The Argus newspaper of August 1790 reported that on St James’s Day, which had fallen on a Sunday, crowds went to St James’s churchyard to honour the graves of their friends. They paid the customary tributes of paper gloves and garlands of flowers, laid on the graves. Brand prints the report among his notes on the funeral garlands once hung up in country churches for young women who died unmarried.
Garlands on the Graves on St James’s Day
25 July · St James's churchyard, London
No longer kept
the votaries of St. James's churchyard attended in considerable crowds at the shrines of their departed friends, and paid the usual tributary honours of paper gloves and garlands of flowers on their graves.
From Brand's Popular Antiquities, vol. 2, p. 304. Read the original
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