The London Necropolis Company: A One Way Ticket to Ride

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Brookwood Cemetery, coffin trains, funeral trains, London Necropolis, London Necropolis Railway, Necropolis company, Richard Broun, Richard Sprye, Victorian Death, Victorian funerals

Entrance to the London Necropolis Company’s cemetery station c1890. Source unknown.

Readers of this blog might have guessed that I have a bit of a fancy for graveyards and the macabre…surely not I, hear you say!  In my opinion, the Victorian’s definitely had the edge when it came to eccentric and OTT funerary practices.  The London Necropolis Company with its railway service was a prime example of how the Victorian’s used a modern technology to revolutionise funerals for rich and poor alike.

A surplus of bodies

Image by Lenora

London in the nineteenth century was a burgeoning industrial and commercial centre, attracting in-comers from all over the country and the empire.  Between 1801 – 1851 the population pretty much doubled.  With this increase in the living, there came also in increase in the dying and soon London’s limited burial grounds were packed to overflowing.  Reuse of burial plots resulted in bones and body parts being strewn about the cemeteries polluting the ground water and exacerbating the problem by increasing the risk of outbreaks of Typhoid, Measles, Smallpox and Cholera.  When 15,000 Londoners were carried off by Cholera in 1848/49 it was evident that something urgently needed to be done.

A man with a plan

Into this festering scene stepped Sir Richard Broun, an entrepreneur with an eye for new technology and a fast profit.  Sir Richard and his partner Richard Sprye had the innovative idea of out-of-town burials – a kind of suburbia for the dead.  They hit upon the innovative idea of using the new-fangled and somewhat controversial steam-train as the method for shipping the dead out of London to Woking in Surrey.

Image Source, The Brookwood Necropolis Railway, John Clarke

They had done their sums and projected that up to 50,000 people a year would use the service, rich and poor alike; profits, like the dead, were sure to pile up.  Their plan would help reduce the burial problem in London, hopefully reduce the risk of further outbreaks of Cholera, and help make funerals more affordable by basing them outside London.

There was some panic and frothing at the mouth amongst the steam-train phobic, who feared these noisy dirty mechanical thing-u-mabobs were hardly appropriate for the solemn dignity of a funeral service. Plus some objections from the privileged classes who feared their dearly departed might have to rub mouldering shoulders with the deceased hoi polloi; this was illustrated by Paul Slade in his article for the Fortean Times, where he quotes the Bishop of London, Charles Blomfield, in 1842,  harumphing that, “It may sometimes happen that persons of opposite characters might be carried in the same conveyance,” [..] “For instance, the body of some profligate spendthrift might be placed in a conveyance with the body of some respectable member of the church, which would shock the feelings of his friends.”  Quelle Horreur!

Nevertheless, despite the imminent fear of social anarchy propounded by the likes of the Bishop, Parliament gave the go-ahead and in 1852 The London Necropolis and National Mausoleum Company was born.  Not a name to trip off the tongue it was swiftly changed to the more succinct London Necropolis Company.  The First Necropolis Train was puffing its way to Brookwood Cemetery by November 1854.

Article from the Times, 1854, image via John Clarke.

Brookwood Cemetery – London’s Necropolis

London Necropolis Station Westminster Bridge Road. Image by David M Pye, Wikimedia

Broun and Sprye had bought huge tracts of Woking Common and created Brookwood Cemetery, at 500 acres it was the biggest cemetery in the country.  Brookwood cemetery was integral to the London Necropolis Railway.  The railway utilised the existing Waterloo to Southampton Railway Line, owned by the London and South Western Railway Company, and added a private branch line that went right into Brookwood Cemetery.

Londoners, both alive and dead, could alight the train at its own discreet private platform at Waterloo Station.  Initially at York Street, with easy access to the Thames transport links, it was later moved to Westminster Bridge Road.  The Station had to be moved to make way for the expansion of Waterloo Station, but it also allowed for a revamp of the Necropolis station to suit more modern tastes and to update its facilities such as mortuaries and to add a chapel of rest.

