Overworked and Underpaid - The Hours of Duty of Early Victorian Railway Workers

The early Victorian railway worker was like a tired pack horse who toiled arduous hours for very little reward. In 1839, 30 of the employees of the London to Birmingham Railway complained in a memorial to the directors of ‘lengthened hours of attendance which forbid the enjoyment of either exercise or recreation and preclude them from the society of their wives and children.’ The working week, especially for the manual staff, was usually seven days. Ordinarily there was no time allowed off on Sundays, even if the many of the staff would have wished to go to church, and holidays were never a consideration. Further to this, most railway companies perceived that any time and employee was not spent in an active state was a rest period. Thus, a man may have calculated to be at work for nine hours, but in reality had been on duty for eighteen. Lastly, any overtime was usually unpaid, but refusal to work would have meant dismissal and possible destitution.

It may seem strange to us, but the members of staff who had command of the most safety-critical parts of the network, the signalmen and drivers, were required on many occasions to work hours that even by the standards of the early 1900s would be considered highly dangerous. Frank McKenna, in respect to the long hours of work that drivers had to do, called the system of working a ‘precisely calculated system of exploitation.’ There was not a regulation length working day for drivers, and rather than there being 7 days and 7 nights in a week, there were simply 7 units of operation. Thus, the general rule that there should be 12-hour days was disregarded by the foreman, and shifts of double and treble that period would be insisted on, payment only being provided when the man was considered not able to work further. But, by the 1870s most drivers had had their nominal hours of work per day reduced to 10 hours. Yet, the ‘working day’ was ordinarily linked to the distance that drivers had travelled, and not the time they were on duty. Thus, if they stopped to pick up or drop off wagons on their journey, any rest time in between this would be added to their working day.

The other employees that were in safety-critical positions were the signalmen who controlled the vast array of train movements from their little stone and wooden boxes up and down the network. A letter to the Journal of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants outlined the hours of work of one signalman in the 1860s and early 1870s:

‘I myself am a signalman, and have been in the employ of the London, Chatham and Dover company for eleven years next June, during which time I have averaged eighty-four hours per week. As there are only two of us, we relieve each other on Sunday morning at 8.30 am., to enable us to change over from day to night. We remain on duty till 7.30 the following Monday, so to enable us to have twenty-three hours off duty once a fortnight.’

Indeed, the Board of Trade, pointed to the fact that it was the fatigue of the signalmen that was the root cause of many of the serious accidents of the period.

Hours of work were not much better for other grades of railway employee. At the top of the railway class system were the clerks, who had a chance of being promoted into management. Yet, many of those who had not reached such heights had comparable hours to the manual railway workers. One Chief Clerk on the North British Railway complained in 1863 that while the hours of work for Clerks were supposed to be between 9.15 am and 6 pm, the reality was that they could only leave when the work had been completed. Therefore, some clerks had been found still at work at 9 or 10 pm, for which they got no overtime. A Clerk complained to the Railway Service Gazette in 1872 that clerical staff on many occasions worked 10, 12, or even 14 hours a day. However, when they complained to their managers about the lack of extra pay they were directed to the book of rules which stated that they were to ‘do duty when and where required, including Sundays.’

For other grades of employee the hours were no different. A Great Western Railway survey of staff in 1871 showed that of Shunters, Goods Guards, Signalmen, Switchmen & Policemen and Porters (totalling 3,258 staff), per day only 7.2% worked 10 or under hours, 22.8% worked between 10.5 and 11 hours, 66.4% worked between 11.5 and 12 hours, and 3.6% worked over 12 hours. Therefore, while the hours of work for railway employees were less than in the generation before, the 10 hour day was still not a reality for most railway employees by 1871. This said, the GWR’s report may have been misleading if the compiler did not factor in employees’ breaks and stoppages into the working day, and thus, the proportion of those working more than 10 hours per day may have been even higher than was presented.

Progress was slow in improving the situation of railway employees’ hours of work. Indeed, one of the first demands of the newly formed Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants in the 1870swas for them to be uniformly reduced. However, despite this pressure, it wasn’t until 1893 under the ‘Railway Servant’s (Hours of Labour) Act’ that the Government imposed any sort of restriction on the length of time a railway worker could be on duty.

Are the North and South, Rich and Poor in Transport Terms?

I don't think that it would surprise you if I said hat London's transport network gets more money than those in the other regions of the country. Truth be told, most people can acknowledge this fact without having travelled around Britain extensively. Indeed, when I went on a little jaunt round Britain last year this difference was something I noticed. Being a regular user of public transport in London, the seats I sat on, the information boards I looked at and the trains I rode on, were not up to the standard I was used to. This was a contrast especially stark when travelling in the north of the country. I did not, however, complain, and put the differences down to underfunding.

