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

---------

[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

Did the Management Ever Control Britain's 19th Century Railways?

Alfred Chandler

The rise of what Alfred Chandler called the ‘visible hand’ of management has dominated the business history literature for forty years. Simply put, Chandler argued that managers came to dominate American business in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. As technology was introduced to companies and markets expanded, their processes of distribution and then coordination became more complex as they increased in size. Consequently, this generated a need for better administrative control of the organisations’ activities, leading to the rise of the ‘visible hand’ of management. Indeed, as managers grew in number within firms, they increasingly steered their destinies, wrestling control of corporate strategy from companies’ shareholders, financiers and directors. Chandler called this ‘managerial capitalism.’[1]

In the United States this process occurred first in the railroads. When faced with challenges such as safety concerns, then the increasing volume, speed and complexity of traffic on the line, companies quickly developed hierarchies of railway managers to coordinate their activities, leading to the rise of the ‘visible hand.’ Ward argued that a situation had developed on the Pennsylvania Railroad by 1873 where ‘paramount executive authority had emerged’, directors were by then ‘pliant acceders,’ and shareholders were virtually impotent.[2] Indeed, there is no doubt that Chandler admired railroads, such as the Pennsylvania, where managers had seized control of the organisation, arguing they were the best managed and innovative. They adopted high-level strategic direction, with considerable authority delegated to operating units and complex administrative practices were developed.[3] Indeed, Zunz also argued similar of the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad, which he considered an exemplar of good management practice because it was controlled by the company’s management class.[4]

The question, therefore, is to what extent this process was replicated in the British context? How much control did British railway managers have over their companies’ directors and shareholders in the nineteenth century, and, ultimately, their destinies? Chandler argued that because of the nation’s smaller size British railway managers were challenged less than their American counterparts to develop new and innovative management techniques.[5] Therefore, this possibly implies that British railway managers did not secure the same level of control as some American managers. However, Channon countered this by arguing that British railway managers were challenged in different ways because of the country’s high-density, expensive and intensive network, which was, unlike in the United States, complete in its operating and physical details in a much shorter time period after the industry’s establishment.[6] Therefore, while not ruling out a rise of the ‘visible hand’ of management, this may suggest that a different pattern of managerial development occurred within British railways. Nevertheless, neither of these perspectives really answered the question of whether there was a rise in the ‘visible hand’ of management in the British railway industry in the nineteenth century.

No comprehensive history of British railway management before 1914 has been written. Therefore, I have had to compile what I know about the rise of the ‘visible hand’ from case studies. However, some historians have broadly attempted to assess when the railways’ management class, particularly within larger companies, came to dominate the industry’s direction. Cain argued that General Managers, who were usually at the top of railway companies’ hierarchies, were the most important decision-makers in the industry by 1870.[7]  Channon made a similar claim, stating that before 1870 managerial ascendency ‘cannot be assumed.’[8] I believe both were wrong, and using a number of case studies I will suggest that management cannot be said to have ascended into a position of control before the 1900s.

Richard Moon

Terry Gourvish’s book on Mark Huish, the London and North Western Railway’s General Manager between the company’s formation in 1846 and 1858, is an enthralling text. It relates the story of a railway manager who during his administration and after his death was considered ‘unscrupulous, dictatorial and Machiavellian’; controlling the companies' policies. At face value this would suggest he was the first ‘managerial capitalist’ in Britain’s railway industry. Yet, Gourvish’s research showed the reverse. He argued that while Huish had more control of the company’s policies than his contemporaries, he did not possess the ‘dictatorial’ influence in decision-making often ascribed to him.’ Indeed, his resignation was forced on him 1858 as he did not satisfy the board’s requirements regarding inter-company diplomacy.[9]

Archibald Scott

Indeed, it was the career of the man who instigated  Huish’s resignation, LNWR director Richard Moon, that truly shows that the ‘visible hand’ of management did not really control policy on the British railway network until long after it had on many American railroads. Moon was appointed chairman of the company in 1861 and stayed in the post for thirty years. Before his ascendency becoming chairman, he had a reputation for taking a highly detailed interest in most of the company’s operational affairs, even when they were beyond his remit. Indeed, most railways’ boards met twice monthly, with directors meeting in committees the day before. Yet, Moon would be active in the company’s affairs every day of the week. Thus, when made chairman his controlling instincts were let loose. His biographer, Peter Braine, described him as being ‘not only a managing director, but also effectively his own General Manager,’ throughout his chairmanship. [10] Indeed, the company’s General Manager between 1858 and 1875, William Cawkwell, was very much under his and the board’s control.[11]

But directors having control of companies’ strategic direction was not unusual in the period. Lord Salisbury, chairman of the Great Eastern Railway between 1868 and 1871, looms large in the company’s history. On his appointment the GER was in chancery. Yet, he successfully turned it around and it began paying dividends again in the 1870s.[12] On the London and South Western Railway, as I will explain in my thesis, policy was dominated by directors until the 1881 when they gave the General Manager, Archibald Scott, more ‘general control’ over the concern’s affairs.[13] However, even then he was still under their control and did not have a decisive role in corporate decision-making. Lastly, on the Great Northern Railway in the 1850s, 60s and 70s it had directors who ‘thought they knew more about the business than the company’s senior officers.’[14] Therefore, this would suggest that the dominance of company boards was still present in the industry as late as the 1870s.

Indeed, from the 1860s there also appeared controlling positions within companies which would now be described as managing directorships. In most cases the individuals taking these positions were ex-managers, who on retirement became controlling directors. The most prominent examples of this were Edward Watkin and James Staats Forbes. They were fierce rivals, with Watkin chairing the Manchester Sheffield and Lincolnshire (1864-1894), South Eastern (1866-1894) and Metropolitan Railways (1872-1894); while Forbes was chairman of the London, Chatham and Dover (1873-1898) and Metropolitan District Railways (1872-1901). Both men had served as railwaymen and then had moved onto railways’ boards where they dominated policy.[15] The other example of this was the managing directorship of the Daniel Gooch on the Great Western Railway. Gooch had been the company’s Locomotive Superintendent between 1837 and 1864, and when he resigned took up a position on the board. He then became the company’s chairman, and had a position akin to a managing director between 1865 and his death in 1889.[16] Furthermore, James Ramsden on the Furness railway also was in such a position between 1866 and 1883.[17]

