15 MOST REMARKABLE WOMEN OF KENSAL GREEN CEMETERY

A walk through Kensal Green Cemetery feels like stepping into a grand Victorian history book with nearly 1,000 individuals buried here who made it into the Dictionary of National Biography. Since it’s Women’s History Month, let’s look beyond the familiar names of notable gentlemen and focus on the amazing ladies who refused to behave quietly!

Here are the most remarkable women of Kensal Green Cemetery:

1. MARY HOGARTH (1837)

The beloved sister-in-law of Charles Dickens. When they met, she was 14, him – 21. Bright girl with a strong personality, Mary quickly became the young writer’s favourite companion and first reader of his manuscripts. He trusted her opinions, gave her a heart-shaped locket containing his hair, and then… married her older sister Catherine instead.

Mary moved in with them anyway and the trio lived happily for a while until Mary’s sudden death at the age of 17. Charles was absolutely devastated, he missed publication deadlines for two major works, personally bought her grave plot, wrote her epitaph, and fully intended to be buried beside her. Sadly, her brother got there first.

This platonic (allegedly) relationship turned into Dickens’s lifelong obsession. He wore her ring for the next 33 years and quietly recast her as the eternally pure, untouchable character across his several novels.

2. SOPHIE DAWES, MADAME DE FEUCHÈRES (1840)

Born to a fisherman and smuggler, raised in a workhouse, and starting out as a barmaid, Sophie had a rather unpromising beginning.

She solved this by becoming the mistress of a prince.

Louis Henri, Prince de Condé, more than twice her age, recognised her intelligence and ambition and did what any reasonable aristocrat would do: funded her education, refined her manners, relocated her to Paris, arranged a respectable marriage for her, and elevated both her and her husband to nobility. Charming and cultured, she flourished in Parisian society and was received at the court of Louis XVIII like she’d always belonged there.

When Sophie returned to London after two decades abroad as the Baroness de Feuchères, she was among the wealthiest and most cosmopolitan women in Europe. She later poured her fortune inherited after the prince’s death into charitable causes, including educational and military initiatives in Nîmes (France) where she’s commemorated with Avenue Feuchères.

3. EMMA SOYER (1842)

A prodigy who mastered three languages by eight and exhibited at the Royal Academy by ten as the youngest artist ever, Emma built a serious artistic career in a world that preferred women to sketch flowers and keep quiet. She did neither. Her work often centred on those society preferred not to look at. Her striking portrait of two Black girls as central subjects was a very unusual and radical choice for the time (1831). She married celebrity chef Alexis Soyer, who fully supported her artistic ambitions.

Tragically, shortly after exhibiting at the Paris Salon in 1842, Emma died from complications following childbirth. She was 29.

Her grieving husband designed an elaborate memorial for her grave, complete with a portrait bust based on her final self-portrait and a glass reliquary displaying her palette and favourite brushes.

Despite producing over 500 highly regarded paintings, Emma faded from public memory. Her work has started to receive renewed attention after being featured in the BBC television program Fake or Fortune in 2018.

4. MARIA CALLCOTT (1842)

The Regency era suggested women stay home, but Maria politely ignored it and got on a ship. At first, she accompanied her father on voyages, then she married another ship’s captain, and continued to travel widely with him until his death off the coast of Chile in 1822. Widowed, Maria did something extraordinary: she stayed there alone renting a cottage, living among locals, and carefully documenting one of the most devastating earthquakes in Chilean history.

Back in Britain, she married again, wrote nearly twenty books, illustrated them herself, declined to soften her opinions, criticised the treatment of women, described the horrors of slavery in detail, and became the first woman published in the journals of the Geological Society of London.

In 2008, the Chilean government funded the restoration of her grave in recognition of her contributions to the country’s history.

5. JANE LOUDON (1858)

At twenty, Jane anonymously published The Mummy! A Tale of the Twenty-Second Century, a pioneering work of science fiction in which she imagined Britain ruled by women in trousers, with futuristic technology like steam-powered machines (a decade before they were actually invented!) and a long-distance communication system resembling the internet.

Horticultural writer John Claudius Loudon, who reviewed her novel in his magazine was curious about the mind behind such ideas, so he arranged to meet the mysterious author. Within a year, they were married.

Jane soon developed a deep interest in her husband’s field and noticed that gardening books were written for experts and filled with technical language. So, she fixed it by writing clear, practical guides aimed especially at women, teaching herself botanical illustration along the way as she realised the importance of images for explaining plants. Her beautiful lithographs are still admired by collectors, you can also buy prints at Posterlounge!

Basically, Jane did for Victorian gardening what Mrs Beeton later did for cooking – she made specialist knowledge accessible to everyone.

6. CATHERINE HAYES (1861)

Born into poverty in Limerick, Catherine rose to become an iconic opera superstar and the first Irish woman to sing at La Scala.

In 1849, with her country being under the British rule and devastated by Great Famine (over 1 million Irish starved to dead while massive amounts of food were exported to England), she was invited to perform at Buckingham Palace for Queen Victoria and over 500 royal guests. After an evening of Italian repertoire, she sang an Irish rebellion song smiling sweetly as she did so, fuelling the campaign for Irish independence.

Off stage she was known for her generosity, supporting numerous charitable causes. Her legacy is still celebrated in Ireland, and her cultural pride keeps inspiring performers around the world. She made headlines recently after an enthusiastic but rather unskilled restoration of her monument made by the Limerick Association of London.

7. MAHARANI JIND KAUR (1863)

The last queen of the Sikh Empire, renowned for her beauty and restless fight against British colonialists. Trying to break her, they exiled her young son Maharaja Duleep Singh to England and raised him as a gentleman, away from his heritage. Reunited with him after 13 years, Maharani spent her final days in London.

