Photographs of the Cemetery
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      Who is Buried here

Dr Thomas Masterman Winterbottom, b. 1766, was possibly South Shields’ greatest philanthropist. He died onthe  8^th July 1859 at the age of 93, by which time he was the oldest qualified medical practitioner in the country.  He was given a public funeral which was probably the largest in terms of attendance which South Shields has ever seen, and was buried in the central portion of Westoe cemetery, reserved for notable local worthies.  Unfortunately his tomb, with an elaborate inscription on it, has been the object of attacks by vandals who do not share its occupant’s ethos of public service, and is today as much a monument to their lack of civilisation as to Dr Winterbottom’s attainment of it.

The Jarvis family suffered a second tragedy on 14th January 1894 when Robert was accidentally killed while at sea. He was 51 years old. His body was interred at Lisbon, but he is commemorated on the tombstone for his first wife Harriet. This can still be seen in the south-east corner of Westoe Cemetery. In his Will, dated 31st October 1893, he left everything to his wife, but it was not a tremendous fortune, being valued at only £60.0s.0d. Margaret Jane, widowed after only 8 years of marriage, proceeded to establish herself as a butcher, a trade to which two of her stepsons had been apprenticed. Her shop was located at 46 Bath Street, not far from their home in Salmon Street. There is evidence to suggest that she lived above the shop, and rented out their former home.

John Tulley III was a draper, then a "van man" and finally an innkeeper like his father. In 1862, when he was about 26, he was living in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. In that year, he married Mary Esther Gray in Bedlington, where she was living at the time. Mary was born in Heworth, Co.Durham, but on the 1881 Census, someone put her birthplace down as Blyth, which made it difficult to trace her.

John and Mary had 7 or 8 children, moving around the Newcastle area before settling in South Shields. Their first child was John Joseph Stephenson Tulley, born in Felling in 1863. Mary's father, Joseph Stephenson Gray (after whom J.J.S. Tulley was obviously named), had been a viewer at Felling Colliery and the Gray family were from Heworth, the next village to Felling in the east Gateshead area. I will deal with J.J.S Tulley in more detail later.

John and Mary's second child was Annie Morrow Tulley, born in Gateshead in 1865. In October 1880, she was "accidentally drowned by the rising tide" at Herd Sand, which is the beach near the pier in South Shields.

A terrible storm had burst over the district on Wednesday night, 27th October 1880. Gales were still blowing on the Thursday evening, and the alarm cannons were fired at 8 o'clock, as the schooner Harry Clem started to founder off the pier, the captain and another man having been lost overboard. The promenade became packed with several thousand spectators.

The ship beached, and the crowd made their way along the beach to the scene of the wreck, walking along a sand bar bounded by the sea on one side and a sheet of water left by the tide (a "gut") on the other. As the tide rose, the sea and the gut united, and waves rolled over the sand bar. There was a stampede, with people up to their waists in water and being swept off their feet.

Four girls aged 11 to 22 and a boy of 14 were drowned, their bodies being found in the gut beside the Volunteer Life Brigade House.

At the inquest two days later, John Tulley said "I am a van-man, and live at No.5 Ocean Road. My daughter's name was Annie Morrow Tulley, and she was 15 years of age last birthday. I was not present when she drowned." Robert Stephenson, a plater from South Shields, said " Everybody was struggling for life ... we came to the body of Annie Morrow Tulley, lying in a pool of water four yards from the sand end. I pulled her out, but she was dead. She was lying in about 2½ ft. of water."

The Coroner said that the efforts of the Life Brigade to save lives on such occasions were much impeded by the people crowding down, especially the women.

Annie was buried "on the consecrated side" of Westoe Cemetery - two of the others were buried on the unconsecrated side, There was a large number of spectators at the funeral.