Myles Fenton

But by the late 1880s the dominant power of railway managers was coming through more widely within the British Railway industry. Between 1885 and 1897, as my thesis will show, Charles Scotter was the dominant General Manager of the London and South Western Railway, controlling almost all aspects of policy, large and small. Cornelius Lundie, General Manager and Superintendent of the Line of the Rhymney Railway between 1858 and 1904, ran the railway as he wished with little or no reference to the board’s interests.[18] Even Watkin  relied on the General Managers at each of his companies for their safe and efficient operation. They were the SER’s Myles Fenton, William Pollitt at the MSLR and John Bell at the Metropolitan.[19] Indeed, Hodgkins argued that because Pollitt and Bell were rivals a proposed link between the MSLR and Metropolitan in the 1890s would have been difficult to arrange. Therefore, this suggests that despite Watkin’s domineering chairmanship of his companies, his chief executives still heavily influenced their railways’ policies.[20]

George Gibb

These cases were, however, only the start of a shift of towards the absolute control of the ‘visible hand’ of management within Britain’s railways. In 1891 George Gibb was appointed General Manager of the North Eastern Railway. Gibb reformed the company’s operations and, through dominating the company’s board and staff, dragged it into a position where experts acknowledged it was a model of good management practice.[21] But Gibb was just the first of a new breed of railway executives. Indeed, as a crisis hit the industry around 1900, as passenger, goods and revenue growth stalled, the cost of fuel and materials increased, and railway securities became less favoured as investment opportunities, the role of reversing  the industry’s financial situation fell onto the shoulders of executives.

After 1900 a raft of new and innovative managers came to the fore within British railways. Sam Fay, an ex-LSWR employee, became the Great Central Railway’s General Manager in 1902, and through his dynamic leadership transformed it from being a poorly performing to concern into one that, while never rich, made great advances and innovations in operational practice.[22] On the Midland Railway Cecil Paget, the company’s Chief Operating Officer, devised a whole new method of train control that added greatly to the company’s operating efficiency,[23] reducing delays to freight trains from 21,869 hours in 1907 to 7,749 hours in 1913.[24] Lastly, in 1912 Herbert Walker became the LSWR’s General Manager. Through dominating the company’s directorate he reformed its management and introduced electric traction onto its ailing suburban network.[25]

Of course, not all railways had General Managers that were as dynamic as these three. However, generally by the early twentieth century executives controlled the strategic direction of most of the largest companies within the British railway industry. Furthermore, the process of the rise of the ‘visible hand’ was also helped, as my thesis will relate and as Channon discussed,[26] by directors having less time to dedicate to the companies they served. Before 1900 the many took an active interest in their railway companies as they had little else to occupy their time. However, from around 1900, as the British corporate economy grew, they took on other external responsibilities, such other directorships. Thus, large numbers of directors were occupied by these activities, leaving vacuum of control into which railway executives could step.

Herbert Walker

Therefore, it is not surprising that on the formation in 1912 of the Railway Executive Committee, established to organise Britain’s railways in wartime, all its members were General Managers of the country’s largest companies. Indeed, the diminished role of the railway directors in the administration of the industry by that time was reflected by the fact that not one was present on the REC. Consequently, Britain’s railways in World War One was completely managed by the ‘visible hand’ of management,[27] the final proof that it had secured strategic control of the industry by 1914.

Overall, this survey [tentatively] disproves Channon and Cain’s claims that railway managers were universally important to British railways’ policies by 1870, and there was much variance in who controlled their direction. Overall, in the contrast with experience of the American railroads, the rise of the ‘Visible Hand’ of management occurred relatively late in the British context; only truly emerging after 1900. But why this was so?

I think that Chandler was correct to some extent in arguing that British railway managers were challenged less than their American counterparts because of the country’s smaller size. Despite the dramatic traffic growth throughout the century, the smaller size of British railway companies meant that there was never a point until after the 1890s when the internal administrative control required by them was beyond the ability of one director or their boards to organise. Indeed, the highly centralised management structures of British railway companies throughout the period, where decisions could be made by a small group of directors or managers at the top of the hierarchy,[28]  meant that dynamic and knowledgeable individuals, irrespective of whether they were directors or a managers, had the possibility of controlling their railways. Thus, this is why it is unclear before 1900 if management had 'ascended' within the industry. Indeed, one factor in an individual controlling a railway in the period was his personality; and all of the men mentioned were certainly characters. 

-------------

[1] Channon, Geoffrey, Railways in Britain and the United States, 1830-1940: Studies in Economic and Business History, (Aldershot, 2001), p.5

[2] Ward, James A., ‘Power and Accountability on the Pennsylvania Railroad, 1846-1878’, Business History Review, XLIX (1975), p.58

[3] Channon, Railways in Britain and the United States, 1830-1940, p.5

[4] Zunz, Oliver, Making America Corporate: 1870-1920, (Chicago, 1990), p.47

[5] Chandler, Alfred D., Scale and Scope: the Dynamics of Industrial Capitalism, (London, 1990) p.253

[6] Channon, Railways in Britain and the United States, 1830-1940, p.29

[7] Cain, P.J., ‘Railways 1870-1914: the maturity of the private system,’ in Freeman, Michael J. and Aldcroft, Derek H. (eds.) Transport in Victorian Britain, (Manchester, 1988), p.112

[8] Channon, Railways in Britain and the United States, 1830-1940, p.44

[9] Gourvish, T.R. Mark Huish and the London & North Western Railway, (Leicester, 1972), p.167-182

[10] Braine, Peter, The Railway Moon – A Man and His Railway: Sir Richard Moon and the L&NWR, (Taunton, 2012), p.477

[11] Channon, Railways in Britain and the United States, 1830-1940, p.44

[12] Barker, T.C., 'Lord Salisbury, Chairman of the Great Eastern Railway 1868-1872' in Marriner, S., Business and Businessmen: Studies in Business, Economic and Accounting History, (Liverpool, 1972)

[13] The South Western Gazette, December 1881, p.2

[14] Simmons, Jack, The Railway in England and Wales 1830-1914, (Leicester, 1978), p.247

[15] Gourvish, T.R., ‘The Performance of British Railway Management after 1860: The Railways of Watkin and Forbes’, Business History, 20 (1978), p.198

[16] Cain, P.J., ‘Railways 1870-1914: The maturity of the private system’, in Freeman, Michael J. and Aldcroft, Derek H. (eds.) Transport in Victorian Britain (Manchester, 1988), p.113

[17] Simmons, The Railway in England and Wales 1830-1914, p.247

[18] Simmons, The Railway in England and Wales 1830-1914, p.247

[19] Gourvish, ‘The performance of British railway management after 1860’, p.188-191

[20] Hodgkins, David, The Second Railway King: The Life and Times of Sir Edward Watkin, (Melton Priory, 2002), p.609

[21] Irving , R.J., The North Eastern Railway Company: An Economic History, 1870-1914,  (Leicester, 1976)  p.261-264

