The old English Cemeteries in Murree, Pakistan (formerly British India before 1947)
Photo Gallery: Coming soon! click on picture to view full-size (Click on photos to view in larger size)
There are 16 Cemeteries in and around Murree! I have photographed individual headstones in most of them and the digital catalogue has now more than 500 listings. (Updated 2005)
Old Cemetery
Cliffden Road New Cemetery
Pindi Point New Cemetery
I created this webpage because I was getting a number of queries from people around the world & from visitors on my other webpage on Murree,  and those searching for the burial sites of their family members or friends who had died in Murree (1850s � 1980s)

Disclaimer: I am acting alone in good faith only and doing this voluntarily out of sheer interest and to help people trace their ancestors. I hope that I am able to assist you as well.

Regards,
Dr Ali Jan
Click on picture to view in larger size
Click on picture to view inscription on headstone
The list has been personally compiled by me on the basis of legible headstone inscriptions as on Sep 2003 (updated 2004/2005!). Some of the oldest graves are from 1850s. I have contacted various authorities to send me the official list or record of the graveyards in Murree, but it is very difficult to find. Hopefully with time my database shall increase. If you have any knowledge or if you would like to help me or share information please write to me. I could do with a bit of extra help. Thanks.
ChristianCemeteriesPakistan Mailing List
For cemetery record/ listing or any other assistance please contact Dr Ali Jan
The following is my favourite article on the old cemeteries of British India

Visiting India�s Land of Regrets

by Geoffrey E. Duin

The title of a poem, �The Land of Regrets�,  by Victorian writer Sir Alfred Lyall is a fairly apt description of how Europeans living in India in those days often regarded the country. Today one can have a fascinating encounter with this aspect of India�s past by taking a side trip off the tourist trail and spending some time wondering among the graves of India�s old European cemeteries.



These are not hard to find as most of India�s major towns have at least one and some are near popular tourist destinations. There are two in the former British Civil Lines area adjacent to Old Delhi: the �Nicholson Cemetery� (a short walk from the Raj-era Oberoi Maidens Hotel), and the Lothian Bridge cemetery which has older graves like that of a Greek merchant who died in 1828.



Calcutta has numerous old cemeteries including Catholic, Scottish, and an Armenian one with headstones dating back to 1630. The city once had a Greek and French cemetery though these have been reclaimed by asphalt and cement. But the most famous of Calcutta�s and perhaps India�s European cemeteries is the South Park Street(formerly Burial Ground Road)Cemetery located near the Chowringhee area. Upon passing through the newly restored gatehouse one encounters what an architectural historian has described as �an Imperial City of the Dead�[i]: an amazing array of neo-classical funerary architecture, �without parallel in England�[ii], of pyramids, pavilions, obelisks, urns, pagodas, and spiral columns, beneath which rest some of Calcutta�s early nabobs, administrators, and soldiers along with their lovers, wives, and children.



Agra has a Catholic cemetery located in the former British cantonment, which is not far from the Taj Mahal. This is the oldest cemetery in Northern India[iii], built by the Portuguese, and is the resting place of John Mildenhall, buried in 1614 who was the first known Englishman to have died in India.  The old cemetery in Varanasi (Benares) is also in the cantonment where some of the city�s upscale tourist hotels are located. This area of the city still retains an air of its colonial past with its gardened bungalows facing quiet, shady streets. Here St. Mary�s Church stands slowly disintegrating amid its desolate grounds. Inside the church, a faded blue runner woven with fleur-de-lis designs is moldering under bat droppings and mildew. On a wall one of the plaques commemorates a service Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip attended at the church while visiting the city.



The Benares cantonment, established in 1811, is one of over two hundred settlements the Portuguese, Dutch, British and French built throughout pre-Independence India. While places like Bangalore, Madras and Kanpur have become large and important cities, many of the settlements and stations they built were near towns or in remote areas that have seen little growth over the centuries.  But regardless of the size or importance of the station; whether it was manned by a few thousand or a half a dozen, each had its oft-used burial ground filled with the graves of those who died within "two monsoons" or a few years after their arrival, or birth in India.



There are an estimated two million[iv] of these graves scattered throughout the subcontinent most in cemeteries that are in various stages of decay while others have disappeared due to encroaching urbanization. Sadly, some are now being used as latrines, or are sporadically vandalized, or have become homes to squatters. Headstones and grave monuments have been stolen over the years and there is the problem of grave robbers that feed India�s black market in skeletons(interestingly, reports of �old sahib� ghost sightings have protected some graveyards from being vandalized or occupied!).



But due to the efforts of the British Association for Cemeteries in South Asia(BACSA), a London-based organization with worldwide membership, European cemeteries throughout Asia are being restored or at  least maintained to some degree, especially those that are more historically important like the South Park Street Cemetery. This cemetery was in terrible condition before BACSA and members of its �sister� organization in Calcutta, The Association for the Preservation of Historical Cemeteries in India(APHCI), restored it to its present state.



Some BACSA members have taken on the arduous and painstaking task of locating and recording headstone inscriptions of European graves in Asian countries including Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Myanmar, Thailand and Japan. For example, Susan Farrington has dedicated her life to locating and recording every grave inscription in Pakistan, a task she started almost twenty years ago when she worked for the British Embassy there[v].  Her books from this work are published by BACSA and contain every legible name and inscription on headstones in cemeteries in Quetta, Peshawar and Rawalpindi, as well as those on memorials and plaques found in the old cantonment churches in these towns.



