Details of the funeral for Duke of Wellington (1852)

The programme for the funeral ran as follows: “The remains of His Grace will remain at Walmer until four days before the funeral, which will take place between the 17th and 19th of November. They will then be removed to Chelsea Hospital, where the body will lie in state for three days, and on the evening before the solemnity it will be removed to the Horse Guards.

“On the morning of the funeral, the funeral cortège will be formed at the Horse Guards, and will proceed by Charing Cross, the Strand, Fleet Street, and Ludgate Hill, to St Paul's.

“Six regiments of infantry, eight squadrons of cavalry, and 17 guns, will take part in the procession, that being the number of troops to which His Grace is entitled by his rank in the army.

A body of marines will also form part of the cortège, which will be headed by 83 veterans from Chelsea Hospital, who shared in the Duke's campaigns, the number 83 representing the years to which His Grace has attained.”

The reported continued: “With a view of diminishing at much as possible the delay inseparable from a long file of carriages, it is intended to make the procession as much as possible a walking one, and to dispense, as far as consistent with the solemnity of the occasion, with an unnecessary train of vehicles.

“It is also hoped that the good sense and good taste of the city will, on this occasion, consent to waive its claim to precedence, and that the Lord Mayor, after meeting the cortège at Temple Bar, will fall into the procession after the Prince Consort.

“Finally, it is not intended to line the streets through which the procession will pass with military.

"The guardianship of the thoroughfares will be left to the police, and to the good feeling of the public, who will thus have an opportunity of beholding the mournful spectacle without the interruption of a line of soldiers, and of testifying their respect for the mighty dead by their decorous and orderly demeanour,” concluded the News Letter’s report.