[22] Dow, Andrew, ‘Great Central Railway,’ The Oxford Companion to British Railway History, (1997, Oxford), p.191-192

[23] Burtt, Philip, Control on the Railways, (London, 1926), p.144-151

[24] Edwards, Roy, ‘Divisional train control and the emergence of dynamic capabilities: The experience of the London, Midland and Scottish Railway, c.1923-c.1939, Management and Organisational History, 6 (2011), p.398

[25] Klapper, C.F., Sir Herbert Walker’s Southern Railway, (London, 1973), p.33-76

[26] Channon, Railways in Britain and the United States, 1830-1940, p.187-188

[27] Pratt, Edwin A., British Railways and the Great War: Organisation, Efforts, Difficulties and Achievements – Vol. 1, (London, 1921), p.40-50

[28] Bonavia, The Organisation of British Railways,p.17-18

A Brief History of the Female Railway Clerk 1830-1914

While I have written frequently about female clerks on Britain’s railways before 1914, I have never penned a complete history. Therefore, this post will provide a broad survey of the changes in women’s clerical employment on the railways between 1830 and 1914.

Initially it may be useful to specify who I am talking about. Women were employed in three clerical positions on the Victorian railway. Firstly, there were the booking clerks; who sold tickets to passengers and registered their luggage. Secondly, women were engaged as administrative clerks, to fill in returns, conduct correspondence, and deal with the day-to-day station administration. Lastly there were telegraph clerks, who sent and received telegraph messages. It would be interesting to talk about these types of clerks separately. Yet, that would take some time and I have decided to just do a general history of all female clerical workers.

When the first female clerks were engaged on Britain’s railways is uncertain. However, the earliest I have found was Margaret Savage, who was appointed as a Telegraph Clerk at the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway’s (LBSCR) Three Bridges Station in August 1855. Two years later Margaret’s sister, Harriet, was also employed there as a Booking Clerk. Clearly, both Margaret and Harriett only got their jobs because their father, Thomas, was the Station Master there.[1] The same occurred in the case of Elizabeth Spearpoint, who was appointed as Telegraph Clerk at the LBSCR’s West Croydon Station in October 1857 because  her father, Robert, was in charge of that station.[2] Interestingly, what these and other appointments by the LBSCR suggest is that in the 1850s it was the first company to adopt a coherent policy regarding female clerical staff, which was simply to appoint station masters’ daughters in clerical positions.

It is not clear to what extent similar opportunities were available for women on other railways. Yet, a letter to The Timesreported in 1858 that:

“In taking a ticket the other day at the Edinburgh station of the Edinburgh, Perth and Dundee Railway, we were pleasantly surprised on being waited upon by a blooming and bonnie lassie, who, along with an activity quite equal to, exhibited a politeness very rare in railway clerks of the literally ruder sex. We observed that the department was entirely occupied by women, there being another giving out tickets, and a third telegraphing.” [3]

Nevertheless, the evidence suggests before 1870 different railways adopted different policies regarding female clerks, and many, such as the London and South Western, Great Western, Metropolitan and London and North Western Railways, did not employ any. Thus, the first reference to a female clerk in the London and South Western Railway’s files, of which I have done an extensive survey, was in 1871, as follows:

Mr Fifields Daughter – Read letter from Mr Fifield Agent at Oakley Station requesting that his daughter may be appointed as Telegraphist at that Station at a pay of 7/- per week

   Recommend this to the Board[4]

Indeed, the fact that this matter had to be submitted to the board suggests that this was the first case the company had considered. Thereafter, the LSWR employed some female clerks, but these were in isolated cases and there was no set policy.

The first case of a railway company employing a large group of female clerks at one time was the London and North Western Railway between late 1874 and 1876. The women were working in the Birmingham Curzon Street Station Goods Department and their role was to make 'abstracts from invoices for the ledger accounts of credit customers and for forwarding to the Railway Clearing House.’[5] Following this, the company began employing large numbers of female clerks around the its network, at locations including Camden, Shrewsbury, Bolton, Manchester and Wolverhampton.[6]

The success of this ‘experiment’ (a word used frequently) meant that other companies began investigating the possibility of engaging women for clerical work. Most notably, the Great Western Railway investigated it thoroughly for about six months in 1876. On the 30 August its board minuted that:

‘…female clerks might be employed with advantage, but their work should be confined to offices (such as Goods or Abstract Offices) where they could be employed separately from the men clerks, except when the member of a station master’s family may be employed at the same station himself.’[7]

This was a promising start, and a later letter by a senior management endorsed these views. Indeed, on 24 November a meeting of goods managers authorised a trial of clerks at Birmingham, Bristol and Plymouth Goods Stations. For some unknown reason the trial was not proceeded with, and it was not until 1905 that the matter was considered again by the company.[8]

Nevertheless, despite the LNWR’s ‘experiment’ being successful,  it would not be until after 1900 that the cases of women being engaged in clerical positions on the railways became common. In March that year twelve were employed at Kings Cross Station by the Great Northern Railway, with the North British Railway engaged forty as telegraph clerks at Edinburgh Waverly Station. In 1901 the North Eastern Railway employed six women as telegraphists at York, with an undetermined number of female clerks being appointed there in the Traffic Statistics office the following year.[9] In 1906 the Great Western Railway employed a number of women in clerical positions at the Paddington Goods Department, followed by female telegraphists and tracers in 1908 and 1910 respectively.[10] One of the last places to engage female clerks was the Railway Clearing House, which in 1912 appointed twenty-seven who were related to men working there. This number had increased to 180 two years later.[11] Thus, by July 1914 there were 2,341 female clerical staff working on Britain’s railways.[12]

The LSWR's 'Conditions of Service' for female clerks.

However, not all companies were quick to appoint women in clerical capacities, and it was only in March 1914 that the London and South Western Railway drew up formal 'conditions of employment'.'[13] Indeed, by the coming of war, the company had only employed six female clerks.[14]

Overall, how should we think about the increase in the number female clerks within British railways after 1900? It would be easy for me to simply claim this change occurred because it became more socially acceptable for women to take up such positions. Yet, I cannot help think that there was an economic rationale involved on the railway companies’ part. Between 1870 and 1900 the profitability of British railway companies declined, with the industry’s operating costs increasing from fifty-one to sixty –two per cent of revenue over the period. Indeed, the most significant rise in companies’ expenses occurred in the late 1890s.[15] Consequently, the railway companies began looking at many ways to economise from around 1900.

