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Author: 
 
 Grinling, Charles Herbert 
 
 Title: 
 
 The history of the Great 
 Northern Railway... 
 
 Place: 
 
 London 
 
 Date: 
 
 1898 
 
^5-^15ti^-3> 
 
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 PRESERVATION DIVISION 
 
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 ORIGINAL MATERIAL AS FILMED - EXISTING BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD 
 
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 Business 
 
 D986 
 
 G797 
 
 Grinling, Charles Herbert, 1870- 
 
 The history of the Great Northern Railway, 
 1845-1895. London, Methuen, 1898. 
 
 429 p. iUus., ports., maps. 
 
 1. Great Northern Railway (England) 2. Rail, 
 roads - Gt. Brit. 
 
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intlieCtipofHrttigork 
 
 THE LIBRARIES 
 
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ry. 
 
 
 THE HISTORY OF 
 THE GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 1845-1895 
 
EDMUND DENISON, ES«J., M.I'. 
 
 "father" of the great nokihekn kaii.way company 
 
 (holding in his hand a copy ok thk act ok incorporation) 
 
 From a fiiiUim^ by PuiersirtU, R.A. 
 
THE HISTORY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE GREAT NORTHERN 
 
 RAILWAY 
 
 1 845- 1 895 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLES H. GRINLING 
 
 METHUEN & CO. 
 
 36, ESSEX STREET, W.C. 
 
 LONDON 
 
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 PREFACE 
 
 IN writing this book my prime object has been to give a 
 complete account of the origin and development of the 
 Great Northern Railway Company from its inception to the 
 year 1895, a period, roughly speaking, of fifty years. In so 
 doing, however, I have necessarily had to give much informa- 
 tion with regard to other railways of Northern England and 
 Scotland, and so I am not afraid to claim that the book forms 
 a fifty years' record of the fortunes of all the great trunk 
 systems connecting London and the North — a record hardly 
 any part of which has previously been presented to the public. 
 The style of presentation I have adopted will, I hope, at 
 once satisfy by its accuracy and thoroughness readers already 
 acquainted with the subject-matter, and attract "the general 
 reader " by its continuous thread of narrative and strong 
 dramatic interest. 
 
 As regards the facts given, I have spared no pains to insure 
 correctness and comprehensiveness. Without seeking access 
 to the private archives of the Great Northern Company, and 
 so placing myself under obligations which could have been 
 met only by a sacrifice of my impartiality, I have, neverthe- 
 less, been able to obtain information of the most intimate and 
 authentic character with respect to all the chief events with 
 which my History deals. Moreover, I have had most valuable 
 assistance, which I acknowledge with great gratitude, from 
 a number of the men mentioned most prominently in my 
 narrative. To Lord Grimthorpe, Lord Colville of Culross, K.T., 
 Sir Henry Oakley, Mr. Richard Johnson, and Mr. Archibald 
 Sturrock — the five men now living whose connection with the 
 
VI 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 Great Northern undertaking has been longest and most 
 valuable— I beg most respectfully to tender my special 
 thanks, and I also take this opportunity of making grateful 
 acknowledgment for the help rendered me by Mr. B. S. Brundell 
 (whose very long connection with the Great Northern Railway 
 has been terminated by death since I commenced this work), 
 Mr. James Alexander, Mr. William Latta, Mr. Henry Walker,' 
 and my brother, Mr. W. J. Grinling. The numerous other 
 officials of the Great Northern Company who have afforded 
 me assistance will not, I hope, think that my appreciation of 
 their kindnesses is less because I do not mention them by 
 name. 
 
 It is very important that it should be clearly understood, 
 however, that this work is not " official " in any sense of the 
 word. For every fact given, and for every opinion expressed, 
 I, the author, am alone responsible. 
 
 Finally, I dedicate what may be worthy in the work to the 
 memory of my dear father, Mr. William Grinling, who served 
 the Great Northern Company faithfully for over forty years. 
 
 I 
 
 r 
 
 London. 
 
 CHARLES H. GRINLING. 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER L 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Ln the Rkign of Ki.\«; Hudson — Ancestry and Birth of the Hero 
 
 (1833-1844) . . . . ... I 
 
 CHAPTER H. 
 
 How "Five Kings" Issued an Edict to "Strangle the Monster 
 Infant at its Birth" (1844- 1845) • • ... 20 
 
 CHAPTER HI. 
 
 Who is to Rear the Infant?— The Mothers Before Solomon (1845) 33 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 The Infant is Christened and Given Leave to Grow (1845-1846) . 46 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 The Hero Grows ui' Amid Straitened Circumstances and gets 
 TO Work in the Country in a very Small Way (1846-48) . . 58 
 
 CHAPTER VL 
 
 The Hero Comes to London— End of the Reign of King Hudson 
 (1848-1850) . . . . ... 74 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 The Fight with "The Euston Square Confederacy"— The Battle 
 OF the Exhibition Year (1850- 1851) . . . . 92 
 
 CHAPTER VIH. 
 "Finis Coronat Oi'us" (1852) . 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 The South Yorkshire Si-lit— The Breakin(;-Down of the Barriers 
 (1^531855) . . . . . . . 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 "The Battle of the Rah ways"- Break-ui- of the "Confederacy" 
 (1855- 1858) • . . . 
 
 i'3 
 
 129 
 
 151 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 An Isolated Incident :-the Frauds of Leopold Redpath (1856 1858). 166 
 
Vll 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 il 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 The Midland Aggression (1858 1863) 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 The Great Eastern Attack and other Matters (1863- 1865) 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 General Progress, Interrupted by a Startling Accident 
 (1866-1867) 
 
 • • • 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 The "Coal War" and the C.O.A.L. Line (1868-1871) . 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 The Invasion of the Midlands (1871-1872) 
 
 • • 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 The Campaign ok 1873, includinc; a Parliamentary Fight ok 
 Ihirty Days (1872- 1873) . 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 The Zenith ok Prosfekity— The Suburban Increment— The Abbotts 
 Rn>TON Accident (1873-1876) 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 Hard Times-The Arlesey Siding Accident— The Cheshire Lines 
 
 / « /^tJ"'' "Great Eastern Question" Seitled at Last 
 (1876-1878) 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 Going Slow-The Fikty Years Agreement Again-The Suburban 
 Incubus (1878-1881) 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 General Progress (1881-1885) • . . . 
 
 • • 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 The Suburban Incubus Still— The Railway Rates Bills— The 
 Eastern and Midlands— The Race to Edinburgh (1886-1888) 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 A Gathering Storm— Two Bridge- Building Achievements— The 
 Conversion ok Stock (1889-1890) . 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 The Fikth Line to London— The Suburban Incubus once more — 
 The Great Northern and Midland Joint System— The Race 
 TO Aberdeen (1890-1895) 
 
 • • 
 
 Inde.\ 
 
 I'AGE 
 179 
 
 198 
 
 220 
 
 236 
 
 256 
 
 276 
 
 293 
 
 311 
 
 333 
 
 353 
 
 373 
 
 389 
 
 403 
 425 
 
 THE HISTORY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 IN THE REIGN OF KING HUDSON -ANCESTRY AND BIRTH 
 
 OF THE HERO — 1833-1844 
 
 THE Stockton and Darlington Railway, the pioneer of the public 
 railways of the world, was opened, as every schoolboy should know, 
 on 27 September, 1825, and about this same date, when the first short 
 epidemic of " railway fever " prevailed, numerous surveys were made for 
 similar undertakings in other parts of England. Amongst these was 
 one made by the Messrs. Rennie for a line northwards from London, 
 which they proposed should follow the valley of the Lea nearly as far 
 as Ware, and thence pass by the valleys of the Rib and Quin and " the 
 towns " of Braughing and Barkway to Cambridge. Here their original 
 survey stopped, but in 1827 they extended it in a direct line northwards 
 through Lincoln to York. By this time, however, the railway fever had 
 quite subsided, having resulted in the incorporation of one important 
 public company only— the Liverpool and Manchester, and it was not 
 until the successful opening in September, 1830, of this, the first line 
 constructed in England for the conveyance of passengers, that kindred 
 projects again began to find favour. Then a proposal for a London and 
 Birmingham Railway, also first made in 1825, was revived in the latter 
 town, and, the services of George Stephenson and his son having been 
 secured as engineers, a Bill for it was successfully passed through the 
 House of Commons in the session of 1832. Being then thrown out 
 in the Lords, it was revived in 1833, together with one for a Grand 
 Junction Railway, which the Stephensons and Joseph Locke had in the 
 meantime surveyed ; and, these both passing into law in that year, a 
 chain of railway communication became authorized from London, via 
 Birmingham, to Manchester and Liverpool. 
 B 
 
I 
 
 2 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 In 1833 also the London and Greenwich Railway was authorized, and 
 schemes were set on foot for London and Essex, London and Dover, 
 Grand Southern, London and Southampton, Great Western, and Grand 
 Northern lines. The last-named was projected and surveyed by Mr. 
 Nicholas Wilcox Cundy, and comprised a main line from London 
 to York, 7w Bishop Stortford, Cambridge, Lincoln, (iainsborough and 
 Selby, and branches to Norwich, Nottingham, Sheffield, Leeds, and 
 Hull, the total length of the main line being 190 miles. 
 
 In York meanwhile a " Railway Committee " of the Corporation had 
 been deliberating for twelve months already upon various plans for con- 
 structing a line from their city, and a young linen-draper, George Hudson 
 by name, had produced considerable sensation by putting down his name 
 for the greater part of the shares in a *' York and West Riding " pro- 
 ject. This he had favoured in preference to an alternative proposal for 
 making a line from York to Doncaster, the advantages of which had 
 been presented to the Committee by a deputation from the latter town 
 consisting of Messrs. Edmund Denison and Robert Baxter. 
 
 In the neighbourhood of York a line from Leeds to Selby was 
 already approaching completion, and in the Midlands, where the 
 Leicester and Swannington coal line had been open since July, 1832, 
 a project was making good progress for the construction of a Midland 
 Counties Railway, "to connect the towns of Leicester, Nottingham, 
 and Derby with each other and with London." Indeed, the Parliamen- 
 tary notices for this were actually given in the autumn of 1833, but 
 subsequently the Bill had to be withdrawn for lack of financial support. 
 In the summer of 1834, however, the London and Southampton Rail- 
 way, seventy-six miles in length, and several other smaller undertakings, 
 were authorized, and this encouraged the promotion of a number 
 of new schemes, several of which proposed to fill the blank still 
 presented by the railway map on the eastern side of England. 
 
 In September, 1834, the prospectus was issued of the "Eastern 
 Counties Railway — from London via Colchester to Norwich and 
 Yarmouth," and about the same time Mr. James Walker (one of the 
 engineers, it may be remembered, who had championed fixed engines 
 against Stephenson's locomotives at the famous Rainhill trials, and 
 who had since constructed the Leeds and Selby line) was employed 
 by a party of gentlemen, headed by Mr. Handley, m.p. for Lincoln- 
 shire, to survey a Northern and Eastern Railway from London to 
 York and Norwich. Early in 1835, too, Mr. Joseph (Jibbs, a clever 
 and sanguine engineer, who had made a considerable reputation in 
 drainage works, projected a line to start from Whitechapel, London, 
 and to run via Dunmow, Cambridge, Sleaford, and Lincoln to York, 
 
 1835-6 
 
 HUDSON'S LINE TO YORK 
 
 3 
 
 
 and this was submitted in the summer of 1835 to a Committee formed 
 in London, to which the title of " Great Northern Railway Company " 
 was provisionally given. 
 
 The second epidemic of railway fever was now raging, and all parts 
 of the country were scenes of activity in railway projection. The 
 London and Birmingham directors had made up their minds that 
 it was desirable to extend the communication by their line north- 
 eastwards as well as north-westwards, and so, on their behalf and that 
 of local parties in the Midlands and in Yorkshire, George Stephenson 
 was surveying lines from Birmingham to Derby, and Derby to Leeds, 
 the former to be in connection not only with the London and 
 Birmingham, but also with a projected line from Birmingham to 
 Gloucester. At the same time, too, Mr. Vignoles was making a new 
 survey for the Midland Counties line, which was also to connect with 
 the London and Birmingham, viz., at Rugby ; while the Railway 
 Committee at York, with George Hudson as its leading spirit, having 
 abandoned their projected West Riding line because of the difficult 
 character of the country, were debating whether they should join with 
 the Northern and Eastern or the Great Northern parties in promoting 
 a direct line through the flats of Lincolnshire to the Metropolis. 
 
 It chanced, however, that Hudson paid a visit to Whitby during 
 this summer of 1835, ^"d there secured an introduction to George 
 Stephenson, who happened also to be visiting that place. Then the York 
 draper learnt something of the surveys which the engineer had already 
 in hand for carrying a chain of railways from London to Leeds, and 
 on his return to his native town he advised his Committee that before 
 they pledged themselves either to Gibbs' or Walker's plans, the 
 advice of Stephenson should be called in. The result was that they 
 decided, instead of joining in the promotion of a new direct railway 
 to London, to content themselves with the much smaller, and there- 
 fore much more easily practicable, scheme of a link line from York 
 to connect with the Derby and Leeds at Normanton, and, as the 
 latter had now been christened the North Midland Railway, the new 
 project of the York Committee received the appropriate title of the 
 York and North Midland. At the same time a Great North of 
 England Railway Company was formed to carry on the chain of 
 communication from York to Newcastle. 
 
 Bills for all the lines above mentioned came before Parliament in 
 the session of 1836, when they all met with some measure of success, 
 except that of Mr. Gibbs. He was a really able engineer, and his 
 "report to the York and Norwich Committee of the Great Northern 
 Railway Company," which is still extant, shows that he conceived his 
 
4 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 project in an enlightened and far-sighted spirit. But full of its 
 national importance, he took no pains to conciliate private interests, and 
 he had also to meet the hostility of the strong party who were support- 
 ing the rival Northern and Eastern scheme. The result was that his 
 " Great Northern Railway Bill," being opposed by landowners on 
 second reading in the House of Commons, was then summarily 
 rejected by ninety-nine votes to eighty-five. 
 
 The Northern and Eastern Bill, on the other hand, was referred, 
 without opposition, to a Committee, and before this Mr. Gibbs also 
 was allowed to appear to explain the merits of his alternative project ; 
 but both parties found themselves strongly opposed by the London 
 and Birmingham and Midland interests, the representatives of which 
 claimed that their united undertakings would provide a route amply 
 convenient for the through passenger to York and the North. This 
 view, backed as it was by the great authority of George Stephenson, 
 prevailed, with the result that the Midland Counties, Birmingham and 
 Derby, North Midland and York, and North Midland Bills all passed ; 
 while the Northern and Eastern was cut down into a line from London 
 to Cambridge only. The Eastern Counties Bill having no pretensions 
 to provide a trunk line to the North, but proposing simply to connect 
 London with Colchester, Norwich, Yarmouth, and the adjacent country, 
 was allowed to pass in its complete form as promoted. 
 
 In 1837 the mania for railway construction gave way to panic— in 
 modern slang, a " slump " followed the " boom "—and even the com- 
 panies which had obtained powers found it hard to get their undertakings 
 realized. In 1838, however, the London and Birmingham hne was 
 opened, and in the following year, by way of the Grand Junction and 
 North Union, through communication north-westwards from the Metro- 
 polis was established as far as Preston ; so that one night in September 
 of that year Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle, returning home from 
 Scotsbrig, were able to take a train at Preston, and, after "an 
 excellent breakfast with deliberation to eat it" at Birmingham, were 
 "safe landed at Euston Square soon after one o'clock." In the 
 same year, too, the Midland and Counties, Birmingham and Derby, 
 and York and North Midland lines were all opened, and the North 
 Midland, though a line through very difficult country, was completed 
 by the Stephensons in the spring of 1840. So, on the ist of July in 
 that year, Hudson, who in the meantime had become Lord Mayor of 
 York, had the satisfaction to see the first passengers leave York Station 
 for a through journey by rail to London, their route being by Nor- 
 manton, Derby, and Rugby, at each of which places a change of train 
 had to be made, and the total dibtance being 219 miles. 
 
 1839-41 
 
 THE BOARD OF TRADE REPORT 
 
 5 
 
 Meanwhile the question how best to carry the chain of communication 
 further northwards into Scotland was being hotly discussed, and the 
 terms " East Coast," " West Coast," and " Inland " routes had already 
 become familiar. The Great North of England Railway Company had 
 been compelled by financial difficulties to cut down its undertaking to 
 a line from York to join the Stockton and Darlington at Croft Bridge, 
 but George Hudson hoped that this, with the York and North Midland, 
 would eventually become the trunk line from London to Newcastle and 
 Edinburgh. 
 
 As things were, however, the Scotch traffic was leaving the York 
 road to go by Birmingham to Preston, and thence by boat or coach 
 via Kendal ; moreover, a line was nearly completed from Preston 
 to Lancaster, and several routes had been surveyed for carrying this 
 on through Carlisle to Glasgow and Edinburgh. Railway projection 
 elsewhere was now entirely at a standstill, but so keen was the interest 
 in this subject of "communication with Scotland" that in August, 1839, 
 a special Commission of the Board of Trade was appointed to consider 
 it. The Commissioners were instructed not only to compare the merits 
 of the routes north of York and Lancaster, but to include in their report 
 " the relative merits of the two lines from London to York by Derby 
 and Rotherham and by Cambridge and Lincoln." Thus the question 
 of a " Great Northern Railway " once more came to the front. 
 
 Mr. James Walker had now ceased to be the Northern and Eastern 
 engineer, but in reply to an invitation from the Commissioners he sent 
 in plans showing the extension he had formerly proposed of that line 
 northwards from Bishop Stortford through Peterborough and Lincoln 
 to York. Mr. Gibbs, who had meantime been busy constructing the 
 London and Croydon Line, also received an invitation to send plans, 
 and this time he abandoned his " Dunmow route " and adopted what 
 the Commissioners described as " a modification of the Barkway route," 
 originally proposed by Rennie, as far as Cambridge, and thence by 
 Sleaford and Lincoln to York as before. The total distance by Gibbs' 
 route was 185 miles; by Walker's, 193 miles. 
 
 The Commissioners, however, did not find it necessary to weigh the 
 respective merits of these two routes very carefully, because they came 
 to the conclusion that neither of them should as yet be made. 
 
 " If this subject were now brought forward for the first time," they 
 said in their report (which was not published till March, 1841), "and 
 the relative merits of the existing line by Derby and Rotherham were to 
 be weighed against the proposed route by Cambridge and Lincoln, we 
 should have no hesitation after a full consideration of the properties of 
 both in awarding the preference to the latter as a main trunk line ; but 
 
HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 1841 
 
 LONDON TO NEWCASTLE IN 17 HOURS 
 
 rtj 
 
 as the former has been completed and has at this time by no means an 
 overwhelming traffic, it does not appear to us it would be expedient to 
 construct at the cost of probably more than four millions another line 
 passing by Cambridge and Lincoln merely for the sake of shortening 
 the distance for the through passenger to York and to the north of that 
 city. Looking, however, to the highly productive district to the east- 
 ward of the Derby and Rotherham line wholly unprovided with railways, 
 and the unusually favourable character of the country for their con- 
 struction, we are of opinion that the period is not far distant when a 
 new line will be formed, passing near Cambridge, Peterborough, and 
 Lincoln, and that this line will in all probability be combined of parts 
 selected from the different projects which have at various times been 
 brought forward." 
 
 On the respective merits of the East Coast and West Coast routes 
 between the north of England and Scotland the report of the 
 Commissioners was of an equally non-committal character. In the 
 belief that at present one line of railway only could be formed between 
 the two countries they felt " bound to give the preference to that from 
 Carlisle by Lockerbie, Beattock, Lanark, and Hamilton to Glasgow, 
 with a branch from Thankerton, or Symington, to Edinburgh," but 
 they noted so many points in favour of the rival East Coast route 
 through Darlington, Newcastle, and Berwick, that George Hudson was 
 not in the least afraid to refer to their report when (on 30 April, 
 1 841) he presided over a meeting of representatives of six neighbouring 
 railway companies, which he had summoned at Newcastle to consider 
 what steps could be taken to carry on the Great North of England line. 
 Thanks to the enterprise of Sir Hesketh Fleetwood in developing the 
 port which bears his name, " West Coast " passengers could now leave 
 Euston at daybreak, and, travelling by railway via Birmingham and 
 Preston and by "a noble steamer" from Fleetwood to Ardrossan, 
 could reach Glasgow by the Ayr railway, and even Edinburgh by 
 coach, in time for breakfast the next morning. So the necessity for 
 improving the rival " East Coast Route " had become urgent, unless it 
 was to be deprived of the most profitable part of the through traffic 
 with Scotland. The difficulty was, however, that except Hudson and 
 the Stephensons, who were keenly interested in making a line to 
 Edinburgh by Newcastle and Berwick, and Joseph Locke, whose mind 
 was set on making the railway he had already more than once surveyed 
 from Cariisle northwards, there were very few people at this time who 
 really thought it worth while to establish through railway communica- 
 tion with Scotland at all. "What more can any reasonable man 
 want ? " asked the Railway Times, after pointing out the wonders of the 
 new Fleetwood service. "If he were to travel the whole way by rail at 
 
 the rate of twenty miles an hour, he could but arrive two or three hours 
 earlier, before breakfast was ready or anyone up to bid him welcome." 
 
 When even the organ of the railway interest could talk in this strain, 
 it will be inferred that in 1841 zeal for railway extension had sunk to a 
 very low ebb. In the session of 1840 not a single railway Bill had 
 been passed, and in 1841 one only, and that for a short branch line; 
 and the general impression was that when the lines then in course of 
 construction were completed the railway system of the country would 
 
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 DARLINGTON. 7 30i 9-20 
 
 Newcastle 
 
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 not only be finished, but would even be in excess of profitable 
 operation. Special objection was taken to the two parallel west and east 
 lines, the Manchester and Leeds, and the Manchester and Sheffield, 
 which had been sanctioned like nearly all the other larger schemes 
 during the "mania" of 1836-7, and as the former was now open to a 
 junction with the North Midland and York and North Midland at 
 Normanton, many people were disposed to doubt whether it was worth 
 while lo finish the latter at all. Meanwhile, with the opening of 
 the Great North of England from York to Croft Bridge, a considerable 
 improvement was made in the communication north and south, and 
 from I July, 184 1, a time-table was published, of which we reproduce 
 a part in facsimile, which showed a through communication between 
 
I 
 
 I 
 
 8 
 
 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 1S43 
 
 HOW THE "MANIA" BEGAN 
 
 London and Newcastle in seventeen hours, the route being by rail 
 throughout from Euston Square to Darlington and thence northwards 
 by coach. 
 
 Even this, however, was far from satisfying George Hudson, and 
 in September, 1841, he called another conference of neighbouring 
 railway directors at Newcastle, with the result that in the following 
 month an arrangement was come to, by which six companies undertook 
 to lease the Great North of England at a 6 per cent, guarantee, and to 
 find the money for carrying the line northwards through Durham to 
 Gateshead. A Bill for this was accordingly deposited under the title 
 of the " Darlington and Newcastle Junction Railway " in November, 
 1 84 1, and Hudson became chairman of the new company, when it was 
 incorporated on the i8th of June of the following year. The terminus 
 was to be at (iateshead, because a bridge over the Tyne was considered 
 too onerous an undertaking at present. Indeed, it was not thought 
 likely that either this or the completion of the West Coast route, 
 for which Joseph Locke was now making a new survey, would ever be 
 carried out, except by Government aid. 
 
 Not only were very few new companies formed at this time, but the 
 existing ones were generally afraid or unable to make tributary branches. 
 Thus the North Midland Company was urged by Robert Stephenson in 
 1842 to make a short line from Swinton or Wath to serve the South 
 Yorkshire coal-field, and give a railway communication to Barnsley and 
 I )oncaster, but the directors could not make up their minds that such an 
 extension would be profitable; and, when the London and Birmingham 
 Company did venture to project a branch — from Blisworth to North- 
 ampton and Peterborough — so strong was the feeling of the landowners 
 against it that it was carried through the House of Lords in 1843 by a 
 majority of one vote only. Meanwhile moralists in search of an argu- 
 ment against excessive railway construction could point to the experience 
 of the Midland Counties and Birmingham and Derby Companies, a 
 rate-war between which for London traffic was being carried on with such 
 vigour that the directors of the former had recourse, in the summer 
 of 1843, to a mandamus from the Queen's Bench to compel the 
 Birmingham and Derby Company to equalize its fares. In this, the 
 first "war" of its kind in English railway history, Mr. James Allport, 
 manager for the Birmingham and Gloucester Railway at Hampton 
 Junction, played a leading part. 
 
 * This was the condition of affairs between these two companies, when 
 the directors of the North Midland — the line which carried the traffic 
 of both northwards from Derby— suggested an amalgamation under 
 one management of the three railways radiating from that town. The 
 
 originator of the proposition was George Hudson, who had joined the 
 North Midland directorate early in this year, 1843, after taking the 
 leading part on a committee of inquiry into its affairs ; and the reforms 
 he had then introduced had so much enhanced his already great 
 reputation, that he was now able easily to persuade the shareholders of 
 the three companies to agree to this " Great Midland Amalgamation," 
 a Bill for which was accordingly deposited for the session of 1844. 
 The man who ten years before had been an obscure linen-draper at 
 York, was now freely spoken of as " the Railway Napoleon." 
 
