Brief history of Highgate cemetery, setting for Niffenegger novel “Her Fearful Symmetry”

Brief history of Highgate

Highgate Cemetery was one of seven cemeteries built in London in 1839, after Victorians realized burial conditions had become intolerable due to overcrowding.

The population of London had almost trebled 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 spectacular south-facing hillside site slightly downhill from the top of Highgate Hill, soon 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 holds a collection of Grade I listed Victorian mausoleums and gravestones. It brims with trees, wild flowers and shrubbery and is a haven for small animals such as foxes and birds.

In addition to such luminaries such as Karl Marx, Michael Faraday and George Eliot, Highgate is the final resting place for an eclectic assortment of notable figures. They include:

— 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 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

There are over 168,000 people buried in more than 52,00 graves in Highgate’s 37 acres, of which at least 850 are notable.