Latest / Ridiculous History / CLASSIC: London Made a Train for the Dead

Transcript

CLASSIC: London Made a Train for the Dead · Ridiculous History

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Oh man.
• 0:02
  Speaker 2: We talked about trains a bit in previous episodes. Ridiculous Historians, Max,
• 0:08
  Speaker 2: Noel and I they call me Ben. We have a
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: we have a classic, a blast from the past for.
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: You, Noel.
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: Once upon a time, rumor has it London made a
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: train for the dead.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know you hear that, And there's a
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: lot of places that your mind could go, like, is
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: this like a spooky ghost train that only appears after
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: midnight as some sort of transparent apparition?
• 0:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah?
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: Did the monarchy discover life after death and decide to
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: train the newly dead for some sort of career opportunities
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: in the afterlife?
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: I love it? Well, yes, and no kind of. It's
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: up for interpretation there. Happy birthday, by the way, Max,
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: but there is.
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: Happy Birthday, Max, Happy New Year.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, birthday's coming up. I know it's coming up. It's
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: hard especially, Yeah, it's all I guess our birthdays are
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: always in some former fashion.
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: Coming shout out technically the truth.
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: Indeed, So what we're talking about today is the story
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: of the London Necropolis Railway. Uh, it was in fact
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: a train for the dead. Let's just leave it at
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: that and jump right.
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: In Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Choo Choo Choo,
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: Friends and neighbors all aboard. We want the train to
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: run on time. My name is Ben.
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: We are going off the rails on a train of
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: the dead on. My name is Nolan. This is ridiculous history.
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: That's right, that's right, alight. No, we are looking into
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: something relatively morbid today. I would say even more so
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: morbid than ridiculous. We're looking at a very particular railway
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: in London.
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: That's right. From eighteen fifty four to nineteen forty one,
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: the London Necropolis Railway was operational. It took mourners and
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: they're dearly departed on a forty minute, twenty three mile
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: ride to a very specific cemetery outside of London Town.
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: Yes, the Brookwood Cemetery in Surrey, which at the time
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: was the largest cemetery in the world, or the largest acknowledged,
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: and it came about through the efforts of something known
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: as the London Necropolis Company. They were established in eighteen
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: fifty two by an Act of Parliament. Because it turns
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: out this wasn't just some grizzly macob lark. There wasn't
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: you know, some creepy like Adams family type Gomez figure
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: who wanted to cart dead people around London was in
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: the grips of a crisis, a burial crisis.
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right. It was actually a twofold problem because
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: around about the mid nineteenth century, the cemeteries in London
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: proper were just absurdly overcrowded because of a booming population
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: that more than doubled from the early eighteen hundreds to
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: the mid eighteen hundreds, not to mention that there was
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: a pretty serious cholera outbreak, so London nurse were burying
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: in the neighborhood of fifty thousand dead every year.
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: Before the cholera epidemic. The cemeteries were so overcrowded that
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: it was impossible to find a new grave without running
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: into an older grave. So when the cholera epidemic hit
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: in eighteen forty eight and killed almost fifteen thousand people
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: from cholera alone, the bodies were left stacked like cordwood
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: waiting to be buried, and people were exhuming even recent
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: graves to make room for new corpses.
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a fantastic article from the BBC by Amanda
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: Riggery and She says that one way of dealing with
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: this is pretty grizzly, was actually digging up bodies and
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: cremating them under cover of night. And the only way
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: that you could escape this potential fate of your loved
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: ones was if you had all the money. Just all
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: the money. Oh gosh.
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we are going to encounter some very strange issues
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: of class and social hierarchy here. So as the city
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: falls into this christ they're trying to figure out how
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: to address it. And there were a couple of different
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: ideas that were tossed around with varying degrees of plausibility,
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: but the one that won out was the idea of
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: transporting the newly deceased, you know, the recently passed on
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: from London proper to an area outside of it. That
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: would be Brookwood Cemetery or the London Necropolis. As Noel mentioned,
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: this isn't too far out of town thirty seven kilometers
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: or so.