Yesterday I got some basic evidence delivered to me that confirmed my belief. The difference in the funding for transport, especially between the North and the South of Britain, is quite simply stunning. A short report, written by the Passenger Transport Executive Group (PTEG), detailed where money spent on transport services goes, region by region. PTEG, it should be noted, is best placed to do this review. It represents Britain's 6 Passenger Transport Executives (PTEs) in Greater Manchester, Merseyside, South Yorkshire, Tyne and Wear, West Midlands and West Yorkshire, as well as Nottingham City Council, Strathclyde Partnership for Transport and Transport for London. All 'provide, plan, procure and promote public transport' in their regions. Yet while PTEG is supposed to promote the interests of all of these member organisations, I don't think it will actually do this evenly. With the majority of these organisations in the north of the country and with TfL being a significant political force on its own that has the backing of the Mayor of London, it is unsurprising that PTEG favours the interests of their non-London members. This, I think, is why the '2010 PTEG Funding Gap report' came about.

Now for some statistics. Please don't go to sleep, they really do make interesting reading. Using data from the Office of National Statistics (ONS) from 2008/2009, the report states that Londoners had, per head, £641 per year spent on them. However, those living in North West of Britain, had only a mere £287 spent on them each. Even worse luck befell those living in the North East, where the figure was only £234. This meant that Londoners had, per head of population, on average two and a half times more transport money spent on them than those living elsewhere in Britain. But it apparently gets worse. Of all money spent on transport in this country, 30% was spent in London which has only 15% of the entire population. Yet, the West Midlands, as an example, has 11% of the population and received only 9% of the transport budget. Further, PTEG present statistics that show that the recent disparity is part of a historical trend. Taking the comparison of London and the North and West Midlands, in 2004/05 the London spend per head was £533, whereas in the North and West Midlands it was £216. Skip forward to 2008/09 and the difference is that in London the figure was £641, whereas in the North and West Midlands it was £262. Awake? Right, let's move on.

What is good about the report is that there is no commentary or analysis, leaving that job to people like me. It would be easy for me to jump to conclusions about how unfair the spending difference between the north and south is, and I do think that there is an element of this. But at the end of the day my subjective view point is, however, playing a role in this judgement. The problem is that the statistics in the report actually tell us very little with regard to the issues surrounding public transport. The report measures the spending per head of population, but this is far too basic a measure that doesn't take into account a number of other factors.

My primary complaint is that it doesn't factor in how the services that the money pays for are used. The key statistic would not, therefore, be the number of individuals living in an area, but rather it would be the number of journeys made by public transport. Take for example two stations in roughly the same situations, Berrylands in South West London and Mossley Hill (shown) in Liverpool. Both are in densely populated suburban areas, and both have approximately four trains an hour. In 2005/2006 329,000 people passed through Berrylands station, however Mossley Hill only had 133,128 visit it (one of which was me). This would therefore mean that despite Berrylands being smaller and having fewer platforms (2 verses 4), the facilities would require more frequent maintenance because of higher ware and tare and the trains would need to be longer and at very least require more frequent cleaning. The costs incurred by the operator of Berrylands station would therefore be higher per user and per head of population.

Further, another complaint is that the report doesn't factor in that London's transport services move types of passengers that other British transport systems do not to the same degree. Firstly, the bulk of Britain's prosperity is now, very sadly, focussed on London. Taking figures of Gross Value Added to the economy in 2006, London comes out on top, adding £26,192 per capita. Other regions perform much worse, for example the West Midlands contributes £16,583 per capita and the North West £16,234. Therefore, in London transport links to and from the city, offices and businesses, need to be maintained at a high standard as they are vital to the economy.

Additionally, the majority of Britain's tourism is based in London. London is the world's most visited tourist location and in 2006 played host to 15,640,000 individuals. Manchester, where the second largest number of tourists visit sits at 73 in the world rankings as it only accommodated 912,000 people. Additionally, the top three British tourist attractions, The Tower of London, St Paul's Cathedral and Westminster Abbey, are all London based, the next being the Roman Baths in Bath. Therefore, tourism would put greater strains on London's infrastructure and would need to provide more facilities for these customers.

Lastly, history that plays a role. Once the railways came to London, the city quickly developed a dense commuter belt. For example, the London and South Western Railway (L&SWR), which had a dense suburban network, always derived above 72% of its revenue from passenger traffic. Further, in 1900 the average clerk in London could live at a distance from the city where it would be impractical to walk from, whereas in smaller cities, Manchester or Liverpool for example, he possibly could have made his way to work on foot. Further, because of the fact that there were more industrial workers in the north, than in the business-orientated south, there were fewer individuals that could afford to use public transport in an era when the cost was still rather high. Lastly, many of the railways that served the north, such as the London and North Western and Great Northern Railways, tended to focus on attracting freight as this generated more profit. Historically therefore your average railway historian would tend to see northern railways as 'freight railways' and many of the lines built in the dense industrial regions of the north, while having stations on them, were essentially constructed to facilitate this transport. London, therefore, has always been a city used to using public transport and has it far more ingrained in its woodwork. Public transport in London is therefore used more and has a greater role to play in keeping the city moving.

