The Riddle of Double Dated Headstones

Why do some early headstones give two years of death for the same person? The headstone of Richard Broadas in Woodhouse is a beautiful example.

 

Here lieth ye Body of

Richard the Son of

Antony Broadas Who

died ye 20th of Feb:1702/3

aged 22 years

 

How could he had died in both 1702 and 1703?

To find the answer we have to look back to the Calendar (New Style) Act, which was adopted by parliament in 1750.

Previously England, Wales, Ireland and the Colonies had used the Julian Calendar and celebrated New Year on March 25th. The Act formally adopted the Gregorian Calendar and set New Year on the now familiar day of January 1st.

One curious byproduct of this change was that the year 1751, was left with only 282 days.

The use of double dates on headstones shows that for a time the two dating systems co-existed. Thus, any day after January 1st and before March 24th might be regarded as being in one of two adjacent years.

This double dated headstone in Newtown Linford is another example. William Poole is said to have died on the 16th of March 1605/6. According to the Old Style calendar he died in 1605 (new year had not yet been reached). But according to the New Style calendar the new year happened in January, so it was already 1606.

The New Style calendar had been adopted in other parts of the world many years before. The changeover took place in Scotland in 1600 and earlier still in Catholic Europe.

From the double dating of headstones and other documents it seems that the change of new year had for some time been seeping into popular usage in England, but that legal documents used the old system until the formal changeover in 1752.