The Waterloo County House of Industry and Refuge was bounded by Victoria Street North, Edna Street, Frederick St. and Dunham Ave and its farm also went north beyond Victoria Street North of the Railroad Tracks.

There were two cemeteries. The first starting in 1869 was located north of the railroad tracks which run parallel to Victoria St. It continued in operation until 1884 when a new cemetery was started.

The second cemetery was bounded by Dunham Avenue, Mansion Street and Indiana Street. The cemetery was in use from 1884 to 1907.

These cemeteries were the burial place of those who died in the House of Refuge. No markers exists. The graves were supposedly moved, but no records have been found to confirm this. Bodies continued to be unearthed when houses were constructed on Dunham Ave after World War II. A number of bodies probably continue to be underneath lawns, sidewalks and roadways. As late as the 1960s a skull was unearthed on Dunham St. and about 1966 a body was found at the older location during an excavation at Electrohome was underway.

This virtual cemetery is created in conjunction with the website Waterloo Region Generations. Below is a link in Generations to those recorded as being buried in this cemetery.

http://goo.gl/ao49W

Here is a link to those listed as residing in the House (very incomplete)

http://tinyurl.com/k24co4u

In 1870 William Jaffray a newspaper editor of Kitchener said of the people living in the Waterloo House of Industry and Refuge.

"a singular gathering of the halt, the imbecile and the blind, the wise and the unwise, the decayed and the decaying of the poverty-stricken of the county, most of them passing quietly to the grave without a thought.."

William Jaffray spoke of it as "a Potter's Field with a fence around the nameless graves." In the field was a little red brick house of two rooms, called a pest-house {located at Indiana Street), which was used as an isolation hospital.