26/07/2026
STORY 31 – DEAD MEN TAKE NO PILLS
Long before the council ran the cemetery the control and maintenance was the responsibility of two separate bodies.
The Anglican end of the cemetery had the Trustees of the Church of England, while the remaining General section was controlled by a group of Trustees that represented the other religious faiths.
The cemetery grounds often suffered from neglect with overgrown shrubs, roaming cattle and lack of paths for access. Did the citizens complain? You bet they did.
The following anonymous article from 1890 took a different approach by using a humorous and very sarcastic dig at the cemetery Trustees. It begins with praising the Trustees “masterly inactivity” and goes onto suggest that if only people could be prohibited from dying so that the Trustees could continue to do absolutely nothing. There is a final dig from “Mr B Quiet” stirring them up with the suggestion of burying his horse.
The author deliberately calls the town “Ulverwood” and later publishes a dig at the “Ulverwood Farmers Club in the land of Nod” where it was hoped that the milk of human kindness could be churned into the butter of benevolence.
Sources: Trove for Newspaper article. The Coastal News. 1st November 1890.
ULVERWOOD PUBLIC CEMETERY.
The Trustees met the day after tomorrow at 12.5 a.m.
There not being a quorum present, the Chairman congratulated the Trustees on being still able to maintain their policy of masterly inactivity, they had held office for nearly twelve months, and had done absolutely nothing, thus preserving the traditions of their office.
He would not have troubled the members to attend this meeting, but that some meddling people had suggested that they should begin to work, and he thought it advisable to check such, unwarrantable interference at once. He held, that it would never do to offer the inducement of a nicely laid out cemetery.
He preferred that people should not die, it would suit him much better to keep them alive, or at all events well enough to take physic. Dead men take no pills. He had asked the public to wait until the Loans to Public Bodies Bill became law, before taking any action in clearing the ground, but now that that measure was likely to pass, there was some danger of their having to make a move, so he would now suggest that nothing should be done unless the Premier and Members of the Ministry would consent to scrub and grub the ground with their own hands, (Hear, hear, and applause).
Mr. Winch cordially approved of the Chairman’s remarks, he was a conservative and held that as the Public Cemetery had been in its present, state since the time of Adam, it should he permitted to remain so till the Day of Judgment. Those who complained against the trustees were new-comers, who had no right to express any opinion, the Ulverwood Improvement Association was a thing of yesterday, whereas there had been trustees of the cemetery from time immemorial, yes, from the dawn of history. They had always and consistently done nothing, and the U.I.A. were not going to drive them into a different course.
Mr. Woods thought that the residents should be prohibited from dying, otherwise it was quite possible that the time would come when some unreasonable people might want to bury their dead in the cemetery, causing the Trustees some trouble. If the Town Board and the Ulverwood Improvement Association would mind their own business, and do nothing, they might yet have the pleasure of seeing the whole town of Ulverwood once again restored to its original state of scrub mid desolation.
A letter was read from Mr. B. Quiet asking permission to bury his dead horse in the cemetery, and enclosing a medical certificate to the effect that it had died from blind staggers. Agreed, that as the Trustees had framed no regulations, there was nothing to prevent Mr. Quiet from doing what he pleased.
The meeting was then adjourned.
sine die.
