London Rd 1887. Source: Picture Sheffield.
Evangeline Guest died in 1879 aged 22. She and her husband Richard rented a house on London Road. When his wife didn’t respond to their baby’s crying at 8 o’clock one morning Richard discovered that Evangeline had died.
Their former landlady, a friend of Evangeline, said that she had wanted to leave the marriage, that Richard was drinking a lot, he didn’t bring home much money and there wasn’t much food.
The coroner found traces of opium in Evangeline, but not enough to cause death. The inquest jury’s verdict included a damning comment about her husband saying that, ‘Richard Guest…is highly censured for his neglect and ill treatment’.
It is interesting that Richard’s parents gave Evangeline a burial in their family plot, memorialised her on the headstone, and gave a home to baby Henry. Richard’s parents and some of his siblings together with Evangeline were buried in plot J 14 in the cleared Anglican 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.