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: Yes, that's exactly right, twenty three miles or thirty seven
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: kilometers outside of London. And this was all done in tandem.
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: The railway was built at the same time as the
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: Brookwood Cemetery to deal with this overcrowding, because you know,
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: the folks that came up with this idea thought this
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: would be a pretty elegant solution because it was not
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: very efficient to take a horse drawn hearse with a
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: single boy thirty kilometers out of town. That would just
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: be a prohibitively long trip and just you know, how
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: would you even accommodate all the people that wanted to
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: go along for the procession. And the train was sort
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: of a combination of that where you could have many
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: people going at predetermined times each day. This train made
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: this journey and it was kind of an all encompassing,
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: for lack of a better term, kind of a package deal, right.
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: It was the total package because not only did the
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: mourners get transportation, there were even snacks provided. You could
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: have these homemade sandwiches and things called fairy cakes, which
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: are sort of the English equivalent of cupcakes.
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, specifically ham sandwiches, and then take the same train
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: back returning to London mid afternoon at three point thirty pm.
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: This was an efficacious solution, but as you might imagine, folks,
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: it was a very controversial one for a number of reasons.
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: The Bishop of London testified on the proposal before a
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: House of Common Slight committee in eighteen forty two, and
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: he said, I consider it improper at present, we are
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: not sufficiently habituated to that mode of traveling, not to
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: consider the hurry and bustle connected with it as inconsistent
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: with the solemnity of a Christian funeral. So he thought,
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: you know, it was disrespectful to the dead and not blasphemous,
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: but not proper in terms of the Christian religion.
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: Do you think he was it was because of the noise,
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: you know, the noisy engines, and just the nature of
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: traveling by train, the fact that it was kind of
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: considered newer technology. Maybe I wonder what his beef was.
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: It's hard to tell specifically from that quote, don't you think.
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think you're on the right track though,
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: on the right rail, ay, Because he did seem to
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: feel that the technologlogy was impinging upon the traditions, the
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: rituals of burial. And when we were looking into this earlier,
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: I was wondering if it would be comparable to something
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: like having someone skype in at a funeral today, like
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: that would be controversial to some people, right, that's.
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: A really good parallel. Ben, I kind of that's a
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: really good way to look at it, and I think
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: we've kind of hit on what this bishop's problem really was.
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: But you know, the company that put all this together
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: really did try to make it a solemn and comforting experience.
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: The folks on the train were treated to some quite
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: resplendent views, including Westminster, Hampton Court and Richmond Park. And
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: you know, typically people that plan train routes looking for
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: the most efficient path, not necessarily the most scenic, but
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: this was a completely different animal, wasn't it. Yes. Absolutely.
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: There's a book on this called the Brookwood Necropolis Railway
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: by an author named John m clark, and in there
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: he details some of the amenities that were available to
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: the living and one of the other controversies that may
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: be surprising for us today, which is that in addition
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: to concerns about religious traditions, there were class concerns. After
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: you had a relative or a loved one pass on,
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: you could buy them a ticket for their coffin to
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: go to Brookwood Cemetery. But you could buy one of
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: three types of tickets, and we had the prices attached
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: for this travel, right, like the fancy one first class
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: that would be a pound, Is that correct?
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was a pound, and it was divided up.
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: You had to pay for the living and the dead
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: as well.
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: That makes sense, So live passengers were charged six shillings
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: I believe for first class, so it was less expensive
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: to transport the living, probably because of space. To be
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: honest with you, we know it was five shillings for
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: the dead and second class, a little over two shillings
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: in third class. And we did some of the math here,
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: so in eighteen fifty four one British pound from eighteen
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: fifty four today would be about eighty six pounds, so
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: this was not an insignificant expense. This was still a
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: pretty pricey endeavor.
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, funerals to this day totally still are. I found
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: a review of a BBC four extra radio documentary about
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: the Necropolis that has some interesting references to the signage
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: one might have seen laying out these different classes and prices,
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: and it's referred to here as corpses artisan five shillings,
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: corpses pauper two shillings and sixpence. Oh wow, that's some
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: pretty strong language, right.
