1

"This is an Author's Accepted Manuscript of an article published in the Journal of Historical Geography (2010),

vol. 36: p. 305-314 [copyright Elsevier], available online at: http://www.sciencedirect.com/

[doi:10.1016/j.jhg.2009.11.001]."

Death has a touch of class: society and space in Brookwood Cemetery, 1853–

1903

Agatha Herman

Abstract

Changes in the cultures and spaces of death during the Victorian era reveal the shifting

conceptualisations and mobilisations of class in this period. Using the example of Brookwood

Necropolis, established 1852 in response to the contemporary burial reform debate, the paper

explores tensions within the sanitary reform movement, 1853–1903. Whilst reformist ideology

grounded the cemetery’s practices in a discourse of inclusion, one of the consequences of reform was

to reinforce class distinctions. Combined with commercial imperatives and the modern impulse

towards separation of living and dead, this aspect of reform enacted a counter-discourse of alienation.

The presence of these conflicting strands in the spaces and practices of the Necropolis and their

changes during the time period reflect wider urban trends.

Keywords: Brookwood Cemetery; Death; Class; Victorian; burial reform

In 1852, The Times noted that ‘the Bishop of London…entertained great doubts whether any private

parties ought to be allowed to speculate in a traffic of the dead’.1 The Bishop’s opinion provides a

useful entry point into the contemporary discourse of burial reform, one aspect of the wider and much

contested public health reforms of the nineteenth century. Metropolitan burial reform in particular

was essential given the incapacity of existing parish graveyards to deal with London’s rapidly

increasing population. However, whilst belief in the benefits of sanitary reform was widespread, it

was also controversial; resistance was active, fuelled by fears that reforms would break down the

spatial and social barriers so assiduously cultivated.2 This was accompanied by concerns over how

1 The Times, 9 June 1852, 2 2 M. Allen, From cesspool to sewer: sanitary reform and the rhetoric of resistance, 1848 – 1880, Victorian Literature and Culture 30 (2002) 383-402.

2

reform was articulated, particularly through the language of commodification, often deemed

especially inappropriate with regards to interment.3

In this paper, Brookwood Necropolis, established in 1852 in direct response to the metropolitan burial

crisis, is used to explore these tensions and to consider the ways in which reform played out, often in

unexpected ways. Class emerges as a useful framework through which to understand the socialities

and spatialities informing practices in the Necropolis, reflecting the operationalisation of the ideals of

spatial division and social hierarchy in contemporary London. A conceptualisation of class as relational

is the starting point for this paper, which then grounds this theoretical understanding in the specific

‘modern’ death cultures of the Victorian era and, more specifically, through the project of

Metropolitan burial reform. Through archival research for the period 1853-1903, the paper then

considers two key discourses in operation in the Necropolis – inclusion and alienation – which reflect

the contradictory and equivocal attitudes within the reform movement and Victorian society more

widely.4

Class, Death and Modernity

The nineteenth century has been described as the ‘golden age of grief’ and Victorian cultures of

mourning and attitudes to death more generally were strongly shaped by the experiences and

representations of class.5 The equation between funerary expenditure and the social worth of the

deceased provided only one measure of this, for in many respects the material and spiritual details of

mourning were grounded in distinct class-bound death cultures.6 Whilst emulation of social superiors

amongst the working and middle classes played a part, this has arguably been exaggerated. Cohen,

for example, argues that middle-class identity was formed as much in opposition as in imitation of the

aristocracy, and was derived significantly from a distinct culture of material consumption, which

signalled creativity, cultivation and moral integrity.7 Combined with their increased financial capacity,

which brought funerary indulgences within reach, this contributed to a consumerist middle-class

death culture. The range of articles and expense of the early Victorian funeral gives credence to

3 R. Eckersley, Late modern: book review, History 90 (2005) 466. 4 This period starts when the London Necropolis and National Mausoleum Company, owners of Brookwood Cemetery, began operation. 5 Gorer, 1967, cited in D. Cannadine, War and death, grief and mourning in modern Britain, in: J. Whaley (Ed), Mirrors of Mortality: Studies in the Social History of Death, London, 1981, 187-242, 188.

6 P. Jalland, Death in the Victorian Family, Oxford, 1996; R. Richardson, Death, Dissection and the Destitute, London, 1987; S.J. Kleinberg, Death and the working class, Journal of Popular Culture xi (1977) 193-209; J-M. Strange, ‘She cried a very little’: death, grief and mourning in working-class culture, c. 1880-1914, Social History 27 (2002) 143-161.

7 D. Cohen, Household Gods: the British and their Possessions, London, 2006; D. Cohen, Buying and becoming: new work on the British middle classes, Historical Journal 46 (2003) 999-1004; S. Gunn, The public sphere, modernity and consumption: new perspectives on the history of the English middle class, in: A. Kidd, D. Nicholls (Eds), Gender, Civic Culture and Consumerism: Middle-Class Identity in Britain, 1800-1940, Manchester, 1999, 12-31.

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Cannadine’s acerbic comment that the ‘Victorian celebration of death was not so much a golden age

of effective psychological support as a bonanza of commercial exploitation’.8

By the 1870s there were clear moves away from the ostentation of the early Victorian funeral, with

increasing demand amongst the middle and upper classes for simpler, cheaper affairs.9 Whilst many

contemporaries believed that the poor would risk everything to ensure a respectable funeral, recent

research suggests a diversity of working-class attitudes to burial.10 However, a fundamental

motivation for the working classes was to avoid ‘death on the parish’ – the pauper’s funeral – which

proclaimed the deceased’s total lack of possessions and hence of social worth. This was given extra

impetus when the Anatomy Act 1832 made pauper bodies available for dissection, in a governmental

attempt to reduce body-snatching.11 Many contemporary commentators considered this a ‘class

reprisal against the poor’, and conjoined with the New Poor Law 1834, this reflected a hardening in

attitudes, which positioned poverty as an ‘unpardonable [moral] offence’.12 As the century

progressed, however, destitution was increasingly linked with social and environmental conditions,

especially in large cities, a position supported by increasingly reliable statistical data.13 This discourse

supported social reform as a clear solution: improving environmental conditions would return

deprived individuals to civilization by bringing them into closer proximity with ‘respectable’ values and

codes.Error! Bookmark not defined. Burial and funeral reform were important components of this process. It

was argued that with appropriate measures of intervention, corpses would no longer remain

unhygienically unburied until relatives could afford burial costs, and the potential for epidemics

contained in the overcrowded churchyards would be eliminated.

