Margravine Cemetery is all things to all men, women, children, fauna, flora, birds of the air and creepy-crawlies.
But primarily it is a cemetery and Robert Stephenson investigates the histories of the graves and shares his research with the Friends of Margravine Cemetery. I had seen the Marsh grave (above) often but did not know the family story.
The SS Princess Alice was a paddle steamer permitted to carry a maximum of 936 passengers between London and Gravesend in calm waters. On Tuesday, 3rd September 1878 children were still on holiday. Thomas and Susan Marsh went with their nine year old son, Eustace, to Gravesend for the day. On the return journey a strong ebb tide made Captain Grinstead cut a corner at Gallions Reach. He collided with a collier; his paddle steamer broke in two and sank within four minutes. Between six and seven hundred people drowned, including the Captain, and Susan Marsh and her son. Her husband survived dying in 1926 aged eighty-two. They are re-united in Margravine Cemetery with an enigmatic inscription at the foot of the headstone: “Teach us to marvel, not murmur at Thy Will”.
Readers with long memories may remember on that evening in 1878 Edward Joseph, 2nd Lord Bellew, was the incompetent proprietor of the Rosherville Hotel at Gravesend; another skeleton rattling around in the Bellew cupboard.