Indeed, given that female clerks were paid less than their male colleagues, this raises an interesting question; to what extent was the expansion of women’s clerical employment on railways after 1900 advanced by changes in society, or changes in the nature of the railways’ business? My impression is that alterations in society's attitudes made the employment of female clerks more acceptable. Yet, because the cases of their employment on the railways grew rapidly after 1900, with little progress directly before it, I would also suggest that the industry's weakened financial circumstances stimulated managers into taking advantage of changing attitudes by employing more women in clerical positions, thus reducing railways' wage bills. Indeed, when the London Underground was considering engaging women as clerks in 1907, the Railway Gazette stated the following: ‘such an innovation has obviously only one raison d’être, that of economy…’[16]

Of course, I may be wrong in this assessment, which is based on the information I have to hand. Therefore, I am open to other perspectives and suggestions.

---------

[1] The National Archives [TNA], RAIL 414/770, Traffic staff: register of appointments Indexed, p.62

[2] TNA, RAIL 414/771, Traffic staff: register of appointments Indexed, p.77

[3] The Times, quoted in Wojtczak, Helena, Railwaywomen, (Hastings, 2005), p.27

[4] TNA, RAIL 411/241, Traffic Committee Minute Book, Minute 575, 30 November 1871

[5] The Englishwomen’s Review, Friday, 15 February 15th, 1878

[6] TNA, RAIL RAIL 410/1837 to RAIL 410/1842, Salaried Staff Registers.

[7] GWR Board Minute, 30 August 1876, quoted in, Matheson, Rosa, The Fair Sex: Women and the Great Western Railway, (Stroud, 2007), p.50

[8] Matheson, The Fair Sex, p.51

[9] Wojtczak, Railwaywomen, p.29-31

[10] Matheson, The Fair Sex, p.52-54

[11] Wojtczak, Railwaywomen, p.29

[12] Wojtczak, Railwaywomen, p.38

[13] TNA, RAIL 411/275, Traffic Officers’ Conference, March 1914, Appendix 1

[14] TNA, RAIL 411/506, Clerical register - Female staff, Various Staff Records

[15] Gourvish, T.R., Railways and the British Economy: 1830-1914, (London, 1980), p.42

[16] Railway Gazette, quoted in Wojtczak, Railwaywomen, p.27

The Social Backgrounds of Female Railway Clerks - 1875-1886

Mid-way through last year, I looked at the first sixteen female ledger clerks employed at the London and North Western Railway’s (L&NWR) Birmingham Curzon Street goods station between 1874 and 1876. However, in the course of my research I actually discovered the staff records of fifty-six female clerks that the company appointed between 1874 and 1886 at eight locations across the company’s network.

While I determined from the records these women’s rates of pay, length of employment, promotional prospects and what their jobs involved, I did not look at their family backgrounds. However, understanding individuals’ backgrounds is important, as they ultimately they determined their employment prospects. Indeed, I have postulated elsewhere that these clerks were possibly the daughters of railwaymen. Thus, I set out to test this theory. To determine the women’s backgrounds, which in the Victorian period were essentially their father’s occupations, I looked for the clerks in census records. Consequently, I found the professions of eighteen of their fathers.

Firstly, my theory that the female clerks predominantly came from railway families seems to be unfounded. Of the nineteen clerks only five had fathers employed by the L&NWR (27.78%).  For example, Margaret A. Peacock, who was employed at Shrewsbury station on the 1 December 1876,[1] was the daughter of Edward Peacock who made Station Master at Tattenhale Station in 1881.[2] Furthermore, in that year William Redford, Goods Agent in Manchester,[3] was father to both  Elizabeth[4] and Isabella[5] Redford, who were both clerks in Manchester Moss Street Goods Station. Lastly, Mary Hannah Hassall, who was also appointed at Manchester Moss Street in 1876,[6] had a brother, James, who was a Junior Clerk at the time,[7] which may also have facilitated her entrance into the company. Thus, a considerable, but not overwhelming, proportion of the women did have some link with the railway.

Of the nineteen fathers, seven could be considered to have been in some form of trade (38.89%). For example, Edith Gould, who joined the Camden Goods Office in 1876,[8] was the daughter of James Gould, a cheesemonger in St Pancras.[9] Additionally, James Harris was a Blacksmith employing one man, [10]  and was the father of Martha and Mary Harris who were employed at Birmingham Curzon Street in 1874 and 1876[11] respectively. The professions of the remaining four fathers were a cabinet maker, someone simply listed as a ‘manufacturer,’ a cigar and tobacco manufacturer and a master jeweller employing one boy.

Four (22.22%) of the fathers had positions in some form of administration. Probably the highest ranked was Joseph Arlom, father of Emma Arlom who was appointed at Manchester Moss Street Station in 1878[12], who was an ‘Inspector of Police.’[13] The lowest ranked socially was Alfred Vigurs, who by 1881 was a clerk at a lamp makers.[14] He was the father of Lizzie Vigurs, who was appointed to the Birmingham Curzon Street office in 1875.[15] The others fathers were working as Canal (or possibly Burial) Agent and a Superintendent of a public baths.

Only two of the fathers (11.11%) had what can be considered unskilled jobs. Frederick Hughes, the father of Martha Hughes, an appointee at Birmingham in 1875[16], was a ‘spoon and fork filer.’[17] The other was a Wheelhouseman in Manchester.

Therefore, it can be concluded that the vast majority of the female clerks had fathers who were in professions that required skill or education. Indeed, sixteen of the eighteen (88.89%) fathers would almost certainly have provided comfortable households for their families including good schooling for their children. Furthermore, the majority of the fathers were in positions that Victorian society considered ‘respectable’, meaning their daughters would have had a good chance of obtaining the positive references that potential employers required. Lastly, while this brief piece of research has shown that familial links to the railway were not necessarily required for the women to become clerks on the L&NWR, it has shown that the basis of their entry was identical to that for male clerks, in that the social class, public standing and educational level of the father were hugely important factors.