The movement of cemeteries to the urban periphery enacted a return to Classical customs of

extramural interment, a practice in harmony with the ‘sanitary idea’ that permeated the early

Victorian city and representative of the progressive change considered then as the hallmark of

modernity.14 The concept of modernity is commonly connected to a changed consciousness of time,

and through this lens we can also understand the changing spatiality of burial practices.15 Modernity

8 Cannadine, War and death, 191. 9 Jalland, Death in the Victorian Family; G. Howarth, The Changing Face of Death: Historical Accounts of Death and Disposal, Basingstoke, 1997. 10 J. Litten, The English Way of Death: the Common Funeral since 1450, London, 1991; Richardson, Death, Dissection; Strange, ‘She cried a very little’.

11 J. Rugg, From reason to regulation: 1760-1850, in: P.C. Jupp, C. Gittings (Eds), Death in England: an Illustrated History, Manchester, 1999, 202-229 12 Richardson, Death, Dissection, 266; G.S. Jones, Outcast London, Oxford, 1971.

13 E. Chadwick, Poor Law administration, its chief principles and their results in England and Wales as compared with Scotland, Journal of the Statistical Society of London 27 (1864) 492-504; B. Luckin, Revisiting the idea of urban degeneration in urban Britain 1830-1900, Urban History 33 (2006) 234-252.

14 A. Briggs, Victorian Cities, Harmondsworth, 1968.

15 M. Ogborn, Spaces of Modernity: London’s Geographies 1680-1780, New York, 1998; D. Gregory, Modernity, in: R.J. Johnston et al (Eds) The Dictionary of Human Geography, 4th edition, Oxford, 2000, 512-516.

4

as discontinuity is particularly salient in examining the nineteenth-century (re)turn to extramural

interment. Lacqueur thus attempts ‘to understand what, if anything, is distinctively modern about

death’ by studying the history of the cemetery whilst Roach notes that under modernity, death ‘lost

its lineage’, and through the modern tendency to define the body as ‘unhygienic’, unbearably

repulsive in its decay.16 The ‘perpetual separation of the dead’ was thus materially and aesthetically

justified, cleansing the deceased by rendering them invisible and anonymous.17

Extramural interment accentuated the distinction between the spaces of the dead and the living,

rendering death unfamiliar, compartmented away from life and the living in an effort to establish

order, which was impossible in the undisciplined chaos of the city churchyard.18 Burial reformers’

insistence on ‘one grave, one body’ brought orderliness through individualisation, separating the

deceased from their community, suppressing the political gatherings triggered by working-class

funerals and limiting sympathy for paupers, whose communal burial in pit graves had been censured.19

Homogenisation accompanied individualisation: the working-class dead were treated separately but

any personal significance or individuality was repressed by restricting distinctive identities to those

who could afford a headstone. Here, the themes of ‘inclusion’ and ‘alienation’ begin to emerge in a

seemingly contradictory array of reform within class limits; equality of treatment becomes a

governance strategy in which the working classes are positioned as worthy of particular interment

practices whilst simultaneously being spatially, culturally and politically alienated from their

communities.

Metropolitan Burial Reform

Brookwood Cemetery was a product of the reformist sentiments within mid-century Victorian society,

and was specifically established in response to the metropolitan burial situation. London churchyards

had been overcrowded long before the burial reform debate took hold but high urban population

growth worsened conditions, making intramural interment an issue of increasing prominence.

Inspiration came from the nonconformists who had established separate cemeteries in Britain since

the late seventeenth century and Père-Lachaise, the great Parisian cemetery, located on the urban

16 T.W. Lacquer, The places of the dead in modernity, in: C. Jones, D. Wahrman (Eds), The Age of Cultural Revolutions: Britain and France, 1750–1820, London, 2002, 17-32; J. Roach, Cities of the Dead: Circum-Atlantic Performance, New York, 1996.

17 P. Joyce, Maps, blood and the city: the governance of the social in 19th century Britain in P. Joyce (Ed), The Social in Question: New Bearings in History and the Social Sciences, London, 2002, 97-115.

18 Lacquer, The places of the dead; J.S. Curl, The Victorian Celebration of Death, Detroit, 1972.

19 Lacquer, The places of the dead; M.E. Hotz, Down among the dead: Edwin Chadwick’s burial reform discourse in mid-nineteenth century England, Victorian Literature and Culture 29 (2001) 21-38.

5

periphery because of the perceived health hazards of intramural interment.20 Burial reform was

initially an arena for private enterprise since the state ‘proved itself unready and unwilling to solve

the sanitary issues’.21 Kensal Green, the first great London cemetery, consecrated in 1833 and owned

by the London Cemetery Company, set the precedent for other metropolitan cemeteries to be

managed via joint stock companies.22 Despite the moral concerns over investment in and profit from

bereavement, six further cemeteries were established by 1850 (Figure 1).

Fig. 1 Location of Brookwood Cemetery and the Existing Private Cemeteries Serving London

The high cost of interment in private cemeteries limited their capacity to solve churchyard

overcrowding, which became of paramount importance when tolerance of their conditions rapidly

declined during the early 1840s. The Times credits Dr. Walker with this change, as he established the

‘horrible effects of allowing the dead to be deposited in the midst of the living’ in his 1839 publication

Gatherings from Graveyards, which described the stench and gore in horrific detail. ‘[A] body partly

decomposed was dug up and placed on the surface, at the side slightly covered with earth; a mourner

20 J. Rugg, The origins and progress of cemetery establishment in Britain, in: P.C. Jupp, G. Howarth (Eds), The Changing Face of Death: Historical Accounts of Death and Disposal, Basingstoke, 1997, 105-119. 21 Hotz, Down among the dead, 22.