 During this autumn of 1843 ^^^ money market in London was in a 
 remarkably easy state. The amount of bullion in the Bank, which two 
 years before had been as low as four and a half millions, had trebled 
 itself in amount. The rate of discount was 2 J per cent., and Consols 
 were above par. Money was very abundant, and the investments in 
 foreign securities, in which it had until recently found full employment, 
 had suddenly become extremely unpopular owing to " repudiations " on 
 the part of several South American States. Hitherto the London 
 brokers had left railway shares severely alone, and the lines so far 
 constructed in England had been promoted not by financiers, but 
 by solid commercial men — bankers, manufacturers, and merchants — who 
 were interested in them, not as investments primarily, but as likely 
 to improve trade in general, and their own businesses in particular. But, 
 now that other fields of investment was proving unfruitful, the attention 
 of " the City " began to turn to railway promotion ; it was discovered 
 to be a branch of speculative finance from which 10 per cent, dividends 
 might be hopefully expected— for were not ihe London and Birmingham, 
 Grand Junction and York, and North Midland paying this, and the 
 Stockton and Darlington 15 per cent. ? — and so, all at once as it seemed, 
 a condition of most intense apathy in regard to railway projection gave 
 way to one of keen interest, rapidly passing through enthusiasm to a 
 new and overpowering mania. 
 
 City men who studied the railway map of England in the autumn of 
 1843, could not fail to be struck by the fact that there was an immense 
 blank as yet unreached by rails on the eastern side of England. The 
 Eastern Counties line had now got as far as Colchester, and the 
 Northern and Eastern to Bishop Stortford, but northwards of these 
 places, throughout the counties of Huntingdonshire, Cambridgeshire, 
 Norfolk, and Lincolnshire, there was not a yard of railway laid down 
 from the Ouse to the Humber, and the only new line authorized to 
 come near this district was the London and Birmingham branch, from 
 Blisworth to Peterborough. On the map, therefore, there seemed ample 
 room for a new trunk line between London and York, which would not 
 
lO 
 
 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 ,844 LINCOLNSHIRE CATCHES THE EPIDEMIC 
 
 1 1 
 
 only give the local accommodation, but form part of a through route to 
 Darlington, Durham, Newcastle, and Scotland ; and so it came about 
 that in the later months of 1843 ^ committee was formed in London, of 
 which Major William Amsinck and Mr. James Farquhar, of the firm of 
 Messrs. Johnston, Farquhar, and Leech, solicitors, were the leading 
 
 Mah of the Railway System betwee.n London and York in 1843. 
 Rtprodttced from " Brads haw' s Guide" by perMiUsion 0/ Messrs. Henry Blackiock S" Co., MaMckester, 
 
 spirits, to promote a " Direct Northern " railway, for which Sir John 
 Rennie — who, as we know, had already plans for a line from London to 
 York on his office shelves — and Mr. Gravatt were instructed to make a 
 survey. 
 
 But the successof railways had not onlychanged the attitude of the City, 
 it had changed that of the landed interest also; and so, during the winter 
 
 of 1843-4, a strong desire arose among the landowners and farmers of 
 the eastern counties to secure some of the benefits which other districts 
 were enjoying from the new method of locomotion. One great want of 
 tins part of England— a want which was, of course, most keenly felt in the 
 winter months— was that of cheaper fuel ; for though there were collieries 
 open at this time in Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire, and Derbyshire, 
 the nearest pits with which the eastern counties had practicable transport 
 communication were those of South Yorkshire and Durham, and this 
 was of so circuitous a character, that even in places situated on navi- 
 gable rivers or served by a canal, the price of coal often rose as high as 
 40J., or even 50J., a ton. In remoter places, to which it had to be 
 carted ten, twenty, or even thirty miles along bad cross-roads, coal even 
 for house-firing was a positive luxury quite unattainable by the poorer 
 classes. Moreover, in the most severe weather when the canals were 
 frozen, the whole system of supply became paralyzed, and even the 
 wealthy had not seldom to retreat shivering to bed for lack of fuel. 
 
 This state of things was, of course, stoically borne, while there 
 appeared no remedy for it; but in 1843, when the railway system was 
 firmly established and praise of it began to be on every lip and in 
 every newspaper, even the slow-moving inhabitants of Lincolnshire 
 and the neighbouring counties began to take interest in railway 
 promotion. Naturally enough, one of the first expedients which 
 suggested itself was to seek assistance from "the Railway King," 
 and so in February, 1844, Sir John Beckett, of Gainsborough, wrote 
 formally to George Hudson, suggesting on behalf of himself and some 
 of his neighbours that the North Midland Company should make a 
 branch to their town. About the same time Sir Isaac Morley, an 
 influential resident of Doncaster, came into communication for a 
 similar object with Captain Laws, the energetic manager of the 
 Manchester and Leeds Company ; while a party of merchants trading 
 in Sheffield, Worksop, and Retford projected yet a third west to east 
 line to run to Gainsborough and Lincoln in connection with the Man- 
 chester and Sheffield Railway, which was now at last approaching 
 completion. Meanwhile the larger landowners of Lincolnshire, the 
 Earl of Winchilsea, the Earl of Yarborough, Earl Fitzwilliam, and 
 Mr. Charles Chaplin of Blankney, were taking more interest in getting 
 a north and south line through the county, and for this two projects 
 were set on foot, the one suggested to Earl Fitzwilliam by an 
 enterprising engineer named Rendel, and the other fathered by a 
 committee, of which Mr. Chaplin was the leading spirit, and for which 
 Mr. James Walker was persuaded rather reluctantly to re-survey his 
 line of 1835. Moreover, Walker's former rival, Mr. Gibbs, also took 
 
n 
 
 IK 
 
 II 
 
 t2 
 
 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 the field again, and in this month of February, 1844, when all the 
 above schemes seem first to have taken definite shape, he showed 
 his "Great Northern" plans to a number of gentlemen, including 
 Mr. Francis Mowatt, an East Indian director, and Mr. Edmund 
 Denison, of Doncaster, m.p. for the West Riding of Yorkshire The 
 latter gentleman, as we have already noted, had twelve years before 
 advocated a line from York to Doncaster as an instalment of a through 
 route to London down the eastern side of England, and he now 
 promised to support Mr. Gibbs' "Great Northern Railway," provided 
 it was brought rather more to the west, so that his constituents in the 
 West Riding and his neighbours at Doncaster might be better served 
 by it. 
 
 In the year 1837, when England was suffering, as we have already 
 noted, from the reaction from the first epidemic of "railway mania," 
 stringent regulations against the promotion of bubble companies were 
 adopted by Parliament. The chief of these were that a domi fide 
 "subscription contract" must be proved by the promoters, and that 
 one-tenth of the capital required must be deposited with Government 
 authorities at the same time that the Bill for incorporation was 
 presented to Parliament. This, of course, made it necessary for every 
 new railway scheme to obtain very respectable support before its 
 promoters could hope to pass the Standing Orders Committee, and 
 indeed it had been one of the prime causes of the stagnation in 
 railway promotion, which we have noted as prevailing in the years 
 1838 to 1843. Even in the spring of 1844— a "spring" when the 
 fancy of investors all over the country was "lightly turning" to 
 thoughts of railway speculation— the heavy deposit required was 
 thought to press very heavily upon quite honest projectors. At any 
 rate it compelled them to go to considerable expense in advertising 
 their schemes in the newspapers and through the post, in order that 
 they might obtain the signatures of intending shareholders, to whom 
 "scrip," i.e., the title deeds to shares when the company was in- 
 corporated — was issued in return for the 10 per cent, deposit 
 preliminarily required. 
 
 Of the group of Lincolnshire projects just noticed the first to be 
 put before the public was that fathered by Captain Laws and Sir 
 Isaac Morley— the Wakefield and Lincoln, the prospectus of which 
 appeared on 19 February, 1844. This was quickly followed on 
 22 February by that of Mr. Walker's resurrected line, now 
 christened the Cambridge and York, the Provisional Committee of 
 which included the Earl of Winchilsea, Mr. Chaplin, and Mr. George 
 Hussey Packe, of Caythorpe, near Grantham. Proposing as it did to 
 
 1844 
 
 GIBBS' "GREAT NORTHERN" 
 
 13 
 
 complete a second through route between London and the north in 
 connection with the Northern and Eastern Railway, this project 
 aroused instant opposition from the established companies, and in 
 its issue of 2 March the Railway Times declared it to be its duty 
 to them to "protest against and denounce this newest of reckless 
 speculations and all concerned in its concoction." Immediately, also, 
 the Midland directors woke up to the necessity of meeting actively 
 the new competition which threatened them, and on 5 March the 
 North Midland Board— the Amalgamation Bill was not yet passed, 
 and so each of the three Derby companies still carried on its affairs 
 separately — decided to promote a branch from their railway at Swinton 
 to Doncaster, Gainsborough, and Lincoln, as proposed to Mr. Hudson 
 by Sir John Beckett and other parties. Shortly afterwards the 
 Midland Counties Board decided to make a branch in the same 
 direction from Nottingham, passing through Newark to Lincoln, and 
 these were advertised together as the "Lincolnshire Junction Rail- 
 ways," with Mr. Robert Stephenson as engineer. 
 
 Meantime, on 7 March, the prospectus of the Sheffield and 
 Lincoln Railway had been published, and on the 13th of the same 
 month the Northern and Eastern and Eastern Counties Boards, 
 which, thanks mainly to the exertions of Mr. George Parker 
 Bidder, were just on the verge of being amalgamated into one 
 interest, decided to promote an extension to Lincoln " in such 
 direction as would best serve the important towns and ports of 
 Wisbeach, Spalding, and Boston.'" Next, on 4 April, Major Amsinck 
 issued a map and prospectus of the "Direct Northern Railway," 
 surveyed by Sir John Rennie and Mr. Gravatt— " a line to commence 
 near King's Cross and pass through Chipping Barnet, Biggleswade, 
 St. Neots, Huntingdon, and Peterborough to Lincoln, and thence 
 by Gainsborough, Thorne, Snaith, and Selby to York," and this 
 on 15 April obtained wide notoriety by being prominently referred 
 to in the "money article" of the Times. Finally, on 17 April, the 
 advertisement columns of the same newspaper contained the pre- 
 liminary notice of Mr. Gibbs' revived and modified project, headed : 
 
 "GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY. 
 
 " From London to York, through Hitchin, Biggleswade, Huntingdon, 
 Stamford, Grantham, Newark, Gainsborough, and Doncaster, joining 
 the Leeds and Selby and York and North Midland Railways near 
 South Milford, with branch lines to Bedford and Lincoln, and a 
 junction with the Manchester and Sheffield Railway." 
 
 The notice stated that "a detailed prospectus with names of the 
 Provisional Committee " would be ready in a few days, and that in the 
 
I 
 
 I 
 
 • i 
 
 il 
 
 i^i 
 
 14 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 meantime further information might be obtained on application to 
 Messrs. Baxter, Rose, and Norton, solicitors, 50, Mark Une, London. 
 
 Thus by the middle of April there were four north and south and 
 three west and east lines in the field, every one of which proposed 
 to enter Lincolnshire; and thus "threatened," as a contemporary 
 writer put it, "with no less than seven different lines of railroad, 
 with all the infernal machinery connected therewith," it was no 
 wonder that the people of Lincoln became excited and full of party 
 feeling on behalf of one or other of the projects. Probably because- 
 it had been first in the field, the Wakefield and Lincoln became the 
 most popular line, securing a vote of the Town Council in its 
 favour ; and early in April its promoters still further improved their 
 position by announcing their intention to extend their railway along 
 the banks of the Witham to Boston, where they talked of making 
 a junction with one of the Eastern Counties extension lines. Seeing 
 that a large number of Lincoln people were shareholders in the 
 Witham Navigation (which connects the city with the Wash, and 
 was in 1844 by far its most important channel of conveyance), this 
 proposal to construct a parallel, competitive railway would, if it had 
 stood by itself, have been a most unpopular one ; but the Wakefield 
 promoters boldly disarmed opposition, and at the same time enlisted 
 new support, by arranging a union of interests with the Navigation 
 Company, under which the shareholders in the latter were guaranteed 
 a permanent 6 per cent, dividend, while at the same time the public 
 were promised a reduction of the water tolls. A similar arrangement 
 was also made with Mr. Richard Ellison, the proprietor of the Fossdyke, 
 another canal which connects Lincoln with the Trent at Gainsborough, 
 while the canal interests, on their part, undertook to give land for the 
 construction of the railway, which for the greater part of its course from 
 Gainsborough was to be constructed along their banks. 
 
 Meanwhile the public announcement of the Direct Northern and 
 Great Northern projects had had an immediate effect upon the 
 councils of the Cambridge and York, and on 16 April- the day 
 after the Direct Northern was noticed in the 7////«-they had 
 passed a resolution intimating that a continuance of their line to 
 London through Peterborough might become desirable. It was 
 " urged " on them-so they explained afterwards-" by the northern 
 interests that the public should not be subjected to the fifteen miles 
 additional distance involved in the Cambridge route, when a more 
 direct route through the centre of Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, and 
 Huntingdonshire could be obtained," and moreover, Mr. Whitbread 
 of Bedford, who had now joined the Committee, had pointed out that 
 
 1844 
 
 "THE LONDON AND YORK" 
 
 15 
 
 local railway accommodation was badly needed in these counties. So 
 on 23 April, Mr. Walker was definitely requested to continue his 
 surveys right through to London. This important move soon became 
 known to the Eastern Counties directors, with the result that they, 
 having failed to effect a union with the Wakefield and Lincoln party, 
 instructed Robert Stephenson, on 30 April, to continue his northward 
 survey to Gainsborough and Doncaster. Thus there were now four 
 schemes in the field for complete north and south trunk lines. 
 
 On 3 May, 1844, the first prospectus of the "London and York 
 Railway" was issued. It stated that Mr. Walker had recommended 
 that "the line of railway should commence at London, near Kings 
 Cross, and proceed in the direction of Barnet, Hatfield, Hitchin, 
 Biggleswade, St. Neots, and Huntingdon to Peterborough, where it 
 would join the line originally projected between Cambridge and York," 
 and this new line, the prospectus added, had " the hearty concurrence 
 and support" of the landowners affected. In evidence of this the 
 Committee list now published included among many other new names 
 those of Wm. Astell, m.p. for Beds, an East Indian director, his son 
 Mr. John Harvey Astell, the Hon. O. Duncombe, of St. Neots, m.p. for 
 the North Riding of Yorkshire, and Mr. F>ancis Pym, of the Hazells, 
 Beds. This new and more formidable development of the scheme 
 did not, of course, lessen in any degree the hostility already provoked 
 towards it, and the duty it had imposed upon itself of denouncing the 
 "wild project" was once more cheerfully taken in hand by the Railway 
 Times. " Was it because the undertaking was not huge enough for 
 public support," it asked, "that Cambridge as a starting point had 
 been dropped— that seat of learned travellers deserted— the large 
 traffic of taking students to and from the colleges removed from the 
 table of estimates, and despised in comparison to proceeding direct 
 to so celebrated and extensive a city as St. Neots." This addition 
 to the original scheme of " fifty miles more of railway, with a new 
 terminus into London through some 100 furlongs of house property, 
 was," it declared, "a further sign of the extraordinary caution exercised" 
 in bringing out the scheme, and the public might next expect to hear 
 that York Minster had been " scheduled for removal to make room for 
 a proper station " at the northern end. 
 
 Meanwhile the promised "detailed prospectus" of the "Great 
 Northern" line did not appear, and the reason was that, almost 
 immediately after its preliminary notice had been made public, the 
 Cambridge and York — now London and York — Committee had 
 appointed a deputation of their body to endeavour to arrange a 
 union with the other parties of promoters who were occupying the 
 
. 
 
 \ 
 
 I ll. 
 
 ,6 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 same field. The result was that, on ,7 May a <=0"f7"" J^^^^ '^fjf J^ 
 the offices of the London and York solictors m Parl.an.ent Street, 
 Wes°>^ns e° at which the Earl of Winchilsea, the Hon O. Duncombe, 
 Messrs . H. Astell, Chas. Chaplin, C. H. Packe and others repre- 
 ^, d the London and York Committee, and Messrs. Edmund 
 Sson and Fra.,cis Mowatt the Great Northern. At th.s meet.ng a 
 olu^on was unanimously passed that the two committees shou d 
 unite and "that the efforts of all should be exerted to form a ra.l_ 
 unite, ana , London and York 
 
 way between London and VorK, to ue Laucu , „ , r^„„„,-i 
 
 Railway,- and at the next meeting of the London and Vork General 
 SmmLe on : June, Messrs. Denison and ^-"/-■f^'i jj. 
 the former spoke "in highly laudatory terms" of the un.ted under 
 Sing. Thus'the separate "Great Northern" P-i--^ droppe^^^^^^^^ 
 the name vanishes for a time from these pages. The D.rect Northern 
 
 patty, however, still preferred to remain '^^^^-^^^f^^'^^. e 
 their project had been first in the field, and on 18 May -the very 
 day when the union of the London and York and Great Northern was 
 
 announced in the press-Major Amsinck issued a counter advert.se- 
 announceo in v ' ^^^^^^ ^^^ completed 
 
 ment announcing that Sir John Kennie anu 
 
 their surveys, and that a committee was being formed to carry out the 
 ranwaytheVrecommended,_ which would "form the most direct line 
 
 between London and York." „ 
 
 Five days later-23 May-the titular " London and Yori^ Com 
 mittee sustained a loss by the resignation of their engineer, Mr. James 
 Sker who had found Ihat the task of surveying -d construct^^^^^^^^ 
 complete trunk line to the north was incompatible -^.^ ^^ !"^^. "^'^^J 
 engagements. Thus the "Committee of Direction, "^'^J «as "o« 
 formed as a delegation from the General Committee, with Mr. William 
 Ate 1 MP as chairman, and Messrs. Edmund Denison m.p., and 
 rinds Mowatt as vice-chairmen, had as its first duty to choose a new 
 enleer for their combined and reconstituted undertaking. For this 
 Z"ion the most obvious claimant was Mr. Gibbs ; but the con.m.ttee 
 TpS r ti have thought that for an undertaking of -h magm ude^ a 
 e^hfef engineer of acknowledged eminer^e - -u.ed.^t^^^^^^^^ 
 vipvv a denutation was sent to Mr. jostpn i^uv^ivt ^ , ... y\ ^ 
 
 Te work The invitation was a tempting one to a man of amb.t.on like 
 LocL but under ordinary circumstances he would Probab'y have at 
 ka t hesita ed to accept it, because as engineer to the Grand Junction 
 Coripany and projector of the just christened "Caledonian Rai .ay 
 he had prior interests and engagements which it «°"W obviously not 
 be easy \o reconcile with the position of engineer to the new ea tern 
 trunk ine But it happened that just at this time the Boards of the 
 
 1841 
 
 A "PRODIGIOUS" PROSPECTUS 
 
 17 
 
 Grand Junction and London and Birmingham Companies were at 
 loggerheads, and so the former seem actually to have encouraged their 
 engineer to take up the new enterprise, because it was likely to prove a 
 formidable rival to Euston Square. However this may be, Mr. Joseph 
 Ix)cke did accept the invitation, and at once threw himself into the 
 London and York plans with great energy. 
 
 On 1 1 June a new prospectus of the undertaking appeared, headed 
 by a list of names '* unequalled," according to Herapath's Railway 
 Jonrtial^ "for extent and respectability," and it at once created an 
 "extraordinary degree of sensation" (though at this time new railway 
 prospectuses were appearing almost daily), for no new company, it was 
 averred, had ever come out with such strength as this before. The 
 prospectus stated that the two main objects of the undertaking were to 
 shorten the distance between London and the northern parts of the 
 kingdom, and to connect a population of one and a half million in 
 Yorkshire with a population in London of about equal amount. The 
 facilities to be provided for the transmission of corn, malt, flour, cattle, 
 and wool were enlarged upon, and it was pointed out that Yorkshire, 
 Derbyshire, and Nottinghamshire coals, Yorkshire manufactures and 
 London goods would "find a ready market along the whole line." 
 " The railway," said the prospectus further, " will give the farmers and 
 graziers in the counties of Nottingham, Lincoln, Northampton, 
 Bedford, and Hertford daily opportunities of sending their fat 
 cattle to Smithfield in a few hours without the great loss now invariably 
 sustained by travelling for days together on a turnpike road," and 
 " the market gardeners of Biggleswade will be enabled to send their 
 I)roduce fresh lo the London market in about two hours." A few days 
 later an elaborate "first estimate of income" appeared in the news- 
 papers, compiled by Mr. Robert Baxter, a solicitor of Doncaster, who, 
 it may be remembered, had accompanied Mr. Denison on his deputation 
 from that town to the York Railway Committee twelve years before ; 
 and this purported to prove that the traffic would from the first be 
 sufficient to pay a dividend of "upwards of 9 per cent." on ^4,500,000 
 — the amount of capital asked for. "in the language of Dominie 
 Sampson," said the Railway Times, "and almost bursting with excite- 
 ment, we can only say ' Prodigious!'" 
 
 Meanwhile, the Midland Amalgamation Bill had received the Royal 
 assent, and at the first meeting of the united Boards, which was held 
 early in June, Mr. Hudson had been, as a matter of course, elected 
 chairman of the new "Midland Railway Company." This had 
 extended the dominions of the York monarch southwards as far as 
 Rugby ; and, northwards, he had just become chairman of a newly- 
 
 A 
 
 H 
 
|8 
 
 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 incorporated Leeds and Bradford Company, the practical object of 
 which was to extend the Midland rails to the latter town. He was 
 also on the Provisional Committee of the North liritish Railway, from 
 r>erwick to Edinburgh, the Bill for which had just passed the Commons 
 after a hard fight ; and, if this passed the Lords-as it was almost sure 
 to do- only the link between Gateshead and Berwick would remain to 
 l>e authorized to make the " East Coast Route " from York to Edinburgh 
 complete. Meantime the works of the Newcastle and Darlington 
 Junction Railway had been pressed on with extraordinary vigour, and 
 by the middle of this June-a full fortnight before Hudson had 
 promised-the twenty-seven miles of new line from Darlington to 
 Washington, and the new terminus at Gateshead, were ready for 
 opening The occasion was made one of great ceremonial, and at 
 c^ am on 1 8 June a special train -precursor and prototyi>e of 
 many "racing trains" to the north- left Euston Station with (ieorge 
 Stephenson and other eminent men on board, and reached Gateshead 
 at 2 35 p.m., having covered the 303 miles in nine hours thirty-two 
 minutes-" a feat unparalleled in the annals of railway travelling m the 
 kingdom." Moreover, at the dinner which Hudson gave in the after- 
 noon at Newcastle to a company of three hundred, the completion of 
 the route through to Edinburgh, with bridges over the Tyne and 
 Tweed, was spoken of as the matter of but a few more years. 
 
 Mr Glyn the London and Birmingham chairman, was to have 
 attended this ceremony, but at the last moment he was detained in 
 town to meet the chairman of the Grand Junction, so that the 
 unfortunate differences between their two companies ^^g^^ ^e 
 arranged. This was accomplished and a peace concluded, of which 
 Huds'on immediately took advantage to arrange a united plan of 
 campaign against the London and York, "the Ishmael of railways 
 as Mr Hutchinson, the Midland Quaker director, had just christened 
 it Hudson now recognized that Parliament could not be expected to 
 resist the public demand for a new through route on the eastern side 
 of England, and that the best policy for the established companies, 
 therefore, was to combine to supply this themselves in such a way as 
 would least damage their existing property. The Eastern Counties 
 Company had just obtained powers for an extension to Peterborough, 
 and its directors had, as we know, instructed Robert Stephenson to 
 survey further extensions to Lincoln, Gainsborough, and Doncaster ; 
 but these towns Hudson regarded as belonging legitimately to his 
 kingdom. Accordingly, he now proposed that his companies should 
 fullv occupy the district north of the Ouse by the York and North 
 Midland making a branch to Doncaster, while the Midland extended 
 
 ,844 AN OFFENSIVE AND DEFENSIVE ALLIANCE 19 
 
 its Swinton and Nottingham branches beyond Lincoln to Boston, 
 Spalding and March, and that the Eastern Counties should come to 
 March also by a deviation of its authorized Peterborough extension, 
 thus making a through " East Coast " route by Cambridge, Ely, March, 
 Boston, Lincoln, and Doncaster to the north. To this arrangement 
 the Shoreditch Board was induced to agree by being promised a half 
 share of the through traffic with York and places north of that city. 
 
 Further, in order to fill up the eastern side of the country more 
 completely, and yet at the same time to avoid the making of any 
 through route to the north more direct than the existing one via 
 Rugby and Derby, the Railway King suggested that the Midland and 
 Eastern Counties systems should be joined at Peterborough as well 
 as at March, by the former making a new branch from its main line 
 somewhere near I^icester through Oakham and Stamford ; and in this 
 he succeeded in securing the acquiescence of the London and 
 Birmingham directors, though to some small extent it threatened the 
 traffic of their Blisworth to Peterborough branch, already in course of 
 construction. But Euston Square in return, it was arranged, should 
 be allowed to embrace Bedford in its dominion by making a branch 
 thither from Bletchley, while the Eastern Counties, which also had had 
 designs on Bedford, was to stop short at Hertford and Biggleswade. 
 
 Such were the terms of the "great and valuable alliance" between 
 the established companies which the Railway Times announced in its 
 issue of 13 July, 1844, and which— in the language of that news- 
 paper — "spread peace in the railway kingdom from Yarmouth to 
 Holyhead." Thus the two projects for a main trunk railway on the 
 eastern side of England — the London and York and Direct Northern 
 — besides having to fight for supremacy between themselves, had now 
 ranged against them the united forces of the existing companies, 
 commanded by a leader whose ability and influence were everywhere 
 acknowledged — George Hudson, the Railway King. 
 
 iV I 
 
( 
 
 I 
 
 I 
 
 ll 
 
 f: 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 HOW "FIVE KINGS ' ISSUED AN EDICT TO -STRANGLE THE 
 MONSTER INFANT AT ITS IJIRTII"— 1844-1845. 
 