-----

[1] The National Archives [TNA], RAIL 410/1837, Register of salaried permanent officers in the Goods Department including clerks, goods managers, inspectors, superintendents, time keepers, accountants, foremen, agents, canvassers and collectors., p.1286

[2] TNA, RG 11/3552, 1881 Census, Cheshire, Tattenhale, District 6, p.1

[3] TNA, RG 11/3473, 1881 Census, Lancashire, Manchester, Heaton Norris, District 12, p.16

[4] TNA, RAIL 410/1841, Salaried Staff Register [No 2, pages 2593-3088] - Miscellaneous departments. Includes staff employed in the following departments: Goods, Cattle, Horse, Rolling Stock, Detective and Canal. Includes station masters, inspectors, detectives and clerks, p.2634

[5] TNA, RAIL 410/1843, Salaried staff register [No. 1, pages 1089-1599] - Goods Department. Includes clerks, goods managers, inspectors, superintendents, time keepers, accountants, foremen, agents, canvassers, collectors, timber measurer, traffic solicitor and cartage, p.1338

[6] TNA, RAIL 410/1837, Register of salaried permanent officers in the Goods Departmentp.1215

[7] TNA, RG 11/4003, 1881 Census, Lancashire, Manchester, St George, District 19, p.71

[8] TNA, RAIL 410/1837, Register of salaried permanent officers in the Goods Department, p.1227

[9] TNA, RG 11/176, London, St Pancras, Regents Park, District 4, p.17

[10] TNA, RG 11/2982, 1881 Census, Warwickshire, Birmingham, St Martin, District 7, p.24

[11] TNA, RAIL 410/1837, Register of salaried permanent officers in the Goods Department, p.1207

[12] TNA, RAIL 410/1841, Salaried Staff Register [No 2, pages 2593-3088] - Miscellaneous departments, p.1338

[13] TNA, RG 11/3940, 1881 Census, Lancashire, Moss Side, District 81, p.59

[14] TNA, RG 11/2835, 1881 Census, Staffordshire, Handsworth, District 20, p.26

[15] TNA, RAIL 410/1837, Register of salaried permanent officers in the Goods Department, p.1207

[16] TNA, RAIL 410/1837, Register of salaried permanent officers in the Goods Department, p.1207

[17] TNA, RG 11/3033, Warwickshire, Aston, Duddeston, District 41, p.19

Gourvish and Wolmar - TurnipRail's 2 Year Anniversary - Guest Posts

This is the last TurnipRail Two-year anniversary post, and I am glad to say I finish off with two prestigious guest posters, Terry Gourvish and Christian Wolmar.

Kevin Tennent, Me and Terry at Battersea Beer Festival, 2011

Terry Gourvish: On the first day of my PhD, my supervisor he handed me a book: 'Mark Huish and the London and North Western Railway.' I consumed it, gaining a fondness for a subject which, at that point, I knew little about. But beyond that, I was in awe of the author: Terry Gourvish. On our first meeting I was star-struck. Oh how things have changed. Indeed, over a pint in the Golden Ball, York, it was partially his idea to start the blog. Terry's had an extensive career. His two-volume history of British Railways is unsurpassed, and he authored the Official History of the privatised railways between 1997 and 2005  and the Channel Tunnel. Furthermore, he has written countless articles on railway history, a comprehensive history of Britain's brewing industry and on business history generally. He now heads the London School of Economics' Business History Unit. Indeed, Terry is someone I look up to immensely. Thus, I was overjoyed when he agreed to write a piece for the blog, and for that I owe him much thanks.

Should Passengers Pay Higher Fares?

This issue comes up every year, and produces the same sterile arguments from the main protagonists: Passenger Focus, ATOC, et al. How much of the cost of running the passenger railway should be charged to the ‘fare box’ is, of course, a matter for public policy. Some countries, e.g. France and Italy, have historically charged more to tax-payers than we do in the UK. If that is justifiable, then passengers should pay less here too. On the other hand, in countries which load the burden onto tax-payers, the operation represents a subsidy to rail users, who are in general not the poorer members of society that subsidies really ought to reach. I would say that increasing the fare box via higher fares is justifiable, but only if: 1] railway costs are as low as they could be; and 2] journeys made on the spur of the moment, i.e. non-APEX fares, are not punitively high.

Can we say that this is so? 

Christian Wolmar: Well, what can be said about Christian Wolmar that hasn't been said already? Christian is Britain's leading transport commentator, popping up on TV and Radio almost every week. But more than that, he has written widely about railway issues and history. The first book of his I read, many moons ago, was the 'Subterranean Railway', his engaging account of the history of the London Tube. Subsequently, I have consumed most of his other books, including 'Fire and Steam', 'On the Wrong Line' and 'Engines of War.' I also am an avid reader of his fortnightly column in RAIL magazine. Therefore, as an author whose writings I have thoroughly enjoyed through the years, I was thrilled when he agreed to write a paragraph for this anniversary. Many, many, thanks to Christian:

Without understanding history,we cannot learn its lessons. In the research for my various books, it is remarkable how the same dilemmas over railway politics have occurred throughout their history. Italian politicians, for example, were debating whether to nationalise their railways in the 1880s, and interestingly it was the Left who opposed state control. Discussions over open access to railways predate that by some decades and nearly all rail companies realised that providing the traction as well as the track was the best option, a lesson of history missed by those who supported the rail privatisation of the mid 1990s. Subsidy, too, has always been a thorny issue and subject to much handwringing from politicians. If only they understood the history and learned from it, they would not make the same mistakes as their predecessors. Maybe that is too much to hope for, but as historians – and I have become one by default – we must strive to educate today’s decision makers about how the past can inform them.

TurnipRail 2 year Anniversary - The Best of the Second Year

What a couple of years it has been. As I write, my Turnip Rail website hosts 213 posts on a range of railway history topics. However, despite what I have produced, the past year, and especially the last six months, has not been one of the easiest periods in my life. In September I began suffering from anxiety, which has affected my ability to work and, I think, the quality of my output. I also broke my toe around the same time - which I'll only say was annoying. Gladly, both these problems are mostly resolved. Nevertheless, in the last couple of months I have gone through a process of a work restructure. Therefore, I have been made redundant and will have to re-interview for a job in the coming months. Consequently, combined with an increasing work-load from my PhD (which has until late September to be submitted) I have been reduced to doing a post a week.

Despite these things, I hope I have turned out posts which you have found entertaining and interesting. I have certainly enjoyed researching and writing them. So, in this anniversary post I have randomly chosen some of my favourites from the past year. 

1. “When Victorian Beer Trains Crash” – In some sense, this post from April explored the link between the railways and the brewing industry.  Indeed, I looked at some of the interesting ways that crashed beer trains were reported. I was unsurprised that the newspaper reports always seemed to have humorous remarks, this being the funniest:  “Alcohol can thus baffle her Majesty’s mail as well as her Majesty’s Government.”[1] However, what was particularly interesting was that the majority of the accidents I found befell Midland Railway trains coming from Burton. This was logical though, Burton being the centre of the Victorian brewing industry.

2. “The York Tap - A piece of railway heritage restored”– OK, this is another beer-related post, but in a different way. A trip to York in early December meant I had the pleasure of going into the York Tap, a pub sited on the York Station platform. In the post I described how the building the Tap inhabits was opened in 1907 as the station’s tea room, and its recent conversion to a pub restored the building to its former glory. I love the Tap and would recommend a visit to anyone.