Overall it seems that the report is very flawed. Just saying that regions other than London receive less money is failing to address the differences in transport patterns and realities of transport in this nation. There needs to be more complex, more detailed and more intelligent figures gathered before spending on transport can be properly assessed.

But then again, with all this in mind, I do still feel that there is an underlying unfairness in the amount of transport funding between London and the regions. The counter argument, to all my points above, is simple. If not enough money is not spent on public transport outside of London, to develop, improve and add to the existing services , then people will not move onto the trains or buses. They are right. The question underlying this is what role do we want our transport systems to play in the future? Do we want them to just continue to service those existing patterns of usage, or do we want them to be an instrument of greener travel and economic growth? I will go with the latter option. I would argue that the challenge to public transport providers and the government, is to increase spending on public transport throughout the nation, so as to expand the opportunities for people to use it. In the quest to be a greener nation, to reduce congestion on our roads and to grow local economies, transport spending needs to increased so that getting on a train or bus anywhere in the country, is as pleasant an experience as it is in London. With the economic crisis we'll see what happens, but in truth, increased and more evenly distributed spending on public transport can be, and should be, a positive thing for all in stimulating economic recovery. Only by making transport spending fairer, will this happen throughout the nation.

Read the report HERE

Three Station Masters at Hampton Court - The Odd Bunch

I have been always been interested in the lives of railway workers, and what has particularly peaked my interest are those individuals that worked at my local station, Hampton Court, in the Victorian period. Astoundingly, between 1849, when the station was built, and 1895, Hampton Court only had four station agents (later called station masters). The line, which came off the London to Southampton main line just past Kingston Station (now Surbiton), was built throughout 1848, and opened for traffic on the 1^st February 1849. The London and South Western Railway had been interested in the tourist traffic going to the Hampton Court Palace since 1839. Therefore,those individuals that took up the position of station master is of interest as this was a prestige post.

The first Station Agent or Master was John Madigan. Like most of the staff based at Hampton Court in the period, Madigan was not from the local area. A minute of the Traffic and coaching committee of the 23rd February 1849 boasts that the company's three major projects at the time, the extension of the line from Nine Elms to Waterloo, the Windsor line and lastly the Hampton Court Branch were all 'manned without adding a single individual to the company's staff.' This indicates that Madigan had joined the railway at an earlier point. Indeed, Madigan had started as a clerk at Nine Elms in 1840, had been moved to Winchester in 1841, Botley in 1842 and Wareham in 1847.

But what of his background? On the 1851 census it shows that Madigan was from Ireland. He was 29 year old, meaning he was born in either 1822 or 23, was married, and was listed as living in the 'Corn House Building'. Having come from Ireland it is quite possible that Madigan had brought his young family over during the Irish Potato famine. Many of the Irish who came over to work on the railways during this period only took positions as navvies. However, Madigan's employment shows that as time progressed more immigrants went into the operational side of the railways taking on administrative jobs. The position of Station Agent was not as prestige as it became in the later Victorian period, yet for an Irish immigrant of only 29 years of age, running a station would have been quite an achievement. Madigan was moved to Windsor in September 1851 and the station agency was taken over by William P. Legh.

Like Madigan, Legh was not a local being born in Windsor in 1810. He was very well educated. In his notice of retirement in 1882 the South Western Gazette, the company's staff magazine, notes that he was at Eton and was a contemporary of the sitting Prime Minister at the time Gladstone. Legh obtained his first railway job when he entered the company as a clerk in the Stores Department at Nine Elms in 1847 . The formal process of job appointment was through a process of nepotism and he would have been nominated by one of the directors of the company. It is possible that his family knew some company directors, perhaps through an Eton contact.

As a well-educated clerk in the Traffic Department in 1847, Legh's promotion prospects were good, and he was quickly moved to the Booking Office at Nine Elms station. In 1848 he was made Station Agent at Adlestone Station, after which he moved in 1850 to Hounslow. In 1851 he was transferred to Hampton Court. The system of advancement on the London and South Western Railway was quite erratic and promotion was based on a number of factors, such as how good the employee was at their job and their degree of contacts within the company. Another possible explanation is that the Traffic Managers at the time, Mr Stovin up to 1852 and Mr Scott after, were actively trying to advance Legh. Employees of the company were not allowed to enter the company as station master at the time, and the majority of employees in the main were expected to work up from the bottom. Legh starts in a very cushy position as a Clerk in the stores department and rapidly worked his way through gradually more important stations. Thus, he may have been subject to further nepotism after his appointment. As a result in 1853 he became Assistant Superintendent at Waterloo.