A Ticket to Ride

The Bishop of London need not have feared for his delicate sensibilities, the classes were tastefully kept apart and the distinction of rank preserved with both living and dead divided by religion and by class:  Conformist (Anglican) and Non-conformist (everyone else); and first, second and third class.

A first class one way coffin ticket, priced at a princely £2.10 shillings, allowed the purchaser access to choose their own plot of land with a permanent marker.

A second class ticket cost £1 and allowed some choice of plot, and for an extra 10 shillings, the family could erect a permanent marker.  The slight downside was that the London Necropolis Company could decide to reuse the plot.

A Coffin Ticket – one way (obviously!). Image via John Clarke

A third class ticket cost only a couple of shillings and was often used by paupers and those being buried ‘on the parish’, they had no choice of plot, and no marker, but they did get an individual plot which was more than they could expect elsewhere.  The LNC usually threw in a couple of free tickets for mourners as well (return of course – unlike the coffin).

In the station itself, First and Second Class patrons were also treated with distinction.  They were given a grand entrance hall and staircase, elevators, and avenues lined with bay and palm trees.  They also had the use of 5 private waiting rooms and were permitted to view the coffins being loaded onto the hearse car of the train.

Mourners at the station, image taken from http://www.avictorian.com

The poor had to make do with a shared waiting room and they were not permitted to watch their loved ones being put on the train.  Funeral cars were themselves divided by class, the more elaborate and decorated the more expensive the ticket.

Once at Brookwood Cemetery there were two stops, one for conformists on the sunny side of the cemetery and one on the north side for non conformists.

One of the interesting things is that the service had refreshment rooms that served spirits (but of course!)  The living also seemed to have enjoyed this perk, often taking fortified refreshments while waiting for the return train. There are reports of some quite riotous behaviour on the return journey (I wonder which class was the worst?)  The occasional driver got a bit to merry to operate the train, until the company introduced a free lunch and pint of beer as part of the drivers benefits in an attempt to keep them from the local pubs.

Death of the Necropolis Railway

Clarke indicates that the train service, right from the outset was never quite as popular or profitable as Broun and Sprye hoped.  He notes that between 1854-1874 it fell far short of the estimate of 50,000 funerals per year, only managing about 3200, which Clarke calculates to be about 6.5% of the annual deaths in London.  The London Necropolis Company had competitors in the form of other mortuary trains, and new cemeteries (such as Highgate Cemetery) that were built around the same time to alleviate the burial problem.

Another unforseen problem was that by the early 1900’s 1st class return tickets on the Necropolis Train were significantly cheaper than on the regular train – 6 shillings as opposed to 8.  This was because Necropolis ticket prices had been set by parliament in 1854 an not amended. Clarke and Slade note that this led to many canny London Golfers dressing as mourners to get a cheap day out to their club near Brookwood.

Eventually the timetable was reviewed, Sunday trains were cut, then it reduced from daily to twice weekly.  The decline was initially slow, but the final end of the London Necropolis Railway was dramatic and devastating.  On 16 April 1941 in the worst night of the Blitz it was destroyed.

The end of the line for the London Necropolis Railway, source unknown

Reinforcing class divisions or democratizing death?

The London Necropolis Company was created to alleviate a very real social problem of burial space in a metropolis that barely had room for its living inhabitants.  It used a revolutionary new technology – steam power – in an attempt to create a mass market funeral industry that aimed to monopolise the profits on death by capturing a huge inner city market.

It did not achieve its aims, other cemeteries built in London depleted its market share so it was never as profitable as intended.  It probably did help to reduce health hazards in London, but so did the other new cemeteries.

