Online database documents 70,000 buried in cemetery

A project aimed at documenting the social history of Limerick through one of the country's largest cemeteries has been completed.

The launch of an online database of 70,000 people buried in Mount Saint Lawrence Cemetery is the first in a series of cemetery projects aimed at establishing a social history of Limerick.

Staff from Limerick City Archives and the History Department of Mary Immaculate College of Education have spent the past two years manually transcribing thousands of handwritten records of those buried at the cemetery between 1855 and 2008.

The records include the name, age, address and, in many cases, the cause of death of those buried in the cemetery, which opened in 1849.

High-profile figures who were buried in the cemetery include former Labour TD and mayor of Limerick Jim Kemmy and poet Michael Hogan, also known as the Bard of Thomond, who died in 1899.