Unlocking the Early Railway Manager - A Project to Follow

One of the main areas of research that has yet to be covered by railway and business historians is the nature of the early British railway manager. Of course, some historians have commented on this topic before, however, few have done any real in-depth research on it. Bonavia in his 1971 book on the organisation of British railways gave little time to how railways were managed before 1923. Subsequently, he only gave broad statements as to who became the first senior managers in British railway companies. In his estimation ex-military officers were prominent in railway management after lines had opened, as they had experience at coordinating and marshalling large bodies of men. Also heavily involved were the ‘secretaries’ of companies, although, he did not comment on their backgrounds. Lastly, involved were the engineers, men such as Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Joseph Locke and William Cubitt, who, while they built the railways, they also played a role in the administration of them. [1]

Overall, Bonavia’s history did not give a full picture of railway management within early British railways (which I classify as being before 1860) and there remains a large gap of knowledge amongst historians. I acknowledge that all three groups of individuals, the ex-military men, the engineers and the secretaries, all played a role, but to what extent did individuals from each of these actually get involved in the industry? Which group dominated? Therefore, what is needed is a statistical survey of the management class in the formative years of the British railway industry

In the next few posts I hope to answer a these questions. But I start from a position of not knowing the answer. I sit here with no conclusions and with a blank canvas to fill. I do, however, have on my desktop three directories of railway officials in pdf format from 1841, 1847 and 1848. In the next few weeks I will be researching them and my findings, as they come, will be posted on the blog. But this will be an on-going process that I hope you follow and as such I will not hold back from posting my thoughts, erroneous conclusions, premature ideas and mistakes as the research moves forward. I will also detail my research processes and how they change (which they predictably will). Hopefully, this will make for interesting, and entertaining reading.

I will first be looking at the 1848 directory as it seems to have a lot more information in it on early railway managers from a larger number of railways than the other directories. It was also created at a point where the railways are just starting to come into their own as an industry. Thus, it would provide information on managers when the industry was starting to demand large numbers of men to administer the railways. So, on with the show, I’ll report back soon.

P.S. Oh, I will be using a hash-tag as the research goes on - #TurnipRailProject - Please use it!!

[1] Bonavia, Michael, The Organisation of British Railways, (Shpperton, 1971) p.9-26

Railway Company Staff Records - What Survives from the L&SWR

The staff record is an integral part of the railway historian’s arsenal of sources. While naturally providing information on railway workers’ careers, on their own or in a group, they can also provide useful information on how railway companies were managing their company, labour relations and attitudes to innovation. Subsequently, in my work on the London and South Western Railway I have completed an extensive review of that company’s staff records, and thus have discovered the lives of many individuals.

Staff records can be classified into three categories (well in the L&SWR’s case at least). Firstly, it is important to note that within all 19^th Century railway companies there were two employment streams, the clerical and secondary labour markets. Those clerks in the clerical labour market had to go pass rigorous entrance requirements and tests, but once employed enjoyed good promotional prospects, salaries that were paid to them monthly and job security. Indeed, many clerks became senior managers. The secondary labour market encompassed all other staff. Most were paid weekly, had poorer wages than clerks and had low job security. Thus, it is only natural that the staff records of these two employee groups are different in character. While in both cases individuals’ details were either recorded on a full or half page of a book, the clerical staff’s details were usually recorded in a larger book, but, surprisingly, had fewer forms of information within. Lastly, in addition to these records, there were the ‘registers of workmen’ that recorded the details of many individuals over two pages.

Clerical staff registers, in the case of the L&SWR at least, have a separate index which is very handy when looking an individual up. Five pieces of information were recorded on the clerical staff registers held at the National Archives. These were the age of the individual when they started their employment, date of entry into the service, who nominated them for a clerical post, any ‘positions and removals or promotions’ and ‘reports and complains.’

