On 30 June 1923 a visitor to St John’s, Westminster reported in Notes and Queries the following inscription on a tombstone:
Here lieth the Remains of Rear Admiral Cornthwaite Ommanney who died the 26th day of March 1801 aetat 65. Also the Remains of Martha Ommanney his widow who died on this 18th day of March 1813 aetat 65. Likewise Edmund Woods Ommanney their grandson, son of Henry Manaton and Ann died 19th May, 1813, aged 2 years...
Fourteen years later, a correspondent to the same journal (27 March 1937) recorded that:
One of the most interesting of the memorials was badly broken in moving it, involving the loss of part of the inscription to Rear-Admiral Cornthwaite Ommanney (died 1801). Fortunately this inscription had already been placed on record in ' N. and Q.' of June 30, 1923.
Reading these notes I rashly assumed that the memorial had been lost altogether - “badly broken” would seem serious enough to warrant disposal. Not so, it turns out. The stone is in fact still there, propped against a neighbouring building. And indeed the inscription continues beyond the excerpt quoted above, as follows (the material in square brackets is illegible or missing, but I add my assumed completion):
[Antho]ny Tenterden Hollist
[text missing] died May 6th, 1[837]
Hasler Hollist [text missing] 6th 1832, died May 1st 1...
[Cap]ron Hollist [born May 6] 1834. Died May [3rd 1836]
Cornthwaite’s granddaughter Frances Georgiana married Hasler Hollist (b.1799); Anthony and Capron were two of their children who did not survive infancy. It would seem likely that the Hasler Hollist referred to on the inscription is not in fact the father (for whom the date of the memorial would not make sense, and who was not in any case a blood relative of Cornthwaite and Martha), but another short-lived, but otherwise unrecorded child.
My thanks to David Bingham of The London Dead blog for spotting the inscription and taking the trouble to let me know. https://thelondondead.blogspot.com
