ABSTRACT
In garden cemeteries, proposed and built in Britain in the early decades of the nineteenth century, awareness of time's passing was purposefully cultivated as the basis of individual character. This occurred alongside broader theoretical developments associated with the emergence of the life sciences, including studies of memory and cognition, attempts to discern the psychological basis of personality and investigations into adolescent behaviour and development. Cemeteries, like schools, libraries and museums, provided so many 'silent and decent' abodes for reflecting on the consequences of one's own life. In assuming responsibility, for educating the masses, as well established in several German states by 1829 and for burying them in Britain a decade later, it was hoped that the governments would reap the benefits of reduced religious animosity and heightened civic virtue. Evoking dimension of the culture of enterprise was the representation of the cemetery as the reserve of nature, a place protected from human interference or degradation.
