Ryde Social Heritage Group research the social history of the citizens of Ryde, Isle of Wight. Documenting their lives, businesses and burial transcriptions.

Based at Ryde Cemetery Heritage & Learning Centre. Preserving, documenting and promoting the social history of Ryde on the Isle of Wight.

Death during Bible Reading

The Holy Bible

Inscriptions on early nineteenth-century memorials are often interesting and quite unique, like the one for James Nicholls, buried in St. Thomas’s Churchyard, Ryde, in 1838. The upright arched headstone has been placed next to the Church Lane wall and inserted on a concrete base. Although weathered and with fading text, the inscribed lettering was still legible when transcribed and photographed by RSHG in 2017.

It reads as follows:

SACRED
TO THE MEMORY OF
JAMES NICHOLLS
WHO SUDDENLY DEPARTED THIS LIFE
WHILE READING HIS BIBLE
ON THE EVENING OF THE
23RD SEPT 1838
IN THE 71 YEAR OF HIS AGE

AND ENOCH WALKED WITH GOD AND HE WAS
NOT FOR GOD TOOK HIM GENESIS 5. 24

FOR TO LIVE IS CHRIST AND TO DIE IS GAIN
PHILIPPIANS 1.21

ALSO ELIZABETH
THE BELOVED WIFE OF THE ABOVE
WHO DEPARTED THIS LIFE
JANY 4TH 1848
AGED 82 YEARS

Image source: The Improved Domestic Bible. London. Schuyler Smith & Co. 1880 – from Wikimedia Commons