3. “Unlocking the Early Railway Manager – Parts 1, 2, 3 and 4” (The link is to Part One) – Using three directories of railway officials from 1841, 1847 and 1848, these four articles sought to investigate the validity of a long-held belief that early railway managers were mainly ex-military men, as well as look at early managers generally. However, rather than presenting four finished pieces of research as I normally do in posts, I set out to describe how this investigation progressed over the period of a few weeks. The results were startling and should change the content of railway history books in the future. Firstly, I concluded that ‘the notion that military men were the driving force in early railway management is erroneous,’ given that they constituted a tiny proportion of all railway managers. Secondly, in 1848 the three great engineers of the period, Brunel, Locke and Stephenson, directly controlled  the engineering affairs of 28.81% of Britain’s railway companies. Yet, even more impressively, engineering matters for 59.13% of all Britain’s total railway mileage was under their collective charge. These are important findings and I would like to do much more work on this subject in the future.

4. “A New High-Speed Line, an Old Victorian Assumption?”– I got some interesting reactions to this post which simply highlighted something I observed. The building of Britain’s second high-speed line (HS2) was being promoted by its supporters as adding capacity to the railway network, as the number of passengers using the railways is predicted to massively grow in the future. I suggested that if you talked to any railway manager before 1900 they too would have said that traffic growth was inevitable. Yet, the expected growth didn’t occur, and after 1900 the number of passengers using the railways levelled off and then began falling. All I did was compare the two situations, observing that this part of railway history shows us that passenger traffic growth can be hard to predict. I will state this now, I did not post this because I necessarily oppose HS2; I posted it only as a consideration. I will not reveal my position on HS2, because I don't think getting political is what my blog is about.

5. “‘Crabbed, morose and irritable’ - One Liverpool Man's Complaints Against the L&NWR in 1867” – This was a post that discussed of six long letters that ‘A CONTRACTOR’ wrote to the Liverpool Mercury in 1867 complaining about the station facilities of the London and North Western Railway. The station that received the most criticism was at Huyton Quarry, which he argued ‘might be a station in Chancery, so out-of-elbows does it look, or belong to some bankrupt company, who could not afford a few pounds to put in a tolerably descent condition.’[2] Generally, these letters were just interesting insights into how the public felt about railway managers at the time and the services they received.

6. Lastly, I have done three posts this year about the first sixteen female clerks to be employed at the London and North Western Railway’s Birmingham Curzon Street Station between 1874 and 1876. The first in August looked at how the company’s decision was reported in the press. Indeed, the newspapers detailed the basic facts of their employment, for example, whose decision it was, the company’s attitude, their working environment and their pay. However, on Ancestry.co.uk releasing digitised railway staff records, I was able to look these women up and do some detailed statistical analysis of their employment. In two following posts (HERE and HERE) I examined the women’s ages, promotional prospects, length of employment and pay. Indeed, on this latter point I found that up until their eighth year they received the same pay as the men, at which point it was curtailed. This was a very interesting finding, showing that the newspapers at the time were wrong when they said that the employment female clerks was immediately going to reduce company costs.

Overall, I cannot say these were my absolute favourite posts, yet, they are definitely near the top. I strive hard in my blog to pass on entertaining and interesting pieces of railway history, things I find, and elements of my PhD. In return I have received a lot of love, complementary comments and warmth. I just want to thank all my readers so much for your support this year. My blog wouldn't have been a success without you all reading, re-tweeting and re-posting, and for that I am eternally grateful.

-----------

[1] Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper, Sunday, August 10, 1873; Issue 1603

[2] Liverpool Mercury, Tuesday, November 12, 1867; Issue 6175

"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

-------

[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

We were Coachmen, Servants and Craftsmen. Early Railway Recruitment - Part 3

This is last post on research that I have been doing on the occupations that 400 London and North Western Railway (L&NWR) employees had before coming  to the company’ Traffic, Coaching and Operating Department (hereon known as the traffic department) between 1837 and 1860. This is based on a single file found in the National Archives. In the first post (here) I discussed how most of the department’s new employees came from the company’s permanent way department. The second post (here) presented evidence relating to those who went into the department directly after school, and those that came from the army or from being labourers. This last post will look at individuals who had worked in transportation industries, were previously employed as servants and those who had been skilled craftsmen.

One of the big questions relating to the early railways is how many employees came from other transportation industries. The results above reveal that the number was small and only ten had been involved in such businesses (2.50%). The ten were constituted of two mariners, five coachmen, one carman, one letter carrier and one currier. What is interesting about the ten is that there were no individuals who had worked in the canals.  Indeed, apart from the mariners (and possible the carman), it seems that most had been working for themselves.  Coachmen, particularly, were seeing the railways as a chance to improve their fortunes in the greatest number.

Furthermore, it also seems that there was no pattern as to when ex-transport workers joined the railway, and in each of the six periods I have split the years between 1837 and 1860 into (see above) there are always at least one individual joining the department. The only pattern that has been discerned is the types of jobs that the men went into. Eight of the ten went into the secondary labour market (with low weekly pay, low job security and few promotional prospects), becoming Porters (3), Guards (1), Pointsmen (1), Ticket Collectors (2) and Police Constables (1). However, only two joined the company’s primary labour market (with high job security, promotional prospects and good pay), one becoming a Station Master and another becoming a station agent. Indeed, these individuals were the mariners, clearly indicating that their prior jobs were perceived as being more skilled and that their education made them suitable for administrative posts. Therefore, this further reveals, as the last post did, that employment patterns before the railways came into existed determined how the L&NWR appointed individuals to posts.

Ex-servants constituted a large number of the sample, with fifty-seven of the 400 being employed as such (14.25%) before coming to the railway. Of these two had been butlers, one was a footman, six had been grooms, thirteen were listed as having been in ‘Gentlemen’s service,’ while thirty-four were simply described as servants. There seems to be no pattern as to when they joined the railway. In the years between 1837 and 1839 they made up 9.09% of those joining the department. In the early 1840s, however, none joined, but in the late 1840s they constituted a massive 19.05%. In the early 1850s the proportion dropped to 8.93%, then rose 16% in the late 1850s and 24.59% in 1860. Thus, the evidence implies that the labour market changed. Before the railways domestic service was the largest employing sector of the economy. However, as shown, when the railways came along they took over this mantle and many people saw them as means to obtain better employment prospects.