This was short lived and in 1855, for an unknown reason, he was moved back to Hampton Court. He never married and lived in the station building until his retirement in 1882 at the age of 72. On his retirement he was on a wage of £110 a year, at the top end of the scale. He retired with a yearly allowance of £95 from the pension fund. He died on the 9^th July 1883 and was buried in West Molesey Cemetery on the 12^th July 1883. (Molesey is actually where the station is built and on the other side of the river from the Palace) The funeral was attended by Mr Chalwin the Goods Clerk, Mr Whittington the delivery agent, Inspector Nicholson of Waterloo Station and by the new station agent of Hampton Court, John McDougall. Clearly, Legh's appointment indicates that the position of Station Agent was gaining in prestige, as being appointed after an Irish immigrant, the ex-Eton student's posting suggests that the company wished to have an employee in the position of a higher social standing. It is, however, unusual for someone who had such impressive education to be placed in such a position, especially as the majority of station agents, when they first became clerks, would only have had basic elementary schooling.

I have found a lot more about Legh's successor, John McDougall. Once again McDougall did not come from Molesey, rather he was born in the Scottish Borders at Gordon near Kelso in 1831. He joined the railway company in 1860, becoming a porter at Waterloo in 1860. He started as a guard based at Hampton Court almost immediately after, and was appointed as an Inspector at the station in 1873. In the 1871 census he is recorded as being a married and living at 7 Creek Road, aged 40. In the 1881 census he is listed as living in Osborne Villa in Matham Road with his wife, Annie, his daughter Rosa, and two other railway employees. By this point however he was already reliving the ailing Legh of some of his administrative work, something that presumably precipitated his rise to the post of Station Master. In February 1880 The Locomotive committee paid McDougall £5 for filling in the Locomotive Department returns for a year. This he did for a number of years.

There is also evidence that McDougall was gaining the respect and profile of a Station Agent, and this is why he is one of the most unusual appointments to such a post that I have encountered for a long time. On two occasions, in April 1880 and in December 1881, the Traffic Committee of the L&SWR reported being petitioned at first by the residents of Molesey and then by the local board for him to be the next Station Agent. This was eventually confirmed on the 15^th February 1882, when he was put on a wage of £95 per year. Most station masters had to start as junior clerks and work their way upwards. McDougall, however, was not a clerk and therefore was only advanced to agent on the basis of the love that the people of Molesey had for him. This is shown through a lot of evidence in the South Western Gazette.

It is obvious that McDougall was a popular, efficient and good natured station master. On two occasions McDougall organised charitable donations for worthy causes. In 1881 each station, including Hampton Court, had a donation box for employees at Christmas. He suggested that each member of the station staff should donate a small portion to the London and South Western Railway's Widows and Orphans fund. 10 shillings was given by 16 men. In February 1884 there was an accident at Nine Elms, the main goods depot of the railway, in which a member of staff lost both his feet. McDougall organised a collection for the injured man, raising 9s 3d. This was again from the Christmas box.

McDougall also received a good number of honours and accolades from both the travelling public and local residents. The most notable came from Baron Pawell Von Rammingen, and his wife HRH Princess Frederica Von Rammingen. They lived in the palace and were regular travellers. On December 26^th 1881, while he was still and inspector, the Princess presented him with a 'massive gold scarf pin set with pearl and pale coral.' She also gave him £4 to be divided between the station staff. In May 1885 the Baron presented him with a gold horseshoe pin set with Pearls as a new years gift. The last present that I have found was given in 1890 when they presented McDougall with a gift of a cut glass inkstand with silver tap and silver tray. On it was inscribed, “Presented by HRH Princess Frederica and the Baron Pawell Von Rammingen to J. McDougall, Station Master, Hampton Court.”

It has already been shown how respected McDougall was around the town. However, another accolade came on the occasion of his 20 years at the station in 1885 when it was “thought by many of the travelling public that so long a term spent in one place fairly deserved some recognition.” As such a committee was formed by local residents including the Reverend W.F. Reynolds, Rear Admiral Wilson, Capt Lonsdale, Mr Evan McGregor C.B., and Messrs Fletcher, Kennedy, Payne, Keeling, Young-Adams and Garland. Mr Athelstan was honorary secretary. The goal was to invite subscriptions for a testimonial, and a circular that was issued stated their efforts were in recognition of McDougall's “invariable courtesy and attention to the travelling public in general and the residents in this vicinity in particular during the past 20 years.” The call for subscriptions was widely heeded and Rear-Admiral Wilson sent McDougall just over 40 guineas, which, accounting for inflation, would be be worth around £1700 today. At the end of the letter that accompanied the gift it stated that the contributors hoped that McDougall would 'enjoy health and strength to continue the performance of his duties with the same credit to himself and comfort to others.”

