Khalid Sheldrake: The East Dulwich man who would be King | Hacker News Reader

Khalid Sheldrake: The East Dulwich man who would be King

nationalarchives.gov.uk

59 pointsGeekette31 comments

In 1928 he conducted the funeral service of Sayaid Ali, an elephant keeper at London Zoo who had been murdered in his bed by a rival elephant keeper. The service was held at Waterloo station, after which the coffin was taken on the Necropolis Railway to the Muslim section of Brookwood Cemetery.

History is often stranger than fiction. The Necropolis Railway is definitely worth a read if you haven’t heard of it before: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Necropolis_Railway

>to prevent both mourners and cadavers from different social backgrounds from mixing

It's always fascinating reading about England's very complicated social class system. Other than the aristocracy being rich, does this still hold up today? Is there still inherent benefit from being a traditionally upper class family, even if they don't have generational wealth still?

The closer you get to London, the more it matters.

Money is not central to the system: it is possible and even common to be in one of the middle classes with virtually no income. However this may not work for the upper class since lack of money would preclude taking part in many social occasions.

Yes. For example 2 prime ministers of the last ten years were educated at the same school (Eton).

Whatever its actual merit and financial requirements for attendance, it is a symbol of aristocracy and class.

That it is (and similar institutions are) still massively over-represented in the life paths of the Great and Good is telling.

you bet there is

Can you provide some examples?

I consider myself a pretty egalitarian dude. That accent still makes me stand to attention internally. I hate it. (And I haven't had much exposure to it in real life, so I suspect it's because its baked into our media landscape).

The problem with egalitarianism is that it leads to chaos, as we're now seeing in the UK. The old system was better.

‘That accent’ is received pronunciation, I’m guessing?

The public school accent I'm thinking of is a notch plummier than RP.

Closely related: the Mortuary Railway Station[0] in Sydney, Australia, with services to Rookwood Cemetery[1]. They barely bothered to change the names.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regent_Street_railway_station

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rookwood_Cemetery_railway_line

ah, yes, good old Necropolitan Line. I first learned about it in "The Fuller Memorandum", a Laundry Files novel by cstross.

The Necropolis Railway also features in the Basil Copper novel Necropolis (1980).

At the time the largest cemetery in the world, Brookwood Cemetery was designed to be large enough to accommodate all the deaths in London for centuries to come, and the LNC hoped to gain a monopoly on London's burial industry.

There is something amusing about how incredibly ambitious they were, yet they completely missed the mark on how many people would live (and die) in London in the following centuries.

> Khalid performed the ceremony over the Channel with Gladys taking the name Khair ul Nissa.

"Khair ul* Nissa"?! This cannot be a coincidence? That was also the name of a young Hyderabadi noblewoman who married the earlier English convert to Islam, James Achilles Kirkpatrick** [1][2]. It caused controversy in Hyderabadi society at the time, but after Kirkpatrick's death, it became widely(?) seen in England as having been a devoted relationship and a very romantic story. IIRC it was Thomas Carlyle who said Kirkpatrick had "scaled walls for" Khair un Nissa. So I will guess that Gladys had heard that story.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Achilles_Kirkpatrick

[2] Dalyrumple. White Mughals.

* Shouldn't that be "un"?

** How good is that name?

Whether that should be "un", Wikipedia[1] lists both ul- and un- for the name. I'd also have thought the transliteration to take into account Sun letter assimilation rule. Perhaps it was less established, or not so well known to the author.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gladys_Milton_Palmer

Dalrymple

Thanks.

> In 1928 he conducted the funeral service of Sayaid Ali, an elephant keeper at London Zoo who had been murdered in his bed by a rival elephant keeper.

The police records aren't digitized (https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C1257682), but the "Murder Mile Podcast" seems to have done a fairly complete episode on this case, transcript here: https://www.murdermiletours.com/blog/murder-mile-uk-true-cri...

> In 1928 he conducted the funeral service of Sayaid Ali, an elephant keeper at London Zoo who had been murdered in his bed by a rival elephant keeper.

This sentence begs for an entire blog post of its own.

Yeah, very curious about how there is this calibre of high stakes drama and intrigue among 1920s elephant keepers.

James Brooke becoming the monarch of Sarawak is another interesting case.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Brooke

Very interesting, I had not heard of the Brookes but the last crown price died here in New Zealand in 2011, being a an heir to a biscuit fortune. There was actually a connection between Sheldrake and the Brookes family.

The name "Sheldrake" seems to coincide with colourful characters! The only other instances I know of are the Sheldrake family consisting of:

* Rupert, biologist turned crank scientist.

* Merlin, science populariser.

* Cosmo, musician.

oh wow, I live just round the corner from there. I guess I'll go check out if there's still a mosque there

So do I!

There’s a mosque on North Cross Road but that’s only about 35 years old.

So long as it is not Dunwich.

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