Mary Hogarth (1820 - 1837) was the beloved sister-in-law of Charles Dickens died on 7th May 1837 and Dickens was utterly bereft at her loss. At the time he was working on Pickwick Papers and Oliver Twist, and he was unable to complete the next instalment of both. Rumours began to circulate that the talented young writer, Boz (the name under which Dickens was writing), had gone insane, or even that he had committed suicide. He and his wife, Catherine, had in fact gone to Hampstead to recover from the shock of Mary’s death.
Dickens took immediate charge of the funeral arrangements for Mary, and it was he who paid for her grave here at Kensal Green Cemetery and it was he who composed the epitaph that, although now somewhat weathered, can still be discerned on the tombstone ‘Young, beautiful and good. God in His mercy numbered her among His angels at the early age of seventeen,’
His obsession with his dead sister-on-law, however, seems to have bordered on the downright morbid. There is no doubt that he wished to be buried in the same grave as her, and when her brother, George, died in 1841, it was with great reluctance that Dickens relinquished his claim to lie in the grave when he died. ‘It is a great trial for me to give up Mary’s grave,’ he wrote to his great friend, John Forster, ‘the desire to be buried next to her is as strong upon me now, as it was five years ago.. And I know…that it will never diminish…I cannot bear the though of being excluded from her dust…’ However, wiser and less morose minds seems to have prevailed and Dickens renounced his right and so the tombstone also bears a memorial inscription to George Hogarth.