 ALL through the month of June, 1844, application for "London 
 and York " scrip flocked in to the office of the Committee at 
 Lothbury from all sides. In the previous month of May, on the 
 motion of Mr. W. E. Gladstone, the President of the Board of Trade, 
 the amount of deposit required by Government had been reduced 
 from 10 to 5 per cent, of the capital, on the ground that it was 
 "undesirable to oppress speculation" at a time of commercial buoy- 
 ancy, and this measure -a very ill-timed one as events proved— made 
 the issue of the London and York scrip an easier task than it might 
 otherwise have been. On the other hand, the Committee had to 
 exercise all possible care to prevent persons subscribing to their share 
 contract who might subsequently prove unable to pay the further calls 
 
 on the shares. 
 
 Meantime, Mr. Locke and a deputation of the directors were out 
 inspecting the country, with Messrs. Walker and Gibbs' plans in their 
 hands, in order to decide finally upon the route of the line. The main 
 point at issue was whether it should run across the fens, as proposed 
 by Mr. Walker, or be brought more to the westwards in order to serve 
 "the towns" (/>., (irantham, Newark, Retford, and Doncaster) as in 
 the later plans which Mr. Gibbs had prepared at the instance of Mr. 
 Denison ; and on this question a rather sharp difference of opinion 
 had arisen at the Committee, which it had been agreed Mr. Locke's 
 arbitration should decide. Pending his decision the directors who 
 accompanied the engineer found some difficulty in meeting the 
 pressure which was brought to bear upon them in the various towns 
 they visited ; but, fortunately, in Mr. Denison. who by force of charac- 
 ter had already made himself the leader of the party, the Committee 
 had a representative who could be ix-rfectly candid, and yet, at the 
 same time, win not only respect but support. At a meeting held at 
 Peterborough on i August, under the presidency of Earl Fitzwilliam, 
 
 30 
 
 1844 
 
 TOWNS OR FENS? 
 
 2i 
 
 ii 
 
 he did not hesitate to say bluntly that he would not consent to sacrifice 
 the interests of the general public for the benefit of any town on the 
 route. "Our main object," said he, "is to shorten the distance 
 between London and Yorkshire. If a line through Peterborough is best 
 for the general public, Peterborough shall have it, but, if not, it shall 
 pass outside the town." Nevertheless, resolutions in favour of the 
 London and York were passed both at the Peterborough meeting and 
 at another held at Huntingdon on the following day. 
 
 A few days later Mr. Locke made his report, which was adopted by 
 the direction, and on 22 August, 1844, an advertisement of the route 
 of the i)roposed railway was published in the Times. It stated that 
 the London terminus was to be "at King's Cross, near the New Road," 
 and that the line was to pass "by Crouch End, Hornsey, Colney 
 Hatch, between >Vhetstone and East Barnet, near to Potters Bar, west 
 of Hatfield Park to Hatfield, by Welwyn, Hitchin, Henlow, Biggles- 
 wade, Sandy, with a branch to Bedford, by Tempsford, St. Neot\ on 
 the west side of Huntingdon, by Peterborough, east of Stamford', by 
 (irantham and Stubton to Beckenham with a branch 4^ miles' to 
 Newark, by Doddington with a branch 4^ miles to the city of Lincoln, 
 by the village of Lea to Gainsborough, by Misson, Tinningley, and 
 Cantley to Doncaster, thence on to York." Thus the scrip-holders 
 and the public learnt that Mr. Walker's "Fens" line, which, as we have 
 seen, had been the basis of the original " London and York " under- 
 taking, had practically been abandoned in favour of the " towns " line 
 which Mr. Gibbs had adopted at the instance of Mr. Denison. 
 
 North of Doncaster, however, the route was still, it will be seen, left 
 very vague, and this was because the important question as to whether 
 or not the new company should seek an independent access to York 
 and to the West Riding had not yet been decided. Mr. Gibbs' plans, 
 It may be remembered, had contemplated that the trunk line should 
 termuiate by "joining the York and North Midland and Leeds and 
 Selby Railways at their junction near South Milford," and this un- 
 doubtedly was the most economical arrangement by which access 
 to York and Leeds could be secured. On the other hand, there was 
 much to be said in favour of making the new system independent 
 throughout of existing railways and competitive interests. In this 
 dilemma the London and York promoters came into communication, 
 through Mr. Denison, with Captain Laws, the manager of the Man- 
 chester and Leeds Company, who was also, as we know, the leading 
 promoter of the Wakefield, Lincoln, and Boston project; and as this 
 ^ne as planned by its engineer, Mr. Cubitt, was to cross the route 
 the London and York at Doncaster, and so practically constitute 
 
 1 ' 
 
f 
 
 I 
 
 (i 
 
 I' 
 
 ^n 
 
 42 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 branches from it to Wakefield on the one side, and to Lincoln and 
 Boston on °he other. Mr. Denison proposed that the two bod.es of 
 liters sLd unite their interests, and that in that way the I..ndon 
 aJytrk should obtain access to the West Riding. Capta.n I^w-s, on 
 hi part was feeling rather sore that his undertakings had been left out 
 o a' count n the plans which Ring Hudson had laid, m conjunction 
 : th the tondon and Birmingham and Eastern Count.es directors, fo 
 the occupation of Lincolnshire and the eastern s.de of ^"^^^^l 
 result was that on 30 August, at Normanton, ^e ^'nd Mr Demson 
 
 ca.r.e to an arrangement under which .t ^^ ^^S^" '^^^J^^^^h" 
 -tnd York plans should be enlarged to embrace the objects ol the 
 Wakefield and Boston Committee, and that 'he latter should be 
 dissolved and five of its members placed on the U.ndon and York 
 d eSn tts scrip being taken over by the latter so as to form an 
 idit onal half a million of capital for the amalgamated undertaking. 
 ThisTntlt alliance, to which the Manchester and Leeds d.reaors 
 fuUv consented, was announced by an advertisement dated .0 Sep- 
 ember .844, and its immediate effect was to send up the London and 
 ?orK;rip,':hich had been a good deal depressed since t^e—^^^ 
 ment of the Hudsonian combination, to a prem.um on the Exchange. 
 
 rLe question of access to the West Riding having been^h- Jc.ded 
 in favour of an independent branch from Doncaster to Wakefield, the 
 Cotrt ee at once decided in favour of a through line to York also, 
 and M Locke was informed of this, and requested to cont.nue h.s 
 uLvs accordingly on 4 September, just as he was about to start for 
 Patron business connected with the Paris and Rouen Railway^ 
 S.n e the adjustment of the disputes between the London and 
 Smingham and Grand Junction Companies, however. Locke had been 
 fubTected to a good deal of pressure to induce h.m to g.ve up h.s 
 conne fon with an undertaking so hostile to the .nterests of the 
 ex.sTng companies, and the London and York Comm.ttee on the.r 
 part hfd been warned that he would before long V-eld to that pressure^ 
 NeterSeless, they were hardly prepared for a letter wh.ch they rece.ved 
 from him o.^ 20 September, dated from Paris three days before, m 
 wh"h h" summarily' resigned his position as their eng.neer on the 
 lound that he had not been properly consulted as to the alterat,o.is 
 STe route which the new alliance with the Wakefield L.ncoln, and 
 Bo ton involved. The Committee, in their reply (wh.ch bears un- 
 SkaWe evidence of having been composed by Mr. Den.son) d.d 
 To hesitate to dismiss this reason as a mere excuse and to charge 
 Locke with having designed his action in order to embarrass as much 
 as possible the undertaking whose interests he had been engaged to 
 
 1844 
 
 AN ENGINEER IN HIS NIGHTCAP 
 
 23 
 
 serve, and it appears that they had good ground for this allegation, 
 though Locke indignantly denied it. 
 
 However, whether it was the outcome of a plot or not, the secession 
 of the eminent engineer did not, thanks to Mr. Denison's energy, 
 embarrass the new undertaking at all seriously. The vice-chairman 
 at once put himself into communication with Mr. William Cubitt, the 
 engineer to the Wakefield, Lincoln, and Boston project, and in an 
 advertisement dated "Monday morning, 23 September, 1844," the 
 Committee was able to announce simultaneously the resignation of 
 Locke and the appointment of Cubitt as engineer-in-chief to the under- 
 taking. The late Mr. Brundell, of Doncaster, is my authority for a story 
 that " Mr. Edmund Denison drove off post-haste very late at night to 
 Cubitt's house at Clapham Common, roused the engineer out of bed, 
 and there and then through the window — Cubitt being in his nightcap 
 — arranged with him to undertake the engineership of the line." 
 
 There was need of all possible haste in completing the plans of new 
 lines, because Parliament, alarmed at the prospect of being over- 
 whelmed in its next session with railway bills, had already taken 
 extraordinary measures to secure their preliminary examination " with a 
 view to its information and assistance in forming a judgment" upon 
 them. With this object the Board of Trade had been directed to 
 institute an inquiry into the merits of competing projects, and accord- 
 ingly on 20 August, 1844, a notice had been issued signed by Lord 
 Dalhousie (who had just succeeded Mr. Gladstone as President of the 
 Board), General Pasley, Captain O'Brien, and Messrs. G. R. Porter and 
 S. I^ing (afterwards Chairman of the Brighton Company). This 
 announced that the Board had decided to examine, in the first 
 instance, the London and York Railway projects, the projects for an 
 east and west line between Lincolnshire and the West Riding, and the 
 schemes for completing the railway communication between England 
 and Scotland. So far, however, the London and York Committees 
 had kept up well in the running. On the very day after the issue 
 of this notice — 21 August — Messrs. Astell, Denison, and Locke had 
 formally laid the preliminary plans of their undertaking before the 
 " Five Kings " — as the Board of Trade officials were soon nicknamed, 
 and on 4 September Messrs. Denison and Locke had had another 
 mterview to announce the coalition with the Wakefield, Lincoln, and 
 Boston — the very matter on which Locke afterwards complained he 
 was not properly informed. Now, on 27 September, Messrs. Denison, 
 Mowatt, and Baxter called upon Lord Dalhousie again, in order to 
 inform him of the resignation of Locke, and of certain changes since 
 made in the plans. 
 
 I 
 
' g --^- 
 
 Ill 
 
 h 
 
 H 
 
 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 IJ 
 
 On 23 September, 1844 -the same day that the appointment 
 of Mr. Cubitt as engineer to the London and York Railway was 
 announccd-a new rival to that undertaking appeared in the field. 
 The reader may remember being informed in the preceding chapter 
 that at the time when Mr. Charles Chaplin was engaged in forming the 
 " Cambridge and York " Committee with Mr. Walker as its engineer, 
 another engineer, Mr. Rendel, was also surveying a north and south 
 line through Lincolnshire, for which he had gained the powerful 
 interest of Earl Fitzwilliam. But, as we have seen, Mr. Chaplin's 
 party proved the stronger, developing, as has been described, into 
 the London and York undertaking, and this Earl Fitzwilliam himself 
 had supported at the meeting at Peterborough already noted. So 
 nothing more had been said about Mr. Rendel's scheme until the end 
 of August, when the route decided upon by Mr. Locke had been 
 published, and it had been found that under the influence of Mr. 
 Gibbs' Great Northern plans, the course through Lincolnshire, 
 originally recommended by Mr. Walker, had been almost wholly 
 abandoned in favour of a more westerly " towns line." Then grave 
 dissatisfaction had arisen in the minds of some of the Lincolnshire 
 gentlemen, particularly at the proposal to place Lincoln on a branch 
 instead of on the main line, and the result had been that Mr. Handley, 
 late M.p. for Lincolnshire, who, as the reader may perhaps remember, 
 had promoted a north and south line, via Lincoln, as early as 1835, 
 and one or two other members of the London and York Committee, 
 had seceded from the party, and with the countenance and support 
 of Earl Fitzwilliam had revived Mr. RendeFs "Cambridge and 
 Lincoln' project. This was the new rival to the London and York, 
 and a preliminary notice of it was issued, as just stated, on 23 Sep- 
 tember, 1844, the course proposed being Vid St. Ives, Ramsey, and 
 
 Peterborough. 
 
 Almost simultaneously with the formation of this "cave" amongst 
 their own party, the London and York Committee received a new and 
 violent attack from their older rivals, the Direct Northern. This party 
 came out at the end of September, 1844, for the first time with a full 
 prospectus, wherein they charged the London and York Committee 
 with having "appropriated seventy miles" of the Direct Northern line 
 as laid out by Sir John Rennie and Mr. Gravatt and published in 
 a map issued by Major Amsinck in April, 1844. Nevertheless they 
 claimed that the railway now proposed by them from King's Cross 
 to York, via Huntingdon, Stamford, Lincoln, Gainsborough, and 
 Selby to York would be twenty miles shorter than the London 
 and York line. Moreover they gave an "estimate of income," 
 
 1844 THE LONDON AND YORK PLANS COMPLETED 
 
 25 
 
 modelled on that prepared for the London and York by Mr. Baxter, 
 which showed a dividend of 9^ per cent, on a capital of four millions, 
 /.<?., one-half per cent, more than that previously claimed for the rival 
 undertaking. This, of course, called for a reply from the London and 
 York, which Messrs. Denison and Baxter were able to make trenchant 
 and lively reading ; but the energetic Major Amsinck was not silenced, 
 for on the very same day, 3 October, he issued a new manifesto, 
 replying to the London and York reply. 
 
 Meantime Mr. Cubitt had been busy going over the country to see 
 how he could best combine his own Wakefield, Lincoln, and Boston 
 plans with the London and York line as laid out by Locke. The latter 
 had suggested just before his retirement that .the London and York 
 should include a branch from Peterborough to Boston in its under- 
 taking, and this was now adopted by his successor in conjunction with 
 the Wakefield, Lincoln, and Boston project, which, it will be remem- 
 bered, was to run along the banks of the Witham and Fossdyke from 
 Boston to Gainsborough in accordance with the agreement with the 
 canal interests. Beyond Gainsborough, however, Cubitt decided to 
 alter the line which the smaller Committee had adopted by diverting 
 the first part of it so as to make it rejoin the London and York 
 "towns line" at Bawtry, and this enabled him to utilize some surveys 
 \vhich he had made for another small Committee — the Sheffield, 
 Chesterfield, and Gainsborough— which was now persuaded to follow 
 tlie example of the Wakefield party and abandon their independent 
 project in favour of an alliance with the London and York. This 
 necessitated the adoption by the latter of an additional branch from 
 Bawtry to Sheffield, while from Doncaster to W^akefield the western 
 section of the Wakefield, Lincoln, and Boston line formed another 
 branch of about the same length. Thus amended and enlarged the 
 complete undertaking of the London and York Committee became : 
 
 1. A main line from London to York . . . .186 miles. 
 
 2. A " loop " line from Peterborough Z'/d Boston and 
 Lincoln to Bawtry 
 
 A branch line from Bawtry to Sheffield . 
 
 A branch from Doncaster to Wakefield 
 
 Minor branches to Bedford, Stamford and "spurs," making a 
 total of 32 7i miles-truly "a leviathan undertaking," beside which the 
 112 miles of the original London and Birmingham Railway or even 
 the 17 1 J miles of the Great Western system-then, as now, the longest 
 ^nglish railway under one management-looked very small indeed, 
 ^ir. Lubitts estimate for the construction of the whole was six and 
 '-^ iialf millions, and as five millions of London and York and Wakefield 
 
 3- 
 
 4. 
 
 5- 
 
 86 
 
 2of 
 20| 
 
 )) 
 
 >j 
 
I 
 
 26 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 scrip had now been taken up, the Committee decided not to issue any 
 more, but to take over what little had been sent out by the Sheffield, 
 Chesterfield, and Gainsborough party, and to rely for the rest upon the 
 exercise of borrowing powers. 
 
 One great advantage of this enlargement of plans was that it 
 enabled the Committee to make its peace with the people of Lincoln, 
 many of whom had been alienated from its cause by the former decision 
 to place their city upon a branch from Doddington. For now Lincoln 
 was offered in one scheme a through north and south communication 
 via Peterborough and Bawtry, and a good connection westwards with 
 both Wakefield and Sheffield, and when Mr. Baxter explained this at a 
 great meeting held in the city on 5 October, a resolution was passed 
 in favour of the London and York by a large majority, despite an 
 announcement by the Cambridge and Lincoln that they now had the 
 support of King Hudson for their scheme. At this meeting the Don- 
 caster solicitor was bold enough to denounce the great railway potentate 
 in no measured terms, and Hudson, though he affected to despise 
 Baxter as " a gentleman little known in the railway world," was roused 
 to reply to him at great length at a Midland meeting a week later. On 
 the same day as the Lincoln meeting, similar gatherings at Grantham 
 and Huntingdon pronounced in favour of the London and York and 
 against the Direct Northern, and on October loth at Newark, and on 
 the next day at Retford resolutions in the same sense were passed. 
 Nevertheless, on 17 October Major Amsinck was able to announce 
 through the press that all the Direct Northern scrip had been 
 
 taken up. 
 
 The great epidemic of railway mania was now raging, and every 
 day's newspapers brought new projects to light. Among those an- 
 nounced during this October, 1844, were the Great Grimsby and 
 Sheffield Junction Railway, the Great Grimsby Extension Dock 
 Company, the Wakefield, Pontefract, and Goole, and the Lincoln, 
 York, and Leeds ; and all these, together with the London and York, 
 the Direct Northern, the Cambridge and Lincoln, the Sheffield and 
 Lincoln, and the extensions of the Midland, York, and North Midland, 
 and Eastern Counties systems, were duly deposited by 30 November. 
 The result was that in a group headed, "Scheme for extend- 
 ing railway communicaiton between London and York, etc.,'' the 
 Board of Trade officials had to place projects involving the con- 
 struction of upwards of 1,200 miles of railway— "an amount not 
 much less than that of the railways already in existence in the 
 kingdom," and proposing a capital expenditure altogether of upwards 
 of ;£2o,ooo,ooo. Of course the London and York, with its 328 
 
 1844 
 
 "LARGE BUT NOT DIFFICULT" 
 
 *7 
 
 miles, was by far the largest single schema. The Direct Northern 
 simply proposed a main line only from London to York, 185 miles 
 in length ; the proposed Midland extension from Swinton via 
 Lincoln and Boston to March, was no more than 124 miles, and 
 the Cambridge and Lincoln 83. The latter was now definitely 
 supported by Hudson, but it was freely stated that he was using 
 it only as a weapon against his more formidable adversaries, and did 
 not intend that it should be made even if the powers for it were 
 obtained. 
 
 
 Autograph Letter ok Mr. Georgk Hudson, "the Railway King," to an Agent in 
 
 Lincoln authorizing Expenditure in Oi-i'osition to the Proposed 
 
 "London and York Railway." 
 
 Re/roduced by fermissioH 0/ Mr. Ed-ward Baker, Bookseller, 14 &■ 16, John Bright Stiett, Birmingham. 
 
 Full plans and sections of the various projects having been now 
 deposited, the details of them were open for discussion, and a wordy 
 warfare about gradients, earthwork, tunnels, bridges, etc., now com- 
 menced in the railway press and elsewhere. The works of the 
 London and York were, as Mr. Cubitt afterwards said in the witness- 
 box, "large but not difficult," involving about fourteen and a half 
 million cubic yards of earthwork, fourteen tunnels, about 420 bridges, 
 some of which, however, were very small affairs, a viaduct at Welwyn, 
 1490 feet long and 89 feet in greatest height, and forty-two stations, 
 mcluding the terminus at King's Cross. This was to cover ten acres 
 
28 
 
 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 ji 
 
 1 
 
 for passenger accommodation and forty-nine acres for goods and coal, 
 but Mr. Cubitt declared that he could build a thoroughly useful station 
 for between ;£'5o,ooo and ;^6o,ooo — about the amount which the 
 London and Birmingham had paid for its archivay at Euston S(|uare. 
 
 For the site of the passenger terminus which fronted on the old 
 St. Pancras Road the Small-pox and Fever Hospitals and several 
 streets of small houses had to be removed, but with this exception the 
 carrying of the line out of London involved next to no destruction 
 of house property, as it emerged into open and completely rural 
 country within a mile of King's Cross. Nevertheless the first section 
 of the line out of London promised to be by a good deal the 
 most costly portion of the system. The prior occupation by the 
 Eastern Counties Railway of the only level route by which a line could 
 leave London for the north had compelled both the London and York 
 and Direct Northern engineers to lay their routes through a country 
 formed of a series of ridges and valleys, and Mr. Cubitt's sections for 
 the first twenty- three miles showed an almost unbroken series of 
 tunnels, cuttings, and embankments, no less than eight of the fourteen 
 tunnels, the highest embankment and the deepest cutting on the 
 system being all in this portion of the line. Indeed, had the new 
 railway been laid out on the same principle which had governed 
 Stephenson and Brunei in laying out the London and Birmingham and 
 the Great Western lines, namely, that a practically level line must be 
 secured, the amount of earthwork involved in getting through what 
 are now called " The Northern Heights of London " would have 
 been colossal. Fortunately, however, great advances had been made 
 in the building of locomotives since the days when those two great 
 lines had been built — even the short incline of i in 66 out of Euston, 
 for which a stationary engine had long been used, was already being 
 "negotiated" by a single locomotive, and so Mr. Cubitt was able to 
 adopt I in 200 as the " characteristic " gradient of the new trunk line ; 
 that is to say, where a better gradient than this could not be secured 
 without additional expense, he was content that the trains should have 
 to face a rise of this degree. But even i in 200 was too stringent a 
 ruling gradient to be adhered to in the neighbourhood of the London 
 terminus. So, after the line had been carried beneath the Regent's 
 Canal, a rise of i in 108 had to be tolerated for a distance of a mile 
 and a quarter in order to reach the higher level at HoUoway, from which 
 again the line continued to rise with a very long stretch of i in 200 
 until its summit level was reached at Potters Bar, thirteen miles from 
 King's Cross. 
 
 From Potters Bar Mr. Cubitt was able to keep on high ground 
 
 1845 
 
 "HUMBUG," SAYS HUDSON 
 
 29 
 
 for another thirteen miles to Stevenage, where, however, a long fall 
 of about six miles of i in 200 began ; and, after that, from Arlesey 
 to beyond Peterborough he was able to secure a practically level 
 run of nearly fifty miles, save for a longish rise and longer fall (both i 
 in 200) near Abbotts Ripton, sixty-three miles from King's Cross. 
 P>etween Peterborough and (Irantham the choice of the "towns" 
 line in preference of that through the Fens had compelled the engineer 
 to penetrate some heavy country, involving three miles of i in 176 
 north of Corby immediately succeeded by a tunnel, 1352 yards long, 
 at Great Ponton— the longest tunnel on the line— and after that came 
 a long fall of i in 200 down to Grantham ; but thence to Doncaster 
 the works were fairly easy, the most onerous being the bridge over 
 the Trent at Newark. The loop, too, was very easy of construction 
 except for bridges, and about half of it could be laid level without 
 any serious earthwork at all. 
 
 Thus we see that except its largeness there was nothing about the 
 London and York undertaking to daunt even the little-tested engineer- 
 ing skill of 1845, and so its opponents had only one really vulnerable 
 point to attack. This was the great costliness of the undertaking, 
 which, they alleged, must be largely in excess of the capital estimate, 
 and at the Midland meeting on 20 January, 1845, George Hudson, 
 with the assistance of figures furnished to him by Robert Stephenson, 
 put the matter in the apparently conclusive form of a rule of three 
 sum. " If," asked he, " the London and Birmingham Railway, with 
 14,000,000 cubic yards of earthwork, four and an eighth miles of tunnels, 
 and no viaduct longer than 500 feet, cost ^£'5, 000,000, how much will 
 the same length, namely, 1 1 2 miles, of the London and York cost 
 from London to Grantham, with 13,000,000 cubic yards of earthwork, 
 four and three-quarter miles of tunnels, and a viaduct at Welwyn, 
 1490 feet long and 89 feet high?" The answer, of course, was 
 "not less than ^5,000,000," whereupon Hudson, not knowing -for, 
 indeed, it had not yet been publicly announced— that the capital estimate 
 of the London and York had been increased by Cubitt from five 
 millions to six and a half, declared triumphantly that "these juvenile 
 promoters" would have "spent every shilling of their capital by the 
 tune they had arrived at Grantham," and that, in short, "if it were 
 united with that humbug, the Atmospheric, the London and York 
 would be the most complete thing in the world." 
 
