24 



NOTES AND QUEEIES. 



[2'^<i S. No 80., JuLT 11. '57. 



his body in a coffin or box. The box was accordingly 

 sent down to Bristol ; and when I called on my friend 

 Mrs. Chatterton to condole with her, she, as a very great 

 secret, took me up stairs, and showed me the box ; and 

 removing the lid, I saw the poor hoy, whilst his mother 

 sobbed in silence. She told me that "she should have him 

 taken out in the middle of the night, and bury him in 

 EedclifFe churchyard. Afterwards, when I saw her, she 

 said she had managed it very well, so that none but the 

 sexton and his assistant knew anything about it. This 

 secrecy was necessary, as he could not be buried in con- 

 secrated ground." 



Commenting upon this last statement of Mrs. 

 Edkins, Professor Masson makes the following 

 remark : 



" There is some difference, it will be observed, between 

 the account given in Mr. Cumberland's surviving memo- 

 randa and that given by Mr. Cottle as his recollection of 

 what Mr. Cumberland had told him. In the one Mrs. 

 Edkins saj's nothing whatever about the private burial ; 

 in the other she makes the detailed statement just quoted. 

 Either, then, Mr. Cumberland had seen Mrs. Edkins a 

 second time, and got from her particulars which she had 

 not thought fit to communicate in 1808, or there was a 

 confusion between Mrs, Edkins and Mrs. Stockwell in Mr. 

 Cottle's memory." 



The preceding extracts contain, I think, an im- 

 partial statement of all that has been published, 

 and which has led to the belief that Chatterton's 

 body was buried in Redcliffe churchyard. 



In contravention of this belief the following 

 reasons are submitted. 



A friend of the writer's is still living near Pen- 

 zance, the Rev. C. V. Le Grice, who in 1796, 

 twenty-six years after Chatterton's suicide, visited 

 the Shoe Lane burying-ground to verify, if he 

 could, the place where his body lay ; and in Au- 

 gust, 1838, will be found in the OentlemarCs Ma- 

 gazine a long letter written by him, in which, after 

 showing how much Chatterton was indebted to 

 Bailey's Dictionary for his knowledge of the 

 Saxon language and of heraldry, he concludes the 

 article with these remarks : ^ 



" The stoiy of the remains of Chatterton's body being 

 re-interred in Bristol is perfectly absurd. His remains 

 were deposited in a pit, which admitted of many bodies, 

 prepared for those who died in the workhouse of Saint 

 Andrew's, Holborn. The admittance for the corpse was 

 by a door like a horizontal cellar door ; so it was pointed 

 out to me many years ago. I wished to stand on the 

 grave, the precise spot. ' That,' said the sexton, ' cannot 

 be marked.' " 



In the GentlemarCs Magazine for December in 

 the same year, 1838, is a letter from Mr. Richard 

 Smith, the nephew of the Rev. Mr. Catcott, who 

 inherited from him several valuable manuscripts 

 and relics of Chatterton, containing the following 

 paragraph. Mr. Smith was a zealous advocate in 

 favour of Chatterton being the author of the 

 JRowleian Poems : 



"The rumour respecting the removal of Cliatterton's 

 body I consider to be quite apocryphal : certainly there is 

 no memorial in RedclitFe churchyard ; and it is unlikely 

 that after incurring the expense of a removal, the parties 



should have neglected to mark the spot, or to write a 

 notice in the newspapers of the day." 



In 1842 was published at Cambridge, by W. P. 

 Grant, Esq., a new edition of Chatterton's poems, 

 with notices of his life. Mr. Grant was materially 

 assisted in the compilation by Mr. William Tyson, 

 of Bristol, who had for many years, in connexion 

 with Mr. Richard Smith, been engaged in col- 

 lecting any new occurrence which could elucidate 

 Chatterton's career ; and these gentlemen cor- 

 rected many of the sheets in Mr. Grant's publi- 

 cation. In allusion to Chatterton's suicide Mr. 

 Grant writes as follows : 



"That a coroner's inquest was held on the body; a 

 verdict of insanity returned (^felo-de-se it should be), and 

 the poet was buried among paupers in Shoe Lane, and 

 this without a single question being asked, or any inquiry 

 being instituted by his friends or patrons. Indeed, so 

 long was it before his acquaintance heard of these cir- 

 cumstances, that it was with the greatest difficulty that 

 his identity could be established, or his history traced 

 with any degree of probability." 



Let us now try the case between both parties 

 by the rules of evidence, and we would ask if any 

 judge would direct a jury to give a verdict in 

 favour of the re-interment of Chatterton in Red- 

 cliffe churchyard. Without casting a doubt upon 

 Mr. Cumberland's veracity, and considering Mr. 

 Cottle's conflicting statements, would not a judge 

 state both to be mere hearsay or secondary evidence, 

 and consider that of Messrs. Le Grice, Smith, 

 Grant, and Masson, most to be relied upon ? 

 How came it, too, that Southey and Cottle, when 

 publishing Chatterton's Life, &c., for the benefit 

 of his sister, and they were in constant commu- 

 nication with her, that she was silent upon such 

 an interesting subject ? The Shoe Lane burying- 

 ground was consecrated, so that Chatterton was 

 not buried in the usual revolting manner of 

 suicides. Again, after the interment of the body 

 in London, was it probable that Chatterton's uncle 

 should, " after the body had been cased in a parish 

 shell, have had it properly secured, and sent by 

 waggon to Bristol ; that after it was opened the 

 corpse was found to be black and half putrid, 

 having burst with the motion of the carriage, so 

 that it was necessary to inter it speedily ? " As 

 Mr. Le Grice says, it is absurd to believe such a 

 statement. As it occurred in the sultry month of 

 August, the body must, even before its first inter- 

 ment, have been in a rapid state of decomposition 

 from the quantity of arsenic that Chatterton had 

 swallowed. In those times it must have taken 

 three or four days at the least to have taken it by 

 waggon to Bristol. The expense also must have 

 been considerable, and Chatterton's relatives were 

 not in affluent circumstances to bear the expenses 

 of removal. Much more might be advanced to 

 show the improbability of the removal and the 

 evidence bearing upon it. But enough has been 

 said to leave the verdict in the hands of a discern- 



