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to it at first. The Bishop of London, for example, considered ‘the hustle and bustle’ connected with railways inconsistent with the solemnity of a funeral. There was opposition, too, from the wealthy, some of whom found the idea of their relatives being conveyed for burial with the lower classes offensive – for it was intended that even the poorest would be able to afford both the fare and the reasonable cost of interment at Brookwood, and thus be saved the shame of having their dead buried in a paupers’ burial ground. The bishop and other objectors having been given assurances that the first-, second- and third-classes of mourners and their respective coffins would be kept apart from each other, and that there would be segregation as regards to religion, the Brookwood Necropolis Railway was finally established in 1854.

At this time, travel by train was still a novelty – the first regular passenger service was only introduced in 1830 – but it was to become immensely popular. During the 1840s, the Industrial Revolution was well under way and by 1851 some 6,800 miles of track had been laid. In 1863, after much clearance of poor housing to make way for it, London’s first underground railway opened.

I have used the invaluable The Brookwood Necropolis Railway by John M. Clarke for all sorts of basic information about the line, such as the price of a mourner’s ticket and the segregation of the classes, but for the purposes of the plot have used dramatic licence when describing the layout of the trains (which would not, for instance, have had corridors). The Necropolis Train ran from Waterloo in London to Brookwood in Surrey until about 1941, although burials still continue in the cemetery today and there are regular guided walks – some of which are specifically centred on the Necropolis Railway – around its beautiful grounds.

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Death and Mourning – the Victorian Way

Some churchyards in London had been full since 1665 (the year of the Great Plague) and by the time Queen Victoria came to the throne many had been locked up. Purpose-built cemeteries were proposed, the first of these being Kensal Green Cemetery, near Paddington. When the Duke of Sussex, Queen Victoria’s uncle, died in 1843, he said in his will that he wanted to be buried at Kensal Green amongst ordinary Londoners, and this boosted the popularity of the new cemetery enormously. This spacious, park-like burial ground was swiftly followed by six others on the fringes of London, including Highgate Cemetery, which became quite the most fashionable place in London to be interred. Highgate not only had catacombs (underground passageways containing shelved compartments on which coffins could be stored), but an Egyptian avenue leading to the marvellous Circle of Lebanon, where 20 large family vaults lined a path which ringed a magnificent ancient cedar tree. On Sundays, well-to-do Victorian families would promenade along the glades and avenues, visiting their departed loved ones.

It was Queen Victoria who, after Prince Albert’s death, fanned the cult of mourning. Initiated by the queen and then the aristocracy, it was imitated by the newly rich industrial and trade classes and spread downwards to the poor. Once the poor were wearing mourning, it meant the upper classes had to redouble their own efforts to demonstrate their social superiority, so that during the second half of the nineteenth century, the wearing of black became such a cult that no one dared defy it. Upper-class women travelling away from home would always take care to pack the correct mourning wear in case they suddenly found themselves in the company of a newly bereaved member of the royal family.

In his book Mourning Dress, Lou Taylor attributes the spread of mourning clothes partly to the proliferation of the newly published fashion magazines, which gave details of the latest fabrics and accessories and advised on mourning etiquette. On Prince Albert’s death, upper-class families slavishly followed the queen by going into full-mourning, then half-mourning and quarter-mourning, perhaps hoping that others