A couple of things stand out about from these records that should be noted. The individual who nominated them for a clerical position was usually either a senior manager within the company or a director. However, ordinarily they would have been written to by a ‘respected’ individual who knew the prospective clerk, for example a school teacher, religious figure or a local dignitary. In the section recording ‘positions and removals or promotions’ was recorded all the details of an individuals’ pay at certain points and the length of time they spent at different locations. On many occasions, their post-employment details, such as their pension and date of death were also recorded. Lastly, the records detail any ‘reports and complaints.’ This encompassed any time a clerk did something exemplary in the line of duty, or did something which would warrant punishment. Punishments included fines, demotion or, in worst case scenarios, dismissal. For example, in February 1892 T.H. Jebbitt, the Agent at Basingstoke, was called upon to resign because of ‘irregularities in various cash matters.’ (shown below) What these irregularities were is not noted in his staff record, but it is at the point that the diligent researcher would seek out the Traffic Committee minute book to find out.

The staff records of those in the secondary labour market usually have more information contained within them. Unfortunately, despite this bonus, in the case of the L&SWR there is no index which means that finding an individual is a laborious task involving searching through every record. What’s more, in the case of the L&SWR many staff records are missing, and only some individual personnel files from the Traffic Department have survived. The information for which there spaces on the record are the staff member’s date of birth, height, the ‘number of the testimonial,’ address when appointed, who recommended them, their date and place of appointment, grade, starting wage, marital status, any remarks, whether they passed the eyesight test and their promotions or wage increases.

Clearly, the larger amount of information recorded was because many in the secondary labour market, such as cleaners, platelayers or porters, were doing more arduous and labour-intensive work. Thus, more details furnished as to their physical appearance and attributes so that their suitability for the job could be assessed. However, what has been noticed is that on many occasions not all the information was filled in, presumably because of the nature of individuals’ jobs. For example, Mrs Watkin (below) was appointed as a waiting room attendant and because the job was not that labour-intensive many of the details have not been filled in.

The last form of employee information was the staff registers that listed the details of many L&SWR employees consecutively (below). However, because so many individuals were listed on two pages the information furnished is not as detailed as in individual staff records. However, a positive thing about the staff registers is that they usually had an index at the front from which individual employees could be found within them. As far as the L&SWR is concerned, only staff registers from the Locomotive Department have survived at the National Archives and the Hampshire Record Office. They record, the employees’ ‘register no.’ (which presumably linked to an actual person’s record), their names, their occupation, where they were employed, the date they entered the service, their starting wage, any wage increases and lastly any remarks. Yet, what the registers do not record, as far as can be seen, are any promotions, rewards or disciplinary actions. Thus, these can be somewhat frustrating files for the historian because of the limited information contained within them

It should be recognised that what I have detailed here only applies only to the L&SWR, and the other railway companies may have set out and organised their staff records differently. Irrespective of this, the staff records of railway company employees are a really useful source for all historians, even if they can be frustrating a lot of the time.

How Technology Changed Research

When I go to archives I carry many technological devices to aid me in my work (camera, laptop, leads, chargers and, of course, earphones). And I am not the only one. Increasingly, I am conscious of the fact that the National Archives is starting to look like a branch of Curry’s, or, if you do some mental blocking, an Apple Store (Genius bar excluded). The reason is that technology dominates historical research now. I wouldn’t even think of going to the archive without any of my devices and on the rare occasions when I forget one of them I am genuinely frustrated. I feel that I am unable to function as effectively without my whole raft of equipment. I suppose it is like when everyone got mobile phones. When we didn’t have them, we didn’t need them. But now everyone has one, we can’t live without them.

I think that now I am full ensconced in the technological age of research, that I ultimately forget the point from which I have come. In 2003 I was using the methods of research that had been used for hundreds of years. In conversation with Terry Gourvish, Britain’s leading railway historian, he described the process of writing an article in 1973 that was on ‘A British Business Elite: The Chief Executive Managers of the Railway industry 1850-1822.’ For this biographical survey of Britain’s railway CEOs, he had to travel from Norwich to London many times to gather the information. This, naturally, took time. His ultimate opinion was that the article wasn’t as detailed as he would have liked, and because of this it was open criticism years later. I have to confess, that I am one of those historians who currently disagrees with the piece. On expressing my disagreements, Terry quickly conceded that my more detailed, technologically aided, research may indeed contradict his, and he put this fact down to the era when he was working. There simply wasn’t the capacity, given his job, his location, and the data gathering constraints of the 1970s, to be as efficient and effective as I can be now.

