In April 1895, Mrs Elizabeth Hendry, at her ‘special request’ was cremated at the Western Necropolis, Maryhill, Glasgow:
At the time of her death, Ms Hendry was a widow and just a few years older than I currently am. She died as a result of valvular heart disease which resulted in emboli in her brain:
Mrs Hendry’s cremation was reported in the Glasgow Herald, as follows:
This was the crematorium in which Mrs Hendry was cremated:
Six years before Mrs Hendry’s cremation, the following was reported in the Glasgow Evening Post, January 1889:
In April 1881, seventeen years before Mrs Hendry’s death, she was widowed. Her husband, Patrick Thoms Hendry, an Insurance Agent, had been living with disabling poor health for over a decade. It is likely that he would have been totally reliant on his wife:
In the summer of 1884, a decade before Mrs Hendry’s death, her 12 year old son , Patrick, died as a result of a serious fall:
Patrick had fallen over 27 ft off a wall outside his home in Hayfield Terrace, Glasgow:
Hayfield Terrace has since been demolished to make way for improvement housing.
Mrs Hendry was born in 1836 in Kircudbrightshire. She was given the name: Elizabeth Haining Laurie:
Her father, Thomas Laurie, a noted farmer in Dumfries and Galloway, recorded how the ancient village of Terreglestown, that once was home to 40 families, had been ‘lost’ in his grandfather’s time:
[Note] Statistical account 1845: “Upon the farm of Terreglestown about a mile E. [East] from the church there sat at one time a village of considerable [extent], its population was about 300. The pavement of the street is still to be seen and extends a considerable length.”
This post is for Mrs Hendry. There is more to her story than being the “First Cremation in Scotland“, but most of that story has been lost, just as the village of Terreglestown has been lost.