Here we find the headstone of Benjamin Jesty described as 'an upright honest man'. The inscription informs us that Jesty vaccinated his wife and two sons with cowpox against smallpox in 1774 - some 22 years before Edward Jenner discovered vaccination! Jesty's luck as a medical pioneer was recognised in his lifetime.

Another grave at Codicote in Hertfordshire is in memory of John Goothridge who died on October 30th, 1824 in the 79th year of his age - Reburied a week later'. Now what this is telling us is that we are back in the body snatching days when some folk made a living by supplying fresh corpses to medical schools.

The thieves had dug up John Goothridge but had been disturbed and they had dumped the corpse.

A few days later it was discovered by a passing labourer and thus it was buried once again.

At Minehead in the new Forest there is a headstone for Theodore White but the inscription has a six inch gap before the word husband. Local tradition has it that his wife had the word 'faithful' removed in the light of discoveries she made after the funeral!

The quaint little Knights Hospitaller's Church in North Badesley, Hampshire has an epitaph for a poacher - one Charles Smith, and it is marked by two headstones which both record the death date of Smith on the gallows in 1822.

One of them says that Smith was 'a martyr to the game laws' but the other stone contradicts this with the words 'He was a murderous brute' An 1827 epitaph reads:

'Here lies the body of Ethan Bevan
Killed by lightning sent from heaven
For trading horses on Sunday June Eleven
In the year eighteen hundred and twenty seven'

St Helen's Churchyard in Selston, Nottingham has the 19th Century grave of Dan Boswell - a gypsy family name we find in the famous Isle novel, 'The Manuscript in the Red Box'. It reads:
'I've lodged in many a town
I've travelled many a year
But death at last has brought me
To my last lodgings here'

At Potterne Churchyard in Wiltshire we can read:
`Heere lies Mary - the wife of John Ford
We hope her soul is gone to the Lord
But if for Hell she has changed this life
She had better be there than be John Ford's wife'

There's an inscription at Whitby for fishmonger, Rose Herring.
'The freshness of all herrings once was this
Sweet as the new born rose
In hope of awaking in eternal bliss
Now in foul pickle she does here repose'

As can be expected, sailors tombstones are very common in coastal graveyards and nautical equipment often forms a large part of the decorative carving on them.
Scarborough has several memorials with anchors and rudders and Portsmouth is especially rich in maritime graves. St Lawrence's cemetery at Ramsgate has a 1903 memorial which reads:
`This marks the wreck of Robert Woolward, who sailed the seas for fifty five years. When Resurrection gun fires. the wreck will be raised by the Angelic Salvage Co: surveyed, and if found worthy, refitted, and started on the voyage to Eternity'

Next week in Part 15 - A Fishlake Epitaph