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: Pauper that's what they call third class copper and artisan
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: I guess that would be like the mercantile class premium.
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: I don't know artisan. I always think of artisan as
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: like artisanal Jesus.
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: Right, right, especially, you know, if you're in a fancy
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: boutique of some sort. We don't usually associate the phrase
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: artisan or artisanal with corpses.
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: I guess you could have an artisan artisanal coffin though, right,
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: like a handmade bespoke coffin.
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, totally, you absolutely could. We're just not used to
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: thinking of actual human remains that way. And I'm glad
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: that it's weird in this day and age, because isn't
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: death supposed to be the great equalizer. This leads us
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: to one of the concerns that baffled us, the social
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: class idea. One of the worries that people had was
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: that different social classes might mix. For that reason, there
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: were separate carriages for each class. And this was the
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: at the time, and so even though you know, a
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: titan of banking and a very poor family could ride
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: the same train and arrive at the same station, they
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: would be segregated. And the cemetery itself, however, was not
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: divided by class or status. It was divided by religion.
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah. You know, once you're in the ground, we're all equal, right.
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: Not if you're Anglican. They had their own spot.
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: That's true. But at the same time, you could have
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: that titan of industry buried next to a pauper that
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: was in his same religion, unless you are such a
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: titan of industry that you could afford a private plot
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: somewhere like Highgate Cemetery, which was very exclusive and very expensive.
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: And today in twenty eighteen is nol and our super
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: producer Casey Pegrim and I record this. People in the
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: West tend to keep death as far away from us
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: as possible, right, But at the time, especially when the
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: city is literally getting crowded with corpses, people were much
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: more intimately familiar with the concept of mortality. And during
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: its peak, London's Necropolis Railway transported more than two thousand
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: corpses per year. That's you know, if we count the
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: live mourners, then the number of bodies reaches the tens
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: of thousands. This was a very successful thing. Also, there
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: were bars, did you find that too.
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, well, I mean, like you know, the concessions
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: were licensed to serve alcohol and pints, so you know,
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: if you opted to do that instead of a nice
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: lemonade and a cupcake or a fairy cake as it were,
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: you could, you know, get smashed.
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: Which you know happens sometimes at wakes and other funereal rights.
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: For sure. It's interesting that John Clark, who wrote the
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: book you mentioned the Brookwood Necropolis Railway's overall he's he's
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: just a railroad historian. He seemed to think that this
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: was pretty forward thinking. He referred to it as pioneering,
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: revolutionary and quoted as saying, as far as I know,
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: it was the first use of the railway for a
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: dedicated service from one private station directly into a cemetery
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: at the other end. And a man by the name
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: of George Nash we're in an essay called Pomp and Circumstance, Archaeology,
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: Modernity and the Corporatization of Death. He notes that discretion
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: was very important because the biggest railway station in London
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: at the time was Waterloo Station, and the York Street
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: station was built just far enough from that station. York
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: Street was where you'd get on to catch the Necropolis train,
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: was just far enough away to be separated from normal
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: commuters in their day to day route, so it was
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: all about kind of segmenting that while also making it
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: accessible and speaking of being pioneering in terms of the technology,
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: these trains had to be specially outfitted to store these coffins.
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: They had leather straps and in fact Parliament mandated that
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: the fares be capped, so it was even though it
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: was a little pricey, the you know, poor people and
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: rich people alike, couldn't be gouged, right. Yeah.
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: These were known as Hearse vans, and the Necropolis Company
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: had the locomotives and passenger carriages on loan, but it
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: owned the Hearse vans outright. In the beginning, each van
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: had twelve partitions in two rows of six. Each of
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: those spots could handle one coffin. In the later vans
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: had around fourteen coffins. I guess per van. They were
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: fitted with these partitions to divide first, second and third
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: class coffins because God forbid that the poor and the
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: wealthy right the same train, even as remains, and they
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: continued to evolve these Hearse vans. It was an example
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: of I don't want to say bleeding edge technology, but
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: it was an example of ingenuity because it became a
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: matter of numbers. They are literally, you know, moving bodies
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: and calculating how much they make per unit.
