Story
A Menagerie of Animal Tales
The Slater family, who lived onsite at St John’s, gave homes to many animals abandoned in the cemetery. Photo courtesy of the Slater family.
Introduction
As well as the many thousands of human stories St John’s Cemetery contains, research unearthed some stories and curios about animals too.
Animal Tales
Cemetery Coos
At one time, cows used to roam on the cemetery land. West Farm (the farmhouse of which still stands today) belonged to the St John’s, Westgate and Elswick Burial Board and what was then afield at the top west side of the cemetery was rented out for cattle grazing. A discussion was minuted in the burial board meeting book about what action to take to deter boys from throwing stones through the boundary fence at the poor cows!
As the population of the west end rapidly expanded with all the new industrial work along the banks of the Tyne, the cemetery was extended in 1899 and the old grazing field is now full of burials.
Image: Courtesy of Tyne & Wear Archives.
After the Horse had Bolted
Also minuted, at a meeting in 1916, was an incident involving the cemetery boundaries and an ice cream cart horse. Some of the railings had been inadvertently removed when, having been tied to them, the horse had had a scare and bolted, taking the railings alongside the cart with it as it galloped down Elswick Road. Accident or not, the board were going after the ice cream business for the repair costs!
Image: Courtesy of Beamish, the Living Museum of the North.
Image: Courtesy of Tyne & Wear Archives
Pony Rental
As machines were beginning to replace some of the work of human manual labour, the board at St John’s, Westgate and Elswick moved in the opposite direction, and proposed a pony be hired to save the wages of hiring another grounds worker for the cemetery!
Image: Courtesy of Tyne & Wear Archives.
A Beastly Escape
This story comes from interviews with Eileen Watson and her daughter, Tara Jobe, who lived in St. Johns as Mr Watson was the gravedigger.
As the daughter of the last grave digger and his family to live in the cemetery at Elswick, we used to have great fun as kids and playing amongst the gravestones. But we had bizarre experiences too.
One day I was playing just outside my front door, and I looked up and saw this beast of an animal – I thought it was an elephant. And I just remember panicking and running to the front door, hanging onto the door knocker, shouting for my mam and hysterically crying!
Tara Jobe
And I just opened the door and I said, what’s the matter? She says, there’s an elephant chasing us and I looked up and there’s this great big bull with all the gunge coming out of its mouth and nose. I says, get down. I just closed the door thinking it will go away. It did, it went away. It never charged the door – I was pleased about that like!
They had to get the marksman in from the cattle market to shoot it. It had to be destroyed because they couldn’t use it as meat – it was contaminated now. It was meant for the cattle market in town, but had gotten out of the abattoir on Scotswood Road, near Redheugh Bridge. It was quite a large place because it was all for the butchers in Newcastle. I mean, it was not the first time an animal had escaped!
Eileen Watson.
Further resources and reading
You can visit Tyne & Wear Archives at Discovery Museum and request to look at the minutes of St John’s, Westgate and Elswick Burial Board to discover more stories. Find out how here: https://northeastmuseums.org.uk/archives
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