 Allowing for Cubitt's addition, however, and for the advances in 
 engineering science since the making of the London and Birmingham, 
 this criticism of the London and York capital estimate was worth very 
 httle, as the sequel was to prove, and Hud.son did his best to rob it of 
 
 
I > 
 
 I 
 
 [i 
 
 50 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 all effect on impartial minds by his reckless language with regard to the 
 gradients and financing of the new railway. " I challenge them," he 
 said, " to leave London with twenty carriages, and I will beat them to 
 York" (i.e., by the Midland route); 'and what is more, I don't believe 
 they will get there at all on a thick, foggy day, when the rails are 
 greasy." Moreover, after the meeting, coming across Mr. Dcnison on 
 the platform at Derby station, he went so far as to assert that the 
 London and York would not have got capital to take them as far even 
 as Grantham, " if they had got it honestly." This sneer had reference 
 to the coalition with the Wakefield and Lincoln party, in which, as we 
 know, Mr. Denison had been prime mover ; but though reminded 
 warningly of this latter fact, the Railway King repeated his charge of 
 dishonesty. Thereupon Denison called him "a blackguard" to his 
 face, and then turned his back upon him, and when Hudson endea- 
 voured to explain that it was to the Committee he had referred and not 
 Mr. Denison personally, the only reply he received was, " Hudson, I 've 
 done with you ; go away ! " 
 
 The Parliamentary session had now begun, and during February the 
 Board of Trade presented its reports on several of the groups of rail- 
 way schemes submitted to it ; but that on the London and York group 
 —which was unanimously admitted to be the most important— was 
 still delayed. It was generally believed, however— even in the oppo- 
 sition camps— that when it came it would be in favour of the London 
 and York line, and this belief prevailed until early in March, when all 
 of a sudden the current rumour changed, and the Cambridge and 
 Lincoln and Direct Northern parties showed unaccountable signs of 
 confidence. On Saturday, 8 March, though no official announce- 
 ment had yet been made, it was positively stated in the City that the 
 London and York was to be reported against, so positively that large 
 sales of London and York, and purchases of Direct Northern and 
 Cambridge and Lincoln scrip were made, and on the following Monday, 
 in response to some sort of official invitation, the precise nature of 
 which was never disclosed, the Direct Northern party sent word to the 
 " Five Kings " that they were willing to combine with the Cambridge 
 and Lincoln by making the northern part of their line from Lincoln 
 to York only. On the following day, Tuesday, 11 March, it was 
 officially announced that the report of the Board was to be in favour 
 of this combination and against the London and York in toto. 
 
 The excitement and surprise produced throughout the country was 
 intense. Feverish sales or purchases of scrip were at once effected ; 
 the most extraordinary rumours as to the origin of the " Five Kings' " 
 judgment were afloat j and the publication of the text of their report 
 
 1845 
 
 THE COMMISSIONERS' REPORT 
 
 3' 
 
 was awaited with intense anxiety. The London and York Bill had 
 
 already passed its second reading unopposed, and on 12 March— the 
 
 very next day after the Board of Trade's verdict was published— 
 
 the Committee announced their intention of proceeding with it, "just 
 
 as if no Board of Trade existed" — a decision for which they were 
 
 loudly applauded by their supporters throughout the country and in 
 
 the press. On the other hand, the Railway Titncs came out on 
 
 15 March with a flaming leader, which declared that "the monster 
 
 bubble had burst ; the mighty scheme which was to furnish the pockets 
 
 of its supporters with the spolia opima of premiums to the tune of a 
 
 million and a quarter has vanished into thin and unsubstantial air, 
 
 * ' * And like the baseless fabric of a vision, 
 Left not a wrack behind.' " 
 
 A day or two later, moreover, one of the Cambridge and Lincoln 
 party, writing by Hudson's direction to Mr. Brogden, the latter's agent 
 at Lincoln, declared that " the report from the Board of Trade must 
 necessarily be so strong and powerful against this wild project, as will 
 almost of itself be sufficient to strangle the monster infant in its birth." 
 
 Mr. Denison in the Commons and Lord Brougham in the Lords 
 endeavoured to ascertain how it was that the Five Kings' verdict should 
 have been known in the City, and sent by post and pigeon to the pro- 
 vinces four days before it was officially announced, and grave reflections 
 on the conduct of the Five Kings were uttered, which gained general 
 credence, amongst the London and York party at any rate, when on 
 20 March the full text of their report was published in the Gazette, 
 An examination of this long and elaborate document— and probably 
 no official report was ever examined more searchingly— showed that the 
 ex parte criticism passed by Hudson at the Midland meeting on the 
 London and York estimates had been accepted by the Board— and was 
 m fact quoted by them almost verbatim in their report— although no 
 opportunity had been given to Mr. Cubitt, or to any other repre- 
 sentative of the London and York Committee, to explain or defend 
 their figures ; while, on the other hand, the estimates of the Direct 
 Northern and Cambridge and Lincoln had been accepted without 
 criticism. What was worse, many of the " facts " quoted by the Board 
 in favour of their decision were found to be not only misleading, but 
 absolutely inaccurate. Moreover, it appeared obvious that the officials 
 had gone beyond their province in suggesting a new combination of 
 routes instead of simply reporting on the merits of the various integral 
 schemes which had been placed before them. 
 
 The fact was that-as Colonel Sibthorpe, the anti-railway member, 
 **aid in the House of Commons— the Five Kings had undertaken 
 
II 
 
 .1 
 
 it 
 
 32 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 a duty which "five angels could not have performed satisfactorily if they 
 had come down from heaven and sat four hours a day as a Board." 
 They had been instructed to report on matters of the greatest intricacy, 
 involving numberless points of local detail, without any power to take 
 evidence or hear advocates ; in short, they had to do the work of 
 a Parliamentary Committee without any of the facilities enjoyed by such 
 a Committee ; and, worst of all, they had to do what fortunately a 
 Parliamentary Committee on a railway Bill never does- they had 
 to give reasons for the decisions at which they arrived. Under these 
 circumstances their prudent course should have been to have simply 
 stated the arguments in favour and against the various projects m 
 a colourless and non-committal manner ; but, as we have seen, they 
 were so indiscreet-to use the mildest term applied to them— as to 
 adopt a precisely opposite course. 
 
 On 25 March -that is after a ver>' short interval only for criticism— 
 the London and York Committee issued an advertisement pointing 
 out "a few of the most glaring mistakes upon the face of the report," 
 and shortly afterwards the indefatigable Mr. Baxter completed a full 
 answer to it, contesting its premises and arguments seriatim, and this 
 was sent out from the London and York office, interleaved with the 
 pa^^es of the official document. Meanwhile the towns on the proposed 
 Lo'iidon and York route line, most of which were left out in the cold 
 by the approved Eastern Couniies, Cambridge and Lincoln and Direct 
 Northern combination, had risen in protest against the Five Kings' 
 authority, and hardly a day passed without bringing with it intelligence 
 that a new meeting had denounced the Board's reix)rt and exhorted 
 the London and York Committee to persevere in the face of it. The 
 inhabitants of Doncaster declared that they "assembled under the 
 most alarming circumstances that ever menaced the prosperity of the 
 town"; Bawtry accused the Board of "gross injustice"; Biggleswade 
 learnt of its decision " with deep regret and disappointment " ; Newark 
 shared the "extreme disappointment and regret" ; Wakefield heard of 
 it with " deepest concern '' ; while at Lincoln feeling was now so sharply 
 divided that a meeting of 6,000 people in the Beast Market broke ui) 
 with stone-throwing, lighting, and general disorder upon the Mayor 
 declaring that the resolution in favour of the London and York was 
 passed. " When the Cambridge and Lincoln partisans could no longer 
 dispute this fact they declared that their opponents had hired " hordes 
 of labourers at 2s. a head " to hold up their hands in favour of their line. 
 It was clear that the preliminary work done by Lord Dalhousie and 
 his colleagues had increased rathtr than lightened the responsibility 
 now impending upon Parliament. 
 
 CHAPTER IIL 
 
 WHO IS TO REAR THE INFANT?— THE MOTHERS BEFORE 
 
 SOLOMON— 1845. 
 
 THE session of 1845 was to be pre-eminently a railway session, 
 for at its opening there were no less than 224 Railway Bills 
 awaiting consideration. Of these a few were voluntarily withdrawn by 
 the parties promoting them in submission to the reports of the Board 
 of Trade, but the work of clearing the ground which the Five Kings 
 thus performed was small compared with that done by the numerous 
 sub-committees appointed by the Commons to make a preliminary 
 examination of the Bills to see if the Standing Orders of the House 
 had been complied with. For as many of the projects had been con- 
 ceived in the fever heat of the mania epidemic, and their plans, sections, 
 and subscription contracts prepared in hot haste and by incompetent 
 hands, the Standing Orders ordeal proved fatal to no less than thirty- 
 nine of them, despite the fact that in numerous cases an agreement 
 was come to amongst competing promoters not to oppose one another 
 at this stage. 
 
 The London and York Bill, however, came through the Standing 
 Orders most successfully, and, as we have before noted, it had already 
 passed its second reading in the House of Commons before the 
 adverse report of the Board of Trade was published. The Direct 
 Northern, on the other hand, did not come before the Standing Orders 
 Sub-Committee until April, by which time its promoters, in order to 
 save expense, had prepared a No. 2 Bill for a line from Lincoln to 
 York only, in accordance with their promise to the Board of Trade. 
 But the Sub-Committee first decided that the notices given for the 
 ^vhole line were not applicable to the limited project, and afterwards 
 on 29 April they announced that owing to some very serious errors in 
 the engineers' sections the original Bill itself could not be allowed to 
 proceed. Jobbers who after the publication of the Five Kings' report 
 had sold London and York scrip and bought Direct Northern now 
 '^egan to regret their action. 
 
 33 
 
1 1 
 
 I 
 
 |! 
 
 34 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 Meanwhile the numerous Bills had been referred to the usual Private 
 Bill Committees, but the way in which they had been "grouped" was 
 causin- much dissatisfaction to the London and York party. For 
 while their own Bill, with the Direct Northern, the Cambridge and 
 Lincoln, the Sheffield and Lincoln, the Midland extension from 
 Swinton to March, the York and North Midland branch to Doncaster, 
 the Eastern Counties extensions, and several other projects had been 
 placed in Group X, the Syston and Peterborough was in Group T, the 
 Nottingham, Newark, and Lincoln in Group V, the Great Grimsby and 
 Sheffield Junction in Group U, and the Wakefield, Pontefract, and 
 Goole in Group W. Yet all these were schemes the carrying out of 
 which would seriously affect the position of the London and York 
 undertaking. Particularly was this the case with the Syston and 
 Peterborough, the line of which was actually planned to run from 
 Peterborough to Walton, a distance of about three miles, practically 
 over the same ground as the London and York. Yet the latter party, 
 having as yet no legal status, found themselves refused a locus standi to 
 appear against it, and had the chagrin of seeing it pass Committee 
 stage in the Commons before the proceedings in Group X had so much 
 
 as begun. j ^r i 
 
 It was on 28 April that the Committee on the London and York 
 group held its first sitting, Lord Courtenay (afterwards Lord Devon) 
 being chairman, and the other members being Mr. Macgeachy, Mr. 
 Barin- Wall, Mr. C. Powlett Scrop, and Mr. Darby. It had fifteen 
 Bills referred to it, and no less than thirty-two counsel were engaged 
 for the various promoters. Great, therefore, was the disgust of these 
 and of the small army of agents, solicitors, witnesses, and reporters— 
 not to mention share-jobbers-who desired to be present, when it was 
 found that it had been allotted one of the smallest of the wooden 
 sheds in which, pending the completion of the new Houses of 
 Parliament, Private Bill Committees were condemned to meet. 
 Before the members of the Committee themselves arrived this room 
 was completely filled, and upon its being cleared to enable them to 
 discuss privately their order of proceedings, "counsel, solicitors, 
 clerks, amateurs, and others were thrust into a narrow passage-a 
 rudis indkestaque ;;/^/^j "-whereupon "some of the more merry of 
 the persons ejected amused themselves "-according to the Railway 
 Times' report—" by emptying buckets of water which hung against the 
 walls " (being used for irrigating, and so cooling the tops of the sheds) 
 "upon those who were immediately below them." When the doors 
 were again opened a great crush ensued, and the reporters of the Times 
 and other papers could not obtain admission. The consequence was 
 
 1845 THE PARLIAMENTARY HEARING COMMENCED 35 
 
 some warm language in their columns on the following morning as to 
 what they alleged was an attempt to fetter the liberty of the Press. 
 
 At the sitting on the next day (29 April) a larger shed was provided, 
 but this was soon crowded with people as thick as they could stand ; 
 indeed, the largest of the committee-rooms subsequently built could 
 not have held the throng which generally attended.* The result of the 
 Committee's deliberations on the previous day had been that the 
 London and York Bill was to be taken first, and so Serjeant 
 Wrangham, who " led " for that party (Serjeant Kinglake, Mr. Paget, 
 Mr. E. B. Denison— son of the vice-chairman and now Lord Grim- 
 thorpe— and Mr. Adams being with him), at once began to open his 
 case. His argumenns, of course, were frequently directed against the 
 statements and conclusions of the Five Kings' report, and with Mr. 
 Baxter's detailed criticism of this in his hand— a criticism the publica- 
 tion of which had already done much to discredit the authority of the 
 railway department of the Board, seeing that no attempt to reply to it 
 had been made— he was able at once practically to spike this gun, so 
 that it became useless to his opponents, if not even an incubus to them, 
 practically from the commencement of the battle. 
 
 Owing to the magnitude of the London and York project and the 
 mass of evidence which he had preliminarily to introduce, Serjeant 
 
 Wrangham's speech lasted well on into the third day of the hearing 
 
 30 April. Then the local traffic evidence was commenced, which 
 the London and York direction had decided to present with great 
 fulness for the first sixty miles of the railway at any rate, seeing that it 
 was a principal argument in their opponents* case that a new line north- 
 wards from London was not needed, but that the existing Eastern 
 Counties Railway should be used as the base of a new trunk. So, 
 passing over the first ten miles only, along which there was absolutely 
 no population except a few farmers, country gentlemen, and rusticating 
 "merchant princes," many of whom objected strongly to the proposed 
 disturbance of their rural quiet, they commenced their case with 
 witnesses from Chipping Barnet, where rural quiet was considered too 
 dear an advantage seeing that it meant coals at 42J. to 45^. a ton, and 
 the payment of iis. for every 18 cwt. load of hay carted to the 
 metropolitan market. 
 
 So, in the sarcastic language of the Railway Times, " Barnet with its 
 grocers came upon the scene and looked as big as could be wished. 
 One witness gave utterance to the astounding fact that he annually 
 
 * Mr. Mitchell, the veteran Committee clerk at the House of Commons, has told 
 nie that the smell of- the London and York Committee-room will never be effaced 
 Tom his memory. 
 
t 
 
 a I 
 
 
 36 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 received from London as much as fifty tons of goods, and that 
 perhaps he went to London once a week. In fact, he thought he 
 might say that he knew two others in the town who did as much. He 
 would not go so far as to say that a superabundant supply of manure 
 from London would augment his business, although he did not say it 
 would not, as he had not considered the subject. He would, however, 
 go this far and say that * perhaps it would and perhaps it wouldn't.' 
 This was his opinion, and nothing could shake it." 
 
 The evidence from Hertfordshire had not gone on for long before 
 Mr. Macgeachy, who was a resident in that county, discovered that he 
 had local interests which should have debarred him from being placed 
 upon the Committee, and so he retired from it, being probably only too 
 glad to be released from an inquiry which it was now certain would 
 be abnormally long and tedious. On 7 May, for example. Committee 
 and counsel were engaged for several hours in wrangling over a single 
 point in the evidence of a professional " traffic-taker "-a personage of 
 much importance in these early railway days-who was understood to 
 declare that 16,500,000 sheep would come yearly by the new railway to 
 the Metropolis, whereas the figure appearing in the official London and 
 York estimate was 276,000 only. According to a newspaper report 
 this apparent discrepancy was due to a misunderstanding " arising from 
 the technical method of calculation traffic-takers adopt." 
 
 But the majority of the London and York traffic witnesses were 
 men of higher calibre than professional calculators. They included the 
 Chairman, Mr. Astell, who spoke as m.p. for Bedfordshire, Mr. G. H. 
 Packe of Grantham, Mr. Charles Chaplin, the Right Hon. W. E. 
 Gladstone, m.p., who appeared on 16 May to represent his con- 
 stituents at Newark, Lord Worsley, and the Earl of Lincoln. On 
 22 May Mr. Edmund Denison came into the box, and he was 
 followed on the following day by Mr. Joseph Pease, son of Edward 
 Pease, "the father of railways," whose evidence as to the probable 
 coal traffic on the line created a great impression. He gave an 
 account of the efforts he had made since the completion of through 
 railway communication to open up an overland trade for Durham coal 
 in the West and South of England, but said that so far he had been 
 baulked by his inability to obtain a low and trustworthy through rate 
 and sufficiently rapid transit over a series of lines under numerous 
 independent managements. He felt quite sure, however, that the 
 opening of a direct route in one hand from York to London would 
 produce "a perfect revolution in the coal trade throughout the 
 whole length of the kingdom." Indeed, so certain was he of this, 
 that he was willing himself to guarantee the ;£3oo,ooo which the 
 
 1845 "PERHAPS THE BUBBLE WILL NOT BURST" 37 
 
 London and York promoters had credited to themselves for coal 
 traffic — to lease the coal business of the line for that sum in fact. But 
 the London and York Committee did not intend to draw their 
 coal traffic from the Durliam field only. Mr. Baxter had already 
 sketched out a scheme for bringing South Yorkshire coal, ready 
 loaded in trucks, down the Dun Navigation to Doncaster, and so 
 conveying it to London without a single break of bulk The rate per 
 mile was to be j^. a ton (a rate already in force to a small extent 
 on the Midland Railway, but which the London and Birmingham 
 directors had refused to adopt for the carriage of Derbyshire and 
 Leicestershire coals to the London market), and on these terms it 
 was reckoned that Durham and South Yorkshire coals would be 
 saleable at King's Cross for 21s. a ton, thus giving the Metropolitan 
 purchaser the benefit of a saving of no less than Ss. upon every ton 
 he consumed. 
 
 This evidence as to coal traffic was not only irritating to the 
 opponents of the London and York as tending greatly to strengthen 
 the case for the Bill, but it also appeared to many of them to 
 amount to a betrayal of the interests of railway proprietors generally. 
 Directors and traffic managers protested loudly that a rate of 
 1^. a ton per mile was worse than unprofitable, and Mr. Robert 
 Stephenson is said to have declared that if the London and York 
 Bill was allowed to pass with its toll clauses unrevised, he would 
 sell every railway share he had and never buy another. Nevertheless, 
 the " Ishmaelites " proceeded steadily with their evidence, which was 
 now generally acknowledged to have been very skilfully got up by 
 Mr. Baxter, and by the end of May their spirits had risen to a very 
 high pitch. In the opposition camps, on the other hand, the fear 
 began to be frequently uttered : " Perhaps the monster bubble will not 
 burst after all." 
 
 On 30 May Mr. Cubitt was called into the box to open the 
 engineering evidence, and he soon showed that he was fully able to 
 defend his estimates against the attacks which had been made upon 
 them, albeit these had the authority of six " kings " at their back. 
 Nor was his evidence less effective because it was not ostensibly 
 framed to repel these attacks ; indeed one of its best '* hits " was the 
 bluff declaration : " I have never read a line of the Board of Trade 
 report." His cross-examination lasted through nearly two sittings, 
 being carried on by a succession of counsel representing the opposing 
 projects; and, as the same questions were repeated over and over 
 again in different forms by men who, while affecting to go into minute 
 details, displayed in many cases a complete ignorance of the elements 
 
 I 
 
 f 
 

 Il 
 
 38 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 of engineering, Mr. Cubitt, though of the most affable temper, had 
 hard work to conceal his irritation, despite the fact that his opponents 
 scored hardly a single effective point. Being asked for about the 
 fourth time how he had bored a certain trial pit, he answered testily, 
 " No, sir, I '11 not tell you ; you Ve bored me enough " ; and more than 
 once he was constrained to tell his learned badgerers to seek more 
 intelligent instructions from the engineers on their own side. 
 
 The fact was that intelligence and argumentative effectiveness had 
 now begun to be considered qualities of small consequence in the 
 Hudsonian counsel compared with loquacity and resource in con- 
 suming time. King Hudson— as Brougham said in a speech before 
 the House of Lords— was now "working with twelvecounsel-power " 
 before the Group X Committee, with the main object of delay, so that 
 its report— which he now seriously feared would be in favour of the 
 London and York— might not be made that session ; and though the 
 daily expense of the proceedings was estimated at £^^00 a day, he 
 did not grudge the portion of this that had to come from the Midland 
 exchequer, since he knew that he was dissipating the enemy's resources 
 as well as effectually preventing, for a year, at any rate, the practical 
 commencement of their undertaking. The London and York managers, 
 on their part, could not afford to weaken their case by curtailment, 
 and so upon the completion of the evidence and cross-examination of 
 Messrs. Hawkshaw, Brunei, and Gibbs, engineers, and of Mr. Betts 
 and his son, contractors— all of whom Mr. Baxter thought it wise to 
 put into the box to confirm Mr. Cubitt's plans and estimates— no 
 fewer than twenty-five days of the working session had been expended, 
 and the cases for the Direct Northern project and for the Cambridge 
 and Lincoln, Shefifield and Lincoln, and Midland and Eastern Counties 
 
 Bills had yet to be heard. 
 
 Meanwhile the Syston and Peterborough Bill had received the 
 Royal assent ; the Nottingham, Newark, and Lincoln, and Wakefield, 
 Pontefract, and Goole had both jxissed the Commons without refer- 
 ence to the proceeding in the London and York Committee, and Mr. 
 Hudson had got his Newcastle and Berwick line— the last link in the 
 East Coast Route north of York— through the Commons also, after 
 a fierce contest with Brunei's rival " atmospheric " scheme. So all was 
 going as the Railway King wished, except in Group X; but there 
 on 10 June the Cambridge and Lincoln, like the Direct Northern 
 before it, was reduced from a Bill to a " project " upon the discovery 
 of some very serious errors in the levels. Nevertheless, the Cam- 
 bridge and Lincoln party was able to consume nineteen precious days 
 with evidence which HerapatKs Railway Journal described as 
 
 1845 
 
 THE HUDSONIAN OBSTRUCTIONISTS 
 
 39 
 
 " tedious, unimportant, and insufferable nonsense," and, as June drew 
 to an end, the Hudsonians became more and more assured that 
 no report in favour of the London and York could be made that 
 session. 
 
 They were not content, however, to rely upon obstruction simply, 
 for on 30 June Mr. Hildyard, Q.c, before closing the Cambridge and 
 Lincoln case, asked for the summary rejection of the London and 
 York Bill. His plea was that Standing Orders had not been com- 
 plied with, seeing that the Bill proposed to raise ;£^6,5oo,ooo capital, 
 whereas ;^5, 000,000 only was the figure appearing on the bulk of 
 the scrip. To give time for the consideration of this point, the 
 Committee adjourned until 12.30 the next day, when a great crowd 
 assembled full of anxiety to hear a decision which might bring the 
 whole contest to an end for the session. Another interval for a 
 consultation with the Speaker increased the fears of the one party and 
 the hopes of the other, and then Lord Courtenay announced that 
 it would be competent for the London and York Company to raise 
 seven millions under their Bill. Thereupon about forty people burst 
 from the room, and the chairman was heard to remark in an under- 
 tone, " There goes share-jobbing." 
 
 The London and York party now determined — not a moment too 
 soon — to make a push for a finish, and on the next day, 2 July, 
 when the Direct Northern case was called on, Serjeant Wrangham 
 gave notice that he should ask for a decision on his Bill so soon as 
 the Committee should have been put in possession of all the evidence 
 for the three competing north and south schemes. But the Direct 
 Northern, naturally enough, took all the time they could over their 
 evidence, and not content with this, on 9 July one of their counsel 
 created a new " sensation " by declaring that he was in a position to 
 prove that there were errors in the London and York plans similar to 
 those which had proved fatal to the competing Bills. Serjeant 
 ^^'rangham protested against the belated starting of such an objection ; 
 but the Committee, after taking a day to deliberate, decided that the 
 allegation was too serious to be ignored. Thereupon messengers went 
 off post-haste to the London Exchange, and pigeons were started from 
 outside the House to provincial jobbers, for it was confidently reported 
 that there was an error on one of the London and York branches of 
 seventeen feet. 
 
 On 12 July particulars of the alleged errors were put in — about 
 twenty in number, varying from seven to twenty feet — but upon 
 examination of them, the London and York party found that they 
 had been derived not from measurements upon the ground, but 
 
H' 
 
 r 
 
 111 
 III 
 
 ii 
 
 I i 
 
 i[ 
 
 40 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 were merely discrepancies upon the plans themselves, />., cases 
 in which the scale measurements differed sensibly from the figures 
 printed thereon. In such cases it was, and is, a recognized practice 
 for the figures to prevail over the measures, but, not content with 
 putting in this sufficient reply, the London and York counsel on 
 19 July produced the copper plates from which the plans had been 
 printed, which showed that the latter had been drawn with perfect 
 accuracy, and that the alleged errors were accounted for entirely 
 by the shrinkage of the paper after it had been damped for printing. 
 After this even the Railway Times was constrained to denounce the 
 over-zealous partisans who had brought forward the objection, and 
 Serjeant Wrangham characterized it as "destitute even of the sem- 
 blance of honesty.'' 
 
