120,000 Years of Life
Heene Cemetery Data Study 2 is centred on the birth year of the people buried in Heene Cemetery.
The burial records include an age at death, and for this study, each individual’s birth year has been calculated by taking their age at death from their burial year.
Heene Cemetery Data Study 2: Birth Years
The birth years span over 150 years from 1788 to 1944.
This chart shows the number of burials for each birth year.
The most common burials in the cemetery are for people born between 1835 and 1880 with an average of 30 burials for each birth year.
Heene Cemetery Data Study 2 – Burials by Birth Year
Adding up all the years of life of the burials, gives the amazing sum of 121,025 years.
We are unearthing the stories behind those 121,025 years of life buried at Heene.
An example of which is Sheffield born, Sarah Coxon, nee Ellison, who was born at the end of the 18th Century and died at 6 Clarence Place, Worthing in 1877.
Birth Decade
The next chart groups the burials by the decade of their birth and by their gender.
It shows that the 1840s was the most popular birth decade with over 223 female burials and 140 male burials.
The gender difference is striking, with female burials vastly outnumbering male burials, in nearly all birth decades.
73,913 female years of life are represented in Heene Cemetery, compared to only 47,112 male years of life.
Burials by Birth Decade
Heene Cemetery Data Study 2: 120,000 Years of Life. This data study is centred on the birth year of the people buried in Heene Cemetery.
Heene Cemetery Data Study 2: Burials of Babies
85 babies died in their first year of life (revised from Data Study 1).
43 were male babies and 42 were female babies.
26 babies were buried in the 1890s and only 5 in the 1910s.
Overall, we calculate, that the lives of these babies were cut short by an average of over 60 years.
Heene Cemetery Data Study 2 – Burials by Date Over the Year
Died on their Birthday
On average 1 in 365 people die on their birthday.
At Heene there are about 2000 burials making it likely that 5 or 6 of people died on their birth day.
However, we do not yet know the full birthdate of most of the burials.
We have identified Rachel Hatcher who died on the day of her birth, and Maria Young who died on her 77th birthday.
Born on the Same Day
Amy Goring, nee Edwards and Kenneth Abbott share the same birth day of 18th February 1881. Amy died aged 47 and Kenneth aged 78 years.
We have not yet identified any twins buried in the Cemetery.
A small donation would help us continue to bring you the history of yesterday, and the findings of today!
Sue Standing – Chairperson for Friends of Heene Cemetery