To lose five children, four of them just toddlers, must have been a huge blow to James & Mary Wyatt. That Sarah, who managed at least to get to twenty years old, in 1891, should have then died just as she was entering adultdhood, must have been just as terrible.
As the inscription, on this grave in Whitmore churchyard, says: A bitter grief, a shock severe / To part with ones we love so dear.
The Victorian era was when the modern met the past.
In the times before, death seems almost to have been a rite of life - albeit the last rite -; but the Victorians, so close to medical break-throughs, found the death of loved ones very, very hard to bear - as we still do now.
This post was featured on the Cemetery Sunday website