What it did seem to do though, was offer the poor the opportunity to have a decent burial.  They may not have been given all of the perks and privileges of the first and second class patrons:  no private waiting rooms or coffin viewings and no permanent grave markers for the them; but they did get an affordable funeral and an individual plot rather than a communal pit.  Plus, for the living, two return tickets for mourners were part of the package, as well as the added bonus that funerals could be held on a Sunday (until Sunday service were discontinued in 1900) so poor mourners did not have to lose a days wages if they wanted to attend a funeral.

As an example of Victorian entrepreneurship, innovative use of  modern industrial technology, and with a dash of philanthropy, and a whole heap of snobbery, the London Necropolis Company and its Commuter coffin service stands out as a proud example of eccentric and morbidly practical Victorian ingenuity.

Necropolis Train, Image from John Clarke via Fortean Times

A Note on Notes & Sources

I first came across the London Necropolis Railway in Robert Wilkins wonderful ‘The Fireside Book of Death’, however as my beloved Wilkins tome is tucked away in a packing crate at the moment, I took myself to the internet and came across a plethora of articles on the London Necropolis Company – most of which used as their main source, works by the acknowledged expert on Brookwood Cemetery and the London Necropolis, John Clarke, author of ‘The Brookwood Necropolis Railway’ and ‘London’s Necropolis – a guide to Brookwood Cemetery’.

I also found the Fortean Times article by Paul Slade (who cites Clarke in his article) of great use in putting together this post.

As it seems that a great deal of the articles about this topic appear to rely on John Clarke’s research, I have not cited any sources directly in the post other than Clarke.  However I have provided a list of the websites I visited.

 

Articles on the London Necropolis Railway

http://www.avictorian.com/death_mourning.html
http://cabinetmagazine.org/issues/20/clarke.php
http://channelvoyager.com/forgotten-the-london-necropolis-railway/
http://www.forteantimes.com/features/articles/171/londons_necropolis_train.html
http://www.john-clarke.co.uk/brookwoodnecropolis.html
http://www.tbcs.org.uk/railway.htm

Highgate Cemetery, Part Two: A Walk Amongst the Dead

Tags

Highgate Cemetery, Highgate Vampire, London Cemeteries, Victorian Cemeteries, Victorian Death

The Victorian Way of death

Pathway amidst the graves

It was a crisp March day when I found myself making may way down Swains Lane, the lane that cuts through West and East Cemeteries.  I had always wanted to visit Highgate Cemetery, it features in so many of my favorite old horror films such as Tales from the Crypt and From Beyond the Grave (and always appears in my imagination accompanied by an overblown 1970’s horror soundtrack and maybe the odd scream as well…)

You would be unwise to wonder around Highgate Cemetery alone, many of the graves and monuments are fragile and a wrong step off the path could lead the unwary to spending some time up close and personal with a cadaver in a lead-lined vault that could be up to 30 feet deep. The cemetery is vast and has many secluded spots so rescue, should it even come, could be slow indeed….

Don’t be put off by taking a guided tour, touristy it might be, but it is also informative and the cemetery doesn’t lose any of its magic, especially if the group isn’t too large.  The guides are knowledgeable about the famous and not so famous persons buried here, and can help decode the Victorian language of death which written all over their tombstones if you have eyes to see it.  You only have to look at some of the more morbid Victorian paintings (dead shepherds, pining loyal hounds etc) or remember that they often had one last family photo taken with the dearly departed, to know that their attitude to death was very different from our own.

The Circle of Lebanon

One of the first things that struck me about the cemetery was how different it was to modern cemeteries.  Now gravestones are in formal rows, with standardised inscriptions – compared to Victorian exuberance (all weeping angels, obelisks and broken columns) – our way of death seems clinical and regimented.  In a modern cemetery you would never get such a tragic description as that of Emma Wallace Gray who died in 1854 at the age of nineteen “From the effects of her dress having caught fire”.  Her inscription reads thus:

In bloom of youth, when others fondly cling
To life, I prayed, mid agonies for death
The only pang my bleeding heard endur’d
Was, thus so early doomed to leave behind on
Earth those whom I so dearly lov’d.

