Drunken Mother – Illustration from Band of Hope Review a temperance publication 1863. Source: UCLAN.
Elizabeth Neild is just one example of those women whose short, destitute and desperate lives ended as a result of excessive drinking. In this period drunkenness in women generally aroused stronger public condemnation than that of men.
Elizabeth Neild was married to James, a machine maker, and was discovered suspended by the neck on 7 June 1847. According to the Sheffield Independent, she had been a habitual drunkard for ten or twelve years. The report continued in a judgmental tone saying that she had told a neighbour that she would abstain from drinking if her husband forgave her.
A second report follows that of Elizabeth’s death, which describes another suicide and cites the cause as drunkenness. This one is of a sixty-year-old man. The tone here is much less denigrating and allows for the possibility of illness and depression of the spirits.
Elizabeth Neild was buried in plot B 46, an unmarked public grave in the Nonconformist area.
You can read more about the lives of women buried in the Cemetery in the Sheffield General Cemetery Trust’s publication A Woman’s Place.