Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/London Necropolis Company/archive1

The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted by Karanacs 23:28, 10 July 2011 [1].

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London Necropolis Company

London Necropolis Company (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

• Featured article candidates/London Necropolis Company/archive1

Nominator(s):  – iridescent 16:52, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Depending on your point of view, the LNC was either a visionary attempt to use new technology to solve a public health crisis and to introduce the concept of dignity to funerals for the poor, or it ranks alongside Mirabel Airport and the Atmospheric Railway as one of the great examples of harebrained overengineering schemes. If it's remembered at all today it's generally only as the operator of one of the world's more peculiar railway lines, but it had an enormous impact; the LNC was directly or indirectly responsible for the world's largest cemetery (since overtaken, but still the largest in the UK), the introduction of cremation to England, one of the most important military memorials in the Commonwealth, the resurrection of the cult of King Edward the Martyr, and the creation of the town of Brookwood. – iridescent 16:52, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Source review - spotchecks not done. Nikkimaria (talk) 17:09, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

• Ref 21: why include "(News)" here?
• Note 22: ref link appears to be broken
• Use a consistent date format. Nikkimaria (talk) 17:09, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

• Citations to The Times traditionally have a different citation format than citations to other newspapers, for reasons lost in the dim-and-distant past; the section and column number (in this case "News" and "D") are always included, whereas they're not for other papers. It's why we have the separate {{Cite newspaper The Times}} template. It is worth keeping the section-and-column in, as those are what the Times archives are organized by so it makes it much easier for readers to check the sources for themselves.
• Fixed a missing anchor; should work now.
• As far as I can see, it is consistent (D M Y in text, yyyy-mm-dd in references). Can't see any deviations on a skim-through, but point them out and I'll fix them. – iridescent 17:25, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

• Ref 75 uses yyyy–mm–dd, 152 uses D M Y (for retrieval date). Nikkimaria (talk) 17:33, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

• Fixed it, thanks—an artefact of the "helpful" new editing interface which autocompletes the accessdate field. That's the only online citation in the article, so there shouldn't be any other instances. – iridescent 17:38, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps you have your reasoning, but I was confused as to why the first image did not have a description or a caption that translates its latin motto (which I was intrigued about, and think others might be too). I've translated the motto very approximately and done as per my suggestions above, but obviously revert both if it wasn't what you intended. Good luck with the article, it seems an interesting subject. MasterOfHisOwnDomain (talk) 18:21, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

There was no such thing as the "Logo of the London Necropolis and National Mausoleum Company", in 1852 or otherwise; AFAIK they never used an emblem of any kind other than abstract ornamentation. The concept of "corporate logo" didn't exist until much later (the first is generally considered to be the Bass Beer triangle, trademarked in 1876). This image is the seal of the LNC; I don't see any point in captioning it, but have no strong opinion either way on it if you think it's useful. I'm not sure where your translation has come from, but it's wildly out; "mortuis quies vivis salus" translates to "a good (or healthy) life and a peaceful death", not "rest is the salvation of the dead"; I've changed it. – iridescent 18:54, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

To be fair, I think the idea of that being a logo came from the filename... It is an interesting set of symbols. A skull and crossbones, a sand timer where the sand has run out (with obvious symbolism), and a worm ouroboros. It was a seal they would have used on company documentation? Carcharoth (talk) 23:04, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

Yes, the idea of it being a logo came from the file description, which I believe you yourself uploaded. The translation came from my bog-standard Latin knowledge - I'm glad that yours is better than mine. MasterOfHisOwnDomain (talk) 14:32, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

Support following the comments and discussions below, which have addressed the minor points I raised. The only slight concerns I still have is that the article is a tad long, and the division of the content between different articles is not 100% clear yet (though this will undoubtedly become clearer as the supporting articles are polished up). Overall, a very interesting, informative and well-written article. Carcharoth (talk) 20:46, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

• Just a brief comment, as the mention in the FAC blurb of a military memorial meant I just had to read this article and find out more. The major CWGC memorials in the UK that I've heard of are at Chatham, Portsmouth, Plymouth, Southampton, and Tower Hill, and it's nice to be able to read here (and in the cemetery article) about this one as well, but I'm puzzled as to why this CWGC memorial is being given prominence in an article about the London Necropolis Company. I can understand the article giving details of how the land owned by the LNC was disposed of, or set aside for other purposes, but why have a paragraph (in an article about the LNC) giving the subsequent history of that land while under the management of another organisation (the CWGC)? Did the LNC have anything at all to do with the design and construction of the memorial, or with the military cemeteries in general, and/or did the company get any income or other advantage (e.g. contract work)? I looked at the following CWGC links: [2], [3], [4], [5], [6]. But those don't really go into any detail. Do your sources have anything to say about the relationship between the LNC (or the later cemetery owners) and the CWGC and ABMC? Carcharoth (talk) 21:26, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

