“Fellow Passengers to the Grave”? Dickens and the London Necropolis Railway

Abstract

In its dynamism and shared imaginative scope, popular fiction could provide a creative foundation for “not-yet-achieved” infrastructural projects. By insisting on the moral value of seeing others as “fellow-passengers to the grave,” Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol (1843) anticipates the London Necropolis Railway. Designed to relieve pressure on the capital, this purpose-built funeral railroad and cemetery opened in Brookwood, Surrey, in 1854. Through a fantasy that invokes locomotive hearses, Dickens humanizes the notion of a steam-powered funeral apparatus. He advocates for burial beyond the city by contrasting Tiny Tim's restful end in a “green place” with Scrooge's horrifying, “walled-in,” urban grave. Dickens's enduring Christmas story appeals to what could be and eases the imaginative leap required of those entrusting their loved ones to a novel postmortem infrastructure that was built to last.