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