• The land was sold to the CWGC (and the US, French, Czech etc equivalents) in 1917 and 1947. (The CWGC didn't exist until May 1917, hence the delay.) The LNC built the American cemetery and the LNC's exhumation division handled the 1949 operation to exhume all Belgian casualties buried across the UK and rebury them in a single plot at Brookwood, but I'm not certain if the CWGC used their own contractors for the main cemeteries and the Brookwood Memorial. To the best of my knowledge, the LNC didn't have any direct benefit from the maintenance of the military cemeteries (there may have been the odd bit of masonry work, gardening etc, and the stations in the cemetery were used as temporary military mortuaries on occasion). There would have been indirect benefits in terms of increased publicity, people visiting the military cemeteries and deciding they wanted to be buried in the civilian cemetery, and so on, but all of that's impossible to quantify. I don't really want to go into too much detail on the military cemeteries in this article, which is explicitly about the company—however, I think they ought to be mentioned, both as an explanation for why the LNC land holdings shrank by 37 acres, and because they're the part of the Brookwood complex with which people are most likely to be familiar so I think people will expect a mention. (The Brookwood Memorial isn't well known these days, but it's a very significant one—its status as the symbolic "grave" for the missing means it's the official memorial site for the all the SOE agents who died in concentration camps, among others.) – iridescent 21:46, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

• Sure, the setting aside of the land for military cemeteries needs to be mentioned (whether it was donations, sales, or both at various times), I'm just concerned that the article then goes into the subsequent history of the military cemeteries and memorials without linking that history to the role played by the LNC. If there was not much of a role played by the LNC, it may be best just to mention the cemeteries and memorials and then move on. Which is pretty much what the article does at the moment. However, what is not made clear is who subsequently managed the cemeteries. If you explicitly mention the IWGC (later CWGC) and ABMC, and their management roles for the cemeteries, that will make things clearer. At the moment, given that it is a cemetery management company, a reader might think that the LNC were responsible for managing those cemeteries, especially as the image caption for the memorial says it was unveiled "in the final months of LNC independence". That the LNC was still in independent existence doesn't seem relevant there - the takeover would not have affected anything, would it? Anyway, it is a fine line between the article being a history of the company or a history of the cemetery. At times it veers into the latter before getting back on track, but I eventually managed to finish reading it (with some minor copyedits), and the article was interesting enough to make me want to visit the cemetery at some point! Carcharoth (talk) 23:03, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

• I've expanded the section slightly to try to clarify the relationships between the LNC, IWGC/CWGC and ABMC. It's a fine line; a lot of countries have cemeteries there and I don't really want an "and the Czech Military Cemetery, and the Belgian Military Cemetery, and the Italian Prisoner of War Cemetery, and the Memorial to Commonwealth Casualties in Russia, and the Free French Military Cemetery, and the Polish Military in Exile Cemetery, and the Sepoy's Cemetery…" laundry list in what's already a very long article, but equally the US and Commonwealth (particularly Canadian) cemeteries are the best-known parts of Brookwood so people will expect to see them mentioned.

  This is explicitly an article on the company, and not Brookwood Cemetery or London Necropolis Railway, but since the cemetery and the railway were the company's main activities, IMO they need to be covered to a significant extent. (I've tried to strip the coverage of both down to the bare bones^[sic] but it's not possible to exclude their histories, since the shifting fortunes of the cemetery and railway defined the ups and downs of the company itself.)

