Clews & Curios · NYC Stories
The Funeral Train
A Chicago rail line that carried mourners and caskets to the cemeteries — with a saloon conveniently located at every stop.
Chicago in the 1880s had a character all its own — rougher, more sprawling, and perhaps more darkly humorous than even New York. The Chicago & Northwestern funeral train service is a perfect example: a rail line that ferried mourners and caskets from the city to outlying cemeteries, with saloons conveniently positioned at every stop.
It was a blend of commerce and grief that only the Gilded Age could have produced. Count on Chicago, as the original article notes, to have saloons conveniently located next to cemeteries. The funeral train was as much a social occasion as a solemn one — a peculiarly American way of dealing with death.
A Chicago & Northwestern funeral train in service — a peculiarly Gilded-Age way of going to one’s grave.
An article from the Chicago and Cook County Cemeteries website captures a New Year’s Day scene from 1885 that could have come straight from the pages of a Dark Lantern Tales story — a vivid reminder that the Gilded Age was never short on the macabre.
Read at Chicago & Cook County Cemeteries
“Hog Butcher for the World, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and the Nation’s Freight Handler.”
— Carl Sandburg, “Chicago”