The architecture too is something you would never find in a modern cemetery, the

Entrance to the Egyptian Avenue

picturesque chaos of the tombstones and mossy angels hidden amongst the trees all overgrown with grasses and wild flowers.  And the monumental grandiose mausoleums; the eerie circle of Lebanon with its use of the natural landscape – the mausoleum is crowned by a Cedar of Lebanon; the austere Terrace of Catacombs cut into the hillside; and of course the fabulous Egyptian Avenue (and the Egyptians knew a thing or two about death).  Walking through the dramatic gateway into the dank alley’s of the Avenue I truly felt like I was walking into another world – a city of the dead.

Highgate and the Macabre

Elizabeth Siddal –
public domain image via Wikimedia Commons

No Victorian cemetery would be complete without some macabre tales, and the one that stuck me most was that of Elizabeth Siddall.  Elizabeth was the beautiful wife and muse of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, one of the foremost Pre-Raphaelite painters, and herself a talented artist.  Elizabeth died tragically young, only 32, possibly as a result of addiction and depression.  She was buried in 1862 by a grief-stricken Dante Gabriel who tenderly placed a sheaf of manuscript poems by her cheek – how romantic.   But Elizabeth was not to rest in peace for long.  In 1869 Dante Gabriel must have been feeling considerably less grief-stricken and romantic because he ordered her exhumation in order that he could retrieve his manuscript….Hmm.

The Highgate Vampire

The Ham and High Gazette from March 1970

One thing that the tour did not mention was the legend of the Highgate Vampire.  This legend seems to have begun sometime in the late 1960’s, the cemetery was neglected and overgrown and attracted not only vandals but those interested in the occult.  There appears to have been some reports of strange goings on the cemetery and in Swains Lane: reports of dead foxes and of a tall dark figure with burning red eyes (Christopher Lee – I wonder?) scaring dog walkers and generally lurking in a sinister way.

In 1970 an occultist called David Farrant contacted the local newspaper the Ham and High Express and the legend was born…further sightings were recorded (although accounts often varied) and it was proclaimed by Farrant that the figure had Vampiric characteristics and that he and the British Occult Society that he was part of would exorcise it.  Another flamboyant figure, Sean Manchester, appeared at about this time.  The ‘Bishop of Glastonbury’*[please refer to comments section for more information] soon became a rival vampire hunter and a bitter enemy of Farrant (so much so that the best ‘hammer horror’ tradition he is alleged to have challenged his nemesis to a magical duel).

Whatever the truth of the legend, the impact was devastating. On the night of the ‘vampire hunt’ hundreds of ‘vampire hunters’ (many valiantly armed with cans of beer), stormed the police cordon around the cemetery and began basically trashing the place. Needless to say no vampire was found.

During the whole Highgate Vampire frenzy not only were monuments damaged but vaults were broken into, corpses attacked and even beheaded.  One gruesome story is that a local resident found a headless corpse sitting behind the steering wheel of his car.  This might sound funny, but really, it’s not, these desecrated corpses were not vampires or demons, just  ordinary people who had hoped to rest in peace.  Perhaps the real vampires of Highgate were Farrant and Manchester who fed off the media hype they  created.

A modern tragedy

Burials are still carried out in the Cemetery, and one of the modern interments the tour visited was that of Alexander Litvinenko the Russian exile and spy buried in 2006.  Litvinenko was poisoned using Polonium after taking tea with two of his Russian contacts, he died from the effects of the posion. I still remember the news footage showing him fighting for his life in his hospital bed.  He is buried here because the Victorian vaults are lead lined and therefore radiation proof.

His  story reminded me that everyone buried in Highgate, however long ago, was once a living breathing individual with their own personal story.  And that one day, despite our iphones and our apps we will all be dust just like them.

Epilogue

My final thoughts on Highgate Cemetery are best summed up by one if its famous incumbents, Christina Rossetti the poet.

