Jeanette Pickersgill
British painter (c.1814-1885)

Jeanette Pickersgill (30 November 1813 – 20 March 1885) was an English painter. She was the first person to be legally cremated in the United Kingdom, at Woking Crematorium in Surrey.
Life
She was born Jeannette Caroline Grover in 1813 in Amsterdam. She married the artist Henry Hall Pickersgill on 20 July 1837 at St Anne's, Soho. He died 7 January 1861.
She published a volume of poetry in 1827 entitled Tales of the Harem. She exhibited at the Royal Academy between 1848 and 1863. The 1881 Census lists her as an annuitant living at 59 Dorset Square in Regent's Park in London. On her death The Times described Pickersgill as "a well-known figure in literary and scientific circles".
Cremation and aftermath
Pickersgill was cremated six days after her death.
“Jeanette Pickersgill” enters the record as british painter (c.1814-1885). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Jeanette, Pickersgill and British can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Jeanette Pickersgill” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.