Saturday 28 March 2015

Fanny's Final Farewell

Just a quick update on the final chapter in the life of Fanny Cornforth.  I have just returned home after visiting Fanny's final resting place.

You will remember last week, in a rather emotional post about the final years of Fanny's life, I told you that Fanny was admitted to Graylingwell Asylum in Chichester, where she died in 1909. I then mistakenly stated that she was buried in the asylum grounds as there was no evidence of where she was buried, the local parish church had no record of her in their burials and the asylum I grew up near had its own graveyard for those poor souls without friends or family to claim them.  Katherine from the West Sussex Records Office contacted me on Tuesday and said that instead, she would have been buried in the Chichester District Cemetery if no-one had claimed her and so I approached Libby from Cemetery Services with the name 'Sarah Hughes' and her death date.

The Chichester cemetery main gates

Sarah Hughes was buried on 1st March 1909 in the cemetery, in plot 133/23. She is in a common grave, which means she's not alone in there and there is no stone.  She is in a peaceful corner of the graveyard, beyond the war memorial.  Actually finding her grave and placing some flowers on it felt that despite the best efforts of Rossetti's family and his biographers, her spirit has triumphed and she will be remembered as a muse, a woman capable of tremendous love and a real survivor. 




If anyone else wishes to pay their respects, drop me an email and I'll send you over the graveyard map.

12 comments:

  1. That's an amazing bit of detective work Kirsty. Well done you.

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  2. I truly could not have managed this ending without the help and patience of so many people who have answered questions and given me information over the last week. I could not have imagined how much support this has received from all over the world. I'm sure Fanny would have been delighted at the fuss.

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  3. It's odd, because I grew up in Chichester. We lived on the other side of town, in Fishbourne, but the cemetery is only a little way out beyond both the Central Junior Boys' School and Chichester High School for Boys, which I attended between 1960 and 1971. So all that time I was quite close to Fanny, but I never heard of her until after I'd left the area.

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  4. Dear KIrsty
    Congratulations to everyone involved in solving this mystery. Sarah can now rest in peace, with her real story told and Fanny can remain that beautiful and arresting image in so many paintings and drawings.
    Best wishes
    Ellie

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  5. Oh Kirsty. Thank you for bringing us along on this emotionally profound journey. I hope someday to visit her final resting place. You have given her such life in her death! ~ Merissa

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  6. What a lovely thing to do, Kirsty. I visit the area fairly often so will definitely go pay my respects next time I'm in the vicinity.

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  7. Thank you everyone for your comments!

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  8. A great achievement to track her down. It's almost like there's a bit of Rossetti buried here, at Birchington (obviously), at Highgate, at Brompton was it where you tracked down Alexa Wilding? I wonder where Jane Morris is buried? What would the lives of all these women have been like if they had never met Rossetti?

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  9. Alexa is at Brompton, not far from Frederic Leyland who fancied her so much. Jane is buried at Kelmscott with all her family around her. Based on the lives of her female family members, Fanny's life would have been quieter and probably far shorter. In that way it is almost impossible to feel too sad for her as she exchanged a more peaceful end for the love, life and colour of her earlier life with the man she loved. I doubt she would have had it any other way.

    Thank you everyone for you support and good wishes. I'll be writing the whole thing up for the Pre-Raphaelite Society journal, so look out for it in the summer!

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  10. Thank you Kirsty - Fanny/Sarah was certainly a force of nature and deserved much more than the shoddy way she was treated latterly. Thank you also for not publishing the photo you described in your previous post. Dementia strips the strongest of their dignity and that is very hard to see xx

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  11. Kirsty - thanks for this - I live in Fishbourne near Chichester and I would love to pay my respects too. My Great Grandmother died in a Scottish asylum in 1901 by way of coincidence and it was her husband who knew Sir John Everett Millais when he visited Dunkeld. I wish I hadn't asked for her medical records - they did an autopsy and detailed it - I think it might have been common practice then... I hope Sarah avoided that final indignity.

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Many thanks for your comment. I shall post it up shortly! Kx