Yet there was one point at which the station master's character, integrity and good nature was attacked. In September 1888 McDougall was summoned to court by Edwin Elphick, a cab driver, for using 'abusive, threatening and insulting language, with an intent to create a breech of the peace in the station yard.' All the evidence was stacked against Elphick. McDougall had seen that Elphick was drunk and asked his boss Mr Bowery not send him into the yard. Yet the next day Elphick reappeared, at which point McDougall ordered him out of the cab yard. Elphick became abusive towards the station master. The judge ruled in favour of McDougall and the case was thrown out before the defence could call any witnesses.

Towards the end of 1894 McDougall's health started to fail him. A Traffic Committee Minute of 23rd of February 1895 stated that at 64 years of age, and at the top of his pay scale of £110, he wished to retire as he had been certified permanently incapacitated. He was retired on the 1st February and was replaced by Mr F. Molyneaux, formally agent at Sunningdale.

The station masters at Hampton Court were probably the most unusual group of people to occupy the position of station agent at one location. An Irish immigrant, an Eton-educated man and an member of the Traffic Department's non-clerical staff, were three groups of people that were all very unlikely to be appointed to such posts. It is, therefore, unusual that an example of each were all located in the same place. Hampton Court doesn't therefore represent employment patterns typically found elsewhere in the company and makes an interesting case-study.

PLEASE NOTE: This is something I wrote 4 years ago. It was copied and pasted from a talk script I knocked up at the time, as being knocked off my pedal bike has rendered my left hand unable to type.

Early Railway Administrators...The Good, the Bad and the Shiny

Early railways were run by people who nothing about them and were learning the ropes. Railway managers and directors faced a range of challenges that had never been taken on before...by anyone. There was no idea what form of signalling to adopt, who was the best man to promote into a position, or even what the best form of coke to burn was (and no I'm not talking diet or regular). Therefore without established ideas about how to manage large and complex organisations, and with few blueprints showing how to move Ethel the sheep or even Mrs Ethel Flaptyback, from point A to B, the railways employed a motley crew of individuals from many employment backgrounds. It is, therefore, not surprising that the concept of a 'railway-worker' cannot really be considered to have been firmly established until, at least the mid-1850s. In this Blog entry I will look at some of the early administrators of British railway companies and show that there were some interesting individuals that took positions as either 'managers' or 'superintendents.'

So lets start at the bottom. The best place to start if you ask me, just ask any builder. Firstly we have to ask a question, who was the early nineteenth century clerk? Anderson argued in the 1970s that clerks in this period were 'superior to most workers.'¹ Attwell agreed, saying that because of their skills in 'literacy, arithmetic up to vulgar and decimal fractions,' they 'stood above the manual worker,'² even if their skills by modern standards were pretty poor. Railway managers and directors therefore looked to this group to be some of the first railway administrators.

If you had gone to your local station in 1845 it would not be run by a station master. It would be managed by the 'Station Clerk.' London and South Western Railway (L&SWR) rule books throughout the 1840s consistently refer to the administrators of stations by this title. By the early 1850s the company had, however, phased the title out and replaced it with 'station agent.' This said, the move does not seem to have been universal. A search of nineteenth century newspapers shows that it may have still around as late as the 1860s. Generally, clerks were chosen to manage stations simply because there was no one else available in the labour market. However in some sense, while the clerks were of good standing, their clerical status held them back, in that they did not have the social status to be appointed as managers. Overall,what the title represents is the fact that the concept of to directors they were simply clerks, with some responsibilities, sited at stations. They were filling clerical roles akin to those in other industries that weren't unique to the railways.

Next I will look upwards at management. I tend to think that directors split their organisations along a distinct fault line. There were those 'bright sparks' who were engineers, that managed the technical parts of the organisation, such as the building of the lines and the running of trains. On the other hand there were the hotch-potch of individuals that ran companies' traffic departments, that did not have any technical experience or training, but that brought experience from other industries.

Firstly, I will look at the engineers who were involved in the management of early railways. On the London and South Western Railway (and what a surprise I am focussing on it again) the Way and Works Department was managed by two men between 1836 and 1850. These were Albinus, 'I'm bloody difficult to find information on,' Martin, and Joseph, 'I'm in history I'm like a supernova,' Locke (shown). Both men had their separate remits. Locke managed the line while under construction and Martin managed engineering work after everything was completed. Locke also managed the Locomotive department. He initially, in 1838, devolved control of the department to Joseph Woods, who was one of his employees. Woods was succeeded in 1841 by John Viret Gooch, also an employee of Locke. Gooch's assistant and successor in 1850, was William Beattie, who was, surprisingly, also an employee of Locke (yes, that is sarcasm – can you smell patronage?). What these appointments show is that engineers naturally had charge of engineering functions within railway companies. What, however, is different from the railway industry later on and is important to note, is that engineers were initially the most important managers within a company. This was because the building and operation of a railway line were the first concerns of the directors and this meant engineers had were amongst the company's first employees to be appointed.