  The fact that the Brookwood Memorial was built before the takeover is important (to my mind). Although I can't find a source to say as much explicitly, when choosing a site for a major national monument the CWGC was far more likely to select a site where the surrounding cemetery was run by a company with a proven 100-year track record in cemetery maintenance, than a site run by the succession of spivs and asset-strippers that ran the LNC from 1959-1985. – iridescent 15:52, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

• Those changes are excellent and address the slight concern I had. I do have a couple of comments on the rest of the article, but will do that separately. If this discursion on the military cemeteries is overwhelming the review, please feel free to move it to the talk page and leave a link in its place. Carcharoth (talk) 22:54, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

• I looked at the sources, and noticed that most of the article is sourced to two books by John M. Clarke. I found a page on the 2004 book here. Not sure if there is a need to include the full title: 'London's Necropolis: A Guide to Brookwood Cemetery'? But what I did want to check is whether these two works, this one and the 2006 work 'The Brookwood Necropolis Railway', are the definitive guides to this company and cemetery? I also looked for a bit more about Clarke, and found this page which says he is the "founding chairman of the Brookwood Cemetery Society and author of three books on the site". My question is whether anyone else has done anything on the cemetery and company comparable to these works by Clarke, or are they the definitive guides? Carcharoth (talk) 23:31, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

• I'm not aware of any authoritative works on the LNC other than Clarke's two books. Brookwood Park Ltd (the former LNC) has a list of publications on their website, and that doesn't mention any other histories of the company as opposed to the cemetery or railway. There are a lot of mentions in fiction and memoirs as a piece of period detail, and a lot of passing mentions of the railway in books on railway history, but to the best of my knowledge there's never been a published history of the LNC other than Clarke's. I see "A Guide to Brookwood Cemetery" as a subtitle rather than part of the title; while it's on the cover it's in very small print, and not on the spine. Worldcat seems split about whether it constitutes part of the title or not. – iridescent 2 11:34, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

Few more general and mostly minor comments:

• Edwin Chadwick linked twice, referred to as Sir once and the Sir is dropped the other time (in the image caption as well).
• Miasma explained in parentheses twice: (i) "the belief that airborne particles released by decaying flesh were the primary factor in the spread of contagious illness"; (ii) "disease-carrying vapour". Do you need both explanations?
• After his initial introduction, Broun is mostly referred to as 'Broun', but there are three instances where the full name creeps back in in different forms, which is an inconsistency: (i) "Sir Richard Broun lobbied vigorously"; (ii) "suggested by Sir Richard Broun"; and (iii) "Although Richard Broun had calculated". The first should be just 'Broun', the second is distant enough in terms of text from the previous mention to be OK, and the third is very distant from the others, but should probably have a 'Sir' added to be consistent.
• Is the 'Waste of Woking' mentioned in an earlier section as the intended purchase for the scheme the same as the actual purchase of the 'Woking Common' mentioned later on? Article is not clear on whether the purchase made was that envisaged by Broun and Sprye. The implication is that it is the same land, but the different name used is confusing.
• Repetition in burial estimates: (i) "The business had been established on the basis that the cemetery would handle between 10,000 and 50,000 burials per year, but the number never exceeded 4,100 and over its first 20 years of operations averaged just 3,200"; (ii) "Although Richard Broun had calculated that over its first century of operations the cemetery would have seen around five million burials at a rate of 50,000 per year"; (iii) "Although at its founding the LNC had hoped to handle 50,000 burials per year and even without being granted a monopoly on London burials had planned for 10,000 per year". Is there a way to reduce this repetition. By the time I read this for the third time (fourth, if you include the lead section, fifth if you include another mention of the 50,000 per year figure), I was getting the distinct (and correct) impression I'd read the figures earlier in the article. Also, the "5,830,500" figure seems to be repeated in the later mention of "5,000,000" (except it has been rounded down).
• Southern Railway (SR) is not linked. Is it the same as the (linked) 'Southern Region of British Railways' mentioned later? Actually, you say in a later bit "British Railways after 1948". I suppose it is South-West Trains now, getting back more to the LSWR days?
• The "in terms of 2011 consumer spending power" bits grate a bit in the main text - can they not be relegated to a footnote?
• Repetition of British Railways bit: (i) "SR (British Railways after 1948)"; (ii) "The LNC continued to lobby the SR and its 1948 successor British Railways".
• Station history repetition: (i) "South Bar continued to operate as a refreshment kiosk"; (ii) "Following the suspension of railway services in 1941 South station had been renamed South Bar, and remained in use as a refreshment kiosk."
• I had thought "The last operators of the refreshment kiosk in the former South station retired in the late 1960s" was repeating the earlier bit, but I see that the earlier bit about the Dendys retiring was the North Station refreshment kiosk.
• Might be worth mentioning that Ramadan Guney died in 2006.
• Hyphenation: should "first class" and "second class" and "third class" be hyphenated in some instances? Other possible hyphenation: "ten year window" (twice), "five year extension" (twice), "83 year old" - there may be other instances as I stopped looking at that point.

