There are nearly 4000 graves in the Porirua Cemetery, many of them unmarked. The cemetery is the resting place for more than 2000 former patients of the old Porirua psychiatric hospital. More than 2000 graves date from before 1946. The first burial was that of Charles Crabbe on 13 September 1895.\n\nIn earlier days the cemetery was subdivided into blocks depending on religion or if the person was a patient at the hospital. Most in the hospital block were buried there before 1906.\n