Indeed, there is evidence that engineers status' were so high that some were considered better as superintendents of railway companies overall, being given charge of the whole of a company's operations. Indeed in 1845 Martin, who already had the position of Superintendent of the Line on the L&SWR, became General Superintendent taking control of the 'whole concern'. His tenure was short-lived, lasting until 1850 when he left. Further to this, in Bonavia's history of railway organisation from 1971 he states that in G.P. Neele's 1904 book, Railway Reminiscences, listed of the railway industry's top managers in September 1847. Engineers featured in the list were I.K. Brunel (what a surprise) and John Hawkshaw (who?).³ Overall I think that early railway company directors may have perceived that engineers' higher education automatically provided with them with the brain-power to manage a whole railway.

But then again it wasn't engineers who took up most of the high-ranking posts. In the 1830s and 40s, when the majority of businesses were small family firms, directors who had no blueprint of railway organisation would naturally look to employ individuals who had come from the only organisations that routinely administered vast numbers of resources and employees. That said, if you had been press-ganged, can you really be called an employee? Yes, I'm of course talking about the armed forces. Thus, a lot of Traffic and General Managers in the early railway industry had, at some point, worn uniform. Terry Gourvish studied Captain Mark Huish who was general manager of the L&NWR between 1846 and 1858 and who had served in India.⁴ Bonavia also noted Captain Eborall of the London and Birmingham Railway, Captain Laws and Binstead of Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway and Captian Coddington of the Caledonian Railway.⁵ Military men were everywhere, filling the administrative ranks of railway companies. This said, there has been no study on how many were actually employed. Their influence is, however, plain to see. Why else would administrators, industry-wide and at all levels of company hierarchies, start to be called 'officers'? Why else would companies adopt draconian, military style rules and regulations? Military men clearly transferred many on the concepts that they learned in the forces to the railways.

Lastly, there were other managers, that Bonavia ignored, that came from 'like' industries such as stagecoaches or canals. I tend to think that they possibly made up a considerable portion of railways' early administrative staff, and they were potentially more numerous than military men. I suppose we know less about them as they were not very glamorous. After all, soldiers have swords, shiny bits and MASSIVE egos (well sometimes). One example of ex-manager from a 'like' industry working on an early British railway springs to mind. Let us go back to the South Western from which I will tell you a tale.

In 1852 Cornelius Stovin, the L&SWR's Traffic Manager, absconded to Canada with quite a bit of cash. I have always felt that the directors of the L&SWR must have been a little dim when appointing him. From a bit of detective work I think I have established Stovin's employment history which reveals that before he joined the L&SWR he had a shady past. On the 1851 census Stovin is listed as having been born in Birmingham. Stovin was appointed to the post of Traffic Manager on the 23^rd February 1839 accepting the post on the 28^th . Interestingly, his acceptance reached the company only days after a Cornelius Stovin, a stagecoach proprietor, was declared bankrupt in Birmingham. Given the unusual nature of the name and the geographical link, it is not unreasonable to presume this was the same person. Given that he got the job I also think it is not unreasonable to presume the L&SWR directors were a bit dim and should have done their homework. While this is an interesting tale, it shows that individuals who had worked in similar industries, that transported goods and people, did work in the early railway industry. This said, we know even less about them than the military men and it is again an area of research that needs further work.

Who was an early railway manager is something that I am keen to research further in my career. From this brief survey of the available evidence it is clear that directors employed individuals as managers who had worked in a mixed-bag of industries and came from many walks of life. No one knew how to manage a railway in the early days and this policy was the only option open to directors because there were no 'career railwaymen' in the labour market. It would take at least until the 1860 for the railway professional, who would spend their entire career in the railway industry, to really become established. But that is a topic for another post...

1Anderson, Geoffrey, Victorian Clerks, (Manchester, 1976), p.129

2Attwell, Paul, 'The Clerk Deskilled: A Study in False Nostalgia,' Journal of Historical Sociology (1989) Vol.2 No.4 pp.370

3Bonavia, Michael R., The Organisation of British Railways, (Shepperton, 1971) p.13

4Gourvish, T.R., Mark Huish and the London & North Western Railway: A Study of Management, (Leicester, 1972)

5Bonavia, Michael R., The Organisation of British Railways, (Shepperton, 1971) p.13

The Female L&SWR Clerk - Part 2

It was in 1880 that the L&SWR began to give female clerical workers greater responsibilities in the positions of Booking Clerks and Weekly Paid Clerks. The appointment of two female booking clerks have been found in the records. These were Miss Augusta Alice Long, who was appointed at Daggons Road Station on the 1^st June 1880, as her father was the agent there. The second was Miss F.A. Dalby, who, in addition to performing telegraphic functions, also became a Booking Clerk at Torrington Station in October 1881, again because her father was agent at the station. However these women were only allowed to handle limited extra responsibilities as booking clerks, and the work did not have any greater status than the position of telegraphist.