 Meanwhile the Committee had acceded to the London and York 
 request for an immediate decision, despite an energetic protest from 
 Mr. Charles Austin, the "leader" for the Midland, who urged that 
 the case for the Swinton to March line should first be heard ; and 
 on Monday, 21 July— the seventieth day of the hearing — Serjeant 
 Wrangham was at last able to make his closing speech in reply. 
 In an eloquent peroration he begged the Committee to sanction 
 the London and York line, because it was calculated to confer 
 abundance and improvement on a great district, "to bless the fields 
 with increase, and to satisfy the poor with bread." Then Lord 
 Courtenay, after rebuking the applause which had burst from the 
 crowded room, announced that the proceedings would be adjourned 
 until two o'clock on the following Wednesday, when he hoped to 
 be able to announce the Committee's decision on the Bill. This 
 adjournment for a day and a half was considered a bad omen for 
 the success of the measure; and, as a matter of fact, there was 
 actually a tie in the Committee— the chairman and Mr. Baring Wall 
 being in its favour, while Mr. Powlett Scrope thought the Eastern 
 Counties line should be used south of Peterborough, and Mr. Darby 
 felt himself bound to vote against the Bill on a technicality, being 
 one of those odd men who think the smallest technical difficulty 
 of more consequence than the largest substantial interests of justice. 
 So when two o'clock on Wednesday, 23 July, came, the fate of 
 the Bill still hung in the balance, and the eager and excited crowd, 
 which besieged all the avenues to the Committee-room and filled it 
 almost to suffocation direcdy the doors were opened, was kept waiting 
 until a quarter-past four before the members of the Committee came 
 into the room. Then amid intense silence Lord Courtenay announced 
 the decision as follows :— " I am instructed to state that the Committee 
 
 1845 
 
 THE BILL PASSES THE COMMONS 
 
 41 
 
 have come to the resolution that the preamble of the London and 
 York Bill is proved"— here he was interrupted for some moments by 
 a triumphant shout and clapping of hands — "omitting the branches 
 to Wakefield and Sheffield, which they have thought it right to 
 postpone for future consideration in consequence of there being 
 other lines before them which they consider as competing schemes 
 with these." Hereupon a further cheer was raised, which the chairman 
 instantly rebuked as "exceedingly indecent," and then the crowd 
 poured helter-skelter from the room to bear to Stock Exchange, news- 
 paper office, and railway headcjuarters the tidings in which so many 
 were deeply concerned. 
 
 The seventy days' fight had thus ended in a brilliant victory for 
 the "juvenile promoters" of the London and York undertaking, 
 but their formidable foes, though discredited, were by no means 
 disabled, and they at once prepared for a new attack. For this 
 they found a ready weapon in the fact that the decision had been 
 given without hearing the evidence for the Midland, York and North 
 Midland and Eastern Counties extensions, although these had been 
 included in Group X as competing projects with the London and 
 York; so at the Midland half-yearly meeting on 25 July — only two 
 days after the decision— Mr. Hudson announced amid "a hurricane of 
 applause" that it was the intention of the Midland and York and 
 North Midland directors to appeal on this ground to the House from 
 the verdict of the Committee. " I feel it difficult," he said, " as an 
 Englishman, to restrain my feelings when speaking of such proceedings. 
 With breathless haste the Committee were resolved to pass the 
 preamble of the Bill ; with breathless haste they are resolved to report 
 upon it ; but I hope and believe that our appeal to the House will 
 result in sending back the Bill to the Committee, so that its opponents 
 may at least bring forward their case." 
 
 On the previous day, 24 July, Serjeant Wrangham had obtained 
 permission from the Committee to divide his Bill into two parts, so 
 that the trunk and loop lines, which had been sanctioned, might go 
 on at once for third reading in the House, but on 26 July Mr. Charles 
 Austin, Q.c, presented written protests from the Midland, York and 
 North Midland and Eastern Counties Companies, urging again that 
 their cases should first be heard. The Committee, however, declined 
 to receive these documents, stating that they could be tendered with 
 more propriety to the full House. Accordingly, on i August, when 
 the report on the first part of the Bill came up for confirmation, Mr. 
 Ward, M.p. for Sheffield, move for its recommittal, declaring that the 
 refusal to hear the cases for the competing extensions formed " one of 
 
fl 
 
 h\ 
 
 
 ! { 
 
 4^ 
 
 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 the strongest causes" for such a motion "ever brought before the 
 House." Lord Courtenay and Mr. Darby repHed, defending the course 
 which the Committee had taken, and Mr. Ward's motion was igno- 
 miniously lost by seventy-nine votes to nineteen. 
 
 To get their Bill through third reading in the Commons and through 
 all its stages in the Lords in the short time that now remained before 
 the prorogation of Parliament, was a task which the London and York 
 promoters would not have found easy if the opposition which had 
 dogged their progress from the start had now been withdrawn. 
 Instead of this it was to be conducted with more virulence than ever, 
 and to be directed against a part of their Bill which had so far escaped 
 criticism, namely, the subscription contract. These contracts had, as 
 we know, been required by Parliament in order to check the promotion 
 of bubble companies, but the futility of this device— now that mania was 
 at fever-heat— had just been demonstrated during the proceedings in 
 the House of Lords upon the Dublin and Galway Railway Bill, the 
 subscription contract of which, it was discovered, had been allowed to 
 pass the Standing Orders Committee, although it contained the 
 names of paupers or fictitious persons to the extent of ^500,000. 
 Naturally enough, this gave rise to the suspicion that other contract 
 signatures were similarly fraudulent ; and thereupon the idea seems to 
 have occurred to a Mr. Croucher, one of the numerous hangers-on 
 of the Hudsonian party— at any rate it was put into effect mainly by 
 him— that if the London and York contract, which had also been 
 unopposed on Standing Orders, were now to be investigated, it might 
 result in the bringing to light of a flaw, real and fatal, in the hitherto 
 
 unimpeachable Bill. 
 
 With cool audacity Croucher and his assistants sent circulars to 
 
 country postmasters, written on paper and in language which made 
 
 them appear to have some authority from Parliament, asking them 
 
 to send information as to the means or station of signatories to the 
 
 deed whose addresses were in their neighbourhood, and they also 
 
 employed emissaries to trace out others in London and its vicinity. 
 
 By these means they in a short time compiled quite a long list of 
 
 subscribers, responsible altogether for upwards of half a million of the 
 
 London and York capital, who were alleged to be " needy persons, 
 
 or paupers wholly unable to meet their respective engagements," or 
 
 to appear on the contract by " fictitious names, descriptions, or places 
 
 of abode." The next step was to embody these names and the 
 
 . allegations with regard to them in a petition, to which Mr. Henry 
 
 Bruce, the deputy-chairman of the Cambridge and Lincoln Committee, 
 
 was persuaded to put his signature ; and this was presented on 
 
 1845 
 
 AN ALL-NIGHT SITTING 
 
 43 
 
 4 August to both Houses of Parliament with the prayer that the 
 London and York Bill might not be allowed to proceed further 
 until a full inquiry into the financial do?ia fides of the undertaking 
 had been made. 
 
 The petition reached the Commons just in time to be heard when 
 the badgered Bill came up for third reading ; but, thanks to the able 
 advocacy of Mr. Denison, it was not allowed to stop the measure at 
 that stage, though the House, fearful of being thought to cloak 
 practices by which many of its own members were deeply tainted, 
 would not refuse to appoint a Committee to investigate the allegations. 
 A similar Committee was also appointed by the Lords, and the two 
 tribunals carried on their inquiries simultaneously to the great disgust 
 of the scripholders named in the petition — who now found themselves 
 hauled up under fearful pains and penalties to prove their means of 
 credit or even their very existence in two separate Parliamentary com- 
 mittee-rooms. The Commons Committee, impressed with the urgency 
 of the matter, hurried on their proceedings in a manner which was 
 more zealous than dignified. On the afternoon of its first sitting, five 
 o'clock had long passed without sign of adjournment, and the scrip- 
 holders in attendance, being strictly forbidden to depart without leave, 
 became almost beside themselves with rage. Says the Times report : 
 
 " Several resolute gentlemen were actually heading a march down- 
 stairs when it was announced that the Committee had adjourned. 
 ' Pray, sir, is it till eleven or twelve to-morrow ? ' ' Why, they Ve only 
 risen to dine ; they meet again at nine o'clock.' This was thought 
 to be a joke for a few moments till hon. members confirmed the sad 
 reality, and at nine o'clock the witnesses were again assembled in the 
 lobby in the worst possible humour. One old gentleman declared they 
 were more like a council of Red Indians than a Christian House of 
 Commons. Others enlarged upon the sufferings of their domestic 
 circles at such unexpected and unusual absence, and a country witness, 
 when it came to eleven o'clock, informed his sympathetic friends that 
 he had never been kept up to such an unearthly hour for the last 
 twenty years. When word was brought that the Committee would sit 
 till three or four in the morning, the elderly witnesses went off in 
 despair, and searching for soft spots on the tables and benches of an 
 empty committee-room, formed a kind of railway bivouac more novel 
 than picturesque. The more mercurial gentlemen amused themselves 
 with playing leap-frog, distorting other witnesses' names as they were 
 called in, wakening the policemen by alarms of fire and ringing the 
 division bell with great energy. It is said that such a scene was never 
 witnessed before in the House of Commons, and that the records may 
 be searched in vain for any similar instance of a Committee sitting 
 beyond midnight. It was hoped that the Committee would decide 
 upon the cases before three o'clock, but finding at one that a great 
 
 \ 
 
,. 
 
 r I 
 
 44 
 
 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 many witnesses remained to be examined, they gave m and adjourned 
 at that hour until eleven. A number of refractory witnesses have been 
 specially invited to attend by Speaker's warrant." 
 
 To many of those named in the petitions these inconveniences 
 were the addition of injury to insult, seeing that their character and 
 means to fulfil their engagements were unimpeachable except l)y 
 reckless ignorance, but others, unfortunately, afforded examples of 
 that unscrupulous speculation from the taint of which, at this time of 
 mania, it was practically impossible to keep even sound enterprises 
 exempt. Thus one name, which was down in the contract for no 
 less than ;£ 12,000, was found to be that of a stockbroker's clerk-- 
 the son of a charwoman— who had been used as a tool by his 
 masters ; while another was Mr. Shakell, who was popularly known as 
 "the great railway proprietor of the Charterhouse." This worthy 
 admitted to the Committees that his sole sources of income were 
 £2(i per annum, which he received from an army pension— he was 
 a retired cornet— and about ;£ 60 from the charity of the Charterhouse. 
 He had, however, a rich brother living at Hockley Hall, Maidenhead, 
 Berks, and on the strength of his brother's address he had obtained 
 a large allotment of London and York scrip. But he did not keep 
 any of it-" he knew better than that"— he sold it at a premium. 
 ♦' Did he make much money?" asked an honourable member. "Not 
 half as much as he ought." " Had he any interest in the line?" " Not 
 he, indeed." The examination of this witness is reported to have been 
 
 " very facetious." 
 
 Meanwhile, after reporting in favour of the London and York mam 
 and loop lines, the Committee on Group X had continued its Hercu- 
 lean labours, taking on next the Bill of the Eastern Counties Com- 
 pany for an extension from Cambridge through St. Ives to Huntingdon. 
 This was not only not opposed, but it was favoured by the U^ndon and 
 York party, because it would give a good route to Cambridge for trafific 
 coming over their lines from the north ; and so it passed the Com- 
 mittee with little difficulty, making way for the London and York 
 (Bawtry to Sheffield branch) Bill, and the rival Bill of the Sheffield 
 and Lincolnshire Company. This contest resulted in a victory for the 
 latter, whose main line from Sheffield to Gainsborough, there to join 
 the Sheffield and Grimsby Junction Railway (which had just got 
 through both Houses in another group) was sanctioned, while the 
 Sheffield branch, promoted by the London and York, and a proposed 
 branch of the Sheffield and Lincolnshire, from Retford to Lincoln, 
 were both thrown out. Then on 5 August— on the eighty-third day, 
 and in the fifteenth week of their sittings— this " record " Committee 
 
 1845 
 
 THE BILL LEFT IN LIMBO 
 
 45 
 
 broke up with an important part of their task yet unaccomplished, for 
 they reported to the House that the London and York (Wakefield 
 branch) Bill, and the Bills for the Midland and York and North 
 Midland extensions must be postponed for consideration in the follow- 
 ing session. 
 
 It was not until four days later — 9 August, 1845 — when Parliament 
 was on the eve of prorogation, and all hope of getting the London 
 and York Bill through the Lords that session had been quite aban- 
 doned — that the reports of the Committees on the subscription 
 contract reached the two Houses. The Commons report stated that 
 the serious charges contained in Mr. Henry Bruce's petition had been 
 made in many cases without taking the most ordinary means of 
 inquiry; that it had been presented with the view of stopping the 
 further progress of the London and York Bill, and to promote the 
 interests of a rival company, and that the conduct of Henry Bruce 
 was a gross breach of the right of petitioning. The Lords Committee 
 also condemned the hasty and inconsiderate manner in which the 
 petition had been drawn up. But the combined result of the two 
 reports was to prove that ^29,900 worth of London and York shares 
 had been signed for by persons who could not be found, and ;^44,5oo 
 by persons stated to be without property, and the Lords report recom- 
 mended that the Bill should not be read a second time in that House 
 until a further investigation into the contract had been made. Thus 
 the policy of the Hudsonian obstructionists was at last crowned 
 with success, and so, with the London and York Bill hung up in a 
 Parliamentary limbo between Lords and Commons, the great railway 
 session of 1845 came to an end. 
 
1 845 
 
 A NAPOLEONIC POLICY 
 
 47 
 
 ^li 
 
 I ' 
 
 'I 
 
 '. I" 
 
 i H 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE INFANT IS CHRISTENED AND GIVEN LEAVE TO C.ROW- 
 
 1845- I 846. 
 
 IT was, of course, a severe disappointment to the London and York 
 promoters that the decision of the House of Commons Committee 
 which they had spent so much money and trouble to obtain had been 
 stultified so far as the session of 1845 was concerned Nevertheless, 
 their partial victory was not only very encouraging for the future, but 
 it also provided them with a most valuable new weapon in controversy. 
 For Lord Courtenay, in his report on their Bill to the House, expressly 
 refuted all the principal adverse arguments of the report of the Board 
 of Trade, and therefore it was no longer possible for anyone to argue 
 with effect either that a new trunk line all the way from London to 
 York was not needed, or that the plans by which the London and York 
 Company proposed to supply this need were not well laid out. More- 
 over, railway scrip continued to be the most popular form of 
 investment, and so, despite the equivocal position of the Bill in 
 Parliament, that of the London and York rose to a high premmm 
 
 on the Exchange. 
 
 Nevertheless, the authority of King Hudson, though far less absolute 
 than it had been a year before, when Messrs. Denison and Baxter were 
 gentlemen " little known in the railway world," still stood like a giant's 
 stronghold right across the path of the new enterprise. The Railway 
 King had had on the whole a very successful campaign in the session 
 of 1*845. He had carried through, in the teeth of formidable oppo- 
 sition, his Newcastle and Ber>vick Railway, thus completing, as far 
 as Parliamentary powers went, the East Coast route to Scotland, the 
 main part of which, from Rugby to Berwick, was under his practically 
 absolute control. He had also secured for the Midland Company a 
 good foothold on the eastern side of England, by obtaining for it 
 powers for the Syston and Peterborough and Nottingham, Newark and 
 Lincoln branches. Moreover, the Midland had risen from adversity 
 to prosperity under his management, while the other company which 
 
 46 
 
 was peculiarly his own — the York and North Midland— had continued 
 its unbroken success. These facts and this greater one, that he — and 
 he almost alone, as it appeared — had brought railway promotion out of 
 stagnation and discredit into prosperity and popularity, were sufficient 
 to explain, and in part to justify, the respect amounting almost to 
 veneration in which he was now commonly held. 
 
 But even King Hudson was not strong enough to disregard the fact 
 that a Committee of the House of Commons, after the fullest possible 
 inquiry, had decided in favour of a new trunk line from London to the 
 north; and so, recognizing that this had made his plan for appro- 
 priating Lincolnshire for the Midland Company a thing of the past, 
 he set himself to work out a new, and even more Napoleonic, plan 
 of campaign against his obstinate competitors. This was to become 
 himself the projector and master of a complete eastern system of 
 railways ! Already, as we have seen, he had given a certain amount of 
 support to the Cambridge and Lincoln project, but this was palpably 
 insincere, and had the Cambridge and Lincoln been carried through in 
 the session of 1845 and the London and York thrown out, he would 
 almost certainly have taken steps either to secure its subsequent 
 abandonment or else that it should be worked in such a way as not 
 to compete seriously with the established Midland and York and North 
 Midland route. This method of blocking the London and York 
 enterprise, however, was now no longer available, and the only effective 
 weapon against it which remained was a bona fide project for extending 
 the Eastern Counties from Cambridge to York. Accordingly, as the 
 best way of getting hold of this weapon, and at the same time prevent- 
 ing its use to the injury of Midland interests, Hudson secured the 
 chairmanship of the Eastern Counties Company. 
 
 Ostensibly, the position was pressed upon him by a majority of the 
 shareholders of this Company who were dissatisfied with the meagre 
 results of the existing management. Ostensibly, the Railway King was 
 reluctant to undertake this addition to his already too onerous respon- 
 sibilities, and quite an effective little scene was played out at York, 
 where Hudson was summoned from a festive gathering to receive a 
 deputation from the Eastern Counties, and was apparently so unpre- 
 pared for their offer that he had to ask for a night's sleep upon it before 
 giving a final answer. But this is strategy of a kind to which men of 
 the Napoleonic stamp have been ever prone, and there can be little 
 doubt that had Hudson himself not set the ball in motion, this first of 
 the many " revolutions " of which the Shoreditch Board-room was to 
 be the scene would never have taken place. 
 
 It was on 13 October, 1845, that Hudson formally accepted the 
 
48 
 
 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 I 
 
 chairmanship of the Eastern Counties Company, and on 30 October 
 he presided over a largely-attended meeting of its shareholders, who 
 behaved, according to a newspaper report, "as if they were literally 
 mad with joy " at his accession. The object of the meeting was to 
 empower the directors to go to Parliament for an extension of their 
 system from Cambridge, through Lincoln and Doncaster to a junction 
 with the York and North Midland, and Leeds and Selby railways at 
 South Milford; and Hudson announced that the Cambridge and 
 Lincoln party had already agreed to exchange their scrip for shares 
 in this new undertaking, and that he proposed to make a similar offer 
 to the London and York scripholders, namely that they should accept 
 ;^2o worth of Eastern Counties Extension Stock in lieu of every j£^o 
 worth of London and York Shares, to which they had subscribed. He 
 admitted that the London and York had gained a partial victory in the 
 House of Commons, but, as a great statesman had said, " Thank God 
 there was a House of Lords," before which the Bill would have to 
 come next session with an essential part of it — the subscription 
 contract — already discredited, and he professed confidence that the 
 holders of scrip would prefer the liberal terms of amalgamation he 
 offered them to entering upon a new Parliamentary contest under such 
 conditions. For the rest, he promised, amid wild cheering, to convert 
 the hitherto unprofitable Eastern Counties within a year or two into a 
 10 per cent. line. 
 
 On the very same day, 30 October— probably as a counterblast to 
 Hudson's rhodomontade — the London and York directors issued a 
 circular from their office at Lothbury. They announced that, in 
 accordance with the resolution of Parliament, "all Railway Bills should 
 be resumed next session at the point where they had been left in the 
 last," they proposed to proceed with their Bill in the House of Lords 
 so soon as it should meet again, and that for this they had ample 
 funds in hand from the original deposit. They proposed further to 
 re-introduce the Wakefield Branch into the Commons in a separate 
 Bill, together with an extension from Wakefield to Leeds, a cross-line 
 from Stamford to Spalding, and new branches to Dunstable v/d St. 
 Albans and Luton and to Hertford, and for these purposes they were 
 about to issue scrip for an additional ;^ioo,ooo of "extension stock." 
 Finally, having in view the proved laws in their existing subscription 
 contract, and the fact that the Standing Orders required that such 
 contract should be entered into "subsequent to the commencement 
 of the session previous to that in which application should be made for 
 a Bill," they proposed to prepare an entirely new deed and to announce 
 shortly the times and places at which it would be submitted for signature. 
 
 1845 
 
 "THE OLIVE-BRANCH OF PEACE" 
 
 49 
 
 In this manifesto there was no hint of a desire for a compromise, 
 and so Hudson appears to have thought that the time was not yet ripe 
 for making his offer of amalgamation formally. At any rate, he said 
 nothing further about the matter until 19 November, when an im- 
 portant public meeting to discuss the question of railway communi- 
 cation was held at Cambridge. At this the Railway King, who appeared 
 in person for the Eastern Counties, urged— of course with the approval 
 of the meeting— that Cambridge should be placed on a main line to 
 the north, and he concluded his speech by an appeal to Mr. 
 Pym, who represented his opponents, to bring about a conference 
 with this object between the London and York and Eastern Counties 
 directors. Mr. Pym undertook to report the proposal at the next 
 meeting of his Board. 
 
 Meanwhile the London and York directors had issued another 
 circular — dated 12 November — to announce that the new subscrip- 
 tion contract would lie for signature in London and other places from 
 9 to 31 December, and to ask that all scrip should be sent in within 
 the same dates for re-registry. This, however, became the occasion 
 of long and inflammatory advertisements in the Ti/zies and elsewhere, 
 signed "One of yourselves," which warned the scrip-holders against 
 the new deed as a device for making them liable to take additional 
 shares, and declared that it amounted to a confession that the whole 
 Parliamentary contest would have to be fought over again de novo. 
 These advertisements no doubt emanated from some hanger-on of the 
 Hudson ian party, but they were well calculated to alarm the more 
 timid of the London and York supporters. For, after reaching a climax 
 in October, the railway mania had now given way to panic, and scrip- 
 holders generally were as eager in November to " unload " as they had 
 been in September to buy. Nevertheless, such was the character of the 
 persons to whom the bulk of the London and York shares had been 
 allotted, and such the confidence which the Committee of Direction 
 had inspired, that by the middle of December nine-tenths of the scrip 
 had been sent in for exchange, and the new contract had already received 
 a long list of most respectable signatures. 
 
 It was under these encouraging circumstances that the London and 
 York Board met on 16 December to deliberate upon the answer they 
 should send to the amalgamation proposal which, as the result of Mr. 
 Pym's action, they had received on 3 December from the Railway King. 
 Hudson had then offered to allot ^.2,000,000 of Eastern Counties 
 Extension Stock to the London and York scrip-holders if they would 
 give up their independent undertaking, and he had suggested that 
 a special Board meeting might fitly be held to consider this proposal. 
 
 E 
 
 I 
 
I 
 
 't 
 
 11 
 
 III 
 
 50 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 But the London and York directors had wisely determined to take 
 time to reply, and now in a letter adopted at their ordinary meetmg-a 
 letter which though signed "William Astell, Chairman," betrays the 
 authorship of Edmund Denison in every sentence-they unhesitatmg y 
 declined the Eastern Counties offer, declaring that its acceptance would 
 be "a gross breach of faith" with the public and their original sub- 
 scribers, and that it was nothing more than "a bold effort on Mr. 
 Hudson's part "to raise the value of the Eastern Counties Stock, and, 
 as Chairman of the Midland, to get rid of a rival." 
 
 "You surely cannot have calculated" the ^^tter continued "upo^^ 
 our giving your proposal our favourable consideration, and youj U 
 Trefore not be surprised to learn that my colleagues unanimous y 
 SeL discuss witS you so unreasonable a P-PO-^-^'^-jt^^^^^^ 
 it does a total abandonment of our whole scheme. . . . ^^^^^ ^ f 
 leave to proceed with our Bill as rapidly as the forms of the House wi 
 Srmit%'avTngvvithout any further call ample f-^-" Jj^f ^^^^^^^^^ 
 expenses. . . Public opinion is decidedly in favour of a new hne 
 beuveen London and York independent of f \f "^ ^f ^^^^^^^ 
 management. We therefore confidently expect that the men s ot 
 our scheme which obtained for us a verdict m the Commons >m11 be 
 equally appreciated in the Lords." 
 
 Two days later-i8 December-the Cambridge and Lincoln Com- 
 mittee issued a circular announcing that their scrip must be exchanged 
 at once for Eastern Counties Stock ; but besides the London and York 
 another party still remained outside Hudson's fold. This was he 
 Direct Northern. Very soon after the prorogation of Parliament a 
 meeting of the scrip-holders in this scheme had resolved to introduce a 
 Bill next session for their integral project, and Mr. John Miller, engineer 
 to the North British Company, had been instructed to prepare new 
 plans, which were deposited at the Board of Trade on the histonca 
 "day of deposits," 30 November, 1845, as one of the 700 batches of 
 similar documents which on that eventful Sunday were poured into the 
 Government offices at Whitehall. A great many of these Bills were 
 practically dead when they were deposited, but, contrary to general 
 expectation, the Direct Northern managed to keep alive, owing mainly 
 to the support it received from Scotland,- and in January, 1846, when 
 the worst of the reaction from the mania seemed over, it came out from 
 its offices in Moorgate Street with a new and confident prospectus. 
 
 The Railway King displayed much pious sorrow that the London and 
 York directors should have rejected what he termed "the olive-branch 
 of peace," and his supporters in the Press did their utmost to frighten 
 the scrip-holders into taking action on their own account by alleging 
 that their deposit must now be exhausted, and that, because of the new 
 
 1846 
 
 THE SISE LANE STRATAGEM 
 
 51 
 
 deed, they would have to fight the Parliamentary battle over again in 
 the Commons as well as in the Lords. Nevertheless, in face of calumny 
 and gloomy forebodings— to both of which, indeed, they were now 
 thoroughly inured— the London and York directors proceeded steadily 
 in their course, and on 13 March, 1846, they had the satisfaction to 
 see their Bill pass the House of Commons /ro forma, as their Pariia- 
 mentary advisers had all along assured them that it would, while about 
 the same time they received overtures of amalgamation from the Direct 
 Northern party, whose Bill was still shivering on the brink of the 
 Standing Orders ordeal. To these proposals, however, as to Hudson's, 
 they replied that they could entertain no terms which involved the 
 giving up of any part of their Pariiamentary line. 
 
