The story of the 'Chewing Gum Girl' and her small grave in a cemetery in Chester, England

@ElentirENG ES 4·20·2024 · 23:19 0

In the United Kingdom there are very beautiful cemeteries and some have curious legends associated with the death of those who rest in their graves.

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One of those cemeteries is Old Overleigh Cemetery, in Chester, an English town that is on the border with the northeast part of Wales. This typically Victorian-looking cemetery was consecrated on November 12, 1850 by John Graham, the Church of England Bishop of Chester. Its designer was the English architect Thomas Mainwaring Penson (1818–1864). Initially it was a private cemetery but it came into the hands of the city council in 1930. This cemetery is full of beautiful tombs with Celtic crosses and various sculptures, and their tombstones seem to have been placed haphazardly, creating a curious landscape.

One of the most famous graves in Overleigh is that of a girl called Mabel Frances Ireland Blackburne, born on April 7, 1866 in Chester and died on November 13, 1869. The little girl died of whooping cough , but a story began to circulate that attributed his death to choking on chewing gum, perhaps an urban legend created to warn children against sweets. For a long time, the children of Chester sang a little song that told about this story, so little Mabel began to be known as "Chewing Gum Girl."

This Thursday, Dead Good Walks published a video touring this cemetery and visiting the grave of This girl:

You can see some screenshots of this video here. This is the appearance of the oldest part of the cemetery, inaugurated in 1850 and with a purely Victorian appearance.

In the cemetery there are funerary monuments that tell very varied stories, and in some there is no one buried. This is the case of this beautiful monument dedicated to Captain Griffith Jones Evans, who disappeared at sea on December 20, 1869.

The small grave of Mabel Frances Ireland Blackburne. It is adorned with a realistic-looking sculpture of a sleeping girl. Despite being somewhat hidden, it is one of the most visited tombs in this cemetery.

Even today, 155 years after her death, flowers and stuffed animals continue to be placed next to Mabel's grave. There is also the local custom of placing chewing gum in a small basket next to her grave.