Belvedere Road

Belvedere Road is identified as the site of the killing that began the story of William Chester Minor and George Merrett. In 1872, it became both the setting of Merrett’s death and, later, a landmark along the route of his funeral procession through Lambeth.

The Site of the Killing

On the Saturday night in 1872 when George Merrett was killed, he had been relieving a fellow member of the Ancient Order of Foresters, a friendly society that provided cooperative financial support to working people. The book identifies the spot on Belvedere Road as the place where the tragedy occurred. The killing also took place only a few hundred yards from Waterloo Station, a proximity recalled in the account of William Chester Minor’s departure for America in 1910.

On the Funeral Route

Merrett’s funeral procession wound through Lambeth for an entire afternoon. It passed the place on Belvedere Road where he had been killed, then continued past Bethlem Royal Hospital and onward to Tooting Cemetery, where he was buried. The route made the site part of a public act of mourning: the procession was half a mile long, with members of the Foresters, Merrett’s bereaved family, brewery workers and thousands of members of the public following the hearse.

Place and Aftermath

Belvedere Road’s significance in the account comes from this contrast between a particular site of violence and its later passage through a communal farewell. The procession did not erase the killing; it carried the memory of it through the streets on the way to Merrett’s burial. The book thus gives the road a role in both the beginning of the tragedy and its public aftermath.