OK, most of that is minor nitpicking, but I hope it helps in polishing things up a bit more. Overall, on the second reading, it is still long, but still readable and enjoyable (though I would quail at a third reading), and can't find too much wrong with it. Will wait to see what others have to say, but will likely support. Carcharoth (talk) 00:38, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

• I've removed the double-link to Edwin Chadwick. I've removed the use of "Sir" throughout when referring to knights, other than Lt. Gen. Sir Henry Goldfinch, where I've used his full title. With Richard Broun I've removed "Sir" from the text, but kept it for the explanatory biographical footnote on him, as it compares the real life Sir Richard with the fictional Sir Vavasour. I've also retained the title in the citation to Broun, as that's the name on the book.
• I think the miasma theory (airborne transmission of toxic particles emitted by decaying corpses is the primary cause of disease) and the definition of miasma (air contaminated with such particles) are both concepts so unfamiliar to modern readers that it's worth defining both of them, even though it does mean a slight "didn't I just read this?" moment. Not sure what others think.
• For Richard Broun, I've used his full name in those instances when he hasn't been mentioned for a while. To my eyes, that's less jarring than assuming readers at the bottom of the page will still remember who he was, while avoiding constant repetition of his full name.
• Broun wanted a site at Brookwood, but hadn't specifically selected the site which was actually bought. His original plan was long thin cemeteries of roughly equal size, on both sides of the railway line. After Broun and Spyre left the LNC the plans were changed to include the railway line, which meant that a single cemetery extending a long way from the main line was more practical.
• I know that "planned 50,000 burials per year" is repeated, but can't see an obvious way to avoid it; each time it's used (other than in the section on the original LNC scheme) it's used to contrast the optimistic projections with the 5% of capacity reality. (The "5,000,000 in a century" figure is actually only repeated once. The 5,830,500 is a different figure; that's the theoretical maximum number of individual plots at Brookwood. Because traditional English practice has always been for husbands, wives and children to be buried in the same plot, it doesn't mean that had the cemetery worked to capacity it would have been full in 117 years.)
• Linked Southern Railway, which was the artificially-created company which operated the former LSWR between 1923–48 following the forced amalgamation of most of Britain's railways. South West Trains was created in the 1990s to take over services out of Waterloo; these include about 50% of the former SR.
• Inflation is always problematic. I've intentionally used CPI as the index here, as that's what railway tickets and funeral costs most closely relate to. Because this gives slightly odd results when talking about capital expenditure, I think it's necessary to spell out in full which index is being used. (Using two different indices would I think be too confusing to the reader.)
• I think the repetition of British Railways is probably necessary. It needs to be explained that the SR was only temporary, but I don't really want to introduce railway nationalisation too early as it distracts from the narrative.
• Reworded to remove the repetition.
• Reworded the part about the post-closure cemetery stations to try to make things clearer. The detailed history of these is given on London Necropolis Railway, so I've tried to keep the history on this article to a minimum.
• I'd like to avoid going into detail on the Guney family. Cyril Tubbs's death can be seen in hindsight as marking the start of LNC decline, but the succession from Ramadan to Erkin Guney didn't have any impact on how things were run. Plus, there are certain BLP issues if the Guneys are discussed with any degree of detail.
• I don't really like hyphenation in general. In these particular cases, my thinking is that the LNC didn't hyphenate "first class" etc (and likewise, nor do the present day Network Rail), so hyphens aren't what people reading articles on British railway lines expect to see. – iridescent 18:16, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

Just a few more points, to respond to some of what you said:

• (i) I agree that repetition of the 'Southern Railway (soon to be succeeded by British Railways)' bit is needed, as I now see that the first bit is funerals and the second bit is tickets. But this raises another question. The matter of cheaper tickets you tie up by saying that the LNC abandoned attempts to get cheaper tickets from the rail companies in the 1950s, but I don't think you say when the matter of permission for funerals ended. You say that "coffins were carried in the luggage space of the SR's coaches" - do your sources say when this ended? Have the LNC and its successor companies technically always been permitted to convey coffins to Brookwood on the railways or was the 13 May 1946 agreement about carrying funeral parties on the trains rescinded at some point? (Presumably it is unlikely that anyone nowadays would want to arrange for their last mortal remains to be conveyed by train to Brookwood from London, but you never know).
• (ii) The impression I'm getting is that Woking Common was an area that was part of the 'Waste of Woking', with the latter being larger than the former. What would help, of course, is a map showing the boundaries (if known) of these areas, and also showing the extent of the land originally purchased by the LNC, and what happened to it over the years, and where the current cemetery is located within that. (In colour and animated to show the changes over time would be nice, but might be pushing things a bit far). Do the books you have contain any such maps, or does the text give some indication of the extremities of the land so that people can look it up on a map and get an idea of the bounds or shape of the "2,200-acre tract of land stretching from Woking to Brookwood"? I can see the land extended east from the current cemetery to Woking, but what shape was the land? Maybe say how far it is from Brookwood to Woking if the land stretched all the way to the then-boundaries (which have obviously changed since)?
• (iii) My point about the CPI is not which index is being used, but the formulaic use of 'in terms of 2011 consumer spending power' three times in the main text. It disturbs the flow of the narrative (for me at least). What I was suggesting was that all three calculations and the set wording be made into footnotes accessed by links to the 'Notes' section (or even a separate 'monetary comparisons' notes section). Compare what you are saying in the CPI parentheses to what you are saying in the notes. If the stuff in the notes can be placed there, why can't the CPI stuff also be placed there?
• (iv) Hyphenation: I accept what you say about class of tickets (and have struck that), but the other examples are less easy to justify lack of hyphenation. I think most people would hyphenate in the examples I gave. Above, they are un-hyphenated, the hyphenation I am suggesting is: "ten-year window", "five-year extension", "83-year-old". Elsewhere in the article, you correctly hyphenate "1,500-acre" and "2,200-acre" and "200-acre". And going back to classes (of graves this time), you hyphenate "third-class grave" once (search for '-class'). Article probably needs just a quick check for things like that.
• (v) Repetition: I stand corrected on the 5,830,500 figure. I hadn't realised the 5,000,000 figure is mentioned twice, but now you mention it I see it is mentioned once in numbers and once in words. Maybe the '5,000,000' second mention should be written out in words like the first mention ('five million')?
• (vi) Loose ends: Since the 'logo' is actually a seal, should the file (File:LNC logo.jpg) be renamed to avoid confusion (as seems to have been the case above) and the image description amended so it is not saying it is a logo? The other loose end is the comment I made above about the sources used for the article. Pointing these two comments out in case you missed them earlier.

Carcharoth (talk) 01:31, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

• The details of how, when and why funeral trains were discontinued is covered on the London Necropolis Railway daughter article; by this time the costs and revenues from railway operations were minimal, so I don't really want to give them undue weight on this parent article. After the formation of British Rail new regulations meant coffins needed to be carried in a dedicated coach and couldn't be put in with other freight or passengers, so it meant attaching a goods van to the train purely to carry the coffin. As Brookwood station wasn't designed to handle goods vans, the coffins then had to be unloaded at Woking and driven the last four miles by car. By the time all that cost and inconvenience was factored in, there was no advantage to using the railway. In 1985 British Rail (and its successors) formally stopped carrying coffins. (Dedicated funeral trains are still sometimes used to transport mourners, in cases where the funeral service is a long distance from the burial site and the number of mourners is so high that it would be impractical to travel by road—Princess Diana is an obvious example—but the coffins are transported separately by road or air. A special dispensation was given for the funeral of Jimmy Knapp in 2001, but that was in honour of his links to the railway industry.)
• I can do a map, but it might be more confusing than enlightening. "Waste of Woking" was a derogatory nickname owing to the uselessness of the land for farming, not a formal placename, so doesn't have a "boundary" as such.
• I'll wait to see what others think about the inflation figures. I know some people strongly support making it extremely clear in the text exactly what index is being used, to avoid anyone being misled into confusing capital inflation, wage inflation and price inflation.
• Neutral on hyphenation; my personal preference is to minimize their usage as much as possible. The "200-acre" etc in measurements are an artefact of a template which another user keeps re-adding to this article despite it conferring no benefit.
• The image probably ought to be renamed, but MediaWiki in its wisdom doesn't allow file renames. I've fixed the description on the image page. – iridescent 2 11:27, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

• Thanks for the replies. That addresses or rebuts or leaves uncertain most of the (very minor) points I was making, and now that you've clarified the situation with the sources, I'm happy to support. You may get random editors trying to add hyphens at some point, though, so good luck on that. File renaming (by which I mean moving the file to a different title) has been possible for a few years now (since some point in 2009, I think). See Commons:File renaming. Try it for the local file you have here and see what happens - I was able to get as far as the rename page when I clicked on the 'move' option, so it should work. Oh, and as always, now that I've decided whether to support or not, please feel free to collapse, tidy or move my comments, or ask me to do so, if they are taking up too much room. Carcharoth (talk) 20:41, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