It was in late 1881 that there was one, albeit small, movement forward in what the working remit of new female clerks was. In November that year, Newcombe, Agent at Haliwell Junction, requested that his niece be made a Telegraphist there. Instead the Traffic Committee appointed her as a Weekly Paid Clerk. In February 1883 the daughter of Mr Wright, late agent at Fulwell station, was also made a Weekly Paid Clerk. While the precise responsibilities of Weekly Paid Clerks is uncertain, what is known is that while Newcombe and Wright would have still have undertaken both telegraphic and booking duties, it is very likely that they would have supported the male clerical staff in administrative tasks.

These women, despite having slightly more responsibilities than previous female clerks, were still highly disadvantaged in comparison to their male colleagues. Firstly they were of course only 'weekly paid' and could be dismissed without notice. They were also paid only £19 5/- per year, as opposed to male Junior Clerks, who started on £30 per year. Further, it seems this wasn't a shift in company policy and in the years after 1883 the company still appointed women simply as telegraphists. In September 1890 Kate Deal received such a position at Southampton. What this suggests is that the women who were appointed to the posts of Weekly Paid Clerk recieved their positions in response the local requirements of the company, rather than a policy instituted by the company of increasing the opportunities to women.

The is especially true given female employment elsewhere on the L&SWR. Evidence suggests that the L&SWR did not employ female staff in clerical capacities except at country stations. In the period after 1898 the daughters of London based Traffic Department employees who wished to work on the railway received appointments at the Vauxhall ticket sorting office. I have found the names of fourteen of these women. Further, most of the widows of deceased Traffic Department staff were given positions as waiting room attendants, office cleaners or gatekeepers in the London area. In addition women had been working in the Nine Elms (Battersea) Carriage and Wagon works since 1871, however the majority of individuals working in this capacity had started employment in the 1880s. All were based in the sewing room, sewing carriage linings. At the same time the widows of ex-locomotive department men were given posts as office cleaners, lodging house keepers and mess room attendants.

Firstly, the evidence presented here suggests that by the end of the nineteenth and early twentieth century the types of work women were doing within the L&SWR was expanding. However, appointments were still always defined by the women's marital status and their husbands department. Importantly for the analysis of the development of female clerical employment on the L&SWR, the positions given to the daughters of railway workers in the city were always in non-clerical capacities, which held much less status than their colleagues acting as telegraphists elsewhere. Therefore, this suggests that those women appointed to clerical work by the company were given the posts because where they lived it was the only railway work available to them. This is highlighted by the locations at which they were employed, such as Torrington, Daggons Road, Halliwell and Fullwell. These places in the 1880s and 90s were simply villages, where the opportunities for women to gain employment would have been smaller than in the city. Therefore, on the L&SWR, the pre-1914 female clerical workers were an anomaly in the system, and presumably the company would have given the women much lower status work had it been available to provide it.

It is at this point that I must jump ahead to 1914. Bar career histories and personal details, I have no information as to whether any further female clerical staff were appointed between 1890 and March 1914. It is in March 1914 that the company decided that there should be a codified policy instituted with regard to the appointment of female staff. I am not certain as to what the initiating factor of this policy was, however, it may have been the result of an industry-wide acceptance of women as railway workers, as well as the number of women rising in the British workforce.
According to Wojtcak, by 1911 British Railway companies employed 1,120 female clerks (1.32%), compared with 84,802 men (Wojtczak, 2005, 29), and increasing numbers of companies were investigating whether more women should be appointed as clerks. The Great Western Railway (GWR), the L&SWR's northern neighbour and long-time rival, had started employing female clerks by 1908, whereas by 1906 the North Eastern Railway (NER) was already employing 94 and the London and North Western Railway (L&NWR) were employing 250. (Matheson, 2002, 137) However the L&SWR was quite behind the national trend and according to the records it is known that in the same year the L&SWR only employed two female clerks.

Another factor that my have played a role in the L&SWR's introduction the formal policy for female staff in March 1914, was the appointment of a new General Manager, Herbert Ashcombe Walker, in 1912. Walker had been a London goods manager on the L&NWR. It may be a coincidence, however all 250 of the L&NWR's female clerks had been based in the abstracting and ledger posting part of its London goods department. It is quite possible that Walker saw the virtue, and the financial benefit (in that women were cheap labour) of employing female clerical staff, and introduced the policy as part of his many wide-ranging changes to the company.