22 Curl, The Victorian Celebration.

6

stepped upon it, and the loosened skin peeled off, he slipped forward and had nearly fallen into the

grave’.23 Overcrowding was exacerbated by the cholera epidemics, which ravaged the city in the 1840s

and finally settled the extramural debate, resulting in the Metropolitan Interment Act of 1850. This

Act secularised control of burials under a Metropolitan Board of Health, which was responsible for the

new burial district centred on the city of London. The Times notes that ‘the Board of Health may

“contract” for funerals at fixed charges, so that there are likely to be “three classes” of funerals,

according to the means of the parties’: this ensured that cemeteries established following the Act,

including Brookwood, supported metropolitan interment reform.24

Edwin Chadwick also contributed to the legislative action through the strong, evidentially-based

recommendations contained in his 1843 ‘Report on the Results of a Special Inquiry into the Practice

of Interment in Towns’.25 As The Times noted, Chadwick

had accumulated and epitomized a mass of evidence of such a revolting nature, that the wonder

was that so frightful a practice could have been so long tolerated…The bodies were piled… until

they reached a depth of 10, 20, and 30 feet, the topmost body being only a few inches from the

surface…The putrescent accumulation raised every churchyard in London on an average 10 feet

high…26

This graphic description of the state of London’s graveyards gave greater urgency to the

implementation of burial reform because the dense urban spaces intermingled living and dead, placing

a large proportion of Londoners at risk from graveyard miasmas.27 Whilst Chadwick’s claims of the

risk posed by these were disputed by contemporary critics, his arguments surrounding moral health

were compelling.28 Prohibitive burial costs resulted in the corpses of the poor being kept at home

until the fees had been obtained. This was socially dangerous since ‘familiarity [with death] soon

succeeds, and respect disappears…when the respect for the dead, that is, for the human form in its

most awful state, is gone, the whole mass of social sympathies must be weakened’.29 Burial reform,

allowing a prompt and decent funeral for all classes and enforcing spatial separation, maintained the

existing social structure and elite control over the working class because a ‘wholesome fear of

death…is the last hold upon a hardened conscience’.30

23 The Times, 24 September 1846, 3; Rugg, From reason, 114. 24 The Times, 15 August 1850, 5. 25 Supplementary report on the results of a special inquiry into the practice of interment in towns to the report on the sanitary condition of the labouring population of Great Britain; 1843 (509) XII.395. 26 The Times, 24 September 1846, 3.

27 For details of opposition see The Times, 24/09/1846, 3; Lacquer, The places of the dead; Curl, The Victorian Celebration. 28 Lacquer, The places of the dead.

29 Chadwick cited in Hotz, Down among the dead, 26-27.

30 J. Morley, Death, Heaven and the Victorians, London, 1971, 56.

7

Brookwood Cemetery

The intrusion of commercialism into death was not unprecedented but there was a stark contrast to

be drawn between the existing activities of the undertaker and the creation of private trading

companies. The Times described the latter as ‘that species of administration in which our social system

is fertile – a trade board inspired by the life of competition, bound to its duty by the nexus of

dividends’.31 Capitalist speculation in the sphere of bereavement was a source of social unease, with

concerns raised about its morality as seen in the opening quotation from the Bishop of London. The

potential profits available were apparent in the expensive tariffs of London’s existing private

cemeteries.32 Although the Woking Necropolis Plan was initially proposed in 1850 as one of three

state-funded ventures to alleviate the metropolitan churchyards, it was abandoned because of

resentment from extant private cemeteries and scepticism as to its financial viability from within the

Treasury.33 Thus, notwithstanding the distaste amongst sections of the intelligentsia, joint stock

companies emerged as the only socially acceptable solution. The Woking Plan was eventually realised

as a private enterprise under the London Necropolis and National Mausoleum Company [LNNMC],

established by private bill in 1852. Despite initial setbacks, by 1853 the company had raised enough

capital to purchase 2000 acres from Lord Onslow, near the village of Brookwood in Surrey, creating

the largest cemetery in the world with the capacity to single-handedly solve London’s burial crisis.

400 acres were initially prepared (Figure 2) following the advice of horticulturalist J.C. Loudon, whose

tenets regarding Victorian cemetery design were highly influential and widely followed. Loudon

considered that after satisfying the primary utilitarian objective, a cemetery’s secondary concern was

aesthetics, which would provide a source of moral and intellectual improvement to visitors.34

Brookwood Cemetery’s ‘imaginative planting’ and utilisation of the recently developed railway for

access fully adhered to these principles.35 This combination of sanitation and aesthetics was not

unusual, being considered by Edwin Chadwick as a natural relationship that contributed to the socially

redemptive capabilities of sanitary reform.36

31 The Times, 14 November 1854, 10. 32 The Times, 9 June 1852, 2.

33 J.M. Clarke, London’s Necropolis: a Guide to Brookwood Cemetery, Stroud, 2004.

34 Morley, Death, Heaven.

35 Curl, The Victorian Celebration, 143.

36 E. Cleere, Dirty Pictures: John Ruskin, modern painters, and the Victorian sanitation of fine art, Representations 78 (2002) 116-139.

8

Fig. 2 The London Necropolis and National Mausoleum, Woking, Surrey. Source: The Illustrated London News 18/12/1852. Reproduced courtesy of SHC.

The LNNMC archives offer detailed accounts of these early days and the later operations and problems

faced.37 Throughout the period 1853-1903, the strong and continuing influence of class in governing

the cemetery’s practices was apparent. However, this was neither definitive nor homogenous. Whilst

what this paper terms ‘inclusion’ was a central feature of the LNNMC’s reformist position, combined

with the company’s capitalist nature this led to the simultaneous circulation of a discourse of

alienation.38 Despite these conflictual strands, the LNNMCs implementation of reformist discourse

through inclusive policies was arguably at the forefront of contemporary theorising on social equality.