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: And the location was a big part of it too.
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: In that BBC article called the Passenger Train Created to
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: Carry the Dead, author Amanda Riggeri mentions that Waterloo had
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: these railway arches that were able to temporarily store these corpses.
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: So there was I'm going to go through the way
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: she describes it in the article. She says, quote, most
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: families have their loved ones picked up by a horse
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: drawn hearst. The funeral procession would end at the station.
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: There the coffins would be lifted into elevators that would
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: carry them up to the platform level and onto the train,
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: and those railway arches offered temporary storage if needed.
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: And here we see another controversial point. So we had
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: social class right, and we had the solemnity of religion.
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: Both were seen as very valid points at the time.
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: The third issue was that, according to Clark, most people
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: aspired to be buried near where they lived and worked,
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: So the idea of varying someone miles away from central
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: London was a large and significant choice to make.
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was a tough pill to swallow. But again
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: we know that there just wasn't space, so I'm not
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: sure how best to handle that. This seemed like a
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: pretty elegant solution. One final taboo that we haven't even mentioned,
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: this kind of staring us right in the face, is
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: this idea of the living occupying the same vehicles as
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: the dead. I mean, there was concern of things like
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: odors from the dead and potential transmission of diseases even
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: and so that was something to be considered as well.
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: And like you said, Ben, it was seemingly successful with
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: the amount of dead and mourners that were transported on
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: this rail, but it didn't quite take off in the
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: way that the creators hoped it would.
• 18:21
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: Clark says this in his book. The original aims of
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: the company to effectively offer economic and sanitary burial well
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: beyond the city limits forever if necessary. That could have
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: been achieved, but the public, having the choice of burial place,
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: decided otherwise, And it all came down to that issue
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: of not wanting to be buried so far away from
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: their home base thirty miles outside of town. That was
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: a stretch for a lot of people.
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: And two other events influenced the fall of the Necropolis train.
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: One which we cannot emphasize enough was the introduction of
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: the motorized Terse in nineteen oh en. This started out slowly,
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: but by the nineteen twenties it became more popular than
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: the horse drawn hearse, which again, as you point out,
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: was pretty expensive, and the train itself, which had its
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: own sort of issues of propriety versus efficiency.
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: It's true, and there was also that issue of timing
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: because as we know, the trains run on a very
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: specific schedule and a lot of folks couldn't take off
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: work to meet these So unless the funeral or even
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: you know, wanting to go visit a loved one took
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: place on a Sunday, they had to take off work.
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: And as this started to wane in popularity, which did happen,
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: the frequency of these runs started to dwindle. But the
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: true death now for this particular railway, came in nineteen
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: forty one. During World War.
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: Two, the London terminus of the Necropolis train was damaged
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: by a German V two rocket. And when the this
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: damage occurred during the London Blitz, there had already been
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: a couple of near misses and the train had already
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: been kind of winding down the frequency of trips, and
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: in addition to that, the trips that did have scheduled
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: were occasionally canceled because there was enemy action somewhere else
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: on the rail line. So in April of nineteen forty one,
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: and one of the last major air raids on London,
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: bombs repeatedly fell on the Waterloo area and the cars
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: or what's called rolling stock in the train world. The
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: cars were burned. The railway arch that Noel mentioned connecting
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: the main line was damaged. The building itself was okay,
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: but again the cars were on fire.
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it caused more than two thousand fire as it
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: turns out, and in the neighborhood of one thousand Peace
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: people lost their lives and that blitz, and you know,
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: faced with the choice of rebuilding or just walking away,
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: the company decided to do the ladder and just ditch it.
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: And so there ends the strange story of London's Train
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: of the Dead. But if you want to check it out,
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: I believe that you can still see remnants of the
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: station today.
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: It's true, it's going to be a weird date. But
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: if you want to take somebody, just let them know
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: what you're getting into.
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: And the facade of the building is almost the same,
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: exactly the same as it was, minus the signage identifying
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: it as the London Necropolis Railway.
