Did UK Poor Houses pay for pauper's graves?

Question

This came from a voluntary group who help look after an old UK cemetery and I noticed that there are 14 buried in this one plot.

I thought there was a limit to the number of people who could be buried in UK graves. But aside from that I noticed that the majority are from 1882 with the exception of the last one in 1904, plus some are registered to be from a poor house. Is this a paupers grave and did poor houses help with burial costs when the family had no means to pay?

As another aside, only 2 share the same surname, so maybe they are not related to each other? Notice a 78 year old and a 15 day old with different surnames buried in the one plot on the same day.

Answer 1

The Poor House system in Ireland was run on similar lines to the English model and I have some experience of it. In Ireland the Poor House would pay for a burial for someone whose family didn’t or couldn’t pay. However it was usually in “common ground” and the graves were unmarked. There were often hundreds buried in such “common ground.” Some workhouses had their own burial area but in other cases land was set aside in a local cemetery.

So possibly Block 106 number 179 was an area of common ground in that cemetery. Almost no limit to the numbers of bodies in that type of burial area.