Beneath the Grave – Ghosts of the Central Line

Good evening, fright-fans, it is I, Tom, your extravagantly-cleavaged Master of the Dark [picture inadmissable]. As Halloween approaches with the inevitability of death, I thought an appropriately-themed entry might be in order. As last year’s entry on the ghosts haunting the Northern Line was so popular, I figured I might continue the theme with the hauntings on the old Central London Railway or, as the kids call it nowadays, the Central Line. Mind the gap…

Northolt

You’ve all heard of the Beast of Bodmin, but did you know there was a Beast of Northolt? In the early 1990s, there were several sightings of a big cat alongside the Central Line between Northolt and Greenford. Accounts vary as to the species of cat, although most seem to settle on “puma.” Whence it came and how it got to Northolt without being noticed remain to be explained.

Marble Arch

If you should find yourself leaving Marble Arch late at night, when the station is quiet, you may find yourself being followed up the escalator. Several people have reported a sinister man in 1940s clothing who they sense close behind them on the escalator and see out of the corner of their eye. Upon turning around completely, the man vanishes. Again, no explanation has been offered as to who this restless spirit might be.

British Museum

Perhaps the most unlikely ghost out of the many on the Underground was sighted at this now-closed station. The ghost would, so the story goes, appear at one end of the platform and walk to the other, wailing mournfully. What marked this particular spectre out, however, was the fact that he was dressed in the clobber of an Ancient Egyptian. Being the intelligent and probably very sexy reader that you are, you’ve no doubt figured out why there might be an Ancient Egyptian haunting British Museum Station. To be more specific, the Egyptian is said to have some sort of link to the so-called Unlucky Mummy (pictured right), a sarcophagus lid in the Museum that is said to be cursed. This is just one of many legends attached to it, the most interesting of which says that it was responsible for sinking the Titanic.

Even bearing in mind that I’m a sceptic, I’m inclined to take this one with a pinch of salt. The accounts are lacking in detail and only emerged shortly before the station was closed down. I’m inclined to believe it was the invention of a journalist looking for a spooky story. Nevertheless, the story persists, albeit with the ghost now haunting Holborn. Why Holborn and not the closer Russell Square or Tottenham Court Road stations? It is a mystery.

Chancery Lane

Chancery Lane has plenty of secrets of its own, but in the tunnels between here and Holborn, there’s said to be one more surprise. During the 1960s,drivers stopping at signals here would often be freaked out by the appearance of a man standing next to them in the cab. Apparently some sort of fellow crewman, he would be staring straight ahead, and would vanish as soon as the train pulled away.

Bank

I covered the manife-stations (see what I did there) at this stop in last year’s entry, but I thought I’d mention that it’s a haunted station on the Central Line for those pedants who’ll leave comments if I don’t.

Liverpool Street

This terminus is built on the site of a plague pit and one of the several incarnations of the notorious Bedlam. The building of this and neighbouring Broad Street Station involved the disturbance of many final resting places, so really it would be surprising if there were no hauntings here. Sure enough, Liverpool Street and environs are said to be haunted by the ghastly screams of a woman.

The most popular suggestion for the screamer is one Rebecca Griffiths, an inmate at Bedlam in the late 18th century whose illness included a compulsive need to hold on to a particular coin. Upon her death, one of the staff (who were not known for their selflessness) stole it from her lifeless fingers and Rebecca’s inconsolable spirit searches for it still.

More recently, in 2000, the Line Controller sighted a man in white overalls in the tunnels who should not have been there. He sent the Station Supervisor to investigate, who found nothing. What made this particularly peculiar was that the Supervisor found no man down there – even though the Controller could see the man on the CCTV screen right next to him.

Bethnal Green

I’ll finish with the Easternmost of the haunted Central Line stations that I’m aware of, and one of the most frightening hauntings. This one is traceable to a specific incident that took place on 3rd March 1943. As often happened in the East End at that time, when the air raid siren sounded, the local people made for the Tube station. Unfortunately, on this night it had been decided to carry out a test-firing of an experimental new type of rocket in nearby Victoria Park. Panicked by what sounded like a very nearby explosion, the crowds surged forward. A woman on the stairs lost her footing and fell, taking several others with her and causing further panic, which in turn worsened the stampede and the crush inside the station. 173 people were killed in the disaster, crushed or asphyxiated. For reasons of morale, the Bethnal Green incident was covered up until 1946.

From 1981 onwards, however, there were reports of an extremely unnerving nature from the station. Staff working late at night spoke of hearing screams – at first one or two, then more and more, clearly identifiable as women and children. These screams would go on for up to fifteen minutes before dying down.

There you have it, readers. I hope you enjoy your Halloween this year and whatever you do, don’t have nightmares…

Give my regards to Broad Street

As regular readers will know, I’m fascinated by abandoned railway stations. Almost as fascinating, though, are the dilapidated ones, the ones that haven’t changed since some time in the early 1980s, shabby, echoey and grubby. Trains are few and far between, as are passengers. I don’t know why I love them so much, maybe it’s because such places feel undisturbed, like I have some sort of privileged access to them. Or maybe it’s just because I’m unbelievably strange and perverted.

