Counting customers - railway traffic before Christmas in the 1800s

There is no doubt that the four or five days before Christmas are some of the busiest for Britain’s railways as people travel home to see their friends and relatives, or return bleary eyed from Christmas parties and gatherings. No doubt the flooding in Britain has reduced the number of trains running in the period this year. However, nationally, 22,247 trains were scheduled on the 21 December; 20,436 on the 22^nd; 11,588 were supposed to run yesterday and 18,968 are due to run today.^[1] Most Train Operating Companies have not supplement their regular scheduled services,^[3] Chiltern being the only one.^[2] Thus, with largely regular Saturday and Sunday timetables in operation on the 22^nd and 23^rd December, and with trains stopping early today, many passengers will feel like they have travelled in tin cans by the end of the festive season.

However, it is no comfort to say so, but crowded trains are what the Christmas passenger has experienced for over a century. In the nineteenth century particularly, the various railway companies provided the press with a plethora of data on their Christmas traffic. In the days after the 25 December how many passengers to and from stations were commonly mentioned in newspapers, especially as the numbers usually grew each year. 

The number of passengers who travelled in the festive period from London via the Great Western Railway (GWR) perfectly shows this growth. In 1895 the number booked at the company’s City and West End Offices and London Stations between Friday 20 December and Thursday 26 December at noon was 40,750. This was an increase on 1889’s total of 37,000. Indeed, in 1895 5,953 passengers travelled from Paddington on Saturday 21 December; with 8,992 being conveyed on Christmas Eve.^[4] Therefore, with Christmas passenger numbers increasing so rapidly year on year, it is quite possible that individual travellers found themselves progressively squeezed as the railways struggled to keep pace with the changing demand.   

However, as we are currently told passenger numbers in this country continue to grow, it would be interesting to see this year whether the 374 and 307 trains scheduled leave Paddington on the 21 and 24 December respectively are on average they are more packed than those on the same day in 2011. ^[5]

But passenger data was not the only information the newspapers featured; and the amount of parcels handled by stations also appeared alongside it. Those passing through the London and North Western Railway’s Euston Station were of particular interest and, as I related in a blog post last year, special arrangements were established there in the 1840s to handle this vast and growing traffic. Statistics have been found which show that number of parcels arriving at Euston in the three days before and the morning of the 25 December grew most years. They were as follows:

1848 - 12,000 [6]

1849 - 15,000 [7]

1850 - 10,000 [8]

1851 - Inward and Outward: 40,000 (figures for the week before Christmas) [9]

1852 - 12,000

1853 - 12,500 [10]

1864 - 17,000 [11]

Therefore, by digging into nineteenth century newspapers we can gauge how the railways became an integral part of Christmas for Victorians; performing the same function as do for passengers today, through taking them from home to merriment and delivering them all they needed for Christmas cheer.

Much thanks must go to Tom Cairns for the data he provided on current train operations.

A Very Merry Christmas

My other Christmas posts are as follows:

'Pretty Festoons of Holly Leaves Are Displayed' - The Decoration of Railway Stations Before 1900

"Christmas fare from the provinces" - Euston Station and the Distribution of Festive Goods in the 1840s

"An EXTRA TRAIN will leave Shoreditch" - Trains on Christmas Day before 1900
A Victorian 'Railway' Christmas - Parcels, Pastimes, Profit and Poetry

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[1] Data kindly provided by Tom Cairns http://realtimetrains.co.uk and Twitter: @swlines

[2] http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/service_disruptions/seasonal/Christmas_2012/index_custom.html

[3] http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/service_disruptions/seasonal/Christmas_2012/index_custom.html

[4] Morning Post - Friday 27 December 1895

[5] Data kindly provided by Tom Cairns http://realtimetrains.co.uk and Twitter: @swlines

[6] The Morning Post, Tuesday, December 26, 1848

[7] Daily News, Wednesday, December 26, 1849, Issue 1119

[8] The Era, Sunday, December 29, 1850

[9] The Standard, Saturday, December 27, 1851, p.1

[10] The Essex Standard, and General Advertiser for the Eastern Counties, Wednesday, December 28, 1853

[11] Jackson's Oxford Journal, Saturday, January 9, 1864

"Christmas fare from the provinces" - Euston Station and the Distribution of Festive Goods in the 1840s

Given that in the nineteenth century the railways were the main way of transporting anything long distances, it is unsurprising that the festive season was their busiest period of the year. Indeed, the railways carried everything the people of Britain needed for their Christmas festivities, not to mention the people themselves. For this reason some newspapers seemed obsessed with what traffic was carried, how it was carried and its volume, and their reports provide an insight into the level of activity occurring on Britain’s railways in the week before Christmas Day. Receiving particular attention in the late 1840s and early 1850s was the delivery arrangements at the Euston terminus of Britain’s largest railway company, the London and North Western Railway (L&NWR).