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: And I have to ask, no, it's it's always a
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: tricky thing for us to put ourselves in the position
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: of someone in the past. But I want to know
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: your take. If you were conducting a funeral for a
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: loved one in this day and age, would you take
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: the train? Does it do any of their concerns seems
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: stranger off putting to you in the modern day.
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's cliche to say, but it was a
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: different time then. My modern mind just can't wrap itself
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: around this notion, you know. Plus the funerals give me
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: the creeps. Anyway, I'm not a fan us who is
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: meant Harold from Harold?
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: I knew you were gonna say that. Yeah, I'm I'm
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: kind of the of the same mind. It's just if
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: we existed back then. I keep having some voice in
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: my head of some you know, hypothetical relatives saying I
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: can't believe you're putting our darling Asmirelda in the ground
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: with Anglicans or something like that, you know, I say
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: that overall, this was a smart solution and was a
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: crucial one for the time in which it existed. And
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: this is only scratching the surface of strange funeral and
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: burial customs around the world.
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah. For a deeper dive, check out John Clark's book
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: on the Brookwood Necropolis or the essay from George Nash
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: Pomp and Circumstance, Archaeology, Modernity, and the Corporatization of Death,
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: both of which you can find with a crisery Google search.
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: And on that note, we would like to hear from you.
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: What are some of the Do you hear that?
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but I was gonna ignore it.
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: You were really trying to power through that ending, weren't, she.
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: Thought if we sewed it up quickly, gentlemen, Jonathan Strickland,
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: the quizt it is.
• 23:30
  Speaker 3: I the Quizzer returned at last to plague you with
• 23:35
  Speaker 3: questions about fact and fiction?
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: Do you have an English exit today?
• 23:39
  Speaker 3: Some? Sometimes?
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: Okay, it comes and goes.
• 23:42
  Speaker 3: I've been in this room a really long time, guys.
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, how long have you been here?
• 23:47
  Speaker 3: Pretty sure it's been weeks, So you know, I hide here,
• 23:53
  Speaker 3: ready to spring at a moment's notice. But you guys
• 23:56
  Speaker 3: recorded in the other studio like across the way the
• 23:59
  Speaker 3: last couple of times, and I mean the light was on.
• 24:01
  Speaker 3: I'm not going to come in with the lights on, right,
• 24:03
  Speaker 3: So I just had to keep waiting until you came
• 24:06
  Speaker 3: back in here.
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: So, but that is.
• 24:10
  Speaker 3: Beside the point. Now you will quake in fear as
• 24:13
  Speaker 3: you face a quizter, the most cringe worthy segment at
• 24:17
  Speaker 3: all of podcasting. Now you were talking about James K.
• 24:23
  Speaker 3: Polk and so mine.
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: No, no, no, we did that one already, like weeks ago.
• 24:27
  Speaker 3: What in the other studio?
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: Right?
• 24:30
  Speaker 3: I knew it. I knew it, guys. I hit here
• 24:33
  Speaker 3: to give you the perfect Why did you talk about today?
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: There's other dead stuff me in my work. We talked
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: about the Train of the Dead in the UK.
• 24:42
  Speaker 3: Still thematically irrelevant. So I will pose to you a query,
• 24:47
  Speaker 3: and as you know, I always come up with rules
• 24:50
  Speaker 3: of arbitrary nature for every single query I posed to you. Yes, yes,
• 24:55
  Speaker 3: And so you must before asking me any questions about
• 24:59
  Speaker 3: the scenario, which I shall lay so graciously before your feet,
• 25:04
  Speaker 3: the phrase.
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: Ooo spooky oOoOO spooks.
• 25:11
  Speaker 3: In on it. My eyes are on you. Then trust me.
• 25:15
  Speaker 3: If you don't give me a sincere ooh spooky. You
• 25:18
  Speaker 3: will not like what you get, so don't phone it in.
• 25:20
  Speaker 3: Do not, by any means phone it in. I mean
• 25:24
  Speaker 3: put your back into it.
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: I want to.