Image review

• Were unearthed remains scattered or stored? Be consistent between captions and article text
• Some of the captions are quite long - consider incorporating into article text
• Captions that are not complete sentences should not end with periods
• "The rate of burials by the LNC was much lower than anticipated and around 80% of graves are unmarked, making Brookwood distinctively uncluttered when compared to other cemeteries." - source? On a quick scan I couldn't find this in the article

Images themselves are unproblematic. Nikkimaria (talk) 13:52, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

• I've clarified that slightly; the charnel houses (bone storehouses) were themselves overwhelmed and bones began to be scattered wherever they'd been dug up, or tossed into pits. The pre-industrial English attitude to death was radically different to today; the belief was that the soul left the body after burial, so other than the relics of saints dead bodies were just considered refuse and treated as such.
• I disagree; the two long captions are explaining the layout of detailed schemes, which aren't obvious to viewers without explanation.
• I can't see any fragmentary captions with periods, unless you mean "Third class coffin ticket, issued between April–September 1925." which I think looks odd without a period.
• That the rate of burials was only 5% of that projected is cited (repeatedly) in the article, as is the fact that 80% of those burials which did take place were in unmarked pauper graves. If the objection is to the statement that other cemeteries are cluttered, to me this is a cite-that-the-sky-is-blue situation. English cemeteries are notoriously overcrowded; the burial crisis the LNC was meant to solve has never been resolved. (This article is a fairly accurate summary of the reality of London burials, and here's a citation that English cemeteries have hit 100% of capacity and the old practice of new-graves-above-the-old has had to be revived.) If you think it's too WP:SYN, the caption could be shortened to "The rate of burials by the LNC was much lower than anticipated and around 80% of graves are unmarked", and allow readers to fill in the blanks. – iridescent 2 11:27, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

Replying here to Nikkimaria's last point above (leaving room for Iridescent to reply up there). On the 80% figure, that bit of information is in this sourced sentence: "While the majority of burials conducted by the LNC (around 80%) were pauper funerals on behalf of London parishes [...]". The pauper burials were unmarked, as far as I'm aware. The bit about the rate of burials being much lower than anticipated is present several times in the article text (search for '50,000' and '203,041' - both appear together twice). Or are you asking for a source for 'distinctively uncluttered when compared to other cemeteries'? Carcharoth (talk) 03:27, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

Support I worked at Brookwood Hospital many years ago and therefore was vaguely aware of the cemetery, but I had no idea about the LNC & this article has provided a comprehensive, well written and referenced insight.— Rod ^talk 15:53, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

Support, with just a few niggles.

• Lead:
  • "Formally" or "formerly"? If the name was only until 1927, it doesn't make sense (to me) to use "formally" here, since it's not NOW known that way formally.
  • Does cemetary REALLY need linking?
• Background:
  • Again, really don't need the link to cemetary here. Or graveyard.
  • "Decaying corpses contaminated the water supply and the city suffered regular epidemics of cholera, smallpox, measles and typhoid..." this implies the the cemetaries were the sole source of the epidemics - they probably contributed, but the living conditions also had a part in the epidemics. Can we reword this to avoid the implication that the cemetaries are solely responsible?
• Formation:
  • "The former Woking Common, owned by the Earl of Onslow at Brookwood was chosen as the site for the new cemetery." Is there supposed to be a comma after Brookwood? It just looks weird to me with only one comma.
• Tubbs:
  • "The LNC was hired by the US government to landscape this area and build a chapel, creating American Military Cemetery (later the Brookwood American Cemetery and Memorial), the only burial ground in Britain for US casualties of the First World War." shouldn't it be "...creating the American Military Cemetary..."?
• End:
  • The second paragraph repeats a great deal of information found in the fourth paragraph of the Closure section - any way this duplication can be eliminated?
  • What is a "day return ticket"?
• Legacy:
  • "The Guney's efforts to attract new custom..." do you mean "Guney's efforts..." or "The Guney family's efforts..."?
  • "...and the principles established by the LNC influenced the design of many other cemeteries worldwide." What principles are these?
• General note - why are the footnotes duplicated? I noted this, "On 13 April 1927 Cyril Tubbs died, after almost 40 years as surveyor, general manager and later a director of the LNC.[2] Shortly afterwards, during meetings of the LNC's shareholders on 16 June and 14 July 1927, the words "National Mausoleum" were formally dropped from the LNC's name, the company being officially renamed the London Necropolis Company.[2] On 28 December 1927 George Barratt, who had worked for the LNC for 63 years and been Superintendent of Brookwood Cemetery for 41 years, also died.[2]" but there are other spots where the refs could usefully go at the end of consecrutive sentences, which you've done elsewhere in the article. There is another run of this sort in "after the takeover", first paragraph.

