By Queen Victoria’s reign, London was running out of space to bury its dead, especially since engineers were digging up so much of the city to bury water & sewer lines… and some were even talking about burying entire trains! WHAT A WORLD!
A group of investors bought a huge plot of land in Brookwood, Surrey, 23 miles outside the city, and started the London Necropolis Company. That land became the world’s largest cemetery at that time. But they needed a way to move bodies and mourners to the cemetery… so they also built the London Necropolis Railway.
In typical British fashion, it was class-based. Third-class burials saw mourners jammed into basic railcars, and their loved one tossed into a pauper’s grave. First-class burials involved fancy railcars and mausoleums. As you might guess, second-class was middle class, with nice (but not lavish) railcars and the typical service and headstone folks have today.
The London Necropolis Company was in business from 1854 until 1941, when the railway was destroyed by German air raids. The company wasn’t as popular as investors had hoped: only 200,000 burials had taken place in the 87 years it was open, far short of the 50,000/year its owners had aimed for.
FUN FACT: there are many golf courses in Surrey, and the fare to Surrey on the Necropolis Railway was far cheaper than a regular train. So golfers would often wear black and crash a funeral party, just to save a few shillings getting to the club!