The ‘community’ envisaged in business plans created a level of inclusivity unparalleled in London and

the narrative of this endeavour will unfold in the following sections.39 Whilst the focus is on the

discourses of inclusion and alienation, a brief review of some explicitly reformist practices in the

Necropolis provides a necessary contextualisation.

37 The LNNMC archives are held at the Surrey History Centre [SHC], Woking. The research utilised the company minute books (1853-1903), agreements of reserved grounds, burial records (1854-1905), the secretary’s correspondence (1890-1907), newspaper cuttings collected by the company and company brochures. Notwithstanding some potential shortcomings, which are inevitable when dealing with a set of archives that are always going to be partial, the range and depth of the archive material supports a number of important conclusions. 38 I use the term ‘alienation’ instead of ‘exclusion’ or ‘class segregation’ because while these are central to the process of

alienation, the latter is more cogent because of its conceptual linkages to modernity.

39 D.R. Green, From Artisans to Paupers: Economic Change and Poverty in London, 1790-1870, London, 1995.

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Reform in Brookwood Cemetery

Archival evidence suggests that the reformist nature of the LNNMC was grounded both in genuine

belief in sanitary and social reform and in a degree of commercial pragmatism, due to the necessary

business focus. Operating under the banner of extramural interment appealed to the social climate

of the mid-nineteenth century, allowing the company to profit from the current fashion. The site of

Brookwood Cemetery met the Board of Health’s requirements for ‘suitable soils’ and was located

twenty-five miles outside London, remote enough to present no health hazard while remaining

relatively accessible.40 This was necessary to fulfil the requirements of the Metropolitan Interment

Act, which prohibited grounds being ‘opened within 100 yards of any dwelling-house

without…consent in writing of the owner, the lessee, and occupier’.41 The land was relatively cheap

and the cemetery size allowed the inclusion of all classes with dignity. However hygiene, rather than

a more radical notion of equality, appears the main motivation for the LNNMC’s reformist practices

and was to be a central feature in the company’s championship of burial reform. The physical

characteristics of the cemetery gave credence to the LNNMC’s claims as to hygienic practices, as

advertised in Health Messenger (1889, 1891) and Health (1889).42 However, this pragmatism is

balanced by proof of reformist zeal in the company’s allowance of funeral credit. The scope for abuse

is clear and funeral debtors were a common issue from the late 1890s onwards. These ‘bad debts’

prove the tangibility of the LNNMC’s belief in funeral reform; however, ideological and business

motivations were not necessarily antithetical and both informed the company’s decisions.

Burial reform was widely accepted as a necessity prior to the formation of the LNNMC, so the company

cannot be credited with anything more than confirming and applying its benefits. However, the

LNNMC had some success in affecting wider attitudes through the nationwide dissemination of its

patented ‘earth-to-earth’ coffin. Mr. Seymour Haden advocated the idea of a disintegrating coffin in

1875

…of some lighter permeable material, such as wicker or lattice-work, open at the top, and filled in

with any fragrant herbaceous matters that happened to be most readily obtainable. A layer of

ferns or mosses for a bed, a bundle of sweet herbs for a pillow, and as much as it would still contain

after the body had been gently laid in it of any aromatic or flowering plant for a coverlet.43

This was patented by the LNNMC and offered a hygienic alternative to the traditional coffin, which

was considered a restriction to thoroughly effective metropolitan burial reform, without relying on

the ultimate option of cremation. Through the earth-to-earth coffin, Health positioned the LNNMC as

40 The Times, 8 November 1854, 10. 41 The Times, 28 August 1855, 10.

42 Woking, SHC, 2935/1/2 (1889, 1891).

43 The Times, 12 January 1875 cited in Litten, The English Way, 117.

10

‘pioneers in the field of sanitary progress’ allowing the body to break down and return to earth.44

However, the company archives make no mention as to the uptake of these coffins and so their impact

on practices and popularity is difficult to judge.

Inclusion: broadening the social sphere of interment

At the 1856 annual general meeting of the LNNMC, the Chairman declared ‘that the quantity of land

available for Cemetery purposes…[was] almost of indefinite extent’, which meant that ‘London may

send all its dead to Woking for centuries, and there would yet be room’45 The space available enabled

the LNNMC to capitalise on the entangled contemporary currents of fear and reform surrounding

metropolitan burial but led to unforeseen consequences in terms of the eventual composition of the

cemetery. Provision for the poor was central to the burial reform debate because of their reliance on

the now defunct parish graveyard, and attracting parish contracts was beneficial for both the business

and reputation of the company. Unfortunately, however, delays in opening lost the company several

parish contracts to other cemetery companies, which limited their potential trade from the start.46

Price was the best way to attract the lucrative parish contracts and the LNNMC tariffs were ‘such as

to effect a saving to the community of 25 per cent’.47 The Board of Health had been concerned that

the intrusion of private interests would increase the cost of interment but the LNNMC’s affordable

prices for all classes and tenders for paupers positioned the company as genuinely supporting

metropolitan burial reform.48 Nevertheless, these decisions were also highly pragmatic, being

essential to alleviating the financial difficulties caused by the company’s initially over-optimistic

market predictions. The LNNMC’s objective of capturing half to two-thirds of all burials in London was

unrealistic given the competition from existing cemeteries, and was placed further out of reach by the

company’s failure to secure all the parishes initially interested.49 Clarke examined the burial records

and found that burials (1854-74) never exceeded 4,100 per annum and averaged only 3,200, far short

of the anticipated 10,000.50 Total burial figures (Figure 3) significantly increased between 1855 and

1865, particularly in January; indeed, burial figures for January were consistently greater than June

due to the higher death rate caused by the combination of hardships - disease, cold and hunger -

brought by winter. Despite these initial successes, from 1865 total burials in January witnessed a