• 25:27
  Speaker 3: I want to see spooky waves of spookiness from you.
• 25:33
  Speaker 3: Before you ask me a question, right, I will not
• 25:36
  Speaker 3: give you an answer.
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: Well, quister, you have set the rules, as I believe,
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: we have three minutes.
• 25:43
  Speaker 3: That is correct, three minutes to ask me any questions
• 25:45
  Speaker 3: before you tell me whether or not the scenario I
• 25:48
  Speaker 3: give you is true or fiction. Now I will tell
• 25:52
  Speaker 3: you when to start the timer. This one's a bit
• 25:54
  Speaker 3: of a long one. So when I tell you, then
• 25:57
  Speaker 3: you hit go.
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: That's very you know, for a villain that is tremendously courteous.
• 26:01
  Speaker 3: I just I find that it won't be as wonderful
• 26:06
  Speaker 3: a victory. I won't be able to savor it if
• 26:09
  Speaker 3: I cheat you of some of your precious ouspookita.
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: So here we are.
• 26:15
  Speaker 3: Shakespeare. You familiar with him, Yeah, wrote a few plays.
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: Well.
• 26:20
  Speaker 3: He was buried. First of all, spoiler alert, he's dead.
• 26:24
  Speaker 3: He was buried in the cemetery adjacent to the Church
• 26:27
  Speaker 3: of the Holy Trinity in Stratford upon Avon, but in
• 26:30
  Speaker 3: seventeen twenty six his bones were moved from that site
• 26:35
  Speaker 3: to Poet's Corner in Westminster Abbey. Shortly thereafter. The abbey
• 26:39
  Speaker 3: reportedly was the site of several misfortunes, and the cause
• 26:43
  Speaker 3: was attributed to a curse Shakespeare had laid upon his
• 26:47
  Speaker 3: own grave, and the bones were thus dug back up
• 26:51
  Speaker 3: and replaced in his original grave at Stratford upon Avon.
• 26:54
  Speaker 3: A statue of Shakespeare was erected in seventeen forty one
• 26:58
  Speaker 3: in Westminster Abbey. That just had to do start.
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: Uh, Okay, I'm gonna say, uh sh I don't know, man,
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: I remember reading some stuff about Shakespeare posthumously.
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: Well, I remember, I definitely remember the epitaph. It was.
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: It was kind of like a creepy little poem, a
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: bit of a spoo keep o oohoo. Christer, what was
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: the epitaph that that Shakespeare had inscribed on his tomb?
• 27:28
  Speaker 3: Excellent question, noel, very well, good, good, spooky too. Here
• 27:32
  Speaker 3: you go, good friend, for Jesus sake, for bear to
• 27:35
  Speaker 3: dig the dust enclose it here. Blessed be the man
• 27:39
  Speaker 3: that spares these stones, and cursed be he that moves
• 27:43
  Speaker 3: my bones.
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: That sounds like Shakespeare.
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: Oh for sure, that definitely rings you. I remember that
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: from school. Okay, but I've got I've got one. I've
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: got what you got?
• 27:52
  Speaker 3: Oohoo, passable, Ben, go ahead, I thank presenting you so much.
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: Okay, all right, fine, quister. Is is it possible that
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: some of this is true and some is not?
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: Sure?
• 28:07
  Speaker 3: It's also possible that I have a golden Cadillac at home.
• 28:11
  Speaker 3: I don't see what the point of that is. Do
• 28:13
  Speaker 3: you mean, do I make something out of whole cloth?
• 28:16
  Speaker 3: Or could there be elements of truth woven into a lie?
• 28:19
  Speaker 3: The Oh yeah, I could. That sounds like me. It
• 28:23
  Speaker 3: could happen.
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: Okay, I'm thinking yes, because I definitely remember that epitaph.
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: That sounds completely accurate. It seems like something that would
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: have happened. The whole Westminster Abbey thing. What do you
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: think that I'm going with?
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: True? Westminster Abbey is historically a place for the interment
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: of very significant people. That's the real thing. Yeah, sure,
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: I'm gonna go with true. All right, let's go with it,
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: shall we lock it in? Let's like it in true? True,
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: I wind know.