The L&SWR's terms of employment for female staff are shown above, however the company only appointed three new female clerical staff members between March and the 3^rd August 1914 when war was declared by Britain. They were Mabel Cole, Florence Emily Elliott and Ada Muriel Coombes, who all became a telephone operators at Waterloo on the 24^th July. These cases show that even after the institution of a formal policy for the employment of women, their appointments on the L&SWR were still restricted to communications work, possibly reflecting management's perceptions of the capabilities of women. Only with the coming of the First World War would women receive the opportunities to become full clerks, with the same roles and responsibilities as their male co-workers.

These two Blog entries are not a comprehensive history of the female clerical workers of the L&SWR, and much more needs to be said and more analysis undertaken. However, what they have shown is that before World War One women were never really afforded greater opportunities than becoming communication clerks. However, even then their appointment to clerical positions was dependent on their location and their contacts. This is in contrast with other railway companies where by the early 20^th century women were acting in full clerical roles at their administrative centres. Therefore, the L&SWR was generally a railway company with a poor record on female clerical employment, and it was only the war that widened women's opportunities within the company. However, that is another story for another time.

Railway Evolution

Well first off, I come bearing good news. My paper, loosely titled, 'Managing the 'Royal Road': The Development and Failings of Managerial Structure on the London and South Western Railway 1836-1900' will now be presented twice. Terry Gourvish at the London School of Economics has asked me to do a re-run of it in the Summer Term, so I am very excited and nervous about that!

In that vein I thought that I would give a little preview of part of the paper, namely the evolution of train control. One aspect that has interested me is the way that companies controlled the trains and those administrative structures that they put in place to do this. No of course this isn't the most interesting subject at first glance, but what I want to do is re-frame it in the context of idea replication within organisations and societies, something that has increasingly come to be referred to as a meme. The meme was the brainchild of the evolutionary biologist, Richard Dawkins, in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene. He described the meme as a noun that, 'conveys the idea of a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation' (Dawkins, p.192) and positions it as a natural extension of evolution. Therefore anything can be a meme such as idea, a concept or a system, and these can be passed on and replicated.

Now I won't be using memes in my PhD as there is no need. However I do think that memetics is an area of study that has the potential to become more prevalent in many academic fields. Therefore I want to apply it here (and no I won't be doing this in the paper) to something that I am working on, train control on the L&SWR.

Firstly on its opening in 1840 the L&SWR operated a system on its original main line between London and Southampton that placed train control in the hands of the Station Agents (at that time called Station Clerks). They were to control the trains through the monitoring of the signals and signalmen on their stretch of line, while at the same time informing engine drivers who stopped at the stations of the time of last train to leave and the next train due, to stop goods trains in a siding if a passenger train needed to pass, and lastly allowing the trains to leave at the correct time. This was a system that made sense for the early railway, especially as there was no telegraph and managers couldn't be in all places all the time to monitor train movements. The Station Clerks were therefore superintendents of their own particular patch. Most importantly they were under the charge of the Superintendent of the Line in all train control matters. This system of train control was easy to implement on the single route main line. The system is however the meme I will be dealing with.

In 1849 the company purchased the Southampton and Dorchester Railway company, which was being built with their support and which was known as Castleman's Corkscrew after the promoter, Charles Castleman, a Wimborne lawyer. On the line's opening, which came after its purchase, the company simply instituted the same system that they had on the Main Line under a separate superintendent, John Bass, the resident engineer, who was subservient to the Superintendent of the Line. Therefore they were replicating the meme of train control in a new place.

Further similar train control superintendencies were established on the company's various lines later on, especially when they where opened. In 1857 a Mr Madigan was made Superintendent of the Windsor line and then later in 1863 superintendent of the Stokes Bay line, in 1859 Mr Scott (the General Manager) suggested a superintendent be appointed between Basingstoke and Gillingham because of the single line working, in 1860 a Mr Williams was made superintendent of the Exeter, Yeovil and Salisbury lines and lastly in 1863 Mr Verrinder was made Superintendent of the North Devon Line. As far as can be extrapolated these superintendencies did not change the established pattern of how train control was conducted. Indeed even when the company revised its organisational structures in 1864, 1881, 1884, 1893, 1899 and 1912, the role of the station master in marshalling the trains did not change significantly (however some aspects of the system did evolve and change in small ways). This is of course despite the fact that the L&SWR was an early user of telegraph, despite technological advancements over the period and despite the increased workload of the railway company with the expansion of traffic. It wasn't until the 1930s that this basic principal of train movements were changed on the Southern Railway.

Now I'm not saying that I know that there were alternative systems available to the railway companies at the time for controlling the movement of trains, and I haven't looked into it. The main thrust of what I want to say is that once the meme had been established and replicated throughout the lines of the railway company, it became very difficult to dislodge (alternatively this is known as path-dependency) as it was the accepted way that trains were controlled. Therefore viewing elements of management history through the mimetic lense may be a further tool in the understanding of the way that elements within company systems became established.