Highgate CEMETERy \ A look at its history

Highgate Cemetery was one of seven cemeteries built in London around 1839, after Victorians realized burial conditions had become intolerable because of overcrowding. London’s population had almost tripled in the first 50 years of the 18th century, London’s church graveyards were unable to cope with the volume of the city’s dead and the number of burials were seen as a hazard to health and an undignified way to treat the deceased.

The cemetery, which occupies a south-facing hillside site slightly downhill from the top of Highgate Hill, became the place for wealthy Victorians to be buried. When opened, the average age of its interns was just 36 years old.

The Western section has a collection of Grade-I-listed Victorian mausoleums and gravestones.

There are more than 168,000 people buried in graves in Highgate’s 37 acres, of which at least 850 are notable, including:

Karl Marx

Michael Faraday

George Eliot

Alexander Litvinenko (1962-2006), former Russian security official-turned-dissident who was mysteriously poisoned with radioactive polonium and died weeks later in a London hospital.

Charles Cruft (1852-1938), who founded Crufts dog show as a vehicle to market James Spratt dog biscuits, of which he was the general manager.

Radclyffe Hall (1880-1943), author of 1928 lesbian classic “The Well of Loneliness,” which was the subject of an obscenity trial in Britain, which resulted in all copies being ordered to be destroyed.

Thomas Sayers (1826-1865), an English bare-knuckle fighter who became the first boxer to be declared the World Heavyweight Champion.

Douglas Adams (1952-2001), author of “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” and other novels.

George Wombell (1777-1850), famous menagerie exhibitor who founded “Wombwell’s Travelling Menagerie.”

Edward Richard Woodham (1831-1886), survivor of the Charge of the Light Brigade.

The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.