 On 6 April, 1846, the Bill came before the Standing Orders Com- 
 mittee of the Lords, and there the objection was raised by Lord 
 Redesdale that the new contract deed was not legal. This check sent 
 London and York scrip to a discount, while an appeal to the Attorney- 
 General and Solicitor-General was made ; but to the immense relief of 
 the promoters the opinion of these authorities proved favourable, and 
 so their Bill passed triumphantly the last of the dreaded Standing 
 Orders ordeals. But meanwhile the Eastern Counties Bill had been 
 withdrawn from the Commons and introduced into the Lords, and so a 
 final pitched battle in Committee stage had yet to be fought. 
 
 " Hard work I don't mind ; it 's dirty work I abhor," Baxter had said 
 aloud in the corridor at Westminster at the time when the proceedings 
 in Henry Bruce's petition were in progress, and he had now occasion to 
 repeat this remark. On 14 April, 1846, a circular was issued from 
 the office of Mr. Henry Philipps, a solicitor, at 4, Sise Lane, e c, pur- 
 porting to emanate from a Committee formed with the concurrence of 
 the holders of many thousand of London and York shares. These, it 
 declared, were strongly in favour of making terms of amalgamation with 
 the Eastern Counties Company on the ground that the passing of the 
 London and York Bill would, in the existing state of the Money Market, 
 be the greatest misfortune that could happen to the scrip-holders; and it 
 exhorted other scrip-holders who endorsed these views to send in their 
 names at once to Sise Lane. As the London and York directors, in a 
 counter-circular issued on 17 April, warned the scrip-holders, this appeal 
 " no doubt emanated from interested opponents," who were making their 
 last effort to impede the Bill, and several large holders of scrip wrote to 
 ^>ise Une to rebuke the self-constituted Committee, one of them- 
 Captain Hall, of the Indian Navy- declaring that he had sealed up his 
 scrip when he had first received it, "like nailing the colours to the 
 mast, determined to sink or conquer." Nevertheless the Committee, on 
 
 \ 
 
« 
 
 I 
 
 ( 
 
 5» HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 ,8 April, addressed a so-called offer of amalgamation to the Eastern 
 CounUes' directors, and on the strength of this 'he 'atter on ^3 Ap'l, 
 made 1 new offer to the London and York Board. This was that a 
 SBo'd should be constituted of twelve Eastern Courities and s.x 
 London and York directors, to decide what Imes should be made 
 
 iointly and what abandoned. x, r , ^f th,. 
 
 ' Th s proposal practically amounted to placmg the fate o the 
 London and%'ork plans in the hands of a majority "[^^^^^^^^^^ 
 opponents, and that it should have been made prove either tha 
 Hudson had grown reckless, or else that he greatly -e^ted ,^^^^^^^^ 
 upon the position of his rivals of the proceedings of the ^<^^r^'^^^ 
 Sise Lane But the London and York directors knew by this time 
 fha ^ry possessed the confidence of the great maiority o their 
 constituents, and, moreover, they had negotiations '" ^-j -f J. 
 Direct Northern which they now felt pretty sure would result in the 
 addhL of that party's funds and influence to their resources. 
 Accorldy on .9 April they wrote to decline the Eastern Counties 
 XoSwhich'they^escribed as "an unworthy mode of at^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
 
 I dissolve the London and York Company"; and on the same day 
 they issued another circular to their own party repeating that hey had 
 ample funds in hand to proceed with their line without a call til the 
 nS spring, and predicting the early conclusion o ™7^^^^ 
 which these funds would be greatly augmented. Six days late^ on 
 . May, 1846-an amalgamation contract was signed by Mr. Astell 
 on behalf of the London and York, and Mr. Capper, on beha f of 
 the Wrect Northern, under which it was agreed that the funds o the 
 ;;:o undertakings should be amalgamated, in order to carry out the 
 
 T nndon and York scheme. . , i ^r 
 
 tS: details of this amalgamation were that the "o™-' -'^J^ 
 the London and York shares was to be reduced by one half, and those 
 of the Direct Northern by one third, and this was announced on 
 8 May by a circular issued from the London and York office, which 
 eq^:Ld' that all scrip should be sent in at once to te endowed 
 according to the new arrangement. On the P™s JX /»^^ ^- 
 Lane Committee had had the "extraordinary effrontery, as the 
 ^ndon and York party termed it, to advertise the conclusion of 
 ^"^s of amalgamation with the Eastern Counties subject to the 
 reaction of the London and York Bill, and to ask that scrip should 
 S s nt to M..« to be stamped to this effect, and "One of Vo-se - 
 now again flooded the newspaper columns wUh appeals to the scrip 
 holders not to trust their directors, but to close with he Eastern 
 Coun es offer while it remained open to them. There .s no doubt 
 
 1846 
 
 THE INEXPUGNABLE BILL 
 
 53 
 
 that Hudson countenanced— if he did not actually inspire — these 
 tactics, and that he hoped by them to break up the London and York 
 undertaking at a time when thousands of scrip-holders were eagerly 
 availing themselves of the " Railway Relief resolutions " just adopted 
 by Parliament to free themselves from liabilities into which in the 
 previous summer they had maniacally rushed. 
 
 Nevertheless this, like Henry Bruce's petitions, the *' olive-branch 
 of peace " and other similar stratagems, failed of its purpose, and it 
 was with a backing stronger than ever that the inexpugnable Bill came 
 before the Lords Committee on 13 May. The Eastern Counties, the 
 Sheffield and Lincoln, and more than a dozen other less important 
 Bills were referred to the same Committee, but it soon became apparent 
 that the chairman, the Earl of Lovelace, was in no mind to suffer a 
 repetition of the procedure in the memorable Group X. He cut 
 short the London and York traffic case with the assurance that the 
 Committee were already convinced of the need of new lines south of 
 Doncaster, and by 22 May the London and York evidence had 
 been completed and the case for the Eastern Counties begun. Prior 
 to this date the London and York directors had issued an advertise- 
 ment calling the meeting of scrip-holders, required by Lord Wharncliffe's 
 recently passed Act, before the Bill could come up for third reading, 
 and this was to be held on Saturday, 30 May, by which time it was 
 expected that the Bill would be almost, if not quite, out of Committee. 
 The fact was that the intrinsic superiority of the London and York 
 scheme over the Eastern Counties extension was now practically 
 admitted, and the only point which still remained at all in doubt was 
 whether, in the existing state of the Money Market, and in view of 
 the drain which railway construction was already making upon the 
 resources of the country, it was politic to add this other huge under- 
 taking to the numerous new lines already sanctioned in the sessions 
 of 1845 and 1846. In his evidence on 19 May Mr. Cubitt had 
 given ;^5,4oo,ooo as his carefully-revised estimate for the construction 
 of the London and York main and loop lines, but this was, of course, 
 again challenged by the opponents of the enterprise, and both Hudson 
 and Robert Stephenson, when they came into the box to give 
 evidence for the Eastern Counties, declared that ;^io,ooo,ooo was 
 nearer the right figure. It was therefore still on the cards that the 
 scrip-holders might even yet yield to fear, and to the importunity of 
 the Sise I^ne Committee, whose alarmist advertisements were still 
 being scattered broadcast through the Press. 
 
 Under these circumstances the directors spared no efforts to obtain 
 votes and proxies for the meeting on the 30th of May, which was 
 
 
 iir'i 
 
IP 
 
 I 
 
 54 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 held at the Hall of Commerce, Threadneedle Street, London, at 
 the same time that the cross-examination of the Eastern Counties 
 engineers was proceeding before the Committee at Westmmster Mr. 
 Astell occupied the chair, supported by Mr. Denison, Mr. Charles 
 Chaplin, Mr. Packe, Hon. O. Duncombe, and other directors and 
 he soon placed the issue of the proceedings beyond doubt by 
 announcing that the directors held proxies for more than 60,000 shares 
 representing nearly two-thirds of the capital, whereas the approval 
 of one-third only was sufficient under Lord Wharncliffe's Act to enable 
 the Bill to be carried forward. The first resolution was, "That this 
 meeting approves the Bill entitled, * An Act for making a railway from 
 London to York with branches therefrom providing for the counties of 
 Hertford, Bedford, Huntingdon, Northampton, Rutland, Nottingham, 
 and the three divisions of the county of Lincoln, to be called the Great 
 Northern Railway,' and requests the directors to take all necessary 
 steps for its prosecution," and this was submitted to the meeting in 
 a short speech by Mr. Astell, and formally seconded by Mr. Denison. 
 Then a scrip-holder-Major Richardson-rose from the body of the 
 meeting and, upon being challenged to do so by Mr. Denison, moved 
 an amendment in favour of an amalgamation with the Eastern 
 Counties, the directors of which, he declared amid great uproar, would 
 vet throw out the Bill, if it was persisted with, "whether by fair means 
 or foul " In replying for the London and York Board Mr. Denison 
 was not slow to take advantage of this confession as to the character 
 and tactics of their opponents. No proposal for amalgamation with 
 the Eastern Counties, he said, had yet been made which did not 
 directly or indirectly involve the giving up of the London and York 
 line • for, as for the proposition that a joint Board should be formed 
 consisting of twelve Eastern Counties directors to six London and 
 York a boy of ten could predict their fate under such circumstances. 
 "Our opponents are very cute," he continued amid laughter, "they are 
 more cute than we are; they adopt tricks and devices which never 
 would have occurred to us ; we are unskilled and untutored in the 
 railway world, and are shot at and hit in all sorts of ways. Why, these 
 very parties who propose amalgamation are opposing us at this very 
 hour, though not successfully, for I have to tell you that their engineer 
 has completely broken down." Here he was interrupted by tremendous 
 shouts of applause. " I tell you with confidence, and at the same time 
 with pleasure, that the evidence which the engineer of the Eastern 
 Counties gave in the course of yesterday has been scattered to the 
 winds in cross-examination this morning, and that the statement that 
 the London and York will cost ;^io,ooo,ooo has been completely 
 
 1846 
 
 VICTORY IN THE LORDS AT LAST 
 
 55 
 
 demolished." So forcible was Mr. Denison's speech that Major 
 Richardson withdrew his amendment, and the resolution empowering 
 the directors to proceed with the Bill was carried nem. con, " amid the 
 most tremendous applause," says a report, "we ever heard." As 
 for the Sise Lane Committee, not one of them ventured to raise either 
 his voice or his head, and it came to light that they had proxies for 
 5796 shares only, although they had claimed at the outset to represent 
 over 30,000. 
 
 The war was now virtually over as far as the Bill was concerned, and 
 no one recognized this more quickly than Mr, Charles Austin, the eminent 
 counsel who was " leading " for the Eastern Counties before the Lords 
 Committee. He saw that he had a losing game to play, and he played 
 it recklessly. During his concluding speech, which occupied the whole 
 of the sitting on 4 June, he was more than once pulled up by 
 the Committee for his mistakes, and more than once he allowed his 
 simulated passion to outrun his discretion. " What are the public 
 interests to me ? " he is reported to have asked. " I am an advocate. I 
 care not twopence whether the public interests are served or injured. 
 I neither care nor hope to know anything about this line when my 
 labours are at an end." Serjeant Wrangham replied in a manner 
 which, if less animated, was more weighty and telling, and then the 
 Earl of Lovelace announced that the Committee w^ould give their 
 decision on the following Monday, 8 June, at eleven o'clock. 
 
 Some time before the appointed hour the lobby of the Lords 
 Committee Rooms was filled by counsel, agents, pressmen, and 
 partisans, but the excited crowd was kept in suspense for more than an 
 hour while their Lordships deliberated upon their decision in private. 
 Then the counsel on both sides and Mr. Cubitt were sent for, and 
 afterwards Messrs. Locke and Brunei, and the excitement increased 
 when it was understood that the Committee were seeking independent 
 engineering opinions, being still not fully satisfied as to the estimate 
 of the London and York. Again the room was cleared, and then, a few 
 minutes before one, counsel and agents were re-admitted at the Peers' 
 door, and the public at the other, till the room— one of the largest 
 in the new buildings — was filled in every part. As soon as quiet was 
 obtained the chairman said, " It is my duty to announce to you, on the 
 part of the Committee, that their decision is unanimous in favour of the 
 London and York." Anything more that he may have intended to say 
 was drowned by loud cheering which burst forth in the room, and was 
 taken up far down the corridors outside. 
 
 Thus after " a contest unparalleled in railway annals " — to quote the 
 subsequent words of the directors' report— the main Bill for the Great 
 
 ||< 
 
56 
 
 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 I I 
 
 Northern Railway was carried beyond the reach of opposition ; but the 
 Parliamentary battles of the promoters were by no means over, not even 
 so far as the session of 1846 was concerned. As a small set-off to their 
 great victory they had already suffered a small reverse by the defeat in 
 the Commons of the South Yorkshire Railway, which Messrs. Denison 
 and Baxter had promoted as an allied project to the Great Northern 
 (to connect the South Yorkshire coal-field with the main system at 
 Doncaster), and two similarly allied Bills— the East Lincolnshire (from 
 Boston to Grimsby) and the Leicester and Bedford (which was to 
 connect with the Great Northern at Hitchin), together with the Bills for 
 the branches to Wakefield, Leeds, Stamford, Spalding, St. Albans, 
 Luton, Dunstable, and Hertford, though they had been successful in 
 the Commons, had still to face strenuous opposition in the Lords. 
 This, during the ensuing two months, proved fatal to all of them except 
 the Stamford and Spalding and the East Lincolnshire, while the 
 Cambridge and Oxford, by which the Great Northern directors hoped 
 to get access from Hitchin to Cambridge, was cut down by a Lords 
 Committee into a line between Hitchin and Royston only. On the 
 other hand, a Bill supported by the Manchester and Leeds Company 
 for a line from Askern, near Doncaster, on the Great Northern to 
 Methley, near Leeds on the Midland, with a junction with the 
 Wakefield, Pontefract, and Goole between Knottingley and Pontefract, 
 passed both Houses; and so also did the West Riding Union Bill 
 which proposed to connect Bradford and Halifax directly with Leeds, 
 the latter after a two-session contest with Hudson's established Leeds 
 and Bradford Company— a contest which produced in miniature many 
 of the features of the London and York war. Another two-session Bill, 
 the Sheffield and Lincoln, also passed at last, together with the Sheffield 
 and Lincolnshire Junction Bill for a line from Retford to a junction with 
 the Great Northern loop line at Saxelby, while by another Act these, 
 together with the Sheffield and Manchester and Great Grimsby and 
 Sheffield Junction Railways, were amalgamated into the Manchester, 
 Sheffield, and Lincolnshire system, to come under the management 
 of a single directorate from i January, 1847. 
 
 Meanwhile the London and York Bill had received the Royal 
 assent on 26 June, 1846— the same day as Sir Robert Peel's Com 
 Law Repeal Bill— and on 25 July, 1846, just within the month from 
 the date of incorporation which the Act of Parliament allowed, the first 
 general meeting of the Great Northern Railway Company was held at 
 the Hall of Commerce, London, Mr. Astell occupying the chair. In 
 their report the directors said that it had not yet been practicable 
 to ascertain the liabilities of the amalgamated Company so as to 
 
 1846 
 
 RECKONING THE COST 
 
 57 
 
 prepare an exact balance sheet for presentation to the meeting, but that 
 the directors thought it right to state " the general receipts and expen- 
 diture." This statement showed that the London and York Committee, 
 after paying away no less than ;^25i,i44 during the two and a half 
 years since the origin of the project, had a balance from the original 
 and "extension" deposits of ;£i 15,358 "in cash," while the Direct 
 Northern, whose disbursements so far had amounted to jC^9,94S o"ly» 
 had a balance "in cash and securities" of £334^^25. This made a 
 total balance in hand of :£'449,483, a sum amply sufficient to go 
 on with without an immediate call on the shareholders; but the 
 directors announced that they had power under their Act of Incor- 
 poration to pay 5 per cent, interest from 30 June, 1846, on all 
 past payments and future calls, and the shareholders were invited to 
 make payments in advance, on which this interest would be allowed, 
 as soon and in such amount as they pleased. 
 
 To those among the shareholders who had funds at their immediate 
 command this announcement was cheerful enough, but others who 
 were suffering from the prevalent "tightness" of money looked 
 forward with apprehension to the heavy calls which must come in 
 the near future. The consequence was that the shares fell to a 
 discount on the Exchange. The directors had a splendid record of 
 victory behind them, but before them lay the task of carrying out 
 the largest railway scheme ever sanctioned by Parliament. "The 
 monster infant " had yet to be reared ! 
 
 tl 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE HERO GROWS UP AMID STRAITENED CIRCUMSTANCES, 
 AND GETS TO WORK IN THE COUNTRY IN A VERY SMALL 
 
 WAY— 1 846- 1 848. 
 
 IT was no wonder that King Hudson opposed the London and 
 York Bill with all the resources at his command, for its passing 
 into law cut his kingdom in half and involved him in a con- 
 flict of duties and interests which even his ability and influence 
 could not possibly reconcile. Even had the Eastern Counties 
 Extension Bill been passed in preference to the London and York, 
 Hudson would have had a hard task to combine the chairmanship 
 of a trunk railway to the north from Shoreditch with the prior 
 claims which the Midland shareholders had upon his interest, and 
 to reconcile both with the positions which he held on the boards 
 of the companies which were to complete the East Coast through 
 route north of York. Now that a direct line from London to York was 
 authorized with which it was the obvious interest of the East Coast 
 lines to join hands, while to the Midland, York, and North Midland 
 and Eastern Counties it was a dangerous rival, the position of the man 
 who was attempting to hold the reins of all these undertakings in his 
 single pair of hands became not honestly tenable. 
 
 Hudson's difficulties were further aggravated by two important 
 developments which the session of 1 846 had produced on the western 
 side of England. These were the amalgamation of the London and 
 Birmingham, Grand Junction, and other companies into the London 
 and North Western systems, and the sanctioning after a tremendous 
 contest of the Caledonian Railway. These two events meant that 
 within a few years the West Coast route to Scotland would be com- 
 pleted, and that, when this came about, it would be the obvious 
 interest of Euston Square to send all through passengers to the 
 north via Crewe, Preston, and Carlisle, instead of sending a good 
 proportion of them, as at present, by Rugby, Normanton, York, and 
 Newcastle. Since the opening throughout from London to Gates- 
 
 5» 
 
 1846 
 
 HUDSON'S VANTAGE GROUND 
 
 59 
 
 head in 1844 this latter had become the popular route to Scotland, 
 and its position was shortly to be much improved by the opening of 
 the North British line from Berwick to Edinburgh ; but the gap 
 between Newcastle and Berwick, involving very large bridges over the 
 Tyne and Tweed, had yet to be filled up. So it was quite on the 
 cards that the W^est Coast route might be completed throughout first, 
 since the construction of the Caledonian was at once to be taken ener- 
 getically in hand. At any rate, when the West Coast was finished, much 
 of the present East Coast through traffic was certain to be diverted to it 
 by Euston influence, unless the East Coast Companies had by that time 
 secured for themselves an independent and more direct access to 
 London. Therefore, though Hudson was still master of the lines from 
 York to Berwick, and was also strong in the counsels of the North 
 British, he had little chance of holding those companies back from 
 their natural East Coast alliance with the Great Northern, although 
 that alliance meant the practical extinction of the Midland and York 
 and North Midland as far as through traffic was concerned, and the 
 dooming of the Eastern Counties to an unprofitable life of agricultural 
 drudgery within the limits of the district whose name it bore. 
 
 One position of vantage, however, the Railway King still held, and 
 that was the footing which his companies had been able to secure in 
 the London and York district before Parliament had definitely estab- 
 lished the Cireat Northern in this territory. Hudson had determined — 
 in his own words — to show that he "could provide Lincolnshire with a 
 railway before other people had done talking about it," and so he had 
 pushed on the construction of the Nottingham, Newark, and Lincoln 
 line at " record " speed, with the result that it was opened for traffic on 
 I August, 1846, barely more than a year, that is to say, after the Act 
 for it had been obtained. In the following month the portion of the 
 Syston and Peterborough line from Syston as far as Melton was brought 
 into work, and in October, 1846, the easternmost section of the same 
 line from Stamford to Peterborough; and from i January, 1847, this 
 latter was worked in connection with the Eastern Counties extension 
 to Peterborough from Ely and Cambridge, which was then opened 
 throughout. After this the completion of the link between Stamford 
 and Melton was all that was needed to establish a through connection 
 between the Midland and Eastern Counties systems, cutting right through 
 the centre of the Great Northern main-line territory. 
 
 But, through connection though it was, it was no good as a route for 
 passenger traffic to and from the north — on both sides of Peterborough 
 it was far too circuitous for that ; and so Hudson, as the last chance of 
 consolidating his kingdom, set himself to devise new connections better 
 
 1 M 
 
I If 
 
 p 
 
 1 
 
 60 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 adapted for through service. In the session of 1846 he had promoted a 
 line, called the South Midland, from Leicester to Hitchin, in rivalry 
 with the similar " Leicester and Bedford " line which the London and 
 York had supported; and now, in the autumn of 1846, after Parliament 
 had rejected both these schemes, he forestalled the Great Northern 
 directors by himself reviving the Leicester and Bedford Company, the 
 scrip-holders in which he bought over by promising them the full value 
 of their deposits in Midland Stock. This done, he invited Captain 
 Laws, who had just left the Manchester and Leeds to become the Great 
 Northern's "managing director," and Mr. Whitbread, the chief land- 
 owner in Bedfordshire, to a conference at Derby in October, 1846, and 
 from this there resulted an agreement that the Great Northern should 
 leave to the Midland the making of the line from Leicester to Hitchin, 
 on the understanding that in conjunction with the Great Northern main 
 line from Hitchin to King's Cross it was to form a route for London 
 traffic to and from the Midlands alternative to the present route by 
 Rugby to Euston Square. In order to ensure this, the agreement said 
 that the line was to be from Leicester to Hitchin, "there to terminate" ; 
 but what Mr. Hudson's real object was became apparent when on 
 behalf of the Eastern Counties he deposited a Bill to extend its 
 just opened Hertford branch to Hitchin, and then inserted a clause 
 in the Leicester, Hitchin, and Bedford Bill authorizing the Midland trains 
 to cross the Great Northern at that place, in order to reach the Eastern 
 Counties line. As a part of the same scheme, too, he deposited 
 yet another Bill for an extension of the Eastern Counties from 
 Cambridge to Bedford. 
 
 Thus, if this ruse was successful, another important slice of traffic 
 would be abstracted from the Great Northern system, nor was this 
 by any means the full extent of King Hudson's new plan of 
 campaign. Another Bill which he deposited for this session of 
 1847, was for an extension of the Eastern Counties from Wisbeach 
 (whither it had a line already authorized from March) to join the 
 Midland's Nottingham and Lincoln branch at Newark; and yet 
 another from Peterborough to join the authorized line of the " Amber- 
 gate, Nottingham, Boston, and Eastern Junction Company'— a 
 company which had owed its incorporation in 1846 mainly to his 
 royal support. Both these, as the reader sees, were to be cross- 
 lines cutting right through the Great Northern's territory and 
 joining the Eastern Counties and Midland systems into one interest. 
 
 One important result of this policy of the Railway King was 
 to give a strategic importance, quite out of proportion to 
 their business prospects, to such small companies as had been 
 
 
 1846 
 
 HIS NEW PLAN OF CAMPAIGN 
 
 61 
 
 so fortunate as to acquire powers for cross-lines which would 
 connect or intersect the territories of the great systems. Of this 
 a striking proof was the competition which now took place to buy 
 up the line from Hitchin to Royston, powers for which had been 
 obtained, as we have already noted, by a very typical product of the 
 "mania," the Oxford and Cambridge Company; and at last, simply 
 in self-defence — for it will be seen how valuable the possession of 
 this line would have been as a new weapon in King Hudson's hands 
 — the Great Northern was forced to acquire it at what even in those 
 days was considered a high price, namely, a guarantee to its share- 
 holders of a permanent dividend of 6 per cent. On the same terms 
 — exorbitant though they afterwards proved — Mr. Denison and his 
 colleagues were glad to obtain command of the Boston, Stamford, 
 and Birmingham Company's authorized line from Stamford to 
 Wisbeach, and of the East Lincolnshire Company's line from Boston 
 to Great Grimsby ; besides which they made an offer — also in the form 
 of a guaranteed dividend — to the shareholders of the Ambergate, 
 Nottingham, and Boston. But this Company, being also eagerly 
 courted by the Midland and Eastern Counties, thought it would do 
 better by maintaining its independence for a while. 
 
 Meanwhile King Hudson, in his truly royal style, had pledged 
 the Midland to give a rent-charge guarantee of no less than 10 per 
 cent, to the Leeds and Bradford Company in order to prevent its 
 just opened railway from falling into the clutches either of the 
 Manchester and Leeds, or the Great Northern ; and upon the strength 
 of this acquisition he was making a determined eflfort to block the 
 Great Northern out of the West Riding of Yorkshire by promoting 
 a direct line to be made by the Midland Company from Leeds to 
 Wakefield. This, however, was even more of a forlorn hope than 
 most of his other projects already named, seeing that a line from 
 Askern, near Doncaster, to Methley, near Leeds, was already authorized 
 to the Great Northern's ally, the Manchester and Leeds. Indeed, so 
 confident were Mr. Denison and his colleagues of obtaining access 
 to the capital of the West Riding by this route, that they deposited a 
 Bill for the two short extensions necessary to make it serviceable not 
 only to Leeds but also to Wakefield, and joined with the Leeds and 
 Thirsk, the Manchester and Leeds, and the Leeds and Dewsbury 
 Companies to deposit another for making a " central station " in the 
 former town. 
 
