There is sorrow enough in the natural way

From men and women to fill our day;

But when we are certain of sorrow in store,

Why do we always arrange for more?

Brothers and Sisters, I bid you beware

Of giving your heart to a dog to tear.

— Kipg, The Power of the Dog

<$z$>.5>D<$>EATH comes to us all, which is a good thing for archaeologists like me, for my profession is founded upon the discovery of things and people that have been discarded and disused, or died, and then buried. No deaths, disuses or destructions means no archaeology, nor geology for that matter. So the dead, gone, and buried are the life of archaeology. Everyone contributes to this life-giving process of death and decay, for as the poet wrote:

A few more years shall roll,

A few more seasons come,

And we shall be with those that rest,

Asleep wit the tomb.<$>

One of the most fulsome burials I had the privilege of examining was at Winchester, the ancient capital of England, in the summer of 1969.

When the conquering Normans from France got around to building their own Winchester Cathedral, they dug up hundreds of Anglo-Saxons, who had been interred in the graveyard of their church, then to be destroyed by the Frenchmen.

Being good Christians, the Normans kept all the big bones of the ancestors of their soon-to-be cousins and reburied them in a great pit near the new cathedral.

The resulting charnel was a metre deep, with all the skulls stacked on one side of the pit and all the other bones amassed in the other. Some 1,500 bodies were represented, which became the largest sample of Anglo-Saxons ever excavated. They were forensically examined and reburied next to Winchester Cathedral.

One of the most unusual tombs I have ever encountered came into view in an old photograph from the Trevor G. Moniz Collection at the Maritime Museum.

It was a fine monument, made with considerable attention to detail and surmounted by a Great Dane of a dog, with a name in Greek on the side of the monument. Cedar trees and a dry-stone wall in the background gave the image a Bermudian provenance.

Eventually, someone pointed to the old Inverurie property as its location and an advertising picture for the hotel from the 1960s revealed the tomb on the hillside across Harbour Road. A cursory exploration showed a swimming pool, where the doggie once reposed.

A further visit to the property, courtesy of Roy and Maria Thomas, found “Sphinx”, as a translation of the inscription indicated, in the courtyard of their apartment.

In the way of development, as are many monuments and archaeological remains, part of the tomb was rescued by the late Donald Aguire and the Thomases, dog lovers all. With the move came a tablet not visible in the 1890s photograph, which stated the following:

Erected by

Colonel H J Wilkinson

to the memory of

Sphinx

a noble English mastiff

Irurie

1877<$>

Research by Linda Abend of the Maritime Museum discovered that the Colonel had been the District Commissary General for the British Army at Bermuda in the 1870s and may have rented the original house, “Inverurie”, from the Friths of “Spithead”.

As a Captain, 20 years prior, Henry John Wilkinson had served with the 9th Regiment of Foot in the bloody engagements of the Crimea and was there captured on camera on horse, not afoot, as befitted his rank.

Wendy Soares published an account that the Colonel’s wife poisoned poor Sphinx, who was therefore buried by the bereaved soldier in great panoply in view of her bedroom, to forever remind her of the transgression.

Another story, one of many legends that suffer as truths in Bermuda history, is that the dog rescued a child from drowning and was later honoured with a magnificent tomb. One suspects the truth is more sentimental and that the Colonel simply “gave his heart to the dog to tear”, to paraphrase Rudyard Kipling.

Of local graveyards for people, most do not contain headstones for civilians, but the military, especially at “The Glade”, the Royal Naval cemetery at Dockyard and possibly the prettiest in Bermuda, usually placed such markers for fallen comrades.

One of these perhaps added insult to a fatal injury, in placing the image of a Rifled Muzzle Loader at the top of the gravestone for Ambrose Connor, AB. That Able Seaman was removed from this mortal coil, “accidentally killed Sept. 20. 1884 whilst transporting a 38 ton gun in HM Dockyard Bermuda”.

Two of these war babies were found in archaeological excavations by the Maritime Museum for the Parks Department at Fort Cunningham in January 1990; fewer than ten survive world-wide.

As no others existed at Bermuda, it is likely that one of these monster guns was the culprit in the death of AB Connor and as the guilty party, it is depicted for all time over his earthlemains.Another<$> Dockyard worker, housed in the old hulk that was once the proud ship-of-the-line, HMI>Irresistible<$>, one William Phillips, who worked on the Floating Dockyard, departed this life in January 1890 “from rupture of a blood vessel”. That injury was possibly an aneurysm, but I am not the type of doctor who does them in, only one who digs them up . . . long after I hasten to proclaim.Perhaps the most emblematic tomb I have ever seen was at the famous Highgate Cemetery, where the infamous Karl Marx was buried, but not laid to rest, an unfortunate circumstance for several generations that later suffered under communism.

Nearby is a baby grand piano in marble, replete with keyboard and the inscription that reads: “Here lies my husband, a musical genius who died before his time.”

* * *

Dr. Edward Harris, MBE, JP, FSA, Bermudian, is the Executive Director of the Bermuda Maritime Museum. Commencan be sent to drharr$>@logic.bm or by telephone to 799-5480.