For these reasons and more, I wish I’d had the opportunity to visit the terminus at Broad Street. Poor, poor Broad Street. If the London termini were people, Broad Street would be a pitiful drunk sitting in a bar telling everyone how he “used to be somebody.”

It started out so well. Broad Street was originally built by the cumbersomely-named East & West India Docks & Birmingham Junction Railway. The aim of this company was, as its name suggests, basically to make its fortune transporting goods from the Docklands to the London & Birmingham Railway. In this, it succeeded admirably. An early amendment was to change its name to the snappier “North London Railway.”

Commuter traffic was initially a secondary consideration for the NLR – they ran passenger trains fo’ sho’, but this was more of a “we might as well” measure than anything else.  To the surprise of the company directors, though, it turned out that their passenger trains into Fenchurch Street (run by arrangement with the London and Blackwall Railway, who owned that terminus) were very popular indeed. This despite the fact that the NLR took a ridiculously circuitous route around London before reaching Fenchurch Street, no less than 44 miles.

It was therefore decided that the NLR could afford to take a gamble on getting more direct access to the City. Particularly since the London and North Western Railway (of which the aforementioned London & Birmingham Railway was now part) offered to stump up much of the cost in exchange for use of such an extension.  The LNWR also supplied a designer, their own engineer, William Baker. The site of the new terminus was to be at the end of a branch from Kingsland, on the junction of Liverpool Street and Broad Street.

Construction was not without its difficulties. Building through crowded East London necessitated the demolition of many crowded streets – the NLR undertook to provide a cheap workers’ train from Dalston, but those forced out decided they’d rather walk and just moved to the neighbouring streets, making them yet more crowded. Excavation revealed some sort of medieval mass grave whose origins were not known – one theory had it that, as one of Bedlam’s several incarnations was nearby, this had been where its dead were buried.

Nevertheless, in 1865 the station opened. Alan A. Jackson describes the architectural style as “really rather horrid,” which I think is perhaps going a bit too far. The Illustrated London News was more charitable, describing the style as “mixed Italian.” Perhaps it is a bit over-elaborate for the size of the terminus. Oddly, we don’t know who the architect was – presumably William Baker had assistance, but from whom is unrecorded.

One ingenious feature to make the most of the very expensive land was to build the goods depot requested by the LNWR under the station, with wagons lowered by a hydraulic lift. As a result, whatever architectural merits the station may have lacked, it was undeniably an efficient use of space, taking up a mere 2½ acres in total.

The NLR nicknamed the station its “happy afterthought,” for it was immediately popular with commuters and rapidly became the third-busiest terminus in London. At the beginning of the 20th century, more than one train a minute left the station, serving such varied destinations as Richmond, Chalk Farm, Bow, Watford, Kingston, High Barnet, Kew, Potters Bar, Mansion House, Kensington Olympia and even Birmingham.

Unfortunately, this prosperity was not to last. As it turned out, the success of Broad Street was largely based on the fact that it had a monopoly on fast commuter trains. As the Tube, tram and bus networks expanded, so people turned to those instead. The NLR desperately advertised their service as “the open-air route,” but no one fell for it.

In 1911, when passenger numbers reached their lowest since the station’s opening, the LNWR decided that electrification was in order – as has been mentioned before, this was seen as terribly clean and modern. This did seem to slow the decline considerably, but services never entirely recovered.

During the Second World War, many of the East London stations were severely damaged by enemy action, and it was decided after the end of the conflict that it wasn’t worth fixing them up again. The service to Poplar (which was rather unPoplar with passengers) was cut altogether. Broad Street itself had been hit, and again, it was not considered worth repairing.

The main station building was abandoned altogether in the 1950s and replaced by a couple of smaller buildings on the concourse. Traffic at this stage was so poor that only two staff were needed for the entire terminus.

In 1963 British Railways declared their intention to close the place altogether, but were thwarted by local opinion. Instead, BR carried out what is known in railway circles as “closure by stealth,” i.e. not officially closing the station but instead making the station so useless as to render it undesirable to keep open. To this end, services were diverted or cut altogether and maintenance was cut to the bare minimum. Part of the overall roof was removed in 1967 which, as you can see above left, gave the station a half-complete look. By the 1980s, only one platform was needed to accommodate the pathetically small number of passengers. Demolition of the rest began in 1985 and final closure came in 1986.

Although the North London Railway mostly survives as part of the Overground and Docklands Light Railways, nothing remains of old Broad Street. The Broadgate Estate was built on top of it, so it couldn’t be reopened even if anyone wanted to (and they don’t).

And it showed such promise.

Snow-ho

I’m almost certainly going to regret that title. Anyway, I’m feeling a little under the weather at present, so appropriately enough I’m going to talk about Dr John Snow of Soho.

Not this one, silly!

Dr Snow was a Soho doctor of the nineteenth century. He was a fastidious man – a teetotaller and vegetarian who would only drink water that had first been boiled.