Books like Ms. Farrington�s are valuable tools for people researching their genealogical connection with the subcontinent and historians alike. The India Office Library and Records(IOLR)of the British Library in London has a repository of burial records, headstone and monument inscriptions, as well as a photographic archive gathered over the years by BACSA members. BACSA�s activities also include hiring a chowkidar, or watchman to guard and maintain particular cemeteries(if you visit a cemetery that has chowkidar on duty, please be sure to tip him!).



Ms. Farrington in her book about Peshawar Cemetery writes that: ��taking an hour or two to walk round the cemetery, it is possible to absorb the whole history of the border area without the need to plough through history books, or struggle with complicated military analysis�[vi].  This could apply to any cemetery in India as well because although they do contain the graves of the military and administrative movers and shakers of the Raj or East India Company, most of them are occupied by the ordinary people who made up the majority of the European residents in India: the shopkeepers and small hotel owners, the bakers, tailors, planters, bank, mill and factory employees, railroad workers, and the lower level military and civil servants along with their families.



Their grave inscriptions offer a striking picture of life, frequently very short, and death in this harsh land: �died of cholera�, �died of heat apoplexy�, �died of heat exhaustion�, �accidentally drowned�, died of �wounds incurred in a dacoity�(sic), �died of enteric(typhoid) fever�, �assassinated in the Khyber Pass�, �fell a Victim�.to that dreadful distemper the small pox�, �shot by tribesmen�, or �he sank exhausted by the united effects of the climate and his judicial labours�. Deaths were also caused by hornet stings, polo accidents, alcohol poisoning, fires, malaria, dysentery, earthquake, rabies, plague, �hysterical mania�, dropsy, �fatty heart�, scalding and suicides.



But the most poignant inscriptions among these are those of the women and children who suffered an appalling mortality rate in India(which unfortunately remains a problem among Indians today). It was common practice in old India for European girls to marry at fifteen or sixteen, only to die in childbirth a few years later. (�Begum� Johnson, once the grand old dame of Calcutta society first married when she was twelve but was fortunate to outlive a succession of husbands before dying at 87). Many who survived childbirth had to watch their children die.  An inscription on a child�s grave in Kanpur(that lies next to her sister�s)reflects a mother�s self reproach at the intensity of her attachment to her child:

�Was my dear babe who now is gone an idol of my heart? It was needful we should part�.



The suddenness and frequency of death in India encouraged a blas� attitude toward it. In the 1800s funeral processions became so common that in some stations the band would play the solemn Dead March from Saul  on the way to cemetery and on the way back break into a humorous ditty[vii].  According to one account: "we have known two instances of dining with a gentleman(at lunch)and being invited to his burial before supper time". A British soldier in 1851 wrote that a fellow officer was "playing billiards at 10 am, at 11 am he was seized with cramps and nausea, dead at 1 pm and at 5 pm the same day we were taking him to the cemetery� [viii](Because of the climate, burials were usually conducted at night). Or this from the diary of a Lady West written in 1823: "Here people die one day and are buried the next. Their furniture is sold the third and they are forgotten the fourth.[ix]"



India�s old European cemeteries and churches are historical treasures though unfortunately(and understandably)they are little regarded as such in India today, and even outside the country the colonial era might still be too fresh in our collective memory for them to generate the interest they deserve.



Hopefully, more Indians and others will begin to appreciate that these cemeteries are part of India�s cultural and historical heritage. Theon Wilkinson M.B.E., founder of BACSA and author of �Two Monsoons� , a book about the subcontinent�s European cemeteries, hopes that in time, �these places may be regarded by the local citizens in the same way as we now look at Roman remains in Britain, without political and religious overtones�[x].  But by then many of the cemeteries and old churches in India could be gone.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[i] Davies, Philip, Splendours of the Raj, Penquin Books, 1987

[ii] Ibid

[iii] Wilkinson, Theon, Two Monsoons, Duckworth, 1987

[iv] Davies

[v] CHOWKIDAR 1977-1997, Ed. Dr. Rosie Llewellyn-Jones, BACSA Publications, 1997

[vi] Farrington, Susan,
Peshawar Cemetery, BACSA Publications, 1988

[vii] Wilkinson

[viii] Ibid

[ix] Ibid

[x] CHOWKIDAR

Subject: Travel & holiday guides Pakistan
Title: Peshawar Cemetary
Author: Susan Maria Farrington
I am currently doing a story on the deteriorating condition of the old Murree cemeteries. If you are interested in teaming-up please contact me. You have all my gratitude. Dr A Jan
Recommended Reading: Peshawar Cemetery by Susan Maria Farrington
A BACSA Publication (Charity)
Contact Address/ Ordering Information:
76 1/2 Chartfield Avenue
London SW15 6HQ
[Murree Main]
Old Cemetery
Cliffden Road New Cemetery
Pindi Point New Cemetery
ChristianCemeteriesPakistan Mailing List
Peshawar Cemeteries Page
Useful Web Resources:

http://www.indian-cemeteries.org

http://members.tripod.com/~Glosters/memindex3.htm Burial Listing - Officers

http://www.angelfire.com/mp/memorials/memindz1.htm Burial Listing - Other Ranks

http://www.bacsa.org.uk BACSA

http://www.fibis.org Families in British India Society
ChristianCemeteriesPakistan Mailing List
Keywords: Headstone, tombstone, inscription, Records, Burial ground, graveyard, grave, graves, english, british, christian, agency noor khan ahata, murree, punjab, india, sacred to the memory of.. who died at Murree, military servicemen, pictures, photos, photographs, colonial, photography
� Copyright 2005 Photos by Ali Jan All Rights Reserved
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