Song

When I am dead, my dearest,
Sing no sad songs for me;
Plant thou no roses at my head,
Nor shady cypress tree:
Be the green grass above me
With showers and dewdrops wet:
And if thou wilt, remember,
And if thou wilt, forget.

I shall not see the shadows,
I shall not feel the rain;
I shall not hear the nightingale
Sing on as if in pain:
And dreaming through the twilight
That doth not rise nor set,
Haply I may remember,
And haply may forget.

Sources

http://lizziesiddal.com/portal/

http://www.highgate-cemetery.org/index.php/home

http://www.mysteriousbritain.co.uk/england/greater-london/hauntings/the-highgate-vampire-how-it-all-began-by-david-farrant.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highgate_Vampire

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-19647226

http://brinkofnada.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/highgate-vampire.html

Highgate Cemetery, Part One: City of the Dead

Tags

Highgate Cemetery, London, Victorian Cemeteries, Victorian Death

History

Jacobs Island London Slum c1840

There was something rotten in the heart of London in the first half of the nineteenth century.  As the population in the capital grew at an alarming rate from just 700,000 in 1750 to 1.6 Million by 1831 so too grew the numbers of the dead that the city had to accommodate.  By the 1830’s London’s graveyards were as packed as its slums with corpses disposed of in shallow graves in burial grounds that were crammed in between taverns and shops; bodies were often quick-limed so plots could be reused; the stench of the charnel house must have hung over many districts of the metropolis.

Entrance to Highgate Cemetery

So great was the risk to public health that parliament was forced to act.  Between 1833 and 1841 legislation was passed creating the ‘London Cemetery Company’ (1836) to oversee a ring of park-like cemeteries encircling London – ‘The Magnificent Seven’ – thereby freeing up more space for the living and improving sanitation in the city.

17 Hectares of the Ashurst Estate set on a wooded hillside above Highgate Village formed the basis for Highgate Cemetery and the cemetery was opened for business on 20th May 1839, with its first burial (of Elizabeth Jackson) following only a few days later.

That Highgate Cemetery became such a fashionable place to spend eternity was largely thanks to the work of entrepreneur and architect Stephen Geary and James Johnstone Bunning who created Highgate’s distinctive Victorian Gothic architecture that appealed to the Victorians penchant for death.  The landscaping was completed by David Ramsay and gives the cemetery a naturalistic park-like feel.   It was a fashionable day out in its heyday.

Many famous people chose to invest in Highgate and also to be buried there: Julius  Beer the newspaper magnate built the magnificent mausoleum for his 8-year-old daughter Ada; other dead luminaries include Christina Rossetti the Victorian poet;  Elizabeth Siddal wife and muse of Dante Gabriel Rossetti the Pre-Raphaelite artist; Charles Cruft of dog-show fame; Michael Faraday, scientist.

Terrace Catacombs

Many families chose to purchase vaults or a place in the Terrace catacombs (made up of 55 family vaults, the catacombs could hold 825 people). In the 1830’s the going rate for a fair-sized plot was £3.  It costs a little more these days…

The Cemetery holds 170,000 people interred in 53,000 graves.  So popular (and profitable) was the cemetery that it had to be expanded and in 1856 the East Cemetery was opened.  The Karl Marx memorial is possibly the most notable monument in the East Cemetery – certainly the most controversial if the bomb attacks in the 1960’s are anything to go by.

Things didn’t go so well for Highgate Cemetery in the twentieth century – two wars and differing attitudes to death and burial saw the once meticulously maintained cemetery fall into disrepair and fall prey to vandalism and desecration.  In 1975 The Friends of Highgate Cemetery was founded  and to this day they have maintained and carried out extensive restoration of the monuments and graves.  They also conduct excellent tours in the West Cemetery – and this will form the basis of my next post.

Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_London#Population

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highgate_cemetery

http://www.highgate-cemetery.org/index.php/history