DARK CORNERS: A funeral tram delivered corpses in Prague. Do you know Black Mary?
It’s like urban legends. Just that, unlike the black ambulance, this was true. A black tram with a cross ran in Prague during the First World War. And she drove the dead soldiers from the hospital directly to the cemeteries. All the horses were at the front.
Motor car number 152 had a strange fate. In 1717, after seventeen years of normal service on Prague rails, they painted a giant white cross on its side and arranged the interior so that it could carry four coffins in the longitudinal direction. The funeral tram was definitely not just in legends. It took to the streets of Prague on October 22, 1917, after the city management decided to do so. Horses, including wagons, served on the war front, and there was a lack of resources in the city to get the deceased soldiers to military cemeteries. If trams could carry the wounded, food or coal or garbage, why not corpses.
Prague has been transporting the dead since 1912, after the cemeteries were built in Ďáblice and Hostivař. “Electric companies were inspired mainly in Milan, Italy. Because the new cemetery – Cimitero Maggiore – was about seven kilometers from the original, it proved necessary to provide the necessary transport links for the deceased and the bereaved, “reads the book New Secrets of Prague, published in 2019 by Grada. The chapter on the black tram was supplemented with post-productions by graphic artist Adam Bartas, with whose permission we also publish them on our Metro.cz website.
A tram with the deceased arrives at the cemetery in Milan, the year is 1915.
In Italy, they had a funeral tram adapted so that it could serve two funerals at once. It was divided into two parts, one in each section being a place for a coffin and a bench for eight mourners. The wreaths were set up, as were the suitcases. The clergyman had his own cabin in the tram. Tram tracks in Milan next door directly to the cemetery. The trams in Rome and, for example, Buenos Aires, were in a similar situation, see the gallery for the article.
However, Prague did not have such a “funerally caught” tram. Plans were thwarted by the First World War, and the city later dealt with a rather massive removal of corpses from the hospital. At the same time, they already had the tracks, there were eighteen ambulances that took the experienced from the station to the hospitals. Four of the deceased entered the rebuilt car, their coffins being operated by tilting sides. She had a cross not only on her side, but also on a round lamp on the roof. The tram was called Černá Máry and in Prague until June 17, 1919 it carried 1,042 dead soldiers. It is interesting that the car was then in normal operation for eleven years. Of course, rebuilt and repainted, the cross on the roof was replaced by numbers.