Otherwise, sources look okay, links checked out with the link checker tool. I ran the article through Coren's tool and Earwig's tool and nothing showed up in regards to plagiarism with those tools. Ealdgyth - Talk 00:28, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

• "Formally", not "formerly". It was officially the London Necropolis & National Mausoleum Company until 1927, as it was created by Act of Parliament and that was the name the law decreed, but because the National Mausoleum never existed they never used the name and all their documents, signs etc just read "London Necropolis Company" or "London Necropolis". There's an explanatory footnote linked from the initial sentence, but I don't really like to clutter the lead with a long explanation of the name;
• Yes, "cemetery" and "graveyard" definitely need linking. The distinction between a graveyard and a cemetery is absolutely critical, since it was the banning of graveyards and their enforced replacement by cemeteries that led to the LNC's creation in the first place. Because graveyards have been illegal in London for over 150 years and very few remain, and given that a disproportionate number of this article's readers will presumably be in London, a lot of readers won't be familiar with the concept;
• Reluctant to reword that. We know now that the graveyards weren't responsible for the epidemics, but Western medical orthodoxy at the time was the miasma theory, in which graveyards (and other sources of decayin flesh such as slaughterhouses) were the sole cause of contagious disease, hence the rush to abolish graveyards and replace them with cemeteries;
• Reworded;
• Fixed;
• A day return ticket is a ticket for travel to a place and back on the same day. If I include an explanation it will look very strange to most readers, since it's the standard ticket type in Britain (single tickets usually cost the same as a day return, so are rarely sold) and it will look as incongruous as giving a definition of "horse" on every racehorse article;
• "The Guney family's". Reworded to make it clearer;
• I've cited each sentence rather than single-citation-at-the-end-of-the-paragraph in places where I think it's reasonably likely subsequent editors will add further information in between. I know some people dislike it, but to my mind it makes an article more stable as there's less risk of facts becoming detached from their sources. – iridescent 17:03, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

• Fine with all of the above explanations, except for the day return. There are 300 million English readers in the US who will have no clue on what the ticket is. And perhaps others around the world too. Can't just write for the Brits... Ealdgyth - Talk 17:06, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

• Changed it to "return tickets for same-day travel from London to Brookwood and back", although I'll wager someone will change it back. – iridescent 17:14, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

Support with the following niggles:

• Lede:
  • "... closure of London's existing graveyards in 1851."

    I think "existing" is unnecessary.

  • "London did arrange for the LNC ..."

    "London arranged for the LNC ..." (more succinct)

• Background:
  • "Edwin Chadwick testified that each year ..."

    There is no context to know what role/importance Chadwick had here (expecting readers to go to another link to find out may not be reader-friendly).

• Formation of the London Necropolis Company:
  • "... the private Act of Parliament authorising the scheme bound the LSWR to carry corpses ..."

    "... the private Act of Parliament authorised the scheme bound the LSWR to carry corpses ..." (tense issue)

• Brookwood Cemetary:
  • "... a Committee of Enquiry into the mismanagement of the company recommended the ..."

    I think "setup to look" should be inserted after "Enquiry", should it?

• Cemetary railway line:

  • "... was poorly suited as a railway trackbed."

    "... was poorly suited for a railway trackbed."?

• London railway stations:
  • "The arches of the huge brick viaduct ... were easily converted into mortuaries."

    Am I reading this correctly? The arches of a bridge were hollow and used as rooms? Do we mean the "piers" of the viaduct (i.e. the pillar[s] of an arch) or the spaces under the arches?

• Burials:
  • "A first class funeral allowed the person buying the funeral to select ..."

    "A first class funeral allowed its buyer to select ..."

  • "... at the time of opening prices began at £2 10s ..."

    I recommend a comma in between "opening" and "prices" to reduce possible confusion.

  • "Although the LNC was forbidden from using mass graves (other than the burial of next of kin in the same grave) and thus even the lowest class of funeral provided a separate grave for the deceased, third class funerals were not granted the right to erect a permanent memorial on the site."