44 Woking, SHC, 6852/7/1/3 (1887), 43.

45 Woking, SHC, 2935/1/1, (14 February 1856); Woking, SHC, 6852/7/1/3, 10.

46 Clarke, London’s Necropolis.

47 Woking, SHC, 6852/7/1/2.

48 The Times, 8 November 1854, 10; Woking, SHC, 2935/1/2.

49 The Times, 9 June 1852, 2. 50 Clarke, London’s Necropolis, 22.

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steady decline and, whilst less dramatic, burials in June also decreased. However, it is not clear

whether this is due to falling sales or the falling death rate in London from the 1870s.51

Fig. 3 Total Number of Burials, 1855 - 1905. Source: LNNMC Archives52

Given both the failure to achieve predictions and the falling number of sales throughout the century,

the guarantee of pauper burials through tenders was essential. On the 1st April 1856, the Guardians

of the Strand Union contracted with the LNNMC for the burial of paupers. For the sums of £1.4s.0d

per adult, 16s.2d per child under 10 and 3s.6d per stillborn, the company would perform the funeral

with proper order and decorum, by an ordained Church of England minister and provide:

A good, ¾” elm coffin with shroud and cap of glazed calico

A 1-horse hearse and all necessary bearers and attendants

Conveyance to the cemetery of 2 mourners for an adult and 1 mourner for a child under 1053

Parish contracts also included terms for pauper burials; with St Anne, Soho paying 14s per adult and

10s per child for similar arrangements as those above, plus a 1s fee to the parish incumbent if burial

was in the consecrated portion of the parish ground.54

51 J.F.C Harrison, Late Victorian Britain, 1874-1901, London, 1991. 52 Woking, SHC, 2935/3/1-21. 53 Woking, SHC, 2935/2/38.

54 Woking, SHC, 2935/2/37.

0

50

100

150

200

250

300

350

400

450

1855 1865 1875 1885 1895 1905

To

tal

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er o

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uri

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Jan

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The burial records testify to the LNNMC dependence on parish or pauper burials, with the workhouse

consistently supplying a large proportion of the total number of burials, only dropping below 20% in

the 1890s. Infirmaries accounted for an increasing share of total burials as the century progressed but

as they were established to separate sick from able-bodied paupers, this does not indicate a decrease

in the total number of institutional interments in the Necropolis. Pauper burials consistently

constituted the majority of burials for both January and June in every year, always representing a

minimum of 70% of total burials (Figure 4).55 The poor were more susceptible to severe weather and

epidemics because of their usually crowded and poorly maintained living areas. Relapsing fever and

smallpox epidemics were common in London in the 1870s and may account for the spike in pauper

burials in 1875 because families who otherwise could afford burial found themselves below the

‘pauper line’ because of the increased death rate and associated costs.56 By 1885, the proportion of

pauper burials had fallen to 75% of the total and the proportion of paupers continued to fluctuate

between 70% and 75% until the end of the period under study. The clear decrease over the whole

time period may be related to the increase in the number of ‘self-help’ institutions amongst the poor,

such as burial clubs, which reduced the need for reliance on parish burial.57

55 According to Greenwood (1869) paupers accounted for approximately 4% of the total population of England and Wales in 1863/64 and 5% 1867/1868: J. Greenwood, The seven curses of London, 1869 <http://www.victorianlondon.org/ publications/seven23.htm>. However, the proportion of paupers in the total death rate is unknown making it impossible to calculate Brookwood’s ‘share’. 56 G. Rivett, NHS history: fever hospitals, <http://www.nhshistory.net/smallpox_and_fever_hospitals.htm>. 57 See Green, Reinventing Civil Society: the Rediscovery of Welfare Without Politics, London, 1993; P.H.J.H Gosden, Self-

Help: Voluntary Associations in the 19th Century, London, 1973.

65%

70%

75%

80%

85%

90%

95%

100%

1855 1865 1875 1885 1895 1905

Per

cen

tag

e of

To

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Bu

ria

ls

Jan

Jun

13

Fig. 4 The Proportion of Paupers in Brookwood Cemetery 52

The company’s commerical nature and a desire to expand the range of customers beyond the pauper

majority, led to the company starting to advertise in 1855, just three years after establishment, with

a view to attracting more individual customers:

the Deputy Chairman reported arrangements which had been made with Messrs. Smith & Co for

advertising the Tariff of the Company in 300 omnibuses for six months and also for exhibiting same

at 100 railway stations for twelve months for the sum of Three hundred & twenty pounds.58

Advertisements increased awareness of the cemetery and the use of space on omnibuses and stations

in this period suggests that the target audience was middle-class, as the main users of public

transport.59 Throughout the period 1853 – 1903, the LNNMC placed adverts in, and received press

from, publications such as Capells Family Paper, Health Messenger and Health.60 The focus of these

on the institution of the family and current social debates such as health imply a middle-class

readership, which strongly adhered to these modern Victorian values.61 The concentration of

advertising on the middle-class indicates the LNNMCs drive to be all-inclusive, or perhaps more

exclusive, in an effort to extend beyond the pauper contracts which formed the majority of business.

Pauper contracts may have had greater profit margins but this predominance could damage the

appeal of the cemetery to less-reformist patrons. The presence of a statuary works on site, statuary

receipts and letters from companies detailing their stone range indicates that the company provided

a complete service package in a bid to attract a better class of patron, who could afford the plots that

came with the privilege of erecting a memorial.

Despite this focus on the middle-class, the cemetery was affordable for all. The parish contracts and

company brochures show that a respectful funeral was open even to the poorest. This demonstrates

a genuinely inclusive attitude as all burials were accorded a basic level of dignity, which was not the

case in all of London’s private cemeteries.62 Paupers were granted a humble yet dignified interment

as demonstrated by the terms of the contracts above and in the company brochures. The 1887

brochure emphasized that all classes received a separate grave, which would only be re-opened for

family members. As space was expected to be at a premium, the LNNMC also advertised that there

would be a minimum of 10 years before any grave might be re-used; though poor sales proved this to

58 Woking, SHC, 2935/1/1 (1 February 1855). 59 J. Armstrong, Transport and the urban environment, in: M. Daunton (Ed), The Cambridge Urban History of Britain, Vol. 111 1840-1950, Cambridge, 2000, 229-257. 60 Woking, SHC, 2935/1/2.

