The Down Passage

Abstract

This chapter explores how the ‘down’ trains carried large numbers of the walking wounded, the terminally ill, the maimed and the weak, as well as ‘healthy’ migrants with cash savings who were being repatriated to Mozambique. The down train had ‘hospital coaches’ but no doctors or, for many decades, trained medical orderlies. On occasion, the corpses of migrants were robbed of their wages. The bodies of those who died on the journey home were taken off the train and subjected to post-mortems with body parts sometimes removed for the purpose of medical research.