The Morning Postof Monday 26 December 1848 reported that ‘yesterday [Christmas Day] and during Sunday, the termini of the various metropolitan termini presented an unusual scene of bustle and activity in consequence of the extraordinary influx of Christmas fare from the provinces.’ The Post stated that the volume of incoming traffic at Euston was so large that on the arrival platform a temporary tarpaulin shed had been constructed in to which goods were unloaded before distribution. It was eighteen feet high and fifty foot long, and at one point before Christmas it had been full. Nevertheless, because the distribution system worked perfectly confusion was avoided.[1]

A year later, the Daily News printed a more detailed account of the distribution arrangements at Euston between the 22 December and the morning of the twenty-fifth. The General Manager of the company, Captain Mark Huish, and Mr Brooks, the company’s Traffic Superintendent,[2] had made special arrangements with the company’s delivery agents, Messrs Chaplain and Horne, to expedite the deliveries as quickly as possible. Once again, there was a tent on the arrival platform. However, in 1849 it was larger than a year before, being twenty foot high and sixty foot long. From the Daily News' article we also learn that it was lit by gas lamps to allow unloading operations to continue at night.

Trains arrived day and night alongside the tent and their contents of ‘barrels of oysters, baskets of fish, fruit game and other Christmas presents’  were unloaded into the tent by fifty or sixty porters. The loads were then handed to the Chaplain and Horne's agents who, with the help of ‘sorters’, arranged the parcels into large compartments on the station wall. These compartments were each labelled with the districts of London that the consignments were being sent to. Some of which were as follows: ‘the City, Strand, Squares over the water, Islington, East End, Finsbury, West-end, Kingsland, Clerkenwell.’

At each compartment two and three omnibuses stood being loaded with parcels and packages being checked by the L&NWR’s clerks. They were loaded carefully and securely, and that efficient loading was achieved not just by ‘laying the packages across,’ but also by ‘suspending turkeys and pigs outside.’ Some were estimated to hold 200 packages and were so piled up that they were as the second floors of houses. Thus, the paper commented that on leaving the station they ‘attracted no small attention.’ Overall, there were thirty or forty omnibuses and when all were filled to capacity they departed ‘without delay.’

Of course, with so many goods passing through this may have offered an opportunity to criminals to pilfer, and to prevent such loss the company’s policemen were present the entire time.

The operation was highly efficient. On Sunday 23 December the majority of the trains carrying mail and goods for London began arriving at 4.30am, and by 9am all their contents had been despatched into the city. However, on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day mornings it took until 10am to clear the incoming traffic.[3] Further evidence of efficiency was recorded in 1853 when only two consignments out of 40,000 were found to have lost their labels.[4] But, additionally, the effectiveness of the operation is so impressive when considering the number of parcels and packages entering Euston Station in the three days up to and including the morning of Christmas Day. The estimates reported were as follows:-

1848 - 12,000 [5]

1849 - 15,000 [6]

1850 - 10,000 [7]

1851 - Inward and Outward: 40,000 (figures for the week before Christmas) [8]

1852 - 12,000

1853 - 12,500 [9]

1864 - 17,000 [10]

Clearly, with just the use of paper and ink, the L&NWR organised the unloading and delivery of consignments with a speed and efficiency that puts some modern delivery services to shame. Ultimately, this enabled London’s residents to have a very, merry Christmas.

Read last year's Christmas post HERE

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[1] The Morning Post, Tuesday, December 26, 1848

[2] Interestingly, no trace of a ‘Mr Brooks’ can be found in Terry Gourvish’s book Mark Huish and the London and North Western Railway, (Leicester, 1972)

[3] Daily News,Wednesday, December 26, 1849, Issue 1119

[4] The Standard, Saturday, December 27, 1851, p.1

[5] The Morning Post, Tuesday, December 26, 1848

[6] Daily News,Wednesday, December 26, 1849, Issue 1119

[7] The Era, Sunday, December 29, 1850

[8] The Standard, Saturday, December 27, 1851, p.1

[9] The Essex Standard, and General Advertiser for the Eastern Counties, Wednesday, December 28, 1853

[10] Jackson's Oxford Journal, Saturday, January 9, 1864