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The cholera epidemic of 1849 provided the first major boost to the use of the cemetery, when 1100 of the 1600 Leeds victims were buried here. In the same year, across the road, was built the first of the workhouse buildings which would later became St James's Hospital. Many of the paupers from the workhouse were buried in the unmarked common graves which occupy so much of our cemetery. The Leeds Burial Ground also provided a final resting-place for thousands of poor folk from the Bank and from central areas of the city. Like other large towns, Leeds became home to many Irish immigrants from the 1840s on, and until a Roman Catholic cemetery was opened in 1895, most of them were buried at Beckett Street.
Another pioneering feature was the inscription or guinea grave, introduced in the 1880s. Although the simple headstones are now associated in many people's minds with poverty, they were once welcomed by families who could not afford a private plot and memorial but wanted to avoid the 'shame' of burying their loved ones in unmarked graves.
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