The blame game. Parramatta, NSW, Australia
Posted by razzbuffnik on November 5th, 2008
I was in Parramtta yesterday and I visited an old sadly neglected historic cemetery from the early days of settlement, where I came across this gravestone.
The epitaph reads:
Sacred to the Memory
of
SAMUEL BARLEY
son of SAMUEL and MARY BARLEY
Who was unfortunately drowned in a
Well on his Parents Premises the 23
Day of October 1834
Aged 3 years and 7 Months
The Well having been left uncovered
By a careless Female Servant who
had Charge of the Unfortunate
Infant who was a beautiful
Promising Child
-
Weep not for me my Parents Dear
I am not Dead but Sleeping here
My days are past my grave you see
Prepare yourselves to follow me
November 5th, 2008 at 4:54 pm
Ooooh I love that one. Something I find profoundly morbid about myself is a fascination with old children tombs and that one is GREAT!
In Porquerolles, a little island in South of France, there is a tomb where three children from the same family are buried. The three kids all died before reaching 7 years old, and all three from different accidents… I’ve always found that particularly suspicious.
November 5th, 2008 at 6:40 pm
Good Grief! What guilt carved into that stone! I’ve never seen anything like this and I’ve got a few pre-revolutionary graveyards here in Boston! Parental guilt and if the “Careless Female Servent” could read, yowser….Perhaps, there was the equivalent of “Nancy Grace” back then? (She’s a legal commentator on TV in the US who hounds parents of children who have been abducted or died under mysterious circumstances.
November 5th, 2008 at 7:38 pm
Nat
I, myself am very interested in how people died. When ever I’m in cemeteries, I can’t help myself reading the epitaphs and my favourite ones are those with a little information about the person interred.
Pat
When I showed my wife this photo, she (in a mock accusatory tone) said, “I damn you to hell!” The epitaph is so loaded with grief, anger and recrimination. The fact that the parents felt the need to point out that it was a servant’s fault shows how guilty they must of felt for not caring for the child themselves. I find it also strange that they had to mention the sex of the servant.
I also wonder if the “servant” was a convict. There weren’t many women in NSW back then and many of the women who were there were convicts or ex-convicts (convicts were used like slaves until about 1870). Most of the female convicts were petty thieves or prostitutes and they were treated so badly it makes me shudder (the “Fatal Shore” by Robert Hughes is a very well written account of the convicts in Australia). So I don’t find it hard to understand that if the Barley’s “female servant” was a convict forced into indentured servitude, that she would’ve had very little enthusiasm for her job.
I think that the death of little Samuel would’ve been a very ugly time for everyone involved, as the blame game was played out.
I would’ve loved to know what happed to the “female servant” and what her story was.
November 6th, 2008 at 8:19 am
Some things I just don’t understand. Putting incription like this on your child grave is one of those things. What did they think an inscription like this would do? Be a warning, threat maybe to other careless female servants? (who probably didn’t roam graveyards and probably didn’t even know how to read). Provoke emphatic feelings of other parents? Maybe.
I wonder.
Though, when we travel to Bosnia, it’s an increadible experience to visit their graveyards. People put all sorts of stuff on their gravestones, not to mention the size and shape of those - gravestone in a shape of a tractor is quite common, I guess, because quite some people die in work related tractor accidents.
November 7th, 2008 at 3:56 am
Hello,
I just wanted to let you know that I have passed on to you the Kreativ Blogger Award (see my blog at www.mirandaswan.blogspot.com for details).
I really enjoy your blog entries very much.
Kind regards,
Miranda S.
November 8th, 2008 at 9:12 pm
I have always had a love of old graveyards and find the modern trend of putting only the last name and perhaps a date, to be very regrettable. The level of personal detail that used to appear on stones, I feel, give you a sense of real empathy and a solid connection to a person who might have died hundreds of years ago. Call me morbid, but I like that.
This stone is simply amazing. As a father of two very young children, I don’t know how I’d survive this kind of grief and yet, back only a few decades ago, loosing a few of your sons and daughters before they reached adulthood was expected. It makes me ill just to think about it.
There is a stone in the corner of a small and very old cemetery in southern New Hampshire that belongs to a five year old girl, who died some time in the late 1700’s. I can’t remember the inscription in any great detail except that it is all done in rhyme and tells the story about how she was killed by falling into a vat of boiling cider. The last line of the last lines refers goes something like “… who, in her wracking agony, was lifted to the embrace of God.”
Powerful stuff. I always try to visit hew stone when I’m in the area.
-Turkish Prawn
November 9th, 2008 at 4:25 am
Great tombstone spotting! I always like taking a look around graveyards and reading the inscriptions. The old Ross Bay Cemetary (west coast Canada old) in Victoria, B.C. is a great place to read about shipwrecks, mining disasters, robber barons, and immigrant stories. Almost everyone in there died amazingly!
note: I wasn’t named after the cemetary.
November 9th, 2008 at 7:22 am
Cashmere
I think that the tombstone was an expression of not only grief but also an cursing accusation. You’ve got me intrigued with the tractor gravestones in Bosnia. The more I hear about Bosnia, the more interested I become in that country.
Miranda
Thanks for coming by again and doing me the honour of passing on the Kreativ Blogger Award.
Turkish
Yes, it’s hard to believe that child mortality used to be taken as a given up until fairly recently. I think that there are very few people in the world who aren’t moved by the plight of a child in danger. Like you, I (who have no children) don’t how parents can cope with such a loss.
Marx once said that “religion was the opium of the masses”. I’m pretty sure he meant it was a pain killer, not an addictive drug and that is why we see stuff like “in her wracking agony, was lifted to the embrace of God”. I suppose there must a little consolation that the child has gone somewhere better and is no longer suffering.
Ross
I’ve been to Victoria BC several times but I never thought about going to the cemetery there. Next time I’m over that way (I have friends in Vancouver)I must go an check it out.
November 10th, 2008 at 9:22 am
I want to know what they did to the servant! Other than permanent public humiliation that is.
November 10th, 2008 at 9:42 am
It’s one of those pictures that tells an entire history. We have a guy at work who holds the terrifying position of Director, and his saying is “when we get it right it’s WE but when it all goes wrong it’s YOU.” He doesn’t accept the blame for a single thing.
November 10th, 2008 at 10:02 am
S.Le
Me too. I bet that would be the really interesting story here.
Epic
When the revolution comes…… he’ll be the first up against the wall!