 Thus the Company seemed at last to be in measurable distance of 
 obtaining full powers for one of its main objects, namely, the provision 
 of a direct line from Leeds — Mr. Denison's native town — to the 
 
 (i 
 
I:i 
 
 I 
 
 II 
 
 ii 
 
 62 
 
 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 Metropolis; but meanwhile Mr. Baxter did not allow the directors 
 to forget another object — which in his eyes at least had, from the first, 
 appeared second to no other in importance — namely, provision for 
 working coal traffic from the South Yorkshire pits. With this in 
 view he set on foot in this autumn of 1846 a new scheme for a railway 
 from Doncaster to the coal-field, for which he secured the support not 
 only of Mr. Denison, but of Earl Fitzwilliam, Mr. Wentworth Vernon, 
 and Lord Wharncliffe, all large coalowners; and to this South York- 
 shire Railway Company, as it was called, the Great Northern directors 
 were persuaded to subscribe one-third of the capital. On the other 
 hand, the Midland and Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Com- 
 panies both declined to give the project financial support, though its 
 line was so laid out as to connect with their main systems also. They 
 preferred to set on foot competing schemes of their own. 
 
 Thus hardly had the Great Northern emerged from the tremendous 
 Parliamentary conflicts which gave it birth, before its directors were 
 called upon to prepare for a new campaign, in which their undertaking 
 was to be attacked at all points. This was the more burdensome to 
 them because their natural desire, of course, was to concentrate all 
 their resources upon the construction of their already authorized lines. 
 They had charge — to quote from Mr. Denison's speech at one of the 
 first half-yearly meetings— of "the largest project of the kind attempted 
 by any company since railways had first been adopted in the country," 
 and, moreover, by the end of 1846 they had expended over half a 
 million of money in their undertaking, although not a single sod had 
 been cut nor one brick put upon another for its works. They therefore 
 felt it most unpleasant to have to look forward to a continuation of 
 wasteful outlay in Parliamentary contests at a time when every pound 
 was wanted to expedite the real work of the railway. 
 
 At the end of July, 1846, as already mentioned, they had told the 
 shareholders that, after allowing for all disbursements to that date, they 
 had a balance from the original deposits of just upon ;^45o,ooo, but 
 soon afterwards it was discovered that the expenditure both of the 
 London and York and the Direct Northern preliminary to the passing 
 of the Act had been very much under-estimated in this rough balance- 
 sheet, and when an exact one was completed a few months later, it was 
 found that the amount expended on both accounts up to the date 
 of the passing of the Act, 26 June, 1846, instead of being about 
 ;^3oo,ooo, came to the monstrous sum of ;£^432,62o 12s. id. Of this 
 the London and York part — ;£309,2o6 — was not excessive in view of 
 the two tremendous Parliamentary fights they had waged, but that the 
 Direct Northern should have expended ;^i23,4i4, although their Bill 
 
 1846-7 GREAT NORTHERN CONTRACTS LET 
 
 63 
 
 in neither session had got beyond the Standing Orders, was proof of 
 gross extravagance on the part of some of that party of promoters, and 
 evoked some strong language from Mr. Denison, who had been assured 
 at the time of the amalgamation that the Direct Northern expenses 
 could not have exceeded ^(^50,000. Moreover, when the time arrived 
 for the final merging of accounts, about ^50,000 of the Direct 
 Northern balance was not forthcoming, and although in consequence 
 of Mr. Denison's emphatic protests the deficiency was immediately 
 covered by notes of hand from the directors, a breach in the ranks 
 was thus created which by the end of the year widened into a final 
 severance, all but one or two of the Direct Northern representatives 
 being then balloted off the Board by the London and York majority in 
 accordance with a resolution of the shareholders that the number of 
 directors should be reduced from thirty to twenty-two. 
 
 On the other hand, however, the promise of immediate interest at 
 5 per cent, brought in many payments in advance of calls, and by the 
 end of 1846 more than ;£"i 00,000 was received on this account, which 
 just about restored the balance in hand to the originally estimated 
 figure. Meanwhile Mr. Cubitt had been busy with the permanent 
 survey of the line, and in November, 1846, his finally revised schedules 
 for the section of the line between London and Peterborough were 
 handed to Mr. Thomas Brassey, already a railway contractor of 
 eminence, who, to the great satisfaction of the directors, agreed in 
 December to undertake the work at the prices therein named, accept- 
 ing a penalty of ^5000 per month if he did not complete the first 
 fifty-nine miles from London to Huntingdon by i July, 1849, and the 
 remaining seventeen miles to Peterborough by i November of the 
 same year. 
 
 Immediately north of Peterborough a deviation of the Parliamentary 
 route was necessary in order to bring it immediately alongside the just 
 opened section of the Syston and Peterborough, in accordance with 
 an undertaking given to the Lords Committee at the instance of Earl 
 Fitzwilliam, who had pointed out the economy and advantages of 
 joining the bridges, archways, and culverts of the two undertakings. 
 Therefore it was impossible to proceed with the "towns hne" from 
 Peterborough to Doncaster until a Deviation Bill had passed formally 
 through Parliament ; so, partly for this reason and partly because of the 
 much lighter character of the works, the directors decided to get the 
 loop line open first. Accordingly, in January, 1847, they made an 
 agreement with Mr. (afterwards Sir) Samuel Morton Peto— perhaps the 
 most respected of the great contractors of the day— and his partner, 
 Mr. Edward Ladd Betts (who, it may be remembered, had supported 
 
i 
 
 
 t 
 
 H 
 
 64 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 the Bill in the witness-box), to complete the works from Peterborough 
 by Boston and Lincoln to Gainsborough by 28 February, 1848, it 
 being a condition of their contract that they should receive ;^ 1000 or 
 forfeit that sum per week for such time prior to or after that date as 
 should be gained or lost in their undertaking. 
 
 The remainder of the loop beyond Gainsborough had, as we know, 
 been authorized to rejoin the main line at Bawtry ; but since the 
 rejection of the branch from Bawtry to Sheffield the purpose of this 
 particular course had been removed. Accordingly the directors 
 decided on Mr. Cubitt's advice to remodel this portion of the system 
 by carrying the loop farther northwards to join the main line at 
 Rossington and by deviating the latter north of Rossington in order 
 that it might pass Doncaster on the west instead of on the east. For 
 this purpose a second Deviation Bill was deposited, and in the confi- 
 dent expectation that it would pass the directors made preparations 
 already for letting the works from Gainsborough to Doncaster, and 
 thence to York, " in the hope "—to quote the words of their report 
 to the shareholders in February, 1847 — "of having that portion 
 of the line open for traffic simultaneously with the other parts of the 
 loop, thereby completing the communication between Peterborough 
 and York in the spring of 1848." Moreover, as the same date was 
 named by Mr. John Fowler, the East Lincolnshire Company's engineer, 
 for the completion of the forty-eight miles of that railway from Boston 
 to Grimsby, the greater part of which lay over absolutely flat country, 
 there was a good prospect of a through eastern line of communication 
 being opened by that time not only to York, as just stated, but 
 also to Great Grimsby (where extensive new docks were to be con- 
 structed by the Manchester, Sheffield, and Lincolnshire Company), 
 and by this latter Company's line and the New Holland ferry to the 
 
 important port of Hull. 
 
 The first half-yearly " ordinary meeting " of the Company was held 
 at the Hall of Commerce, London, on 27 February, 1847, when, 
 in the absence of Mr. Astell through illness, Mr. Denison occupied 
 the chair. At the meeting an attempt was made to raise dissension 
 by some of the Direct Northern representatives who had been 
 balloted out of the directorate, but with this Mr. Denison was well 
 able to cope. Right from the very beginning, as we have seen, the 
 strong will and practical sagacity of this Yorkshireman had shaped 
 the course of the undertaking ; and when in April of this year death 
 deprived the Company of the services and widespread influence of 
 Mr. Astell, Mr. Denison became in name, as well as in fact, the head 
 of the concern. 
 
 1847 THE -SLUMP" AFTER THE -MANIA" 65 
 
 On 13 March, 1847, the first call was made, but only of 25.^ 
 per share on the 111,446 "London and York" shares, this being 
 the sum necessary to equalize the amount paid, namely, ^3 15^ 
 on the whole of the 224,000 shares of £25, which, with 40,000 
 * extension " shares, now formed the capital of the Company. At the 
 time of the meeting in February, 1846, 178,407 of the shares had 
 been registered, and the register showed that they were held by 
 "a highly respectable body of proprietors, numbering 3345," the 
 great majority of whom held less than 100 apiece. This wide 
 distribution amongst small holders who had bought for investment 
 and not for speculation, had been the sheet-anchor of the under- 
 taking in the tempest to which it had already been exposed, and 
 now It was again to prove the source of safety throughout the more 
 dangerous, because more prolonged, storm which was now gathering. 
 
 A serious reaction from the railway mania of 1845-6 had, of 
 course, been bound to come when the money had to be found for 
 the very many and costly schemes which in those years had been 
 authorized, and equally, as a matter of course, it was precipitated 
 by the enormous waste which had been involved in the process of 
 picking out the sound projects from the foul heap of rotten ones 
 which Ignorance, by avarice, had brought forth. Just as much was 
 It to be expected that, when the strain did come, popular enthusiasm 
 would give way to panic, and that the very same people who a 
 few months before had been speaking and acting as if the capacity 
 of the country to make new railways was unlimited, would at once 
 begin to speak and act as if even the established lines were going 
 to cease to pay. All this was natural enough, and by itself it need 
 not have affected greatly the Great Northern's fortunes. But 
 unfortunately, recklessness in one department of business had 
 mfected others ; money had been spent lavishly not only in railway 
 promotion, but also in sending goods to China and other Eastern 
 countries, and in importing foodstuffs far in excess of the legitimate 
 markets. In short, over-trading had been general, and so there began 
 in 1847 a period of real scarcity of floating capital, when even men 
 who had excellent records and unimpeachable security to offer found 
 a great difficulty in raising cash. These were the conditions under 
 which the funds for the largest joint-stock enterprise yet attempted had 
 now to be raised. 
 
 Nevertheless, the first limited call brought in at once over 
 ^120,000, leaving ^15,000 only in arrear upon it, and as payments 
 in advance of calls still continued to be made, the prospects of 
 the Company looked cheerful, until a new danger appeared in the 
 
 F 
 
66 
 
 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 form of a proposal in Parliament that it should he made illegal for 
 railway companies any longer to pay interest out of capital on calls. 
 This proposal was coupled with another, namely, that all Bills for 
 the new lines should be suspended for the session, and they both 
 alarmed the Great Northern directors, who feared that their supplies 
 would be cut short by the one, and their Deviation Bills by the other. 
 The matter was referred to the consideration of a Select Committee, 
 of which Hudson (now m.p. for Sunderland) and other chairmen 
 of established Companies were members, whereupon it was commonly 
 said that "the lambs" (/>., the young Companies) had been "handed 
 over to the tender mercies of the wolves." But fortunately the 
 recommendations of the Committee proved less trenchant than the 
 original proposals, for they advised that the suspension of Bills 
 should be made optional, and the prohibition of interest on calls 
 confined to schemes at present unauthorized. But even this was em- 
 barrassing to the Great Northern, seeing that its "extension capital" 
 was still before Parliament for sanction, and as the scrip for this 
 had been signed eighteen months before on the faith of interest being 
 paid on calls, Mr. Denison asked the House on June 7th to exempt 
 it and other stock similarly circumstanced from the operation of the 
 new resolution. This amendment, however, being opposed by 
 Hudson, was lost on a division by seventy votes to twenty-seven. 
 Thereupon the Great Northern Board promptly issued a notice that 
 they would pay interest on the extension deposits to 30 June, before 
 which date the resolutions did not come into force, and shortly 
 afterwards they announced their intention of allowing the further 
 interest to accrue until it could be paid out of the earnings of the 
 railway. 
 
 Meanwhile the company had suffered a temporary reverse by the 
 rejection of its Wakefield and Leeds extensions, a rejection which was 
 the more irritating because the House of Commons Committee stated 
 that but for a technical error in the levels they would have passed the 
 Bill. As it was, they rejected the rival Bills of the Midland and Leeds 
 and Dewsbury Companies — of the latter of which the London and 
 North Western, which was just amalgamating with itself the Leeds and 
 Dewsbury, was virtually the promoter — and passed the Leeds Central 
 Station Bill in which, as before stated, the Great Northern was jointly 
 concerned. To this, moreover, there was scheduled a contract under 
 seal by which the Manchester and Leeds— now just being merged in 
 the Lancashire and Yorkshire Company — gave power to the Great 
 Northern to run its trains from Askern via Knottingley to Wakefield, 
 and also as far as Methley on the way to Leeds. 
 
 1847 
 
 REJECTION OF A DEVIATION BILL 
 
 67 
 
 The South Yorkshire Railway, from Doncaster as far as Barnsley, 
 was also sanctioned after a stiff fight, and so were the leases of the 
 East Lincolnshire and Stamford to Wisbeach lines, besides a number 
 of small branches and all the more important deviations of the main 
 line. But the most important deviation of all, that of the loop from 
 Gainsborough to Rossington, was unexpectedly rejected in the 
 Commons Committee on the opposition of the landowners, and, in 
 addition to this, the company received another check this session 
 by the rejection of the Royston and Hitchin Bill for the extension of 
 that line to Cambridge. As, however, the lease of the Royston and 
 Hitchin Company's line to the Great Northern was sanctioned and 
 a proposed branch of the Eastern Counties to Royston thrown out, 
 the directors had good hope of obtaining this important access to 
 Cambridge in another year. The Eastern Counties, on its part, 
 secured its Cambridge and Bedford Act, and also an Act for an 
 extension from Wisbeach as far northwards as Spalding, where it was 
 to join the Great Northern loop line ; but the further extension from 
 Spalding to Newark was also rejected, and also a York and North 
 Midland extension from Selby to Gainsborough. The net result of the 
 campaign was that the Great Northern repulsed all the new encroach- 
 ments on its territory, though it was still unsuccessful in establishing 
 itself securely either in the West Riding of Yorkshire or in Cambridge. 
 The Parliamentary campaign ended on 8 July, nine days before 
 which-on 30 June, 1847-the second call of £2 5^. per share fell 
 due. This was responded to in a most encouraging manner, the 
 banking house of Messrs. Smith, Payne and Smith in London being 
 literally besieged by shareholders, who paid in no less than ^180,000 
 at that one place, and the total sum realized was over ;£'34o,'ooo, 
 making with the payments in advance considerably more than the 
 whole amount called up. Nevertheless the directors, " owing to the 
 state of the Money Market and studying the convenience of the 
 shareholders to the utmost extent circumstances permit"— as their 
 report to the half-yearly meeting in August put it-decided to abstain 
 from letting the works from Doncaster to York. But at the end of 
 July a further small contract was let to Messrs. Peto & Betts for 
 the works from the east side of the Great North Road at Doncaster, 
 northwards to Askern, with the object of forming an "end-on" 
 junction there with the branch of the Lancashire and Yorkshire 
 Company, over which, as already stated, the Great Northern had just 
 obtained power to run its trains to Wakefield and to Methley on the 
 way to Leeds. 
 
 Between the main line and Gainsborough matters, of course, were 
 
68 
 
 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 still at a standstill owing to the rejection of the Deviation Bill ; but on 
 the main portion of the loop substantial progress had already been 
 made by Messrs. Peto and Betts, who had several thousands of men 
 employed on their contract ; and the directors were able to report this 
 August that for some miles between Gainsborough and Boston the 
 permanent way had already been formed and the rails laid ready for 
 use. There were, however, several large bridges on this contract, 
 notably one 729 yards long over the Witham at Bardney; and 
 although this was to be constructed entirely of timber, it made it 
 impossible that the line could be ready for traffic at any date earlier 
 than the spring of 1848. 
 
 " We have no object in view," said Mr. Denison to the shareholders 
 at their second half-yearly meeting on 13 August, 1847, "but to get the 
 line made, and if you want the line made you must of course furnish 
 the money"; so on 27 August notice of a third quarterly call of £2 
 per share was issued to fall due on 30 September. But just about this 
 time, unfortunately, owing to the failure of the Irish potato crop 
 and other calamities, the " tightness " of money greatly increased, and 
 the result was that on this third call nearly ^100,000 was for 
 some time in arrear. During October the outlook became still more 
 gloomy; in the language of HerapatKs Railway Journal for 
 23 October, 1847, it became "most distressing to look down the 
 railway share list." "New lines, no matter of what promise," said 
 that paper, "are universally at a discount, £\oo being worth about 
 ^50. Even those old and thoroughly established railways, whose 
 highly remunerative qualities have been proved by the test of time 
 and good dividends — they too are most heavily oppressed. One 
 or two are just raising their heads with difficulty in the bright 
 regions of premium, while many others are gasping on the verge of 
 par or actually floundering in the slough of discount." Under these 
 influences the (ireat Northern shares, which eighteen months before 
 had commanded a £^ premium, fell to a discount of ^5, those 
 on which the full calls of ;£8 had been paid selling for £1 only. 
 
 This was almost entirely the result of the difficulties which holders, 
 whose position a year ago had seemed quite secure, now found in 
 raising ready cash; it did not spring from any real want of confi- 
 dence in the future of the undertaking. Nevertheless it gave a new 
 opportunity to persons, who, though Great Northern shareholders, 
 were more interested in the Eastern Counties and Midland Companies, 
 to bring pressure on the directors to abandon important parts of 
 the new system. At the Eastern Counties meeting in August Hudson 
 had predicted that his opponents would " stick fast in the treacherous 
 
 1847 
 
 ACCESS TO LEEDS SECURED 
 
 69 
 
 1! 
 
 1 
 
 London clay," and now strenuous efforts were made to induce the 
 directors to abandon the independent access into London at least, and 
 to join the Eastern Counties either at Ware or better still at Peter- 
 borough. But this recommendation, though it was urged copiously 
 through both post and press, had no effect upon Mr. Denison and his 
 colleagues. They had long been convinced that the southern part of 
 their system would in the end prove the most valuable, and they could 
 now hardly have given it up, even if they had so wished, seeing 
 that they had already paid nearly half a million on account of Mr. 
 Brassey's contract. New liabilities however, they did endeavour to 
 
 Original Timber Viaduct over the Witham at Bardney. 
 
 From the "Illustrated London News." 
 
 avoid by making overtures to Mr. Hudson before again depositing 
 
 a Bill for an independent line to Leeds; and on 16 October, 1847 
 
 considerably to their own surprise probably— they obtained their great 
 opponent's signature to a contract which gave the Great Northern 
 Company the right of running its own engines and carriages over 
 the Midland from Methley into Leeds. Thus in a very unlooked 
 for way did Mr. Denison realize one of his greatest wishes by obtain- 
 mg power to give a new and much more direct railway service with 
 Ivondon to his native town. 
 
 Meanwhile all idea of letting further contracts on the main line had 
 been put aside, and it had been decided to "concentrate all efforts 
 upon the loop line from Peterborough into Yorkshire, so as to open it 
 and bring the capital expended into productive operation with the least 
 possible delay." Of the hundred miles of line thus embraced seventy- 
 
• 
 
 
 i 
 
 70 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 six miles, namely from Peterborough by Boston and Lincoln to 
 Gainsborough, would, it was calculated, be ready by September, 1 848 ; 
 but at Gainsborough there was a large bridge over the Trent to be 
 built, which in any case would have delayed the opening of the 
 line beyond that town even had the question of its course not been 
 still in abeyance. In the meantime, however, access from the loop 
 northwards would [irobably be obtainable over the Manchester, 
 Sheffield, and Lincolnshire Companies' lines, which were already in 
 course of construction, and so the directors decided not to return 
 to the Bawtry route, but to deposit a new Deviation Bill for the line to 
 Rossington, which was so obviously better, because it saved distance to 
 the north. As for the main line between London and Peterborough, 
 this, it was decided, must proceed at a slower rate, those works 
 only being carried on which could not be postponed without ultimate 
 loss. 
 
 All this time the Company's chief solicitors, Messrs. Baxter, Rose, 
 and Norton — a firm which had been formed in the course of the 
 London and York fight by the union of Mr. Baxter with Messrs. 
 Barker, Rose, and Norton — had had their hands full of work in 
 obtaining possession of the land required for the line. During the year 
 1847 nearly 1,200 contracts with landowners had to be arranged, and 
 of some of these gentry Mr. Baxter was constrained to say, that "their 
 acuteness as to the means of wringing out money from a railway 
 company" was "beyond anything which he or any other individual 
 could have conceived." Some of them even resorted to proceedings in 
 Chancery, which the Company had to defend at great expense ; and in 
 cases where the contractors, letting zeal outrun discretion, commenced 
 work on land the conveyance of which had not been duly carried out, 
 they brought actions against the Company for unlawful possession and 
 obtained heavy damages— which, however, the contractors paid. 
 
 "We have endeavoured as far as possible to avoid anything like 
 a collision with any of the parties," said Mr. Denison at the third half- 
 yearly meeting held on 24 February, 1848, "but there is an amount 
 beyond which we were determined not to go ; and therefore in Lincoln- 
 shire about a month ago we took our stand and said, 'We will not 
 permit you to go further without the intervention of a jury.' Only last 
 week some jury cases were tried at Lincoln and at Boston. The sums 
 demanded amounted to ;^27,ooo; the sums offered by the Company 
 amounted to ;^i 2,000; the sums awarded by the jury amounted to 
 ;^i 1,800. (Loud cheering.) It is possible that some parlies in 
 the country may occupy their time in reading what falls from me ; and 
 I say to you, and I say to the public, that unless the parties with whom 
 
 II 
 
 1847-8 
 
 PROGRESS OF THE WORKS 
 
 71 
 
 we have to treat will be more moderate in their demands, I shall 
 advise my colleagues to go on continually making appeals to juries." 
 At the same time he warned the shareholders that the cost of land 
 would certainly exceed the original estimate. 
 
 In November, 1847, the directors issued notice of their fourth 
 quarterly call, but for the convenience of hard-pressed shareholders 
 they made it payable by two instalments, viz., 25^. on 1 December, 
 1847, and 2 5 J. on 15 January, 1848. On the first instalment, how- 
 ever, a considerable amount remained in arrear, and in anticipation 
 of the second the shares fell in December to j£6 discount ; but when 
 it was found that the directors had powers under their original Act not 
 only to withhold interest from shareholders in arrear, but to charge 
 interest upon the amounts unpaid, and that these powers they were 
 determined to use to the full, many of the defaulters found means 
 to pay. So at the meeting in February, 1848, Mr. Denison was able 
 to announce with satisfaction that, with what had been paid in 
 advance, the cash received was only 7 per cent, less than the amount 
 called up. 
 
 Meantime the works of the loop line had been carried on with 
 all possible vigour, and Mr. Joseph Cubitt, who was acting as 
 superintending-engineer of the line under his father, was able to 
 report in February, 1848, that the permanent way between Peterborough 
 and Spalding had already been ballasted for a distance of about eight 
 miles, and that every exertion was being made to have a considerable 
 length of way formed and completed ahead of the advancing ballast, so 
 that this might now be laid down without intermission. Between Boston 
 and Lincoln, also, about thirteen miles had been ballasted, and Mr. 
 Cubitt expressed himself satisfied that the works generally between 
 Peterborough and Gainsborough were in such a state that, with 
 the necessary further expenditure, they could quite well be completed 
 and opened in the following September, which, however, was six 
 months after the date originally fixed. As for Mr. Brassey's contract, 
 this, of course, had suffered from the limitation of expenditure, but 
 considerable progress had been made with the earthwork in nearly 
 all the principal cuttings ; in five out of the seven tunnels the shafts 
 had been sunk and the headings driven, the bridges and viaducts 
 were in a forward state, and in all respects the contract was in Mr. 
 Cubitt's opinion "in a perfectly satisfactory condition." On the third 
 short contract of five miles from Doncaster to Askern, the earthwork 
 was completed for more than half the distance. 
 
 In short, the directors had a report to make this F''ebruary (1848) 
 which practically disarmed criticism, and so the disappointment which 
 
tl 
 
 I ' 
 
 I 
 
 I 
 
 . 
 
 n i 
 
 72 
 
 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 the shareholders not unnaturally felt that greater progress had not 
 been possible had to find vent in belated lamentations over the 
 enormous amount of the preliminary expenses, and particularly over 
 the amount of Messrs. Baxter, Rose, and Norton's bills. 
 
 "I am not at all surprised — I have not the slightest right to 
 complain," said Mr. Baxter in reply, "that you should come here 
 and say that the charges in the Parliamentary and law department 
 are enormous. They are enormous — they are unprecedented — and 
 it is an instance which will stand, I trust, without parallel to the 
 end of the world, of the infirmity of that process and that constitution 
 of Parliamentary Committees which renders it possible to entail upon 
 a company half a million of money in preliminary expenses." 
 
 On I March, 1848, the Great Northern Railway Company began 
 its first work as public carriers on a length of about thirty miles of 
 railway, from Louth to New Holland on Humber (opposite Hull). 
 Nearly half this route, namely, the fourteen miles from Louth to 
 Great Grimsby, was completely under Great Northern control by lease 
 from the East Lincolnshire Company, and the remainder was worked 
 over by arrangement with its owners, the Manchester, Sheffield, and 
 Lincolnshire, who, in return, worked over the East Lincolnshire to 
 Louth. Thus half only of the rolling stock required for the line 
 had to be supplied by the Great Northern. 
 
