Grave finally marked after 70 years

5:30am Monday 14th May 2007

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A GRAVE which has lain unmarked for 70 years will finally get a proper headstone thanks to a determined relative's hunt through history.

Julia Forster, whose great-aunt Jessica Beeston was buried in Hatfield Road Cemetery, St Albans, at the age of only 29 in October 1937, said: "It just shows what you can do if you persist.

"This grave has just been lying forgotten for 70 years - but not any more.""

Her quest began earlier this year, when a cousin sorting out a loft found a photograph, with a letter attached to the back.

The letter, written by Jessica's husband Charles Beeson just after her death, implored the rest of the family to remember his wife's beauty, generosity, selflessness and bravery in facing her final illness, asking them to visit her grave and mark it with flowers.

Although the couple had lived in Leicester, Jessica was buried in St Albans, where Charles had been brought up.

His parents lived in Folly Avenue and ran a hairdressing shop in St Peter's Street.

After the young couple had met in Jessica's home town of Brighton, the teenage Jessica lived with them for a few years before marriage, working in their shop.

But when Mrs Forster, following the letter's precise directions, found the grave she was dismayed to find just an unmarked patch of grass.

She said: "She has been here all these years without a headstone.

"It is so sad - she was so brave and beautiful, but she died so young."

She resolved to put up a headstone - but immediately ran into a serious hitch. St Albans District Council, which runs the cemetery, told her the grave plot had been bought by Charles Beeson and legally any alterations would have to be approved by his heirs.

Mrs Forster, who lives in Stevenage, said: "The council told me I had to find relatives - I didn't think they thought I had much hope."

As Charles had died in 1979, and neither of his two wives had produced children, the chances of contacting his legal heirs seemed extremely remote.

She contacted a newspaper in Leicester which published her appeal for relatives, but as weeks went by she began to lose hope. She said: "I thought the grave would just be lying there unmarked for ever."

But then she had an unexpected break - Jessica's only surviving sibling, 88-year-old Tess, remembered that Charles had a brother, Tom, who he had fallen out with. Armed with the information that Tom Beeson had owned a butcher's shop in a Dorset village, she published an appeal in the Bournemouth Echo.

On Tuesday afternoon, she had a call from a museum curator in Wimborne giving details of Tom's granddaughter - and soon Jessica's two great nieces were talking on the phone.

Mrs Forster, whose husband Christopher is coincidentally from St Albans, said: "It was quite emotional. She had heard about Jessica as a mysterious, beautiful woman who had died young.

"I felt absolutely elated, and so relieved. I felt disbelief I had been successful."

She is now completing the formalities to have ownership of the grave transferred to her, after which she will erect a headstone to commemorate her great aunt as soon as possible.