Camperdown Cemetery - Burials

Burials

The unusual memorial of Foreman Leys Gravestone designed by Edmund Blacket for his wife, Sarah

Note: Information in this list is drawn from T.G. Rees and/or Chrys Meader unless otherwise referenced.

Burials in Camperdown Cemetery include:

• Sir Maurice O'Connell, (d. 1848) Colonel of H.M. 80th Regiment, Lieutenant-Governor of New South Wales,
• Lieut. Colonel Sir Thomas Livingstone Mitchell, (1792–1855), surveyor to the Duke of Wellington, Surveyor-General of New South Wales. Explored and mapped New South Wales and much of Victoria.
• Major Edmund Lockyer, (1784–1860), explored parts of Queensland and founded Western Australia, 21 January 1827. A blue gum from Western Australia was planted in his memory.
• Isaac Nathan, (1790–1864), scholar and musician, composed and conducted Australia's first opera, Don Juan of Austria. Collected and published Aboriginal melodies.
• Dr. Charles Nathan (1816–1872) pioneered the use of anaesthetics in Australia.
• Bathsheba Ghost (d. 1868) convict and Second Matron of the Sydney General Hospital from 1852 to 1866. Her unusual round memorial is the top of one of the gateposts of the infirmary.
• William Moffit, (1798–1871), printer, stationer and entrepreneur.
• Captain Thomas Watson, (1795–1879), Harbourmaster of Port Jackson
• Elizabeth Thompson, (1758–1865), Australia's oldest inhabitant at the time of her death.
• Charles Windeyer, (1780–1855), Mayor of Sydney and magistrate.
• Enoch Fowler, founder of Camperdown Potteries.
• Nicolas-Charles Bochsa (1791–1856), harpist to Napoleon, and subject of one of the cemetery's more scandalous tales. He eloped from England with the operatic soprano Anna Bishop, wife of the composer Sir Henry Bishop, and toured in America before arriving in Australia, where they completed just one successful concert together before he unexpectedly died. Anna, still the wife of Sir Henry, raised in Bochsa's honour the most ornate monument in the cemetery, with a statue of herself weeping disconsolately. The mourning figure was later smashed.
• Sarah Broughton (d. 1849), wife of Bishop William Grant Broughton.
• John Roote Andrews, monumental mason and maker of many of the cemetery's monuments.
• Mary, Lady Jamison, the widow of the pioneer physician, landowner and constitutional reformer Sir John Jamison
• James Donnithorne (1773–1852), Judge of the East India Company
• Eliza Emily Donnithorne (d. 1886) whose story is similar to, and may have inspired, the story of Miss Havisham in Charles Dickens' Great Expectations. Eliza Emily was jilted on her wedding day, and became a recluse, refusing to have the wedding feast removed from the table, and keeping the front door permanently ajar in case her absconding lover should return.
• Tommy, William Perry, Mogo and Mandelina. Tommy, an 11-year-old Aboriginal boy who died of bronchitis in the Sydney Infirmary was the first recorded Christian burial of an Aboriginal person. The four names are recorded on an obelisk which commemorates the "Rangers of New South Wales" and "the whole Aboriginal race".
• Others important colonial families who have members buried in the cemetery are the Macleays and Dumaresqs, the Tooths and children of the Farmers retailing family.
• Among the memorials moved to Camperdown from other sites was that of Mary Reibey, which has disappeared, presumed stolen or destroyed.
• The tombstone of Edmund Blacket, architect of St Stephen's, and his wife Sarah was moved to Camperdown from Balmain Cemetery when that cemetery was resumed as park. Their ashes were placed in St. Andrew's Cathedral, Sydney.
• One of the most famous burials in the cemetery is that of the victims of the wreck of the Dunbar. This clipper ship went down off Sydney Heads on the night of 20–21 August 1857 after a voyage from England, with all but one of the 122 people aboard perishing. The wreck had a profound effect on the people of Sydney, because nearly all the passengers were Sydney residents returning home. A tomb contains the remains of 22 of those who died, along with the victims from the wreck of the Catherine Adamson which sank in the harbour two months later. The "Dunbar Memorial Service" is held in the cemetery in the August of each year.
• Near the main drive that passes by the church are four small matching tombstones with inscriptions recording the deaths of seven children of the York and Free families. These and many other tombstones reflect the high infant mortality of the 19th century. The burial dockets indicate that many children died of diphtheria and measles, with one measles outbreak resulting in the burials of up to twelve children a day. Strangely, to the modern reader, the major cause of death of infants below the age of two years is given as teething. It is now understood that these deaths resulted from the use of mercury-based teething powders.
• A memorial plaque placed near the drive reads:

“

In memory of the many humble, undistinguished, unknown, unremembered folk buried in this cemetery whose names are not written in the book of history, but are written in the book of life.

”