Burial Registers for the Royal Charter shipwreck victims

Description

Over 400 people perished on the Royal Charter when it sank off Anglesey on 25 October 1859. This image shows a page from a Burial Register noting the internment of bodies from the wreck in the parish of Penrhosslligwy by the Reverend Hugh Robert Hughes. 
Burial registers were kept in every parish in the UK, and after 1812 were kept in their own dedicated books. These registers can usually be found at your local County Record Office.
For many weeks following the wreck, bodies were brought up from the ship itself and others retrieved from the surrounding coastlines of Anglesey, North Wales, the Isle of Man and even Ireland, where an inquest was held at Drogheda to identify a body which has been carried there by the currents and tides.
A total of 34 bodies were buried in the parish of Penrhosslligwy from the wreck. Reverend Hugh Robert Hughes was the brother of Reverend Stephen Roose Hughes who undertook much of the sad responsibility for trying to identify and then bury an even greater number of bodies at Llanagllo.
Other bodies were buried in churches about the area such as Amlwch, Llanddona, Llandyfnan, Llanbedrgoch and Pentraeth. So many coffins were required that they had to be supplied from Liverpool because they could not be found locally and were too expensive.
Some of the bodies had been so damaged in the ferocious storm, dashed on the rocks and the wreckage of the ship, while others had begun to decompose in the weeks following the wreck that identification was not always possible. Many of the bodies remained unknown, and were entered as such in the records 'Body of a Male Person from the wreck of the Royal Charter'.
Notes were kept of any possible feature, markings and possessions that were found on them that might help the process of identifying them to relatives and friends. For example, a body found on 19 November was noted to be wearing a sock with the letters W.B on them (the remains were later identified as being a Mr Bains).
To view the original burial registers, please contact Anglesey Archives:
http://www.anglesey.gov.uk/leisure/records-and-archives/