• 29:00
  Speaker 3: Your streak of victories has come to an end. Your
• 29:03
  Speaker 3: streak too, is a streak here in Atlanta. As it
• 29:06
  Speaker 3: turns out, the people who aren't familiar with Atlanta sports,
• 29:09
  Speaker 3: two's a streak. I have claimed victory from the jaws
• 29:13
  Speaker 3: of defeat. You were bambuzled. So here's the real story.
• 29:20
  Speaker 3: His body was buried at Strafford upon Avon. That is,
• 29:23
  Speaker 3: in fact his epitaph on his gravestone. He was never moved,
• 29:26
  Speaker 3: although in the eighteenth century there was a fellow named
• 29:29
  Speaker 3: John Rich who was a theater manager in London, very
• 29:33
  Speaker 3: very influential man, who actually suggested that they move Shakespeare's
• 29:37
  Speaker 3: bones to Westminster Abbey, and the abbey said, nah.
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: We're cool.
• 29:41
  Speaker 3: So Shakespeare's statue is there, but Shakespeare's bones are still
• 29:45
  Speaker 3: at Strafford upon Avon. You can find other dead poets
• 29:49
  Speaker 3: over at Westminster Abbey, including Chaucer, Spencer, many others all
• 29:55
  Speaker 3: over in that corner. I remember jumping up and down
• 29:57
  Speaker 3: on Thomas Hardy's grave myself.
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: To a corner like where you hide in the podcast studio.
• 30:02
  Speaker 3: I mean no, no, because that's a corner. The poet's
• 30:06
  Speaker 3: corner is a corner on the ground, and I always
• 30:07
  Speaker 3: stay in the one in the upper right part of
• 30:09
  Speaker 3: the ceiling that was you. Yeah, I'm gonna need to
• 30:14
  Speaker 3: replace some time.
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: Well, also, you know you can't blame a guy, because
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: God knows it's gotta be tough to keep your grip
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: up there.
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: But fair is fair.
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: And because you finally won this round, Jonathan and your
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: incarnation as the quizzer Noel Casey, and I must award
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: you this badge that says winner.
• 30:37
  Speaker 3: I have literally never been this happy, Jonathan.
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: Are you crying? Shut up?
• 30:41
  Speaker 3: You're crying.
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: So what this means, I think is that you might
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: have won the battle Old Nemesis, but you have not
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: won the war.
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: No.
• 30:51
  Speaker 3: I will return and I will quiz you yet again
• 30:54
  Speaker 3: and again and again for all eternity.
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: But until that time comes, I think we're gonna have
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: to go drown our sorrows elsewhere. That's gonna be it
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: for today's episode. Ridiculous hisstory. I am admittedly quite bummed.
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: I thought we had it. Yeah, it felt it felt right,
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: But now it feels so wrong.
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: I have never been so upset about getting a badge
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: that says winner back, not even in like fourth grade
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: when that stuff really mattered.
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: Hey, folks, if you want to write us some consolations
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: and help us to feel better about ourselves. Please do so,
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: Please do so. We need it, We need it. Send
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: it to ridiculous at HowStuffWorks dot com. You can also
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: console us on social media, which we are a ridiculous
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: history on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: We would of course like to thank Lori l Dove.
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: Her fantastic article London had a Train for the Dead
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: provided some inspiration for this episode. Our super producer, Casey Pegrin.
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: Along with Alex Williams who composed our theme, and begrudging
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: thanks to Jonathan Whister Strickland for tormenting us you yet again.
• 32:04
  Speaker 3: You guys are going to be in the studio again
• 32:05
  Speaker 3: next time, right because I mean, like, I've got snacks
• 32:08
  Speaker 3: up there.
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: You know what I don't know right now? I don't
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: just I think that Nolan and I need.
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: A break, We need some time to heal.
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, thanks so much for listening, folks, and.
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: Let us know if you would have been fooled by
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: that Shakespeare thing. We'll see you next time. For more
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows.