Joseph Merrick, Elephant Man, City of London cemetery

Another visit to a London cemetery, but this time not one of the Magnificent Seven. I went to the City of London cemetery mainly to see the recently found grave of Joseph Merrick, the "Elephant Man".

I was surprised the cemetery is far from the City of London. It is near Epping Forest, close to Manor Park station, in northeast London.

Joseph Merrick was born in 1862. He had a skeletal and soft tissue deformity and was nicknamed the "Elephant Man" and became a Victorian curiosity and was paraded in freak shows. He was also a  medical curiosity and on his death his skeleton was kept at the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel, East London.

However according to author Jo Vigor-Mungovin, Merrick's soft tissue was buried in the City of London Cemetery after he died in 1890. She did a lot of research and found his death was listed in the cemetery records. More research led her to find the actual plot were Merrick's remains were almost certainly buried. The BBC has a good article on this. The unmarked grave was only found this year, 2019, 130 years after Merrick's death.

The grave is in plot 1771.

See more on Joseph Merrick on Wikipedia. And "The Elephant Man" , a 1980 film, starring John Hurt, and Anthony Hopkins, Anne Bancroft, John Gielgud

The City of London Cemetery holds heritage walks and nature trails.