WEBVTT
Kind: captions
Language: en

1
00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.960
In the middle of the 19th century London had a problem:

2
00:00:02.960 --> 00:00:05.180
It had too many dead people,

3
00:00:05.640 --> 00:00:07.520
and not nearly enough burial plots.

4
00:00:07.820 --> 00:00:11.760
Recently diseased bodies were having to be exhumed and then scattered

5
00:00:12.080 --> 00:00:15.120
in order to make room for more people to be put in the ground.

6
00:00:15.500 --> 00:00:17.220
Now that was obviously an enormous health risk,

7
00:00:17.220 --> 00:00:19.380
that contributed to cholera epidemics,

8
00:00:19.380 --> 00:00:22.540
which in turn contributed to more dead poeple.

9
00:00:22.940 --> 00:00:27.220
And so two industrialists came up with an audacious plan:

10
00:00:27.560 --> 00:00:31.860
They would build Europe's largest cemetery 20 miles outside of London in Brookwood.

11
00:00:32.140 --> 00:00:34.760
And they would run trains from there to here--

12
00:00:34.760 --> 00:00:37.520
to this terminus here in Waterloo--

13
00:00:37.520 --> 00:00:40.440
and it would be the London Necropolis railway.

14
00:00:40.740 --> 00:00:42.760
There would be first class funerals,

15
00:00:42.760 --> 00:00:43.760
and second class funerals,

16
00:00:43.760 --> 00:00:45.120
and third class funerals,

17
00:00:45.120 --> 00:00:47.680
which at least guaranteed you a gravesite,

18
00:00:47.680 --> 00:00:51.840
which was a cut above the mass graves that London was using at the time

19
00:00:51.840 --> 00:00:54.020
for the dead that couldn't afford anything better.

20
00:00:54.760 --> 00:00:57.600
And here is the astonishing thing, the thing you might not know:

21
00:00:57.600 --> 00:00:58.660
It worked!

22
00:00:58.760 --> 00:01:03.440
The London Necropolis railway was a real thing for nearly a century.

23
00:01:03.860 --> 00:01:06.700
The first train ran in 1854,

24
00:01:06.700 --> 00:01:11.040
and while the motor car starting to become popular did diminish the service

25
00:01:11.040 --> 00:01:12.180
in the 20th century.

26
00:01:12.180 --> 00:01:15.020
It ran until World War II.

27
00:01:15.700 --> 00:01:18.320
The only thing that stopped it was the bombing out

28
00:01:18.320 --> 00:01:21.940
of the railway tracks, and this whole area during the Blitz.

29
00:01:21.940 --> 00:01:24.840
If those tracks hadn't been bombed out, theoretically,

30
00:01:24.840 --> 00:01:30.700
we could still be seeing 21st century hearse trains going out to Brookwood.

31
00:01:31.160 --> 00:01:33.700
And that is something you might not have known.

32
00:01:35.200 --> 00:01:36.840
[Closed captions by MM. Translating these subtitles? Add your name here!]