YOUR TOUR OF KENSAL GREEN CEMETERY CONTINUES WITH A VISIT TO THE GRAVE OF THOMAS HOOD.
DIRECTIONS
With your back to the Elliotson tomb take the left path, passing the tomb of the Paul family. A little way along on the left is the pink, marble memorial to:-
Thomas Hood (1799-1845).
Thomas Hood was a writer and journalist who wrote humorous prose and verse throughout the 1830’s and 1840’s. Hood’s major serious work, however, was the narrative poem The Song of the Shirt which he published anonymously in the Punch Christmas issue of 1843. A morose denunciation of the northern mills where women were forced to work extremely long hours, for very little pay, it contained such melancholic lines as ’O God! That bread should be so dear, And Flesh and Blood so cheap!’ It proved a powerful attack on worker exploitation and was immediately reprinted in The Times and other newspapers across Europe. It was printed on broadsheets, cotton handkerchiefs and was highly praised by many of the literary establishment, including Charles Dickens. It is hard to imagine today of the impact that a single poem could have. It is this poem that is referred to on Hood’s Kensal Green memorial which bears the inscription ’He sang the Song of the Shirt.