61 S. Szreter and A. Hardy, Urban fertility and mortality patterns, in: M. Daunton (Ed), The Cambridge Urban History of Britain, Vol. III 1840-1950, Cambridge, 2000, 629-671.

62 Lacquer, The places of the dead.

14

be unnecessary. These were no small attractions, presenting a dramatic contrast with the treatment

of corpses in metropolitan churchyards and the continued use of pauper pit graves in other

cemeteries. Brookwood offered larger plot sizes than its competitors making it ‘the only place of

interment…where true privacy of sepulture can be obtained, and where that privacy is respected in

perpetuity’.63 The vast area was crucial to the company’s inclusive policy, making a cemetery with

dignity open to all, even to those who in life had low social standing.

Inclusion and space in Brookwood cemetery

The company was ‘set steadily against extortion, parade, and mockery of grief…’ but this reformist

principle still left room for the intrusion of class demarcations, which fundamentally were necessary

to attract business.64 Certain basic standards of treatment were accorded to all but extra benefits and

distinctions in the services proffered could be bought. A grave, funeral service and conveyance to the

cemetery could be purchased for only £1.0.0 but this was explicitly termed ‘second-class’; the main

implications were spatial in nature – a restricted choice of grave site, a ‘second class’ waiting room

and carriage for the mourners, a ‘second class’ mortuary for the body and a secondary place in the

order of the funeral services. The LNNMC operated along inclusive lines but sought to temper the

reformist discourse in order to remain financially viable.

Distinctions in the services proffered become apparent on examining the separate undertaking

charges. The LNNMC adopted an eleven part tariff system that catered for all in its graded offerings

that balanced quality and ostentation with price. The lowest level of service offered respectability

and simplicity for £1.5s: ‘1 horse hearse to convey coffin only, smooth elm coffin, finished with black

or white nails, a Plate of Inscription, lined &c’. In contrast, the top level of service demonstrates the

continuing desires of elite clientele for material distinctions to be maintained and a certain level of

ostentation; for £35, the LNNMC offered a ‘[h]earse + 4, 3 mourning coaches/broughams, elm shell

lined with fine swansdown + satin, English Oak case, French polished/lined with fine cloth, massive

brass fittings + stout lead coffin, or Patent ‘Earth-to-Earth’, covered with crimson or black velvet + 8

assistants’.65 A comparable ‘reformed funeral’ scale was also available that accommodated the moves

away from ostentation apparent from the 1870s by excluding the procession. Interestingly, the ‘earth-

to-earth’ coffin is not offered to the lowest three levels of service; the desire for such a reformist

design may have been presumed to be restricted to certain classes, who could afford these higher end

services. Alternatively, it may be due to expense although this argument holds less from 1890 when

63 Woking, SHC, 6852/7/1/3, 15. 64 Woking, SHC, 6852/7/1/3, 13.

65 Woking, SHC, 6852/7/1/3, 30.

15

a refined design resulted in reduced production costs, making ‘earth-to-earth’ potentially available for

pauper burials.66 The company brochures offer a range of further services that emphasize natural

elements, following Loudon’s aesthetic emphasis, such as ‘turfing grave’ (2s.6d.), ‘planting grave with

spring flowers’ (10s.6d.) and ‘planting, turfing and maintenance in perpetuity’ (£21).65 These services

would have been restricted to the higher classes by cost, which provided the capacity for further

distinction from the masses and demonstration of ones financial, and hence social, worth.

The discourse of inclusion operationalised by the LNNMC is representative of the contradictory

currents of progressive change yet simultaneous routinisation considered by Ogborn to be a hallmark

of modernity.67 While the inclusion of paupers signals a break from the harsher attitudes towards the

poor reflected in the New Poor Law 1834, existing class divides were also reinforced and standardised

in the pricing structure of the burial services. Brookwood Cemetery based its appeal on a practical

approach to burial reform, which was clearly fundamental to its operation. Although it is not clear to

what extent these ideas originated from the LNNMC, its application increased the visibility of practical

equality. Despite the inclination towards simple funerals, distinctions in the level of provision

remained important indicators of status and achievements. The spatiality of burial was central to this

process, and thus is an important aspect in the LNNMCs practices of inclusion. Modernity’s spatial

paradigm, which enacted a return to the separation of living from dead, also maintained the class

status quo through the concurrently developed governing strategies that constituted and disciplined

the modern subject through modern networks of power and knowledge.68

Neighbours and neighbourhoods were as important in death as in life, and many individuals wished

to be buried near those of similar social standing as well as to their loved ones. Figure 5 indicates the

more and less desirable areas of the cemetery, showing clustering around both chapels and stations,

and in areas with high visibility from pathways. Vast areas of Brookwood cemetery are sparsely

‘populated’, and the predominance of pauper burials suggests that even though many areas were

marked as ‘first’ or ‘second’ class, this does not mean that the composition of burials matched the

percentage of space designated to specific classes. Figures on the actual density of Brookwood

Cemetery 1855 – 1903 are unavailable.

66 Woking, SHC, 2935/1/2; Litten, The English Way. 67 Ogborn, Spaces of Modernity. 68 Gregory, Modernity; M. Foucault (J.D. Faubion, ed.), Power: essential works of Foucault 1954-1984, London, 1994.

16

Fig. 5 Class Areas in Brookwood Cemetery. Source: LNNMC Archives; Brookwood Cemetery Company69

The social order was maintained throughout, with the deceased being segregated according to class

even before interment. On arrival at the Waterloo railway terminus, the mourners would be directed

to the communal third class waiting room or a private one if they were second or first class parties,

whilst the coffins were loaded onto the hearse coach. Carriages for both dead and living were divided

according to class, and return tickets for mourners were priced in three bands, fixed by the 1854 act:

1st class, 6s.0d; 2nd class, 3s.6d; 3rd class, 2s.0d.70 The merits of rail for the conveyance of the dead had

been under discussion since 1850, with it championed as ‘the most effectual way of taking the dead

out of town’ although at this time funereal duties were considered to fall beyond the legitimate remit

of the rail companies.71 The relationship between the LNNMC and the London South Western Railway

Company separated these functions, and thus overcame this objection, advertising the new necropolis

railway as offering facility of access and economy, conducted with decency and respect.72 Separate

class accommodation had been compulsory on the railways since 1844, and enforcement on the

necropolis line ensured that strict class boundaries were maintained.73 The price-based segregation

69 Woking, SHC, 6852/5/1; Brookwood Cemetery Company, Cemetery map, < http://www.brookwoodcemetery.com/cemetery_map.htm>.

