Whitechapel’s Dead Body Train

Rumour has it that there was once a train tunnel that went from the Royal London Hospital and had a connection at Whitechapel Tube Station. The train was used by the dead primarily, it ran through a tunnel that is not used now and it has been bricked up.

Charles Dickens’ poverty and disease riddled depictions of the city made a colourful picture of the overflowing morgues. G A Walker (1839) also goes into the reports about over-crowding and indeed does mention the Whitechapel burial grounds, he describes the terrible smell from the vaults below that had been left in a dilapidated state. The cemetery is described as being in a densely populated area of London, the general neighbourhood being seen as disgusting (and lets not forget these were the haunting grounds for Jack the Ripper later on) and that the area is in itself is seen by Walker as some infested place with the living just as foul as the dead.

Like something from a horror film he presents a cemetery so badly kept and overflowing that the bones are amassed as one, fluids and foul liquids are all around. He goes on to say how the remains are treated with ‘ruthless indifference’ and the corpses and their remnants are exhumed by the shovel, when a new burial is due the cemetery is so badly over-crowded and unkempt it’s impossible not to come across other burials, some recent, in the needs to find a space for yet another corpse.

In digging a foundation for a new wall, on the eastern side of the church, the workmen penetrated through a mass of human bones eight or ten feet in thickness ; these bones were thrown out, and for some time lay exposed to public view, scattered over the ground in a loathsome humid state – G A Walker on Whitechapel Church.

Under Whitechapel station it is said that the empty rooms beneath were used as a temporary morgue, this is often seen to help continue the story about the train. Clearly Whitechapel sounds like it needed a church to ferry the dead but was there one?

Well some say that the blocked up tunnel was a pedestrian tunnel but that makes little sense, you wanted people on trains not wasting their silly time doing all that healthy walking, no sir! The hospital is said to have had the tunnel to connect it, whilst nearby it seems that making a connecting tunnel for workers would be a little nonsensical as it was very close by not to mention the cost and logistics as the hospital would need steps to access it, and patients would not use it if ill.

A great link!

Another quick read link

National Geographic’s article on Necropolis Line

Southern Necropolis Glasgow

It is a cemetery in the Gorbal’s district, Glasgow, Scotland and was opened in 1840 to provide more affordable burials; there are over 250,000 burials there on various layers of the place. The Old Gorbals cemetery was vastly overcrowded, this is not unusual for the time period, London and many major cities around the UK were opening more graveyards to compensate for the lack of space in those already established.

The proposals for a new cemetery started in 1839 and the following year the land was purchased and the first burial commenced. The first soul laid to rest there was 16-month old and occurred 21^st July 1840. The three sections opened as follows: Central in 1840, Eastern in 1846 and Western in 1850. In 1954 the cemetery suffered from a large group of children who were committed to hunting down a vampire that they believed was buried in the cemetery. The incident sparked it’s own urban legend, a vampire had killed two children. The influence for this was blamed on American horror comics like Tales from the Crypt, despite no evidence for the reason being the comics the moral outrage led to an increased comic censorship.

23^rd September 1954 PC Alex Deeprose was called out and expected to deal with a case of vandalism, instead he was met with hundreds of children from around 4 years old up to 14. They were armed with sticks and knives and were patrolling around inside the cemetery. They told the constable that they were looking for a 7 foot tall vampire, with iron teeth and had that he had kidnapped and eaten two local boys.

The rumours started in the playground, and there was a Chinese whisper emerging that they were going to head out there after school. At three o’clock that day the school emptied and children headed to the graveyard, gathering around the walls. Some were too scared to go in and stayed outside. There were no records of missing children at the time and the only blame they could come up with – comics.

Newspapers at the time took the tale and ran with it, the children turned up a second evening running and the headmaster of a local school had told them it was a ridiculous tale and eventually had the crowd dispersed.

Some of the other people in the area pointed out that they had got little reason to blame comics, after all the children were taught the bible. Daniel 7.7 specifically mentions a monster with iron teeth in it. The political frenzy however meant blaming comics was far more convenient. A local man explained that they would threaten the local children with the Iron Man before then, it was meant to be a sort of bogeyman affair but the political agenda against the comics made a better fit for the reason.

The cemetery is now operated by Glasgow City Council and is protected as a listed Category B building with the entrance listed as Category A. The cemetery also has 11 Commonwealth burials.

Momento Mori

Today’s find is more historical interest, I don’t find this macabre I find it very poignant.

The invention of photography might well be something we take for granted, after all we can happily wander around with digital cameras, phone camera’s and video cameras, we can snap anything we fancy, we can have a reel of 400 digital images to delete and never think about it…

But I think we should, imagine the age before photography where sketches, memories and sculptures caught the vision of the long deceased? Wouldn’t they marvel at even one small snap we produce?

From 1839 the invention of the daguerreotype was the first commercially successful photography, this meant pictures of the family could be taken however for the most part this was used as a momento for children. It’s worth noting here that the child mortality rate was high and often this would be the only pictorial reference.

http://www.coffinworks.org/I also found this if you are in England, may have to try to take a trip!

Of course it wasn’t restricted to children, originally they pictures might only be portrait shots but later on this adapted to other things, such as the coffin, or perhaps even props. For the children this might be a photo of the babe in the cot with toys, as time went on there was more thought put into the rosy cheeks or other little details.

This was a more popular trend in Europe than it was in the United States. I don’t know why because it’s America that has a Coffin Museum…