Why Did London Once Have a Train for the Dead?

When a city's cemeteries start filling up, one solution is to take the funerary show on the road. Learn about London's Necropolis Railway of 1854-1941 in this episode of BrainStuff.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works, Hey, brain Stuff,
Lauren bog Obam. Here, would you ride a train with
undead passengers? Or if not, what about a train with
actually dead passengers? From eighteen fifty four to nineteen forty one,
the London Necropolis Railway took a forty minute journey across

(00:22):
twenty three miles that's thirty seven kilometers, carrying both the
deceased and the living who mourned them to a cemetery.
After departing a special station near Waterloo built specifically for
the line and its passengers, the train rocked its way
across the serene countryside on a route selected for its
comforting views. Once arriving at the Brookwood Cemetery in Surrey,

(00:43):
at the time the world's largest cemetery and built in
partnership with the railroad, funeral goers would lay there dearly
departed to rest, and then have drinks and snacks at
one of the cemetery's two train stations. So we spoke
with John Clark, author of the two thousand six book
The Brookwood Necropolis Railway. He said both cemetery stations had
refreshment rooms, usually run by the wives of the station staff.

(01:05):
The cakes and sandwich has served would probably have been homemade,
and it would have been customary to eat this lunch
with a cup of tea at the station before returning
to London. The refreshment rooms were fully licensed, so guests
could have alcoholic drinks as an alternative to tea or coffee.
After this brief repast, the guests then boarded the train
and returned to London, the trains passenger list a bit

(01:25):
lighter than before. The idea may seem odd today, when
many of us keep the dead as far from daily
life as possible, but at the time it was a
popular one. During its peak, London's Necropolis Railway transported more
than two thousand dead bodies a year. The number of
live mourners that carried reached into the tens of thousands.
Even so, riding in the same train as corpses took

(01:47):
some getting used to. Londoners initially wondered whether loading up
the mourners and the deceased and transporting them on the
same train was a bit too practical. The Bishop of London,
when appearing before the Houses of Parliament a full twelve
years before the Necropolis Railway opened, considered it improper. Clark
says that the bishop stated he would consider the hurry
and bustle connected with it as inconsistent with the solemnity

(02:10):
of a Christian funeral. Plus, there were they corporeal elements
with which to contend, such as the odors and potential
disease transmission of the bodies. Social morays were tested to
could the rich really ride side by side with the
poor to bury their dead? And the concern wasn't limited
only two people of different social classes. There could be
different religions aboard, each requiring its own traditions. The solution,

(02:33):
at least aboard the Necropolis railway was elegant in its simplicity.
Separate cars were designated by class, but all were allowed
to ride, regardless of their station in life. The cemetery, meanwhile,
allowed the rich and poor to be buried side by side,
but sectioned separate areas for various religions. It was a
workable solution for the time, and one driven by a necessity,
if you could argue. London's in town cemeteries were already

(02:56):
chock full. By the middle of the nineteenth century, Londoners
were being buried at a rate of about fifty thousand
a year. Previously buried bodies were sometimes removed and cremated
to make room for new ones, until Parliament began closing
admission at city cemeteries and shipping bodies to greener pastures
like the out of town Brookwood Cemetery, which encompassed about
one thousand, five hundred acres. By the nineteen twenties, motorized

(03:18):
horses were the vehicle of choice for moving the dead,
and many Londoners had access to either automobiles or one
of the trains of the living that also made a
stop at Brookwood Station, and in April ninety one, during
World War Two, the London terminus of the funeral train
was damaged in a German V two rocket bombing. Brookwood
no longer serves exclusively as a departure spot for the

(03:39):
dead and their mourners, but remnants of these stations are
still visible if you know where to look. How's that
for living history? Today's episode was written by laure L
Dove and produced by Tyler Playing. For more on this
and lots of other Lively topics, visit our home planet,
how Stuff Works dot Com.