 

Given the state of drinking water in London at the time, you might think this was quite sensible.Except that at the time, nobody knew that disease could be transmitted by bad water. In fact, Snow was the one who discovered this.

 

See, at the time, nobody really knew how disease was spread. The most popular theory was that it was caused by “miasma” or foul air. In some ways, the theory made perfect sense. After all, outbreaks of disease tended to occur most frequently in poor, squalid and filthy areas, which also had a tendency to smell pretty funky.

 

Therefore, the idea seemed pretty sound.

However, there were other theories. For instance, they hadn’t yet ruled out freaky ground gases, atmospheric electricity or moral depravity.

 

1848 saw an outbreak of cholera in London more severe than had ever been witnessed before. Cholera is a vile disease. It begins with severe vomiting and diarrhoea and ends with renal failure and death. At its worst, it can kill within hours of becoming apparent. Rehydration is vital (one possible derivation of the term is the Greek word ”khole,” or “drainpipe”), although these days the disease can be treated with antibiotics.

 

As the disease felled thousands across Britain, something didn’t ring true about the miasma theory to Snow. First of all, if it was caused by miasma, shouldn’t it have killed, for example, sewage workers first of all? Secondly, the spread of the disease in Dumfries didn’t fit the theory – Dumfries was regarded as an airy, healthy place to live.

 

It seemed to the good doctor that the miasma theory stank. So what was the common cause? Why was it that some streets were unaffected and others were blighted?

He set about collecting statistics, and realised that it was in the water. The streets that were affected all got their water from certain pumps. 

 

The fact that the water supply in London was revolting was nothing new. This famous cartoon, entitled Monster Soup, was published in 1827. The caption below reads, “MONSTER SOUP commonly called THAMES WATER being a correct representation of that precious stuff doled out to us!!!” Two years previously, the water in the Fleet River had become so noxious that it had actually exploded, destroying part of Clerkenwell. Not even joking.

 

The problem was that London’s sewage system was wholly inadequate for the demands placed upon it by the rapid growth of the population in the early nineteenth century, not to mention the increasing popularity of Joseph Bramah’s exciting invention, the “Water Closet” of 1778 (no, Thomas Crapper did not invent it). Sewage either went into the wholly inadequate Roman/medieval sewage system or had to be collected in cesspools which you’d then have to pay to have emptied. In many poor areas, they couldn’t afford to have the pools emptied. They would overflow – contaminating the clean water the people were supposed to drink.

 

In 1842, Edwin Chadwick figured that the problem would be alleviated by connecting all homes to the existing sewer system. Wrong! In fact, this only served to drain the overworked sewers directly into the Thames. That would be the same Thames that the water companies drew from. So not only were the poor still suffering, but the rich who could afford to pay the water company rates were also becoming infected. D’oh!

 

Snow published his theory in 1848. It was ignored. Then 1854 saw another outbreak of cholera in Broad Street (now Broadwick Street), close to Snow’s surgery. Snow immediately set to work researching the spread of the disease, and concluded that everyone (everyone) on Broad Street who had the disease drank from the Broad Street pump. A number of children living in the area had come down with the disease – their school drew water from the pump. An old woman in Hampstead had died of cholera – she had water delivered from Broad Street because she preferred the taste (“Mmm! Tastes like pathogens!”).

 

He presented this pretty strong evidence to the parish council, and the pump handle was immediately removed. The outbreak ended almost immediately. Later research revealed that a cesspit had leaked into the water. Yum yum.

Despite this, the Powers that Be weren’t entirely keen on this whole waterborne disease idea, largely because the idea of poo in the water was just totally gross. The concept was opposed in no small part by the water companies, which I like to imagine as consisting of enormously fat men in waistcoats.

Father Thames introduces the kids - Scrofula, Diptheria and Cholera.

See, if Snow’s theory was correct, then fairly obviously they were in a lot of trouble. They would have no choice but to accept the complaints made against them over the years, that the water was fit for neither man nor beast. People wouldn’t pay top dollar to drink someone else’s wee (except for certain fetishists). Worse still, Chadwick’s earlier report had recommended that the Thames be abandoned altogether as a source of water, which would have meant ruination for those fat men in waistcoats.

William Farr

It wasn’t until 1866 that the Fitzrovia-based Dr William Farr pointed out that, frankly, this was getting silly. There was another outbreak, clearly waterborne, which subsided as soon as people stopped taking water from the Old Ford reservoir in East London. He finally managed to persuade the Powers that Be of the theory, and improvements in sewage and water treatment virtually eliminated the disease in the developed world.

Alas, Snow had died of a stroke in 1858 at the age of just 45. Nonetheless, Farr’s work vindicated him and he now occupies his rightful place in the medical hall of fame as the founder of modern epidemiology. Today he is also commemorated by a memorial in Broadwick Street.

It consists of a pump. With no handle.

John Snow. Not pictured: cholera

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Further reading

http://londonparticulars.wordpress.com/2009/08/12/west-end-boy/ – Herein is a photo of the memorial.