A few people who lost their lives as a result of a rebellion against the state but became heroes, had graves which became places of pilgrimage.
1841
In Wales, the graves of the ten men shot during the riot at Newport in 1839 were unmarked.
Following a long report on the custom of Flowering Sunday and of the practice of that custom at St Woolo’s church, Newport, Monmouthshire, the local paper published a paragraph critical of those who died during the rebellion led by John Frost and others:
In one corner [of St Woolo’s church, Newport, Monmouthshire], “Without a stone to mark the spot,” were the three graves of those deluded and dearly-punished men, who fell victims to a wild and baseless enthusiasm, in the Chartist insurrection of November, 1839, before the Westgate Hotel in this town. By their untimely graves we saw no lone and mourning relatives – no bereaved children – no weeping wife, “nor kith nor kin were there” yet thither had curiosity drawn large numbers, for the hands of some pitying strangers had profusely decked these lonely tombs with flowers of lovely bloom and at the head of one, wherein the body of Shell awaits the Last Day, was written, in a plain but neat style, the following Chartist eulogium of four stanzas which began ‘ Who fought for freedom more than life?’ The report continued with criticism of the behaviour of some of those ‘who laughed and whispered merrily to their gay companions, and strewed pale flowers over the graves they came to deck, with the most heartless indifference’. The weather deteriorated during the day, leaving the flowers ‘wasted, blighted, dead – like the poor shreds of mortality upon which worms revelled below.’
Monmouthshire Merlin, 10.4.1841 [This is one of the first of many newspaper accounts reporting large numbers of people bringing flowers to grave yards in south-east Wales on Palm Sunday.]
Entries in the burial register of St. Woolos Church, Newport, dated 1-10 November 1839.
Other examples
Flowers are still placed every Easter on the grave of the recusant (Catholic) martyr Kemble, in Welsh Newtown, Herefordshire. He was put to death in 1679.
Notes and Queries, Manchester Times, April 12, 1890
Removal of the Remains of Hardy and Baird, The Political Martyrs of 1820 Monument to the former traitors has been erected by the people of Glasgow. Their remains were taken from Stirling to a cemetery in Glasgow and the grave scattered with flowers.
The Northern Star and National Trades’ Journal (Leeds, England), August 21, 1847
Peasant girls who had strewed flowers of the republicans who had been shot at Baden Freiburg, St Joergen, are still in prison.
Daily News (London, England), October 19, 1849
Those who died for others during the French revolution were rewarded by their fellow creatures who mourned them and strewed flowers on their graves
The Northern Star and National Trades’ Journal (Leeds, England), March 3, 1849
Early Tourists in Wales 