When she died, cremation was illegal in Britain, so her body remained in Kensal Green’s catacombs while waiting for a permission to be taken to Bombay. The event was completely forgotten until a marble headstone was found during restorations in 1997.

8. DR JAMES BARRY (1865)

A brilliant surgeon known for amazing standards of recovery in hospitals he oversaw. In 1826 he performed the first recorded C-section in which both mother and child survived. Often teased by colleagues for his squeaky voice and petite figure, he was highly regarded as a specialist, and rose to become Inspector General of the Army – the highest rank a doctor could achieve.

Only after his death, it was discovered that he was actually a woman, born Margaret Bulkley. Disguising herself as a man was the only way she could study medicine at the time. That means she was the first women to qualify as a medical doctor in Britain, graduating in 1812!

9. JANE FRANKLIN (1875)

An independent, adventurous traveller, remembered mostly for her tireless efforts to discover the fate of her husband, Sir John Franklin, whose 1845 expedition vanished while searching for the Northwest Passage. Jane used her connections and resources to organise six separate expeditions to search for him.

She continued exploring the world with her niece well into her seventies, visiting every continent except Antarctica. When she died at the age of 83, her coffin was carried by six naval officers who had taken part in the Arctic search missions she founded.

10. EMILY STRANGFORD (1887)

After the death of her husband, she became a nurse and began campaigning for better professional training within the field. Her most remarkable work came in response to the atrocities of the 1876 Bulgarian uprising: she founded the Bulgarian Peasants Relief Fund, travelled there with a team of doctors and nurses, set up hospitals, organised food supplies, and even funded mills to help local communities rebuild their livelihoods. She is still remembered there with gratitude, and many streets bear her name.

She was awarded the Royal Red Cross medal by Queen Victoria for establishing a hospital in Cairo. She died at sea, on board of SS Lusitania, on her way to Port Said where she was about to create yet another hospital, for seamen.

11. FRANCES ‘FANNY’ KEMBLE (1893)

A celebrated actress on both sides of the Atlantic, while touring the United States she married Pierce Butler, a plantation owner from Georgia. Appalled by the brutal realities of slavery, and shocked to see the source of her husband’s wealth, Fanny ended up divorcing him and returning to England, where she became a fierce abolitionist.

Her published journals describing life on a slave plantation were widely read and helped strengthen British public opposition to the Confederacy during the American Civil War.

Today her name lives on in Philadelphia’s Fanny Kemble Park.

12. SARAH ‘SALLIE’ LANE (1899)

Sarah grew up around the Britannia Theatre on Hoxton Street, where her father worked and where she herself became an actress. Then she married its owner, helped running the venue, took over the business after his death, and managed it for nearly thirty years, while still performing on stage and writing plays. She was also a keen supporter of other female playwrights, staging their work at a time when opportunities for women were scarce.

When she died, thousands lined the streets of Hoxton to pay their respects. Tragically, the Britannia Theatre closed soon afterwards, following a devastating fire.

13. LOUISA TWINING (1912)

Her activism began when she visited an elderly former nurse of hers who had ended up living in a London workhouse. Shocked by the harsh and degrading conditions she witnessed, Louisa dedicated her life campaigning for reform of the Poor Law system, advocating better treatment for the society’s most vulnerable: the elderly, the disabled, and others who had no choice but to live in these institutions. Her work led to practical changes.

She was a member of the National Society for Women’s Suffrage.

14. KATE MEYRICK (1933)

A charming Irish lady, she found herself struggling financially after the divorce. Determined to provide for her eight children, she moved to London with a bold and ambitious plan to start a business.

Over the next 13 years she made a fortune running several nightclubs there, the most famous of which was the 43 Club in Soho (now a Chinese supermarket), popular among celebrities, aristocrats and gangsters alike. During this time, Kate served five prison sentences for selling alcohol without licence, including fifteen months of hard labour in Holloway Prison, which weakened her health so badly she died from pneumonia soon after leaving, aged 57.

On the day of Kate’s funeral, the whole West End dimmed its lights in her honour.

Her hard work paid off – all eight of her children received excellent educations, and three daughters even married into the aristocracy.

A respectable doctor’s wife turned into an infamous owner of a nightclub empire inspired the BBC’s Dope Girls (2025). She was also featured in an exhibition on 1920s organised by the National Archive in 2022.

15. MARIA BJÖRNSON (2002)

The visual mastermind behind the iconic Phantom of the Opera (1986), one of the most recognisable productions in theatre history (yes, that chandelier!). Over the course of her career, Maria designed for more than 120 productions across theatre, opera and ballet, working with the Royal Shakespeare Company, the National Theatre, the Royal Opera House, and the La Scala, as well as Broadway, the West End, Sydney Opera House and more.

Beyond the stage, she shaped future generations as a course director in Theatre Design at the Central School of Art and Design.

In 2006, the Young Vic Theatre named a studio space Maria in her honour.

S

Fifteen different lives united by one refusal: none of these women stayed where they were put. They rebelled in their own way: travelled, created, challenged social expectations, and redefined what women could achieve.

If you could meet one, who would it be?

I’d happily sit down for tea with all 15 – but Jane Loudon, Emma Soyer and Dr Barry are my top three!

Marta

PS For more fascinating individuals resting at Kensal Green Cemetery, check my other articles: VOICES FROM THE VAULTS: INSIDE THE CATACOMBS OF KENSAL GREEN CEMETERY and KENSAL GREEN CEMETERY: FADED GRANDEUR OF A VICTORIAN PIONEER!