Grave Marker of Amy Levy (1861-1889)
Balls Pond Cemetery, London
Levy took her own life by breathing in the fumes of charcoal, which she had put to burn in her room overnight. She had been depressed for some time, and her close friend Olive Schreiner concluded that, despite her own best efforts and those of others close to the young author, "her agony had gone past human help" (qtd. in Beckman 201). As she had wished, her body was sent to Woking Crematorium, where her case was registered as No. 99 ("The Late Amy Levy"); according to Sarah Parker, she was the first Jewish woman to be cremated in England (21). Many gathered for the interrment of her ashes in the cemetery at Balls Pond.