much of the Qing dynasty ~ mid-17th century to 1912.
1643 ~ In Russia, Tsar Michael declared smoking as a deadly sin.  Smokers were arrested and flogged or have their lips slit. A visitor commented that, 'Those convicted of taking snuff, both men and women, can expect to have their noses taken away.'

1647 ~ The Colony of Connecticut bans public smoking, however its citizens may smoke only once a day, 'And then not in company with any other.' In 1650 the colony states, 'No smoking by person under age of 21, no smoking except with physicians order'.
1665 ~ 66 In Europe, Smoking Tobacco is thought to have a protective effect against the Great Plague. Smoking is made compulsory at Eton to ward off infection.
1674 ~ In Russia, smoking can now carry the Death Penalty.
1675 ~ In Switzerland, the town council of Berne applies the same dire penalties to smokers as it does with adulterers.
1676 ~ Russia lifts it's smoking ban.
1700 ~ In England, King George III's wife known as 'Snuffy Charlotte' and in France, Napoleon said to have used 7 lb. of snuff per month.  

Napoleon

1705 ~ In Virginia, assembly passes a law legalizing lifelong slavery. It states that ' All servants imported and brought into this country, by sea or land, who were not christians in their native country, shall be slaves, and as such be here bought and sold notwithstanding a conversion to christianity afterwards'.

1761 ~ In England, the Physician John Hill 'Cautions against the Immoderate Use of Snuff'. It is perhaps the first clinical study of tobacco effects and Hill warns snuff users they are vulnerable to cancers of the nose.

1769 ~ Captain James Cook arrives in Tahiti, smoking a pipe. He is thought to be a demon and the natives dowse him with water.

Captain James Cook

1776 ~ In America, along the 'Tobacco Coast' ~ the Chesapeake,~ the Revolutionary War began. Tobacco growers found themselves perpetually in debt to British merchants and owed the mercantile houses millions of pounds. Tobacco helped finance the Revolution. George Washington appealed to his countrymen for aid 'If you can't send money, send tobacco'. When the war was over, tobacco taxes to help repay the revolutionary war debt.

George Washington

1779: Pope Benedict XII opens a tobacco factory

Vintage British Cigarette Advert

This cigarette advert was a popular one when I was a child and now I know why a Sailor was used in the promotion of sales of them.

Many thanks to Gene Borio at www.tobacco.org for the information used in A History of Tobacco.

Friday's Funerary Symbols ~ Swifts

These are the first Swifts I have ever seen to be pictured on a tombstone and I think they are so beautiful, that you could almost forget the sense of loss they depict.

The symbol of the Swift denotes the fleeting passage of time that their brief summer visits herald. When portrayed as a flock of swifts, these migratory birds remind us of the departure that comes before a journey toward a better place. 

Sacred to the Memory of

James Childs

Died April 5 1880 Age 60 Years

also James, Grandson

Died Dec 25 1886 Age 7 Mths

also Sarah, his wife

Died March16 1897 Age 76 Years

also Elizabeth, Granddaughter

 ? Age 9 Years 

There is also another Grandson who died May 22 and another Elizabeth, who died in January that is mentioned as well. Unfortunately I was unable to get any closer due to overgrown brambles in that area and so this was the best I could capture from a distance.

Wednesday's Child

In

Loving Memory

of

Vera Clarke

Died May 6th 1936

Aged 10 years

Safe in the arms of Jesus

Monday Mourning ~ Beheaded

I found these two intricately carved, but unfortunately beheaded figures, in the children's section of the New Cemetery in Ipswich. They were under some trees and close by one another, so they may have been decapitated by the same falling branch or vandal. They appear to be rather unusual monuments for childrens graves and so it is intriguing to know what their true history was. I also wonder what their faces would have looked like.  

Wednesday's Children

I love this little monument because of it's unique charm. As it clutches a flower to it's chest, I cannot remember ever seeing a cherub in flight, like this one. They are more often depicted as standing. I wonder if the raised hand, had a finger pointing heavenward ?  

Our Darling

Cecil

May 9th 1916

Aged 2 Years & 6 Months

Also

Nellie Evelyn

August 24th 1906

Aged 16 Days



Monday Mourning ~ Spires of Ipswich

All of these Spire monuments are to be found in the Old Ipswich Cemetery, where the number of them, seem to have made them a very popular choice.  

The word 'Spire' is derived from the Old English word 'Spir', meaning a sprout, or shoot of grass.

Symbolically, Spires served two functions. Firstly, a Spire proclaimed a martial power, with it's spear like point giving the impression of strength. Secondly, was is it's connection with the celestial, as it reached up toward the skies and declared its connection with heaven.

The Spire was seen as a symbol of piety, as well as a symbol of wealth and prestige.

Wednesday's Child

Dawn King

Died

May 18th 1969

Aged 4 Years

A

Sweet Little Angel

Sleeping

Autumn Glory in Ipswich, Suffolk

Autumn arrived late this year, but it was definitely in it's Glory at the Old Cemetery in Ipswich, Suffolk.

Autumn is simply the best time for visiting this Sleeping Garden.

In the Old Cemetery, two chapels are dwarfed by the grand old tree between them. They appear identical, but the western chapel has a copper spire.

They were built together for the opening of the cemetery by Cooper and Peck, in 1855. The one with the spire was for Anglican use, the one without for the non-conformists ~ you can just see the blue door under the tree. Catholics used the nearby church of St Mary for their funeral Masses before interment here.

High Gothic in appearance, but in a traditionally Suffolk style, using buttressed flint. The non-conformist chapel is now used for storage with the Anglican chapel still being used occasionally. A new Millennium Cemetery, opened in 2000, to the north of the Borough.

 

I made some very interesting finds here too and will post them soon......