Most of the servants went into the secondary labour market. However, it is interesting that large numbers were in the positions that had a public service focus (and which were cleaner). Thus, twenty-seven became porters, three became ticket collectors and nine became police constables. Therefore, there was a clear link between the types of occupations individuals did before they came to the railway and the positions they took up within the L&NWR. This is reinforced by the fact that the Butler, an individual who was a ‘club servant’ (whatever that is) and a man who was in a ‘gentleman’s servant’ were the only three who went into the primary labour market as an Agent, Clerk and an Assistant Agent respectively. Thus, because two of these seemed to have been servants of a higher status, and one may have been, they were accordingly given jobs in the railway that were of similar standing.

Lastly, the forty-one skilled craftsmen were in the sample, and had been occupied in twenty-eight different professions including Tin-Plate Workers, Brassfounders, Shoemakers, Brickmakers and Weavers. Proportionately, skilled craftsmen were the largest group of individuals joining the railway in the period 1837 to 1839, constituting 27.27% of them. Thereafter, their contribution hovered around 10% in each of the remaining periods. I am uncertain what this suggests, and because the sample size for the period between 1837 and 1839 is only twenty-two, the figure may be artificially high.

Furthermore, unlike the other areas of the economy, where individuals’ jobs before they came to the railway affected their position within it, the correlation in the case of the skilled craftsmen was not as strong. The craftsmen took up positions in both the primary and secondary labour markets. Given that the majority of individuals had at least a fair education given their professions, it would suggests that the L&NWR was not just assigning individuals to their posts based on their prior occupations, but also on their ability to undertake their responsibilities.

Overall, I have not been able to reveal in these three posts all the information that I have discovered. However, a number of interesting things have been revealed about recruitment in the early L&NWR’s. Firstly, its Traffic Department recruited heavily from its engineering sections, suggesting that the completion of lines and the subsequent unemployment this brought for some, allowed the company to choose from known staff. Furthermore, there were not a great number of individuals who worked previously in either the military or other transportation industries, as has always been suspected. Lastly, the jobs that individuals received from the railway company were closely correlated to the level of skill and education that were required for their original occupations.

This is by no means a complete study, and there are over 300 pages in the document that haven’t been surveyed. Thus, I hope to do this at some point and give an even better picture of early railway recruitment.

I was a Schoolboy, a Soldier, a Labourer. Recruitment in the Early Railway Industry - Part 2

In my last post I discussed research I have been doing on  professions that the earliest railway workers had before they joined the London and North Western Railway’s (L&NWR) Operating, Traffic and Coaching Department (to be hereon known as the Traffic Department) between 1837 and 1871. Previously, I looked at sixty-eight individuals (out of 400) who had been employed in the company’s Engineering Department before to coming to the Traffic Department. In this post I will start to focus on the remaining 332 men who, before coming to the L&NWR, were employed in jobs outside the company.

As stated, for ease of interpretation I have categorised the 400 workers into the following fourteen categories (Note, there is one slight modification from the table presented in the last post because an error was found.)

Firstly, only a very small proportion of the individuals, twenty-three out of the 400 (5.75%), had no prior employment before coming to the railway. This was reflected in their ages. The youngest of them were three boys of thirteen, two of which were appointed as Booking Clerks and another of which became an ‘assistant agent.’ The oldest individual in the sample was James Nicholson, the [Station] Agent at Bulkington, who was listed as being thirty-six.  Yet, because of his age and his position of responsibility it is highly implausible that he had done nothing before coming to the railway. Overall, apart from Nicholson and two other individuals, the rest were all under the age of eighteen.

However, more interesting conclusions can be made about changes in the L&NWR's recruitment processes. Only four of the individuals who had had no prior profession were recruited in the 1830s and 1840s (3.57% of the 121 individuals recruited in these years). Furthermore, only three of these men were engaged in the early 1850s (2.67% of 112 new employees). Thus, this leaves sixteen that were appointed between 1855 and 1860 (12.80% of 125 individuals). Clearly, in the railway's emergent years it was principally recruiting individuals who had experience of other industries. However, in the late-1850s did it start to recruit people straight out of school, and this is presumably when families’ decades-long associations with the railways began.

The positions that these individuals went into are also of interest. In this period only two went into the secondary labour market (with low weekly pay, low job security and few promotional prospects), becoming a policeman and pointsman. Indeed, the twenty remaining took up positions as agents, clerks and assistant agents (all clerical positions), and, thus, were in the primary labour market (with high job security, promotional prospects and good pay). Consequently, because only sixty-six of the individuals in the overall sample of 400 went into the primary labour market, the L&NWR’s Traffic Department evidently was recruiting a large number of school-leavers into clerical positions before 1860, possibly because of a skills shortage in the economy. But, importantly, this data also signals that by 1860 the distinction between the two labour markets, the jobs they encompassed and what sort of individuals went into them, were well-defined.

One of the most repeated stories about early railway managers was that their ranks were dominated by senior military men, as they were the only ones that had experience of administering large organisations. However, in four previous blogs (starting here) I have clearly showed the error of this assertion. Nevertheless, my interest in the transference of skills from the military to the early railways meant that I was on the look-out for soldiers and sailors when doing this study.

Of the 400 railway workers in my sample only twenty-eight (7.00%) had been in the military before being employed by the L&NWR. Six had been in the royal navy (two as Royal Marines), with twenty-two being ex-soldiers. All bar three of the individuals went into the secondary labour market. Indeed, it is no surprise that fourteen joined the railway police as presumably the discipline of military training made them suitable for this position. Additionally, eight others received manual positions where strength was required, three becoming porters and five taking up posts as pointsmen.

As for when the individuals were appointed, it seems that there was a consistent stream of soldiers and sailors moving from the military to the railway between 1837 and 1860. Indeed, of those employees who joined in the late-1830s, ex-military men made up 9.09% of these. This increased to 11.1% in the early-1840s, but decreased to 7.14% in the early 1850s. However, thereafter the proportion rose again to 9.80% in 1860. In the early-1840s there was seemingly an anomalous result as only 1.59% of the sixty-three new railway workers appointed in the period had been in the army or navy. The reason for this anomaly is unknown.

The profession that most of those in the sample were engaged in before coming to the Traffic Department was that of ‘labourer’ (apart from those who had worked in the Engineering Department). Anyone who has used the census’ will testify how ambiguous this job description is. Indeed, only in six cases out of the sixty-two ex-labourers was more information available (one carter, one collier, two quarraymen and two warehousemen). Unsurprisingly, all the ex-labourers went into the secondary labour market and the positions that they were appointed to in the greatest numbers were as porters (17), pointsmen (19) and policemen (8). Additionally, they also obtained positions as foremen, gatemen, greaser and shaklers (whatever they were) or signalmen. Therefore, the majority of ex-labourers went from strenuous positions to strenuous positions. However, it is quite possible that the railways paid better than their previous employers.

