25. Celebrating the Dead

Abstract

Having given Petrie and Hibbert a final resting place in his museum, Saull set about securing his own. Here we look at Owenite and freethought last rites and Saull’s French-style obsequies. The examples chosen are the send-off given to Saull’s friends, the old London Corresponding Society revolutionary John Gale Jones, and agrarian reformer Allen Davenport. When Saull bought his own plot in Kensal Green Cemetery, next to Davenport, his monkey-satirizing nemesis Rev. James Elishama Smith criticized him for seeking an unChristian sectarianism even unto death. The first to be interred in Saull’s plot was the old class warrior Henry Hetherinton, who had made his rapprochement with Owenism and had remained true to Saull. Hetherington’s in-house ‘social funeral’ is looked at, and the ideological purpose it served.