Cemeteries: What does PWI stand for?

March 23, 2009 3:31 PM

What does P.W.I stand for at a cemetery?

Whenever I go to the cemetery (UK), I see empty areas between graves with a plaque initialled P.W.I but have no idea what it could mean! Any googling turns up with wrestling terms.

posted by SRMorris to society & culture (6 comments total)

I did a google with a -wrestler -wrestling and couldn't find anything either that made any sort of sense. Only thing I found was Permanent Way Institution some rail company.
posted by zephyr_words at 3:43 PM on March 23

You can put a minus-sign in front of a term in a Google search to exclude it. So 'pwi -wrestling' returns all the pages which have 'pwi' on them, but not 'wrestling.'

Dunno about the tombstone thing, though--I looked at quite a few pages of gravestone abbreviations, but didn't see that one.
posted by box at 3:44 PM on March 23

I reckon it might be Purchase Without Interment - someone purchases the plot but nobody has yet been interred there.
posted by andraste at 3:48 PM on March 23

It could possibly stand for Public Works & Infrastructure (pdf file... check out page 9 of 16). Seems like it could be part of some cemetery beautification program.
posted by Effigy2000 at 3:49 PM on March 23

Prisoner of War - Italy?
posted by gjc at 3:58 PM on March 23

I think it HAS to be the Purchase Without Interment one.
posted by Slinga at 6:53 PM on March 23