Of more interest is that the proportion of new Traffic Department staff that had been labourers declined over the period. Between 1837 and 1839 they constituted 27.2% of all those appointed. Yet, in the early-1840s this dropped to 18.5%, in the late-1840s the proportion was 15.8%, in the early 1850s it rose slightly to 16.1%, but declined again in the late-1850s to 14.4%. Lastly, in 1860 they constituted only 9.8% of all new staff.

This suggests that changes occurred in the national economy, as well as within the railway companies. Firstly, it would appear that the simple description of ‘labourer’ was becoming less common as time progressed, possibly as new trades were started, new inventions were created and the economy diversified in the early to mid-nineteenth century. Furthermore, and as will be shown in the next post, the reducing number of ex-labourers, who would have had only poor education at best, suggests that the L&NWR was increasing looking to recruit into secondary labour market men with better schooling or even better backgrounds. Only an investigation of the company's files have the potential to prove this.

Overall, this post has revealed that between 1837 and 1860 the L&NWR’s Traffic Department refined who it wished to recruit into its ranks. In the 1830s the new company was recruiting a far higher proportion of poorly educated individuals whose experiences were limited to labouring work. Indeed, school leavers did not feature highly.  Yet, by 1860 most positions that new railway workers were appointed to were highly dependent on their prior experiences and education, as well as being defined by the strict parameters of the company’s primary and secondary labour markets. Thus, it is clear that between 1837 and 1860 the norms of railway employment of the later nineteenth century were developed. In the last post of this series this will be demonstrated further.

What Did You Do Before Becoming A Railwayman in the Early Industry? - Part 1

The topic of the next few posts is new to British railway history and has never, ever, been researched in detail before beyond statements like ‘I think,’ which isn’t really useful. What I will be looking at are the occupations of early railway workers beforethey came to the industry. Most study of railway labour focuses the employee’s working environments, such of their hours of work, wages and promotional prospects, or their union activity. However, these issues principally affected the railway industry from the 1870s onwards and before then these topics were not as important as the formal patterns of labour management were still developing. Indeed, the repeated idea of railway work is that it ran in families, with sons following fathers into the industry. Yet, at the start of each ‘railway family’ was an individual who was not a railway employee, but decided to be one. Thus, my aim is to reveal, through research on one document, what early railwaymen did before coming to the railway.

The document I used is held in The National Archives under RAIL 410/1805 and is a staff record book listing London and North Western Railway (L&NWR) employees from the Operating, Traffic and Coaching Departments (to be hereon known as the Traffic Department) between 1837 and 1871. The information I have used were the individuals’ ‘last employment previous to entering the company’s service,’ the date they joined the company, their age on joining and the position they received. For speed of data collection other pieces of information, such as their names, locations, or who recommended them, have been left out of my research.

Before anything else is said, it is important to note how the results are spread across the decades.

Clearly, more data is available from 1850 onwards, reflecting the fact that as the company expanded its workforce grew. Across the entire period the railway employees had between them 120 different professional occupations, however, I have sorted these into twelve categories based on the economic sectors these were in. Only four individuals (1%) had professions that I could not categorise as I had no clue what they were (such is the nature of the 19^thcentury occupational descriptions).  The distribution is shown below of their

It should be remembered that the data relates to Traffic Department employees and does not include railway workers from other departments, for example the Engineering or Locomotive Departments. Indeed, it seems that a large numbers of individuals worked for railways before entering the Traffic Department. However, analysis reveals some interesting things about how the department sourced labour. Sixty-eight department employees, or 17.25% of the entire sample, had come from railways’ secondary labour market and had undertaken jobs that had low job security, pay and poor promotional prospects. However, of these, forty-nine (72.06%) had come from the ‘Permanent Way Department’ (4) or had been a platelayers (45).

What this was suggests is that the L&NWR’s Traffic Department drew heavily on its own Permanent Way staff for employees in the period. Nevertheless, the proportion of staff moving from the Permanent Way Department to Traffic changed with time. Between 1837 and 1839 4.55% workers made the move, however, this osmosis reached its height between 1850 and 1854, when 25 of the 112 in the sample transferred (22.32%). Nevertheless, the proportion dropped thereafter, and in 1860 only one person (1.96%), John Lycett, a Police Constable at Rugeley Station, had been employed in the Permanent Way Department before starting with Traffic. The proportions are shown below.

Thus, the L&NWR’s Traffic Department increasingly drew on staff previously employed the Permanent Way Department in the 1840s and early 1850s. Presumably, this was driven by two factors. Firstly, the core of the L&NWR’s network began to be completed in the late 1840s, meaning that the number of staff the engineering establishment required diminished. However, concurrently, the business of the line was increasing, meaning that the Traffic Department required staff.  Therefore, they were happy to employ those ex-Permanent Way men who were put out of the job.  

Furthermore, from the late-1850s the number of transfers declined. Given what is known about employment in the later railway industry, it seems that by this period the department which individuals joined were usually the ones they stayed with throughout their career. Thus, the low number of transfers from Permanent Way Department to the Traffic in the late-1850s and 1860 reflects that these employment patterns were becoming established. Indeed, on the L&NWR at least, it would suggest that the idea of sons following fathers into the industry began in the late 1850s.

However, while transference out of the Permanent Way Department would have been a step-up for some railway workers, in the majority of cases their new posts were still manual one. The distribution of the posts Permanent Way staff went into after their transfers is shown below.

Indeed, given that ex-platelayers constituted forty-five of the forty-nine individuals transferred from the Permanent Way Department, and what they had been doing what was effectively the lowest ranked job in railway companies’, it is unsurprising that many took up the lowest jobs in the Traffic Department. Indeed, thirty-four (the Gatekeepers, Porters and, particularly, the Pointsmen) were all manual jobs that were the lowest rank on the promotional ladder. Also, Police Constables, that worked for the companies’ private police forces, were basically hired muscle, and were also low-ranked jobs. Only two individuals, the two ‘[Station] Agents,’ were part of the L&NWR’s ‘primary labour market,’ which had high job security, steady pay and promotional prospects. These were John Robinson, who had transferred in August 1846 from being a Permanent Way Inspector, and George Turner, who had transferred in November 1851 from being a platelayer.

Thus, what has been learned is that the L&NWR’s traffic department employed large numbers of ex-Permanent Way Department employees, that these individuals usually transferred from low-paid manual jobs into low-paid manual positions in the Traffic Department, and that by the late 1850s, because employment patterns were becoming more established, these moves became less common. Indeed, this would suggest that as the railway industry became more mature, the opportunity for upward mobility declined as people were tied to the department with which they started.

In the next post I will look at the other individuals in the sample who came to the L&NWR’s Traffic Department from outside the railway.