East Perth Cemeteries - History

History

The cemetery site was surveyed by John Septimus Roe on 24 December 1829 soon after the central portions of the Perth townsite had been surveyed. The area was originally known as Cemetery Hill and was established in 1830. The first burial was of Private John Mitchell from the 63rd regiment. Mitchell died on 6 January 1830; the exact location of his grave site is unknown. A public notice from Peter Broun, the Colonial Secretary on 13 February 1830 said: "to prevent indiscriminate Burials and unpleasant consequences arising therefrom in a warm climate, a Burial Ground will be set apart in Every Township or Parish ... burials will take place in them only and a Register will be kept ... all Burials by the Chaplain will be restricted to times as soon after sunrise as possible, or an hour precisely before sunset..." As it happened, both Broun and Roe were buried in the cemetery and their tombstones are still visible.

The Trustees of the Church of England were granted Perth Town Lot R1 as a general cemetery in 1842. The cemetery was consecrated in 1848, and over the following decades sections of this were granted to various other denominations and ethnic groups with each cemetery being owned and controlled separately. The subsequent grants were: Roman Catholic (1848); "Wesleyanism" (i.e. Methodist; 1854); Congregational (1854); "Hebrew" (i.e. Jewish 1867); Presbyterian (1881); and Chinese (1888). Each of the grants were administered independently, with the exception of the Chinese section.

In 1899, Karrakatta Cemetery became the main burial ground in close proximity to Perth, and from July that year burials officially ceased at East Perth, except where special applications were made to use family graves. The cemetery was used intermittently from then until the last burial in 1919.

Throughout most of the 1900s, the grounds, which adjoined an industrial area, were subject to vandalism and neglect. Appeals from individuals and the Royal Western Australian Historical Society for it to be refurbished given its historical significance continued over some time. In 1931, The Sunday Times reported:

When a representative of this paper visited the cemetery yesterday he found a skull almost intact, leg and arm bones, and other parts of poor mortal remains. These were lying on the rank green grass close to a bricked hole leading to the vault. From the ground above, the rest of the bones could be plainly seen. When the general public can depend upon viewing the actual remains of a dead person, and when mere children also have sight and access to such, it is time that someone in authority awakened.

In the 1930s, the various church authorities relinquished control of the individual grants and the entire site was then re-vested as Crown land and declared a disused burial ground. From the mid 1930s, control and responsibility for the grounds moved between various government departments and numerous projects were undertaken to refurbish the historic site.

Much of the area devoted to the Chinese, Jewish and Presbyterian sections was originally located west of Plain Street, and an unused Anglican section was located south of Bronte Street. In the late 1940s, these sections were excised and existing headstones removed. Some land west of Plain Street was used by the former Perth Girls' School. Fences separating the individual cemeteries were removed and those areas are now roadways, carparks and commercial and residential buildings. An access road called Forrest Avenue (previously Cemetery Road) crossed diagonally over the block which now houses the multi-storey Main Roads office building. Extensions of Wickham and Horatio Streets have been incorporated into the grounds.

A major redevelopment project in the late 1980s provided for landscaping and perimeter fencing to protect the church and remaining monuments from vandalism.

Much of the retained burial ground lacks visible signs of graves or markers, partly because perishable timber crosses and monuments were used for burials of the poor.