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Margaret Green
Not all headstones
were grand and ornate. Well into the 1860s simple
classical headstones were still being designed, such is
the tragic memorial to Margaret Green.
 Margaret
was only 45 when she died, and she had by that time
buried 10 of her children. None of these children got
past their eighth birthday and the youngest died at 6
days old.
Three of her children did survive her - and so in her
short life Margaret gave birth to 13 children. Her
gravestone symbolises the plight of women in the
nineteenth century - constantly bearing children, who
die young, and then suffering an early death.
This gravestone has also been the subject
of considerable research,
highlighting the appalling living
conditions of city dwellers at that
 time.
Margaret was the wife of a butcher and so the family was
unlikely to have been desperately poor. Nevertheless,
they lived in a squalid environment close to an abattoir
and a refuse tip.
A typical street .. |
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