70 Woking, SHC, 6852/7/1/7 (c.1902), 14.

71 The Times, 9 May 1850, 3.

72 Woking, SHC, 6852/7/1/3, 16.

73 Third report from the select committee on railways; 1844 (166) XI.5.

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on the railways therefore reflects the combination of the principles of universality and exclusivity,

making provision universally accessible and yet at the same time, socially specific.

Whilst the class system was conspicuously maintained in Brookwood, an attempt to balance inclusivity

for the poor and exclusivity for the wealthy, this was not enough to attract the upper classes in any

great numbers. The LNNMC aspired to attract every class, and believed that its inclusive reform would

appeal to the purportedly reformist middle and upper classes. However, the association of

Brookwood with low costs and pauper contracts damaged its elite appeal. It is plausible to assume

that, for the upper and middle classes, inclusion meant opening up opportunities to the poor without

threatening their own privileges, an outcome which the LNNMC tried but failed to achieve. All classes

in London had to live in close proximity but, when given a choice, the wealthy opted for exclusivity.

Kensal Green, fortunate enough to attract royalty in the Duke of Suffolk (1773-1843) and his sister,

the Princess Sophia (1777-1848), had its cachet assured.

Alienation: loss of control and community through interment

The lack of power over the disposal of the physical remains of paupers experienced by their families

can be likened to a kind of dissection; a violation or intrusion into the rights of the body. However

respectfully a pauper funeral was conducted, it demonstrated the deceased’s lack of consequence and

their separation from the rest of society; whilst not exactly equivalent to Entfremdung or Entäussering,

this is alienation and can be informed by Marx’s ideas regarding this concept.74 Losing control over

the body means that power has been appropriated by an external force, which alienates the individual

from their essential capacities and choice. The body becomes alien when it should be familiar.

Physical and social distance reinforced the likelihood that paupers and their bodies would be

constructed as faceless entities and a potentially threatening unknown.

Whilst interment in the churchyard would likely have been favoured by paupers because of its

proximity to family and community, prohibitive private cemetery charges made parish burial, and

hence distant interment, the only option, preventing any real exercise of choice. Metropolitan burial

reform made this appropriation more apparent because the poor had no influence over the location

of the new parish burial ground and they lacked the practical power to take meaningful action and

exert choice. The deprivation of control by paupers over their own bodies and those of their families

reflected the alienation they experienced in life. Poverty acted as a severe structural constraint on

their exercise of choice and the workhouse, that final resort, epitomised a total lack of control,

74 Entfremdung and Entäussering are widely translated as ‘estrangement’ and ‘alienation’ respectively. Whilst the latter can refer to, for example, property, the former is reserved for interpersonal relations: K. Marx, Economic and philosophic manuscripts, in: L.H. Simon (Ed), Karl Marx: Selected Writings, Indianapolis, 1994, 40-97.

18

signifying social segregation and the loss of personal freedoms.75 Practices that applied in life

continued in death, with the Necropolis and Metropolis acting as mirror images of each other, splitting

families and communities and reinforcing control over individuals through their bodies.

London parishes formed the majority of Brookwood’s business, with the majority of burials coming

from South and West London, the areas closest to the Necropolis itself, and the LNNMC terminus at

Waterloo. The company won contracts with many of the inner city parishes between 1853 and 1903,

although records do not show the duration of these arrangements. These were essential to the

LNNMC as they ensured business through preventing parishes from contracting for burials elsewhere;

the heaviest users of Brookwood all held contracts. These were also beneficial to the parishes as they

guaranteed exclusive and spacious burial grounds that catered for all denominations. In the parish

churchyard, the separation of urban living areas was reflected in the division of burial sites; all the

working class were buried in the same area, making an accessible ‘museum’ of their community, which

provided historical roots for an individual’s self-formulation. Whilst this still occurred in the cemetery,

Brookwood’s ‘hygienic’ distance from London prevented working class access because of limited

leisure time and disposable income. Modernity’s spatial paradigm had extended control over the

communal past and broken the long existent relationship between living and dead, a move recognised

by The Times, which commented that

Generations have been born, have lived, and have been buried upon the same spot.

Henceforward the homes of the living are to be separate from the broad lands allotted to the

dead.76

The LNNMC reassured the bereaved that the deceased would still be easily accessible. Placards were

placed in the company trains ‘intimating that cheap return tickets price 2/6 are issued every Sunday

from Waterloo to Brookwood’.77 However, even this ‘low’ fare was beyond the means of many

families.78 Unable to easily access their history, and locate it clearly within a community burial space,

connection was lost with the collective and family of the past. The cemetery thus alienated the poor

from their familial and communitarian roots, separating them from the history of their ‘species-

being’.79 This modern disconnection of the living and the dead ruptured an important dimension of

working-class identity formation, which was strongly grounded in the local scale.80

75 A. Brundage, The English Poor Laws 1700-1930, Basingstoke, 2002.

76 The Times, 14 November 1854, 10.

77 Woking, SHC, 2935/1/2 (1 February 1888).

78 18-21 shillings per week was classified as a ‘moderate poor family’ income: C. Booth, Poverty Map of London, 1889, <http://www.umich.edu/~risotto/imagemap.html>. 79 K. Marx, Economic and philosophic manuscripts. 80 C.E. Harrison, The bourgeois after the bourgeois revolution: recent approaches to the middle class in European cities, Journal of Urban History 31 (2005) 382-392.

