The cemetery was closed in 1867 after between 16,000 – 18,000 souls were buried in recorded, pauper and clandestine graves. Numbers are unclear because pauper’s graves often had many people buried on top of each other and the government prohibited such graves from having a headstone. Pauper’s graves were designed for people with no family or money. In such cases, the cemetery had to apply for government funding for these burials. One hundred years on, the council felt they needed a public park in Newtown to cater for the growing population in Sydney. Closure of the cemetery was continually opposed by the church, however, lack of funds in the depression years causing the cemetery become an eyesore and then a murdered young girl’s body found in the cemetery grounds lead to a public outcry over the need for the overgrown cemetery to be cleared. The result was three-quarters of Camperdown Cemetery being resumed in 1948 for Camperdown Memorial Rest Park which opened in 1951. All headstones from the resumed area were placed where ever they could fit within the reduced cemetery and the remaining placed against the sandstone wall that was built to separate the parkland from the cemetery. It was thought nailing the headstones to the wall would preserve the headstones but sadly as the nails have expanded with rust this has cracked almost all of the sandstone headstones on the wall. This massive relocation of graves makes locating a headstone today a challenge. Also, sandstone being soft in nature has meant that there are only about 2000 headstones remaining, and many of those are not readable.