Circular Road Burial Ground

Description

The European burial ground on the Circular Road, at the eastern edge of the settlement on the outskirts of Blacktown: flat ground crowded with mould-blackened obelisks and domed tombs, disordered by nightly digging. Fat adjutant storks feed from the disturbed graves, entirely unafraid of the living who come to look.

What’s Here

• The empty coffins. Dragged from their graves, the burial shrouds folded neatly inside.
• The young woman’s grave. A woman of nineteen, dead in childbed, half-dragged from the earth and left leaning against her own headstone.
• The infant’s coffin. Barely eighteen inches long, and empty.
• The doubled watch. Gopal Chowkidar and Kalu Chowkidar, the ground’s two chowkidars, paid by the resurrectionists to look the other way.

History

Bodies are stolen from the ground every night and sold to ship’s surgeons and to a doctor’s anatomy rooms in Chowringhee, to teach young surgeons.

Related

• Places: Calcutta 1814 — the eastern edge of the settlement. Blacktown — the burial ground sits on its outskirts.
• People: Emma Wentworth — visited with Thomas on Wednesday 12 October 1814 and found the graves robbed. Georgiana Wentworth — visited with Thomas on Wednesday 12 October 1814 and found the graves robbed.

Campaign Log

• Session 12 - The Governor’s Ball — visited on Wednesday 12 October 1814 by Emma Wentworth, Georgiana Wentworth and Thomas Wyndham. They found empty coffins with their shrouds folded inside, a young woman’s body half-dragged from her grave and left leaning on her headstone, an empty infant’s coffin, and storks feeding from the disturbed ground unafraid. Gopal, one of the two chowkidars, explained cheerfully that bodies are stolen nightly and sold to ship’s surgeons.