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 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, 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. 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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.