I didn’t, however, make the technological jump from paper, pencil and photocopying, to laptop, camera and earphones, at once. My methods changed gradually. When I started doing research at the National Archives in 2003 on my undergraduate dissertation (‘Big Wing Theory’ in the Battle of Britain), I was quite satisfied sitting there with a pencil and pad in hand, copying down everything I found. However, recently finding my notes from that work certainly reminded me of the torture of a pencil wearing through to what I felt was the bones of my fingers. By the end of it, I was turning each page in dread of finding a document that was vital, but which was long. I did photocopy some things, but because of my limited budget I could only use the service selectively. As such, I was utterly sick of the sight of documents by the end of the dissertation. This didn’t, however, hinder me from undergoing the same laborious process when doing my postgraduate dissertation in 2005 (Pre-World War One British military aviation).

You see, technology wasn’t something that I thought of at the time as being necessary. Indeed, the majority of historians, especially in 2003, simply didn’t use it. The biggest indicator of this was that those who did use cameras and laptops at the archives were cast to the rear part of the reading room, segregated by a glass screen from us ‘hard-working’ historians who still toiled with the old methods. We struggled to get our necessary work completed before closing time; they cheated. Of course, I have embellished for dramatic effect, but sometimes it did feel to me like a ‘them and us’ situation.

It was only with my PhD in 2006 that I started to use technology. It seemed logical that I should now that laptops and digital cameras were cheaper, and I could see the benefits. With this in mind I went out and purchased the WORST LAPTOP EVER. Heavy, slow and noisy, it made me the centre of attention in the ‘silent’ reading room. But, it did the job I needed it to do until a year and a half later when I upgraded to a better model. This was superseded by a netbook in 2009, which I still use to this day. Small, compact (and strangely faster than my first laptop), it is really great. Obviously, the advantage of having a laptop is that rather than writing things out, I now create immediately accessible digital. As such, I avoid my own handwriting, which tends to leave me staring at a letter or entire word while to work out what the hell it is. It also means that I can tabulate statistical information quicker. Overall, I think that my work rate improved, but this wasn’t really a leap ahead in performance.

Two years later I added the digital camera, and this really was a massive step up. Whereas before I could copy data from a I00 page document in about 2 hours, now I could do it in 20 minutes. Hurrah, I am an archival speed-demon. Ok, my first camera was dreadful, and the number of documents that came out blurred is hard to count, but now I have a beauty that does everything excellently.

I feel now that my own shift in research techniques is not unique. Currently, the National Archives is dominated by historians who use technology to aid and speed their work. Indeed, when the main reading room was remodelled, the Archives did away with the physical barrier that divided the two groups of historians. Everyone is now mingled in. My only complaint, and I don’t know if this is a complaint to be aimed at the camera manufacturers or the historians, is that I wish that there wasn’t such a loud clicking sound when cameras take photos. But hey, I’m just being a grouch.

The last technology that has changed the way that individuals do research, aside from those that have been mentioned, is the internet and the digitisation of records. In the past if a historian wanted to look up a newspaper article from the distant past, he’d have to make the long trip to Colindale to the Newspaper Library. But now these are almost all available online. But newspapers aren’t the only things available. With my University of York log-in a plethora of resources are at my fingertips. While my PhD has been in progress, I have been blessed with a number of tools that have come available for researchers, such as 19^th Century Newspaper and Journal collections, and the House of Commons Parliamentary Papers. There were also a number of other resources that were already available, such the Dictionary of National Biography, Who Was Who and Ancestry. Lastly, there is the multitude of other websites that provide me with information. The internet is now therefore an integral part of my work, speeding it up no end and allowing me to bypass the archive.

The point of this article has been to show how research, once a lonesome, slow and laborious process, has now been transformed into a quicker and simpler exercise through the application of technology. What can be produced is no longer subject to the restrictions of the past, such as time and location. This, therefore, hails a new era of historical research that should be recognised. We are now entering into a period in which the work that is produced as an end product of research, both in an academic and popular sense, should be more accurate and should be less impregnable to criticism. In addition, more material will be researched because of the speed of its collection, allowing more work to be produced. Hopefully, this will further and refine our knowledge of history by leaps and bounds. Of course, there is the potential for historians to become complacent, churning out article after article simply because it is possible. But if academic rigor is upheld and standards are maintained, I see no reason why this should occur. Therefore, because of technology I look forward to what the future will bring.