Green’s Dictionary of Slang

a particularly bad cough, which is likely to lead to the sufferer’s death.

1696		Motteux (trans.) Gargantua and Pantagruel (1927) II Bk IV 239: Both my gentlemen had [...] a churchyard-cough in the lungs, a catarrh in the throat.
1701		R. Steele The Funeral I i: I always said by his Church-yard-Cough, you’d Bury him.
1785, 1788, 1796		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.
1723		epitaph cited in Chester Chron. 9 May (1800) 1/3: To the Memory of Kate Jones, a wealthy spinster, ag’d fourscore, Who’d many achs [...] Knelling her friends to the grave with a church-yard cough. Long hung she on Death’s nose, till one March morn, There came a cold north east, and blew her off.
1811		Lex. Balatronicum.
1821		R. Waln Hermit in America on Visit to Phila. 2nd series 43: The third black in the face with a church-yard cough!
1827		Berks. Chron. 21 Apr. 3/4: Seized witha fit of coughing, her Mamma remarked, ‘She was afraid she had got a churchyard cough’.
1832		Northampton Mercury 14 Apr. 2/3: You may learn to [...] put on the vigorous and healthy look [...] instead of the churchyard cough.
1845		W. Kent Guardian 14 Apr. 7/3: I observe that he does not wait for the old cathedral clock [...] and proclaims the time in a churchyard cough.
1857		N.O. Dly Crescent 30 May 1/7: Men and women dying by consumption are too common about Boston [...] for anybody to go and pay money to listen to a churchyard cough.
1852		Bath Chron. 27 Mar. 8/6: [advert] A Churchyard Cough of Twelve Years Standing Cured by Williams’s Celebrated Pectoral Lozengers.
1878		State Jrnl (Jefferson City, MO) 23 Aug. 8/3: They talked of a church-yard cough; but oh!
1883		Omaha Dly Bee (NE) 24 Mar. 7/4: His lungs became diseased, a hacking, churchyard cough racked him almost to pieces.
1888		Soldiers’ Stories and Sailors’ Yarns 164: She told me that Don Pedro, recovered from his wound, after plaguing her [...] with a churchyard cough [...] had at last ‘gone out’.
1891		Dover Exp. 20 Nov. 8/4: She also had a dry hacking cough which people said was a ‘Churchyard Cough’.
1899–1908		H. Lawson ‘Wanted by the Police’ in Roderick (1972) 739: The racking fit of coughing burst forth again, nearer. ‘That’s a churchyarder!’ commented uncle Abe.
1907		W.W. Jacobs ‘In the Family’ Monkey’s Paw (1962) 177: And he’s got a cough [...] a churchyard cough – I ’eard it.
1912		Bulletin (Sydney) 22 Aug. 44/3: A fit of coughing shook the man in the next room. / ‘Hear him [...]. It’s a graveyarder, isn’t it. He wanted to get up, but I told him not to. He’ll be all right to-morrow.’.

see burying face under bury v.

the death of one child in a large, but impoverished family.

1882		Gloucester Citizen 24 Aug. 3/2: ‘Yes, ma’am,’ said the philosophic retainer; ‘but you see [...] I’ve never had any churchyard luck’.
1901		Hull Dly Mail 30 Apr. 2/6: The wife of a labouring man had recently presented her [...] master with another child. [...] ‘How many does that make?’ The answer was ‘Sixteen, sir, and no churchyard luck’.
1909		J. Ware Passing Eng. of the Victorian Era 77/2: ‘Yes, mum, I hev brought ’em all up — ten boys, and no churchyard luck with it.’ — said by a Liverpool woman to a district visitor.