19

Through its guarantee of separate plots for all classes, the LNNMC reinforced the modern notion of

individualisation. Whilst a welcome step towards equality of sepulture, the rows of pauper mounds

did not confer any more personality on the occupants then the traditional pit grave because

memorials were still absent and the choice of location rested with the parish. The privilege of erecting

a monument, and the cost of the stonework, was not included in a parish burial. Furthermore, the

funerals took place en masse in the cemetery chapel, contributing to the further homogenisation of

this class, a continuation of their treatment in life as a faceless crowd.81

In the spirit of Loudon, Brookwood offered a picturesque landscape, carefully planted and structured

around meandering walks, ‘as pleasing a picture of repose and rural scenery as can well be desired’.82

Such tranquil and singular beauty was felt to offer consolation to the mourner who, the LNNMC

suggested, would

feel invigorated by the refreshing breezes, wafted through trees, shrubs, and flowers; while his

mind, lifted out of the depression to which it has for some time been subject, by a contemplation

of the broad expanse of the picturesque and noble site of which their departed relative or friend

has become a tenant…will hardly fail to acknowledge that even death is not bereft of consolation.83

Similarly, one contemporary observer suggested that the cemetery’s beauty would comfort the

bereaved poor because

Who knows how the poor and lowly might go back to their lives of struggle and labour soothed,

comforted, braced to new endeavour, by the thoughts that they have left their beloved dead in a

place so beautiful and cared for!84

But how much consolation was gleaned from these unfamiliar surroundings? Cannadine argues that

the new, metropolitan cemeteries were reminiscent of ‘exclusive, middle class suburbs’.85 Leisure for

the working classes was restricted by financial and time constraints, which in London would have

confined them to the city. Although nature in the guise of the great London parks would have been

familiar, the rural expanse of Brookwood Cemetery and its surroundings would have been unknown.

The peacefulness and contrast with the overcrowded London churchyard may indeed have been a

blessing to the bereaved, though the prospect of consigning the deceased to this unknown terrain

may have intensified the sense of disconnection and hence loss.

The archival material suggests that while it was reliant on parish contracts, the LNNMC did not intend

to be a working class cemetery, with all their services and advertising straining to attract higher class

81 D. Cannadine, Class in Britain, London, 2000. 82 Woking, SHC, 6852/7/1/3, 11.

83 Woking, SHC, 6852/7/1/3, 17.

84 Anon, Extramural interments: Woking Cemetery, The Leisure Hour (1856), cited in Clarke, London’s Necropolis, 16.

85 Cannadine, War and death, 192.

20

patrons. At the 1855 AGM, it was noted that ‘a larger proportion of the recent funerals have been of

the better classes’ indicating the company’s initial and continuing preference for a higher class of

occupants.86 The very landscape of the cemetery was alienating for the working classes with its

unfamiliar rural aspect and location acting to further separate them from their families. In the 1887

brochure, the company stated that ‘clearly our obligation does not rest with the dead. The living, also,

have a right to be consulted and considered’ but this principle was not practised with respect to the

working classes.87 Although Brookwood Cemetery catered for the poor, providing them with a low

cost, decent and dignified funeral, it did not serve them, in considering their means and the

importance of community. Death remained the great divider, for the deceased of all classes were

borne away by well-meaning, middle-class reformers into a cemetery based on middle-class ideals.

Conclusion

Although death strikes irrespective of social class, this equality did not extend to the practices

surrounding a Victorian death. The experience of class remained innate to death economies and

cultures as has been illustrated here through the spatialities performed and practiced at Brookwood.

The positioning of the Necropolis in marketing materials, the company’s tenders for those designated

as ‘paupers’ and the maintenance of spatial divisions all signal the multiple and performed nature of

this aspect of social identity. Class demarcation was maintained at Brookwood Cemetery through

spatial division and differential levels of service. Simultaneously, lower tariffs and parish tenders

opened access to paupers and the working class, whose claim to basic, equal rights of interment was

recognised. The LNNMC was actively reformist through extending the levels of inclusion beyond that

necessary to adhere to metropolitan burial reform. Furthermore, this equality of treatment was

unparalleled in contemporary London. Nonetheless, maintaining the class structure within the

reformist discourse offered the potential for companies to both tender for parish contracts and to

attract the ‘better’ classes. The LNNMC ethos of inclusion and its commitment to funeral reform were

genuine. However, their practical implementation was compromised as the middle and upper classes

ceded to social expectation when the moment came for action. Consequently, the strength of

nineteenth-century class values prevented Brookwood from achieving its potential and turned it,

unintentionally, into a pauper cemetery.

86 The Times, 14 February 1855, 5.

87 Woking, SHC, 6852/7/1/3, 5.

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Savage and Miles posit that ‘the Victorian city was…a space which…celebrated…the middle class’,

while Morris observes that middle-class identities were highly dependent on urban spaces.88 In order

to be commercially sustainable, LNNMC operations had to reflect the demands of its potential

customers. The reformist sentiments and social composition of its backers ensured Brookwood

Cemetery a place in an ordered and utilitarian middle-class landscape despite its reliance on paupers,

who eventually composed 80% of the ‘tenants’. The latter were alienated from their community and

families through the lack of choice in interment location and the cemetery’s inaccessibility. This

mirrored the treatment which the destitute experienced in life in the increasingly segregated cities.

While funeral reform achieved a measure of change, the LNNMC’s continuing middle-class character

prevented it from genuinely catering for the needs and aspirations of the working-class majority.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Paul Glennie, Nicola Thomas, David Harvey, Anne-Flore Laloe, Elisabeth Roberts and Huw

Vasey for their support and input during this project. Also, the Surrey History Centre for the use of their archives

and granting permission to publish images. Finally, many thanks to the anonymous reviewers and the editor for

their highly constructive comments.

88 M. Savage and A. Miles, The remaking of the British working class 1840-1940, London, 1994, 60; R.J. Morris, The middle class and British towns and cities of the Industrial Revolution 1780 – 1870, in: D. Fraser, A. Sutcliffe (Eds), The Pursuit of Urban History, London, 1983, 286–305.