Sue Bailey

It was with great sadness that I learned last week of the death of Sue Bailey on 12 August. Sue was a London Historians member and ran the superb blog, London Cemeteries.
I never met Sue and knew her hardly at all apart from some emails we exchanged towards the end of July. And the odd bit of Tweeting. She had volunteered to help us on our Kensal Green Cemetery tour on 18th September.

I absolutely wouldn’t charge anything – honestly, I do this for love not money and to have other people who want to hear about it is enough of a reward in itself
(most people I know think I’m crazy!)

So Sue epitomised the perfect Member, someone who was only too glad to muck in to share her expertise with other members. And I understand from what others have written about her (see links, below) that she would have most companionable in the pub, that institution that is the heart of so many of our events.
Sue’s husband Bart has kindly told us this about Sue:

Sue was born on 10th April 1972 in Sheffield
Her parents are David and Gilllian
She went through the state schooling system and then Pembroke College , Cambridge. He degree is in what she always described as “dead languages”
On leaving uni she moved to London joining the company by whom I was employed and we married the following year.
The cems project was the result of The Friday Photo competition when one week the subject was “Angels” and as we lived opposite StPancras cem at the time the source was obvious and our weekends were never to be the same again.
7 years ago we decided that we no longer needed to live in London and moved to rural Brittany but after 5 years or so Sue decided that she really was a London girl and moved back on an increasingly permanent basis.
She died on August 12th. She is buried at Chiltern Woodland burial Park in Beaconsfield.

We only know Sue via her London history interests and her Twitter persona @londoncems. You will see from the links here that she was very active online as an eBay Power Seller, something of a blogging and social media expert, and an active campaigner in the eBay sphere, not least through the blog she co-managed: TameBay.
I believe it would be a fitting memorial to Sue if London Cemeteries could be continued somehow. There have been informal discussions (and nothing more it must be emphasised) with Bart and others how this might be done.
In the meantime, on behalf of London Historians, I should like to offer our deepest condolences to Bart and Sue’s family. A terrible loss.
Here is what others have written about Sue.
http://tamebay.com/2011/08/farewell-sue-bailey.html
http://sellersphere.ebay.co.uk/post/64
http://www.ebaypartnernetworkblog.com/en/2011/08/farewell-sue-bailey/
http://thewhineseller.com/2011/08/mourning-online-friend/
http://ebaystrategies.blogs.com/ebay_strategies/2011/08/bye-bye-biddy.html
http://ebayinkblog.com/2011/08/15/goodbye-sue/
And here is a report on Sue’s funeral, by Dan Wilson:
http://www.wilsondan.co.uk/2011/08/22/sue-baileys-funeral/