Crawford: More families of Pye River Cemetery’s dead need to help in upkeep
Published:Friday | June 14, 2024 | 12:07 AMChristopher Thomas/Gleaner Writer
WESTERN BUREAU:
Montego Bay’s Deputy Mayor, Dwight Crawford, is lamenting that not enough families of the deceased buried in the western city’s historical Pye River Cemetery are helping to maintain the 128-year-old burial ground, even as he gives the assurance that the property will get consistent weekly maintenance.
Crawford, who is the councillor for the St James Municipal Corporation’s (StJMC) Spring Garden division, where the cemetery is located, made the observation on Thursday while speaking with The Gleaner following the corporation’s monthly meeting.
“The call is still out there for families to come and give assistance with the cemetery, but we are not getting the kind of feedback we would like to get. I am suspecting that some persons have just lost interest in their dearly departed although I know that on Labour Day itself, persons were actually volunteering themselves to come and help us and had committed to coming back,” said Crawford, referencing the StJMC’s cleaning and debushing work at the cemetery as this year’s Labour Day parish project for St James.
“There were a couple of families that actually came and asked us to do a few things to help them in maintaining their spaces [at the cemetery] so they could actually do their own independent cleaning of their sites. Unfortunately, it’s a very big place, and the few families that come there are not even close to enough to have a real impact on what is needed,” Crawford added.
“When you have such a big place, with persons who have been buried there since 1896, you can only imagine the number of bodies that are there. You have 20 families that have chosen to do their part, and we say thanks to those persons, but we still need more help from the families as it is still far less than what we need to sustain the site.”
The Pye River Cemetery, which was opened in 1896, is one of 15 overall cemeteries in St James, of which 13 are currently officially open.
It has served as the resting place for several famous Jamaicans over the years, including national footballer Stephen ‘Shorty’ Malcolm, jurist Sir Henry Isaac Close Brown, and members of Montego Bay’s influential Kerr-Jarrett family.
However, the facility has been in a dilapidated state for several years, being one of several cemeteries across Jamaica that have suffered from lack of maintenance. Several graves at the site have sustained damage over time, in some cases because of vandalism as intruders have allegedly robbed graves at night for skulls to use in witchcraft practices.
“There are some broken graves down there, and if you notice, in response to that we have closed the gate at the cemetery because there are persons who go down there to make mischief, and there are some very interesting people who have their weird activities for which they require some things that are inside those graves that they break and go into. In response to that, we have started to keep the gate closed and man it a little bit better so that when people want to go and visit their dearly departed, they have to come here and seek permission to enter the site,” Crawford explained.
“When we did the Labour Day project, I think we managed to achieve about 60 per cent of the required work on the day, and since then, a team has been there working to complete the project. We are actually forming a team to see how we can do it as a more routine maintenance,” Crawford added.
“We are looking at having someone in there every week, as often as is necessary to clean the cemetery site. Before, it was happening quarterly because the last time we did the cleaning of the cemetery, we did one in December 2023. I would say it has had three cleanings since December.”
In 2021, the StJMC called for public-private partnership to clean up the Pye River Cemetery, with an estimate given at that time that it would cost $4.42 million to undertake debushing of the property and repainting and repairing the graves, among other activities.
The StJMC is currently reviewing plans to turn the Pye River Cemetery into a potential tourist attraction even amid plans to formally close the site due to a dwindling number of burial spaces.