Fieldwork Team: Melanie Callas, Thea Lamoureux, Shannon Turner-Riley, and Alex Ashby
For our Memorial Monument Analysis, we studied mausoleums in the Ross Bay Cemetery in Victoria, B.C. This cemetery opened in 1873 and it is located at 1594 Farfield Rd. Our data set consisted of ten mausoleums located in the Ross Bay Cemetery. The subset of monuments that we chose to study was based on the type of monument: mausoleums. We chose to examine ten mausoleums because this number seemed like a good size sample to help us answer our research questions and the sample size seemed adequate based on the the number of mausoleums located in the Ross Bay Cemetery. In this cemetery, there was a total of twelve mausoleums so our data set included 83% of the total mausoleum population. The possible limitations for our project are that the mausoleums that we did not study may have been unique cases and they could have altered our overall findings. For example, the two mausoleums that we did not study might have been from an earlier or later time period than the mausoleums that we studied or the unstudied mausoleums might have contained people who had different kin relations compared to the mausoleums that we did study. Also, our data set of ten might be considered small, even if it is large in relation to the total population of mausoleums in the Ross Bay Cemetery, so our findings might not be representative of all cemeteries in Victoria. We went into the field with these two research questions:
1. What time period were mausoleums common in Ross Bay Cemetery?
2. Are the deceased in each mausoleum in Ross Bay Cemetery related and if so, how are they related in terms of kinship, marriage etc.?
Map of Ten Mausoleums at the Ross Bay Cemetery in Victoria, B.C.
View Ross Bay Cemetery in Victoria, B.C. in a larger map
Mausoleums are beautiful monuments that are built above ground and can contain multiple bodies. We gathered data from ten mausoleums located in the Ross Bay Cemetery and this data - including photos, transcriptions, and descriptions - is presented in the map above. We used this data to help us answer our research questions. First, we examined what time period mausoleums were most common in the Ross Bay Cemetery. The range of dates at death spanned 106 years. The oldest date was in the Mackenzie mausoleum where Kenneth Mackenzie died in 1875, while the most recent year of death was in the Clark mausoleum where Edward Paterson Rithet died in 1981. Overall, the mausoleums were most common in the first half of the twentieth century, with a peak between the 1910's and 1930's. During these three decades, about 51% of all the people contained in the mausoleums died and were presumably added to the mausoleum at the time of death. After the 1930's, the number of people placed in mausoleums decreased slightly and after 1981 the use of the mausoleums ceased even though there were empty spaces in a few mausoleums, such as the Hawkins and Rithet mausoleums. These findings are consistent with the findings of Lee Decker (2009) who states that family mausoleums were common during the late 19th and early 20th century in North America (p.154). Lee Decker (2009) suggests that by the late 19th century, family mausoleums were being used to show achievement and success in a period where there was a clear connection between status and mortuary investment; however, by the 1920's and 1930's the construction of elaborate mausoleums peaked as people altered their mortuary behaviour (p.151). The mausoleums that we studied could also be interpreted as representing a group's high status during this time period based on the mausoleums' elaborate designs and sizes, such as the large Rithet mausoleum which was constructed with materials that include marble and an iron gate.
Our second research question examined the relationship between the people that were buried in each mausoleum with the goal of learning if they were related and if so, how they were related. We discovered that the most obvious relationship between people in a single mausoleum was husband and wife. This was evident in some mausoleums because the inscriptions would make reference to this relationship. For example, in the Hawkins mausoleum, there is an inscription that says "In Loving Memory of Jessie/Wife of T.W.C. Hawkins" and inscribed below that is says, "In Loving Memory of Tom/ T.W.C. Hawkins". In these cases it is easy to infer the relationship. In the majority of the mausoleums, the people buried inside shared the same last name, which suggests that most people found in a mausoleum are related either through blood or marriage, such as siblings, parents, or spouses. However, some people have different last names and there is no reference to their relationship with the other people in the mausoleum. For example, in the Rithet mausoleum, everyone shares the surname of Rithet, except for a woman named Gertrude Alice Genge. There is no mention of her relation to the other people in the mausoleum so it is unknown if or how she is related to the other occupants. We can rule out some possibilities based on the age of the occupants but this still leaves several possibilities. In all of the mausoleums, the name that is inscribed on the outside of the mausoleum matches at least one person's surname inside, except for the Houston mausoleum where all three people share the last name of "Florence". Based on their common last name, they are probably related through blood or marriage but I do not know how they are related to the "Houston" title. Finally, it appears some people that share a mausoleum are related beyond the nuclear family. For example, in the Clark mausoleum the two people inside share the same surname but one of them died in 1866 while the other person was not born until 1921. It is possible that the person that was born later was a grandchild or other similar relative.
Upon examining the inscriptions of the mausoleums, it appears that most of the people in each mausoleum are related either through blood or marriage. However, it is often unclear what their precise relationship is because the inscriptions often lack this information so we must make inferences based on the people's ages at birth and death and their surnames. I believe the mausoleums that we studied at Ross Bay Cemetery were generally built for families and they allowed people to identitfy as a family unit. In some cemteries during the Victoria era, family graves - including mausoleums - became more symbolically important to people and it appears that mausoleums were a way for people to cement the idea of family as the main social institution within a culture (Warpole 2003, p.158). It was near this time period that the mausoleums in Ross Bay Cemetery began to appear. Mytum (2004) suggests that in industrialized countries the upper middle class used family mausoleums to solidify their dynastic success (p.72). This could be a reason why people in the mausoleums tend to be related and why the family name is on public display above or below the entrances to the mausoleums. In conclusion, based on our data set, we found that mausoleums in Ross Bay Cemetery were most common in the early twentieth century although they started appearing in the late nineteenth-century and at least some of the people in a single mausoleum tend to be related through marriage and/or blood with the most evident relationship being marriage between husband and wife. This information provides an insight into the use and purpose of mausoleums in Victoria over the years.
References:
LeeDecker, Charles H. 2009, 'Preparing for an afterlife on Earth: The transformation of mortuary behaviour in nineteenth-century North America' in International Handbook of Historical Archaeology, pp.141-157.
Mytum, H.C. 2004, Mortuary monuments and burial grounds of the historic period, Plenum Publishers, New York.
Warpole, Ken. 2003, Lost Landscapes: the architecture of the cemetery in the west, Reaktion Books Ltd., London.
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