Baby Gardens and Potters' Fields: Burying Babies and Poor People

With Halloween around the corner, this week seems like a good time to talk a bit about burial customs for the most vulnerable of our ancestors. In the past, we have covered several related topics, and you might want to check out some of them before we move into looking at how some infants, children, and poor people were treated at the ends of their lives.

“Did Our Ancestors Trick or Treat?” 25 October 2021

“Funeral Rituals and Traditions, Part 1” 19 April 2021

“Funeral Rituals and Traditions, Part II” 26 April 2021

“Broken Mirrors and Spilled Salt: Some of our Ancestors’ Superstitions,” 26 October 2020

Poor people without family to help them historically were looked after by their parish churches or their synagogues, most of which had regular collections of funds for the needy. In Great Britain, almost every village of consequence had an alms house or workhouse, and in America, there were poor houses. Conditions in these places varied, although most were bare bones. When poor people died, they were buried with little fanfare at the expense of the religious group of which they were affiliated. 

However, by the nineteenth century, being poor and being buried took on new significance. If you were wealthy, your funeral was often filled with pomp and ceremony reinforcing your important role in society. If, on the other hand, you were without wealth, your funeral “at the hands of the parish” was simply the final blow marking you as a failure. In addition, crowded cities, terrible sanitary conditions, lack of understanding about clean water and sewage, and limited medical knowledge meant that people died in staggering numbers.

Was an ancestor buried as a pauper?

Many large cemeteries had sections designated for paupers’ graves. Mostly, these were dug en masse, usually with multiple people buried in the same location. If an individual site was marked, it may have only had a small wooden cross or rock to distinguish it. Most of those disappeared quickly over time. Poor children were often buried in separate sections under similar circumstances. However, young or old, deceased people still would have had death records, even if their names were unknown, and they still would have records from cemeteries, even if their graves are unmarked.

“The Potter’s Field: The Common Trench,” Hart Island, Bronx, New York, c. 1890, International Center of Photography, https://www.icp.org/browse/archive/objects/the-potters-field-the-common-trench (Photo donated to the collection by Alexander Alland Sr., additional funds by Lois and Bruce Zenkel Purchase Fund)

Why did the section for poor people come to be called a potter’s field?

The name we still use, "potter’s field," comes from the New Testament and refers to Judas, who tried to return silver given to him as payment for betraying Jesus. The priests who received the money felt it was tinged with blood, so they decided to do good with it and used it to purchase the potter’s field, a place called Akeldama in the valley of Hinnom, outside of Jerusalem, known to them as the potter’s field because of the rich deposits of red clay that potters were digging there. Once the potters were done lifting the usable clay, the field was filled with holes, no longer suitable for farming but perfectly good for burying strangers.

Were babies buried in individual graves?

This can be problematic, depending on when the baby died. Although deaths and stillbirths are required by law to be recorded, it wasn’t always that way, and babies who died late during a pregnancy may have been labeled miscarriages and not required to be registered or formally buried.

In the past, particularly in the twentieth century, babies who died prior to or at birth may have simply been removed by the hospital and taken away to be cremated or buried in a mass grave. Children of poor people very often were buried in unmarked sections of cemeteries. Some cemeteries had designated “baby gardens,” and others had areas that were just for babies and young children, so you may not find little ones with their families. Even if babies were buried in unmarked sections, cemeteries kept records of them, and they should have death certificates, if they were carried to term. If they were given a religious burial of any kind, be sure to check the church or synagogue where their parents worshiped for existing records.

If you had an ancestor who lived in poverty or a family with many children who died young, you may never find grave markers for them, but with a bit of luck and searching, you may still find information about their lives.