Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works, Hey, brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren bog Obam. Here, would you ride a train with
Speaker 1: undead passengers? Or if not, what about a train with
Speaker 1: actually dead passengers? From eighteen fifty four to nineteen forty one,
Speaker 1: the London Necropolis Railway took a forty minute journey across
Speaker 1: twenty three miles that's thirty seven kilometers, carrying both the
Speaker 1: deceased and the living who mourned them to a cemetery.
Speaker 1: After departing a special station near Waterloo built specifically for
Speaker 1: the line and its passengers, the train rocked its way
Speaker 1: across the serene countryside on a route selected for its
Speaker 1: comforting views. Once arriving at the Brookwood Cemetery in Surrey,
Speaker 1: at the time the world's largest cemetery and built in
Speaker 1: partnership with the railroad, funeral goers would lay there dearly
Speaker 1: departed to rest, and then have drinks and snacks at
Speaker 1: one of the cemetery's two train stations. So we spoke
Speaker 1: with John Clark, author of the two thousand six book
Speaker 1: The Brookwood Necropolis Railway. He said both cemetery stations had
Speaker 1: refreshment rooms, usually run by the wives of the station staff.
Speaker 1: The cakes and sandwich has served would probably have been homemade,
Speaker 1: and it would have been customary to eat this lunch
Speaker 1: with a cup of tea at the station before returning
Speaker 1: to London. The refreshment rooms were fully licensed, so guests
Speaker 1: could have alcoholic drinks as an alternative to tea or coffee.
Speaker 1: After this brief repast, the guests then boarded the train
Speaker 1: and returned to London, the trains passenger list a bit
Speaker 1: lighter than before. The idea may seem odd today, when
Speaker 1: many of us keep the dead as far from daily
Speaker 1: life as possible, but at the time it was a
Speaker 1: popular one. During its peak, London's Necropolis Railway transported more
Speaker 1: than two thousand dead bodies a year. The number of
Speaker 1: live mourners that carried reached into the tens of thousands.
Speaker 1: Even so, riding in the same train as corpses took
Speaker 1: some getting used to. Londoners initially wondered whether loading up
Speaker 1: the mourners and the deceased and transporting them on the
Speaker 1: same train was a bit too practical. The Bishop of London,
Speaker 1: when appearing before the Houses of Parliament a full twelve
Speaker 1: years before the Necropolis Railway opened, considered it improper. Clark
Speaker 1: says that the bishop stated he would consider the hurry
Speaker 1: and bustle connected with it as inconsistent with the solemnity
Speaker 1: of a Christian funeral. Plus, there were they corporeal elements
Speaker 1: with which to contend, such as the odors and potential
Speaker 1: disease transmission of the bodies. Social morays were tested to
Speaker 1: could the rich really ride side by side with the
Speaker 1: poor to bury their dead? And the concern wasn't limited
Speaker 1: only two people of different social classes. There could be
Speaker 1: different religions aboard, each requiring its own traditions. The solution,
Speaker 1: at least aboard the Necropolis railway was elegant in its simplicity.
Speaker 1: Separate cars were designated by class, but all were allowed
Speaker 1: to ride, regardless of their station in life. The cemetery, meanwhile,
Speaker 1: allowed the rich and poor to be buried side by side,
Speaker 1: but sectioned separate areas for various religions. It was a
Speaker 1: workable solution for the time, and one driven by a necessity,
Speaker 1: if you could argue. London's in town cemeteries were already
Speaker 1: chock full. By the middle of the nineteenth century, Londoners
Speaker 1: were being buried at a rate of about fifty thousand
Speaker 1: a year. Previously buried bodies were sometimes removed and cremated
Speaker 1: to make room for new ones, until Parliament began closing
Speaker 1: admission at city cemeteries and shipping bodies to greener pastures
Speaker 1: like the out of town Brookwood Cemetery, which encompassed about
Speaker 1: one thousand, five hundred acres. By the nineteen twenties, motorized
Speaker 1: horses were the vehicle of choice for moving the dead,
Speaker 1: and many Londoners had access to either automobiles or one
Speaker 1: of the trains of the living that also made a
Speaker 1: stop at Brookwood Station, and in April ninety one, during
Speaker 1: World War Two, the London terminus of the funeral train
Speaker 1: was damaged in a German V two rocket bombing. Brookwood
Speaker 1: no longer serves exclusively as a departure spot for the
Speaker 1: dead and their mourners, but remnants of these stations are
Speaker 1: still visible if you know where to look. How's that
Speaker 1: for living history? Today's episode was written by laure L
Speaker 1: Dove and produced by Tyler Playing. For more on this
Speaker 1: and lots of other Lively topics, visit our home planet,
Speaker 1: how Stuff Works dot Com.