Grave robbing has never gone away – there is still a lucrative and macabre market for stolen headstones and markers.
Graveyards in the UK are regularly plundered by thieves who steal tombstones‚ vases‚ and sculptures and sell them as garden ornaments.
And in some parts of the world undertakers place orders for stones on the black market. They buy them cheaply, re-cut and sell them at market price
Not too long ago thieves stole a memorial stone from the grave of Joy Division’s Ian Curtis in a Macclesfield grave yard.
Staff said: “A rare mowing stone has been taken. It is about a square foot with a hole for a floral tribute, it is purely there for aesthetics, there is no inscription on it.”
Now, in Moston, Manchester, North of England, a community-minded mum is trying to find the family who had a small statue placed on a loved one’s grave.
She was litter-picking at Carters field near St Joseph’s Cemetery.
She said: “This is a long shot but I want to try to reunite this statue and get it back to a loved one’s grave on the statue of Our Lady was found on Carters fields on the Lightbowne Road-side and judging by the weight of it, is probably from a plot that side of the Cemetery.
“I’ve cleaned it up and its in an okay condition, a bit of the paint has chipped off and is blistered in places.
“There is a code on the bottom A28 which I believe is the catalogue number & not a grave reference. So, does anyone know any family missing a statue? Can you help share & reunite them?”
Why grave yards and cemeteries have become playgrounds for yobs and hunting ground for callous thieves is difficult to comprehend.
The desecration of our dead is a through back to Victorian tales of tombstone ransacking and the pillaging of ancient religious monuments under the guise of rescuing history.
War graves officials for instance said they were “deeply shocked” by the theft of bronze panels from a memorial in a Manchester cemetery.
Idiots vandalised 70 headstones at Urmston Jewish cemetery in Manchester causing £100,000 of damage.
Police said they were treating it as “hate crimes”.
Ian Levy, chairman of the Whitefield Synagogue Burial Board asked at the time: “Why is this happening? If you saw it, you wouldn’t believe it.
The Commonwealth War Graves Commission spokesman Peter Francis said: “Thefts of this nature have sadly been on the increase because of the global increase in the price of raw materials.
“However, it absolutely beggars belief that someone could stoop so low as to steal a memorial.”
The panels were probably taken for scrap and could be worth about £300 each. But it would cost thousands to replace them.
The Manchester Martyrs is one of the best-known monuments in Moston.
It commemorates William Philip Allen, Michael Larkin, and Michael O’Brien who were executed for the murder of a police officer in Manchester, England, in 1867. It has been vandalised and restored over the years.
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