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In 1928 he conducted the funeral service of Sayaid Ali, an elephant keeper at London Zoo who had been murdered in his bed by a rival elephant keeper. The servic
by robin_reala 2y ago
In 1928 he conducted the funeral service of Sayaid Ali, an elephant keeper at London Zoo who had been murdered in his bed by a rival elephant keeper. The service was held at Waterloo station, after which the coffin was taken on the Necropolis Railway to the Muslim section of Brookwood Cemetery.
History is often stranger than fiction. The Necropolis Railway is definitely worth a read if you haven’t heard of it before: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Necropolis_Railway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Necropolis_Railway
- gpderetta 2y agoah, yes, good old Necropolitan Line. I first learned about it in "The Fuller Memorandum", a Laundry Files novel by cstross.
- wrp 2y agoThe Necropolis Railway also features in the Basil Copper novel Necropolis (1980).
- cjs_ac 2y agoClosely related: the Mortuary Railway Station[0] in Sydney, Australia, with services to Rookwood Cemetery[1]. They barely bothered to change the names. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regent_Street_railway_station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regent_Street_railway_station [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rookwood_Cemetery_railway_line https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rookwood_Cemetery_railway_line
- Loughla 2y ago>to prevent both mourners and cadavers from different social backgrounds from mixing It's always fascinating reading about England's very complicated social class system. Other than the aristocracy being rich, does this still hold up today? Is there still inherent benefit from being a traditionally upper class family, even if they don't have generational wealth still?
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- throaway2501 2y agoyou bet there is
- Loughla 2y agoCan you provide some examples?
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- flir 2y agoI consider myself a pretty egalitarian dude. That accent still makes me stand to attention internally. I hate it. (And I haven't had much exposure to it in real life, so I suspect it's because its baked into our media landscape).
- b800h 2y agoThe problem with egalitarianism is that it leads to chaos, as we're now seeing in the UK. The old system was better.
- quickthrowman 2y ago‘That accent’ is received pronunciation, I’m guessing?
- flir 2y agoThe public school accent I'm thinking of is a notch plummier than RP.
- tengwar2 2y agoThe closer you get to London, the more it matters. Money is not central to the system: it is possible and even common to be in one of the middle classes with virtually no income. However this may not work for the upper class since lack of money would preclude taking part in many social occasions.
- Maken 2y agoAt the time the largest cemetery in the world, Brookwood Cemetery was designed to be large enough to accommodate all the deaths in London for centuries to come, and the LNC hoped to gain a monopoly on London's burial industry. There is something amusing about how incredibly ambitious they were, yet they completely missed the mark on how many people would live (and die) in London in the following centuries.