    "Although ... and thus ..." does not seem to sound right... suggest "The LNC was forbidden from using mass graves other than the burials of next of kin in the same grave; thus even the lowest class of funeral provided a separate grave for the deceased. However, third class funerlas were not granted the right to erect a permanent memorial on the site."

• Developments and difficulties
  • "While some parishes did choose Brookwood ..."

    "While some parishes chose Brookwood ..." (succinct)

  • "... had led to only 15,000 of the 25,000 LNC shares being sold, ..."

    "... had led to the sale of only 15,000 of the 25,000 LNC shares, ..."

  • "With far fewer burial contracts with London parishes then had been ..."

    "With far fewer burial contracts with London parishes than had been ..." (typo?)

  • "While this left 1,300 acres (2.0 sq mi; 5.3 km2) theoretically able to be sold, ..."

    "While this left 1,300 acres (2.0 sq mi; 5.3 km2) theoretically for sale, ..."

  • "While 214 acres (0.33 sq mi; 0.87 km2) were bought by the government as sites for prisons and a lunatic asylum, the LNC struggled to sell the remainder."

    "After selling 214 acres (0.33 sq mi; 0.87 km2) to the government as sites for prisons and a lunatic asylum, the LNC struggled to sell the remainder."

• End of LNC independence:
  • "... even without being granted a monopoly on London burials had planned ..."

    I recommend a comma between "London" and "burials" to reduce possible confusion.

  • "Even with the unusually large individual 9-by-4-foot (2.7 × 1.2 m) grave sites offered by the LNC for even the cheapest burials, ..."

    The second "even" seems repetitive and redundant.

• Image:
  • Would you consider using File:Great Seal of the London Necropolis Company.svg for the lede image?
• Miscellanous:
  • Page 824 of the Joint Stock Companies Directory for 1867 states that the 15,000 stocks yielded 150,000 pounds sterling of startup capital. The names of the directors, bankers, etc. are also listed. Is this information useful for inclusion?

I think the above issues I raised should be easy to address or resolve, so I am not withholding my support here. I had not read an article about a graveyard before, and this one had an interesting past. It made me wonder what would be the situation now if the venture did take off and 5,000,000 bodies are piled in that location... Jappalang (talk) 13:12, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

• Agreed, removed;
• I think "some parishes did arrange" is more accurate in this context than "some parishes arranged". The difference is subtle, but it exists;
• Added "Commissioner and sanitation campaigner" to Chadwick; I don't really want to go into too much detail on him as he's a fairly tangential figure (his rival scheme was rejected);
• The wording "the private Act of Parliament authorising the scheme bound the LSWR to carry corpses" is correct. The Act which authorised the LNC, compelled the LSWR to work with it;
• No; commissions of enquiry are "Commission on topic", not "Commission set up to look into topic"—c.f. Warren Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals in Canada, Royal Commission on London Government etc etc;
• No, "poorly suited as" is correct;
• "Railway arch" is absolutely standard British English for "the space beneath an arch supporting a railway line". When Transport for London offer to sell you a railway arch they're selling the space beneath it, not the actual bridge;
• Reworded;
• Can't see the problem here, but feel free to add a comma if you think it's necessary;
• Same reply as previously on the semantic difference between "chose" and "did choose";
• To my eyes "had led to the sale of only 15,000 of the 25,000 LNC shares" is a jump to US grammar which would grate in a Br-Eng article, but I've no strong opinion;
• Fixed;
• "Able to be sold" isn't a synonym of "for sale"; the current wording is deliberate;
• No. "After selling 214 acres they struggled to sell the remainder" implies a chronology of events which isn't accurate;
• They wanted a "monopoly on London burials", not a "monopoly on London"; a comma would be misleading;
• I don't think SVG files containing text should ever be used; they look terrible in a lot of browsers. I wouldn't use this particular one regardless, as it's subtly but distinctly inaccurate. (The actual seal uses varying font sizes to slightly reduce the prominence of "London" and "Company" and emphasise "Necropolis & National Mausoleum"; plus, the SVG is displaying in the wrong font on my browser at least.);
• I definitely don't want to list the directors, since the LNC in this period was going through repeated changes of board; it would look very odd to list one set but not any of the others, but listing all of them would mean a huge laundry-list. I don't think it's particularly useful to mention the £150,000 raised from the initial stock issue, since it was never the primary source of capital and the other income streams aren't quantified. – iridescent 17:03, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

• No problems, I stand by my support. Jappalang (talk) 22:29, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.