 The passenger stock, which was built for the Company by Mr. 
 Williams, of Goswell Road, at once attracted attention from the 
 excellence of the third-class accommodation, this being described as 
 equal to second-class on most lines. The "seconds," also, were 
 thought noteworthy for having "good glass windows and cushions 
 on the seat," and the first-class were described as " as handsome and 
 convenient as any man of the nicest taste or appreciation of comfort 
 in travelling could wish." In the matter of engines the Company was 
 well prepared, for about a year before the directors had appointed 
 their chief engineer's brother, Mr. Benjamin Cubitt, to the position 
 of locomotive-superintendent, and he had ordered from the well-known 
 firm of Sharp Brothers and Company, of Manchester, fifty of their 
 standard stock-pattern "single"' locomotives, of a type already in use 
 on many lines. Such of these " Sharpies " — as the men afterwards nick- 
 named them — as were delivered by i March, 1 848, were well able to haul 
 the light and slow trains on the level Lincolnshire line. Mr. Cubitt, 
 however, had unfortunately died about six weeks before the traffic 
 was commenced ; so his place was hastily filled by the appointment 
 of Mr. Edward Bury, who had recently retired from the position of 
 locomotive-superintendent to the London and North Western Railway, 
 
 1848 
 
 THE FIRST OPENING 
 
 73 
 
 having served that company— or rather the London and Birmingham— 
 for twelve years. Under his superintendence and that of Mr. (now 
 Sir) John Fowler, who was engineer both to the East Lincolnshire and 
 to the Manchester, Sheffield, and Lincolnshire (eastern section), the 
 traffic from Ix)uth to New Holland was efficiently conducted. At the 
 same time Mr. Bury set to work to increase the Company's locomotive 
 
 The Piibilr arv rt-HprvtMl\ inforaK-d. thai 
 
 On V anei* llie Isl of April 
 
 IV Tiam tf llr Dr^nirr tf tV Traitx 
 
 WUI hr M 
 
 foUowH, viz. 
 
 From liOnth to Mew Holland. 
 
 We«k-4«y TralM. 
 
 1.2,4 3.1 liin<r'i. I and '2. I I and 2. 
 
 t ON 801 1 inh^ 
 
 land 3. 
 
 *4A 
 
 Awi4a> Tralan. 
 I. 2. 4t ;i. I Ac 2 
 
 K. m. 
 
 8 5 
 
 From .\cn Holland to l^oiitli. 
 
 Ht^k-da^ lYalBM. 
 
 I. 2. »nd 3. 
 
 8 30 
 
 I and 2 
 
 ^ m. 
 
 no 
 
 I aiMt 2. 
 
 i 
 
 i and 2. 
 
 I aiHl 2. 
 
 i 6 
 
 Maadaj TraiaM. 
 
 1.2. and 3. I and 2. 
 
 F- m. 
 
 8 
 
 5 
 
 One of the First Great Northern Timk Tahles (1848). 
 
 Stock, both by hurrying on the completion of Messrs. Sharp's contract, 
 and by giving new orders to Messrs. R. and W. Hawthorn, of New- 
 castle, and Messrs. Bury, Curtis, and Kennedy, of Liverpool. Of this 
 latter firm he was himself the senior partner. 
 
 From I March to 30 June, 1848, the Great Northern Company 
 received from traffic on the Ea.st Lincolnshire line the sum of ;^2,502 
 19s. Its total expenditure up to the latter date had been more than 
 2J millions. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 !| 
 
 
 THE HERO COMES TO LONDON-END OF THE REIGN OF KING 
 
 HUDSON— 1848-1850. 
 
 WHILE the Great Northern had thus succeeded in getting to 
 work on a small Lincolnshire line only, the first great "race 
 to the north "—the race to open the two great competing routes to 
 Scotland— had reached a critical stage. The authorization of the North 
 British Railway from Edinburgh to Berwick in 1844— a year before the 
 Caledonian Bill passed — had given a decided start to the East Coast ; 
 but though the North British was completed and opened in June, 1846, 
 the filling of the gap between Gateshead and Berwick had still to be 
 waited for, and so it was not until October, 1847, that Mr. James 
 Allport, the manager of the York, Newcastle, and Berwick Company, 
 whom Hudson had brought from the Midlands about two years before 
 specially to develop the East Coast traffic, was able to announce a 
 through service from Euston via Rugby, Normanton, York, and New- 
 castle—timed to cover the distance between London and Edinburgh in 
 thirteen hours and ten minutes. 
 
 This was a great advance on the Fleetwood service of twenty-seven 
 hours, which, as the reader may remember, the Railway Times in 1843 
 had thought to be "all that any reasonable man could want." On 
 the other hand, the route was not really a through railway one; for 
 pending the completion of the great bridges which the Stephensons had 
 in course of construction over the Tyne and the Tweed, passengers had 
 to be conveyed by road from Gateshead to Newcastle and from Tweed- 
 mouth to Berwick. So, in point of comfort, the East Coast journey did 
 not offer much, if any, advantage over that by the West Coast, by which a 
 passenger could get a carriage right through to Preston, if not to Carlisle, 
 and, if he left Euston at 10 a m., be landed at the end of his railway 
 journey at 9.55 p.m., just in time to have supper and go to bed at 
 Carlisle, with a prospect of an easy ride to Glasgow or Edinburgh by 
 coach on the following morning. In this same autumn of 1847, more- 
 over, the Caledonian got the first portion of its line open from Carlisle 
 
 74 
 
 1847-8 THE FIRST "RACE TO THE NORTH" 
 
 75 
 
 to Beattock, and thereupon the 10 a.m. from Euston was accelerated 
 by forty minutes to Carlisle and a connection put on reaching Beattock 
 at 1 1. 16 p.m., whence the mails, and such passengers who might 
 venture, were carried on by coaches timed to reach Glasgow at 5.4 a.m. 
 and Edinburgh at 6.6 a.m. 
 
 This service remained in force until 15 February, 1848, when the 
 Caledonian Railway was opened throughout to both the great Scotch 
 cities, thus at last establishing a genuine through railway route between 
 London and Scotland. Even then, however, the best times of arrival 
 which were at first offered to travellers by the West Coast 10 a.m. 
 express from Euston were : Edinburgh, 1.30 a.m.; Glasgow, 1.40 a.m. 
 next morning; whereas the East Coast passenger leaving Euston at 
 9.30 a.m. was timed to reach Edinburgh at 10.35 P-"^- ^Y the summer 
 of 1848, however, Captain Huish, the manager of the London and 
 North Western, got the West Coast service into working order, and the 
 result was that " Bradshaw " for July of that year showed a new train 
 limed to leave Euston at 9 am. and to land passengers at Edinburgh 
 at 9 p.m. and at Glasgow at 9.10 p.m. In response to this, the East 
 Coast through connection with the 9.30 a.m from Euston was accele- 
 rated to reach Edinburgh at 9.55 p.m. 
 
 Thus, on paper at any rate, the East Coast Companies held their 
 own very well throughout the summer of 1848, and they had a prospect 
 of doing even better in the autumn when the bridges across the Tyne 
 and Tweed were to be ready for opening. Nevertheless they had to 
 face the fact that so long as they were dependent for the eighty miles of 
 their route from London to Rugby upon the co-operation of the London 
 and North Western— the principal partner in the rival West Coast 
 alliance— they could feel no real security as to receiving their fair share 
 of the traffic. Their great desideratum, therefore, was independent 
 access to the Metropolis, and it was largely, of course, with a view to 
 this that Hudson had taken such pains to obtain in the previous year 
 powers for the Midland to extend its main line southwards from Leices- 
 ter to Hitchin. But the clauses to enable him to make a junction there 
 with the Eastern Counties had by the vigilance of the Great Northern 
 been thrown out of the Bill ; and as the latter had so far resisted 
 all attempts to prevent its system being made in its integrity, it seemed 
 hardly worth while for the Midland to come to Hitchin— in the interests 
 of the East Coast traffic certainly not — seeing that if a through route to 
 London were thus formed, it would obviously be superseded so soon as 
 the Great Northern got its main line at work throughout. In short, 
 there could now be no doubt, as Mr. Denison said in his half-yearly 
 speech in February, 1848, that the Great Northern "must form from 
 
 
76 
 
 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 I 
 
 il 
 
 til 
 
 M^ 
 
 London to York the southern portion of the great eastern trunk line 
 between London and Edinburgh." " I believe," he added, "that some 
 of our most strenuous opponents are beginning to admit this : even 
 Mr. Hudson will admit now that parties will go between London and 
 Edinburgh by the shortest line." 
 
 But "shortest line" though the (ireat Northern undoubtedly was 
 in J>()sse, it was still a good way from being so in esse. On its main 
 line between Peterborough and York not a sod had been cut except 
 on the short length of five miles from Doncaster northwards to Askern, 
 from which point, as we know, the Company had power to run over the 
 Lancashire and Yorkshire (formerly Wakefield, Pontefract, and Goole) 
 system to Wakefield and Leeds. As, however, the construction of a 
 short link from Burton Salmon to Knottingley, which the York and 
 North Midland Company had previously obtained powers to make, 
 would, if Hudson did not prevent it, readily put the Great Northern in 
 connection with York and the lines beyond, the delay in making the 
 direct route from Askern to York did not greatly matter. But the post- 
 ponement of the "towns line" between Peterborough and Doncaster, 
 which the state of the Money Market still enforced, was a really serious 
 affair from the point of view of the through connection with Scotland ; 
 and early in 1848 discontented shareholders began to ask whether the 
 directors' policy of concentrating effort upon the loop was not going to 
 prove a mistake. 
 
 These misgivings were increased by a serious disaster which befell 
 the Company early in its Parliamentary campaign of this year. It 
 happened that Lord Galway, one of the most violent of the fox-hunting 
 opponents of railways,* whose family seat — Serlby Hall — is on the 
 borders of Nottinghamshire and Yorkshire, had conceived a special 
 antipathy to the Bill for deviating the northern part of the Great 
 Northern loop. For this he had two reasons : the one that he was 
 Master of the local fox-hounds, and the other that he was a son-in-law 
 to Mr. Pemberton Milnes, of Bawtry Hall, who was very anxious that 
 the original Act should be carried out, and Bawtry made the point 
 of junction between the main and loop lines. Accordingly the Irish 
 peer, who had a seat in the Commons, set to work to organize an 
 opposition to the second reading of the obnoxious Deviation Bill, 
 and this he did very effectively— and yet so secretly that the Hon. 
 Octavius Duncombe, who was the only Great Northern director with 
 a seat in Parliament this session, did not hear of it until about three 
 
 * Mr. Brundell, of Doncaster, relates that he was horsewhipped by this Lord 
 Cialway when surveying for the original London and York line between Blyth and 
 Tickhill. 
 
 1848 
 
 LORD GALWAY'S SURPRISE 
 
 77 
 
 o'clock on 21 March, 1848, the very day when the second reading 
 of the Bill was to come on. Having no time to rally a party of 
 supporters, Mr. Duncombe thought that the best thing he could do 
 was to move the postponement of the Bill for a couple of days, but 
 to this Lord Galway proposed an amendment that it "be read a 
 second time six months hence"— the regular Parliamentary form for 
 rejection. This amendment was carried triumphantly by 176 votes to 32. 
 This was an alarming event for the Great Northern Board, for it 
 threatened completely to upset the plans which had led them to make 
 the loop before the towns line; but fortunately they found a fairly 
 satisfactory makeshift in an alliance with the Manchester, Sheffield, 
 and Lincolnshire. This Company, as we know, had powers for a 
 branch from its main line at Clarborough, about five miles east of 
 Retford, to join the Great Northern loop at Saxelby, from which point 
 the Great Northern had granted it running rights into Lincoln in return 
 for similar rights over the Manchester, Sheffield, and Lincolnshire 
 from Retford to Sheffield; and, although the Sheffield directors— 
 whose chairman, Lord Yarborough, was an old London and York 
 Committee man — had intended postponing the construction of this 
 branch to better times, they now acceded to the Great Northern 
 proposal that the line should be made at once, so that the Great 
 Northern might use it for through traffic in place of the just rejected 
 Gainsborough to Rossington line. Accordingly Mr. John Fowler was 
 instructed by the Sheffield Board to put the work immediately in hand, 
 while at the same time, and with the same object, the Great Northern 
 directors let a further contract to Messrs. Peto and Betts for the section 
 of their main line from Retford to Doncaster. 
 
 Thus the Company got fairly well out of one difficulty created by 
 Lord Galway's " surprise," but meanwhile they had been embarrassed 
 by another, which arose from the fact that the rejected Deviation Bill 
 had contained an important clause designed to relieve the " tightness " 
 of the Company's finances. In the previous autumn some ingenious 
 person— probably Mr. Baxter, the solicitor— had suggested that the 
 option might well be given to shareholders to "split" their ^25 
 shares into two of ;^i2 10s. each, one of which should be guaranteed 
 by the other a permanent 6 per cent, dividend upon the amount 
 paid up, with the option of paying up the whole amount at once ; 
 while the other, or "deferred" half, should receive the balance of 
 uiterest or dividend after the payment of the 6 per cent., and 
 should be relieved from the pressure of calls. The main object of 
 this was to enable shareholders who had a difficulty in meeting their 
 calls to relieve themselves by disposing of half their shares to parlies 
 
 i! 
 
ii 
 
 f 
 
 78 
 
 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 who would be willing — under the attraction of the 6 per cent, 
 guarantee — to pay up upon them at once and in full ; but, as Mr. 
 Denison said, it had the further advantage of creating a stock paying 
 6 per cent. — if the whole capital earned enough — which would be 
 "exceedingly valuable to quiet people in the country and in town," 
 while on the other hand it held out an inducement to more speculative 
 persons to come into the concern and take the chance of all dividends 
 above 6 per cent. 
 
 Mr. Denison, however, did not urge the adoption of the scheme with 
 any fervour — indeed, he told the shareholders at their meeting in 
 February, 1848, that the directors did not wish it to be considered 
 as " immediately recommended " by them, and Captain Hall — the 
 naval shareholder, who, it may be remembered, had "sealed up his 
 scrip in an envelope like nailing his colours to the mast " — objected to 
 it entirely, on the ground that he liked " plain sailing, a good water-tight 
 boat, and good ship room " Nevertheless, its inclusion in the Devia- 
 tion Bill was approved unanimously by an "extraordinary general 
 meeting"; and, when that Bill was rejected, Mr. Baxter was deter- 
 mined that if possible it should not be lost. He accordingly managed 
 to re-insert the clause in the Company's " Isle of Axholme Extension 
 Bill," which, after passing the Commons in the previous session, had 
 been hung up in the Lords, and in this way it became law, though in 
 a form slightly different from the original scheme. The chief altera- 
 tion was that the " A ' shares, as the deferred halves were called, were 
 credited with the amount already paid up, so that the inducement 
 of the 6 per cent, guarantee might operate to bring in the whole of 
 the £,\2 \os. represented by each B share; but this did not prevent 
 the latter from being greatly sought after, with the result that during 
 the latter months of 1848, 360 shareholders availed themselves of the 
 option of "splitting," the number of shares thus divided being 18,561. 
 
 For the rest, the Parliamentary campaign of 1848 was a com- 
 paratively small affair, its one other important result being that the 
 Royston and Hitchin Company obtained powers to extend its line 
 from Royston to Shepreth, a point on the authorized Cambridge to 
 Bedford extension, with contingent powers for a further extension from 
 Shepreth to Shelford on the Eastern Counties main line in case that 
 Company should neglect to use its Cambridge and Bedford Act. This 
 secured to the Great Northern access to Cambridge from the south, 
 while from the north also there seemed good prospect of a through 
 route being established via Huntingdon, seeing that the Eastern 
 Counties extension from Cambridge to St. Ives and Huntingdon had 
 already been at work for a year. 
 
 1848 
 
 OPENING OF THE "LOOP" 
 
 n 
 
 By the end of July, 1848, the works on Messrs. Peto and Betts' 
 short contract in Yorkshire were so far advanced that the Lancashire 
 and Yorkshire trains, which had been at work for some weeks on the 
 Wakefield, Pontefract, and Goole system, could be allowed to run on 
 from Askern over about three miles of Great Northern line to Arksey ; 
 and by the end of August the whole contract was so far completed 
 that the trains could come two miles further to discharge and take up 
 passengers at a temporary station at Doncaster, where for the first 
 time, in September, 1848, visitors to the Races arrived by railway. 
 About the same date — 3 September, 1848— a further portion of the 
 East Lincolnshire line from Louth to Firsby was opened; on i October 
 
 One of the First Great Northern Trains Passing over the Timber Bridge 
 
 AT Boston. 
 
 From " The Illustrated London News." 
 
 the opening was completed to Boston, and on 17 October, 1848, the 
 fifty-eight miles of the loop were opened from a junction with the 
 Syston and Peterborough line at Walton (or Werrington), near Peter- 
 borough, to Lincoln, the day being observed as a general holiday in 
 the locality and commemorated by " a sumptuous banquet," given by 
 the Mayor and Corporation of Boston to the Great Northern directors 
 and others, at which about 500 gentlemen sat down. Between Boston 
 and Lincoln the competition between the new railway and the steam 
 packets on the Witham Navigation was at first very keen; but by 
 putting on fourth- class carriages at a halfpenny a mile the railway 
 company soon drove the boats off the water. 
 
 The opening of the loop gave South Lincolnshire its first railway 
 communication. Moreover, in conjunction with the London and North 
 
8o 
 
 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 Western or Eastern Counties lines from London to Peterborough, and 
 the short section of Midland line from Peterborough to Walton, it 
 opened up an entirely new route between the Metropolis and Lincoln ; 
 to which city a train service was immediately given more than an hour 
 shorter from London than by the existing very circuitous route of the 
 Midland Company. Another new service, more important than this, 
 was put on by Boston, Grimsby, and New Holland to Hull, a route 
 about forty miles shorter than the existing one via Normanton and 
 Selby, and from i January, 1849, Her Majesty's mails were conveyed 
 to Hull this way. Great Grimsby, too, where the works on the new 
 docks were in active progress, was now for the first time brought into 
 railway communication with the Metropolis. 
 
 Meanwhile between London and Peterborough the works on 
 Mr. Brassey's great contract had been proceeding during the summer 
 with full vigour under arrangements which, according to Mr. Joseph 
 Cubitt's report in August, 1848, "warranted the expectation of their 
 completion by the spring of 1850." Big though they were, the works 
 had no terrors on that account to Mr. Brassey, whose various railway 
 contracts in hand at this time in Great Britain and France represented 
 a capital outlay of about ;^36,ooo,ooo, involving the payment of some 
 ;£"i 5,000 to ;^2o,ooo weekly in wages to an army of about 75,000 
 men. Of these between 5,000 and 6,000 were employed on the Great 
 Northern, with the result that rapid progress was made in the very 
 heavy earthwork in the "London clay district," while the brickwork 
 and masonry also were generally kept well advanced. 
 
 What gave Brassey more anxiety than anything else was the forma- 
 tion of the permanent way over the soft undrained fens of Huntingdon- 
 shire, which for many miles were at this time little better than "a 
 quaking bog," so that, as he himself said, "if you merely stood upon 
 it, you shook an acre of it together." These were the words in which 
 he is said to have described the state of things to a young engineer, 
 named Stephen Ballard, to whom he was introduced on the Eastern 
 Counties platform at Cambridge when returning one day from inspect- 
 ing the Great Northern works. Ballard, who was employed at this 
 time as resident engineer for the Middle Level main drain, which 
 Messrs. Walker and Burges were constructing from the Ouse to Upwell, 
 had already been mentioned to Brassey as a likely man to help him 
 out of his difficulty; and now his conversation on the subject so 
 impressed the great contractor that Brassey engaged him at once to 
 become his agent in making the part of the line over the fens. 
 
 The first thing Stephen Ballard did was to go to the principal 
 timber markets in the neighbourhood and buy up all the faggot wood 
 
 184$ 
 
 RAILWAY MAKING IN THE FENS 
 
 Si 
 
 there was for sale without giving the dealers time to raise the price 
 against him by letting it be known that he wanted a large quantity. 
 Then he had a number of rafts built of alternate layers of faggots 
 and peat sods, and, having laid these on the swampy ground, he 
 added weight to them little by little, so that the water was gradually 
 forced out, while what solid matter there was beneath them was not 
 displaced. In this way a comparatively firm foundation was secured, 
 and on this was built not only the embankment of the line, but the 
 brickwork for the bridges also, the same principle being observed in 
 this work as in the other, namely, that the weight should be added 
 very gradually so as to give plenty of time for the water to find its 
 way out. Thus did Ballard lay the foundation of the Great Northern 
 line over the fens, and of his own fame as an engineer. 
 
 Two years had now elapsed since the passing of the Great Northern 
 Act, and with one hundred miles of line already at work, and the 
 construction of seventy-six more -the most important and difficult 
 part of the system— well forwarded under the able care of the Messrs. 
 Cubitt, Mr. Brassey, and Mr. Ballard, the Great Northern directors 
 had good reason to be satisfied with the progress they had made 
 during a period of exceptional financial embarrassment. But now 
 difficulties of a new kind "cropped up." At the fourth half-yearly 
 meeting, held on 12 August, 1848— the very day and hour when 
 " old George " Stephenson was dying at his residence, Tapton House, 
 Chesterfield— Mr. Seneca Hughes, a considerable shareholder, proposed 
 an amendment in favour of the exercise of greater economy, especially 
 in the matter of the directors' allowances and the superintendent's and 
 secretary's salaries, and this Mr. Denison met with the assurance that 
 the subject of reduction had already been discussed at the Board, and 
 should undergo further discussion in the future. Accordingly, in 
 October, 1848, the matter was taken vigorously in hand, but it soon 
 became apparent that in the cutting down of salaries Mr. Denison 
 was anxious to go farther than the majority of his colleagues. The 
 result was that on 24 November, 1848, he tendered his resignation of 
 the chairmanship. About the same time Captain Laws, seeing that both 
 directors and shareholders were indisposed to retain him as managing 
 director at his existing salary of ;^2ooo a year, accepted an invitation 
 to return to the north as general manager of the Lancashire and 
 Yorkshire at ;£'i5oo. 
 
 Thus at the close of 1848 the prospects of the Company looked 
 gloomy, but fortunately they had begun to brighten again before the 
 shareholders met in February, 1849. Mr. Denison and Captain 
 Laws both consented to remain on the directorate, and, though the 
 
 G 
 
 ( i 
 
82 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 fifth half-yearly report was signed by Mr. Packe, the deputy-chairman, 
 it stated that Mr. Denison "continued all the support in his power 
 to the interests of the Company." So when the shareholders met 
 at the London Tavern on February 23rd, they were not altogether 
 surprised to see their old chairman again take his accustomed place. 
 Mr. Denison at once stated that matters had been so arranged that he 
 could with satisfaction continue to occupy the chair— a statement 
 which was received with " loud and continued applause," and this was 
 renewed even more heartily and unanimously when Mr. Seneca Hughes 
 submitted a resolution testifying "unabated confidence in the zeal, 
 ability, and judgment of Mr. Denison," and approving "his recent 
 efforts to promote retrenchment and economy." 
 
 The report published prior to this meeting had stated that, "to 
 avoid the immediate outlay of capital further northwards," an arrange- 
 ment had been made with the York and North Midland Company 
 " for the use of their line from Burton Salmon into York," and that 
 a communication had been received recently from Mr. Hudson, m.p., 
 the chairman of that Company, to the effect that the short connect- 
 ing fine from Knottingley to Burton Salmon was to be put in hand 
 and completed without delay. This meant, not only that the Great 
 Northern shareholders were to be saved from the necessity of finding 
 money for their own line from Askern to York, but that through 
 the York and North Midland they were to be admitted into the 
 East Coast alliance. Consequently, the announcement of it im- 
 mediately alarmed the Midland shareholders; and, on the other 
 hand, it came too late to protect the Railway King from the distrust 
 of his "York, Newcastle, and Berwick" subjects. On the contrary, 
 at their meeting at York, held a few days before that of the Great 
 Northern, they appointed a "committee of inquiry" into his conduct. 
 
 The inquiry did not proceed far before revelations were made 
 seriously compromising the Railway King. Thereupon the Eastern 
 Counties shareholders took alarm, and for their half-yearly meeting on 
 3 March, 1849, they assembled in a very rebellious spirit. The con- 
 sequence was that Mr. Hudson's name was received with hisses and 
 hoots (and his fidus Achates, Mr. Waddington, mobbed and jeered at) 
 by the very same meeting which only three and a half years before had 
 been " mad with joy " at his acceptance of their chairmanship Nor 
 was the end now far off. On 17 April, 1849, the Railway King 
 resigned the chair of the Midland Company, and by the middle of 
 May he had ceased to be at the head of every one of the railways 
 whose fortunes he had so long controlled. 
 
 On 9 April, 1849— Easter Monday- a further portion of the 
 
 1848-9 
 
 DISAPPOINTING TRAFFIC RETURNS 
 
 S3 
 
 Great Northern loop line was opened from Lincoln to Gainsborough, 
 making 125 miles of the Company's system open in all ; but, as almost 
 all of this was in the purely agricultural county of Lincolnshire, with no 
 outlet northwards except by ferry across the Humber, and only a 
 circuitous outlet southwards and westwards, the traffic remained 
 almost entirely local and consequently of small amount. During the 
 fifteen months from i March, 1848— the date of the first meeting — 
 to 30 June, 1849, ^ess than half a million passengers were carried 
 in all, but the receipt from these — ^^40,184 — was a large amount 
 compared with that from goods and merchandise in the same period, 
 which was ;£"i3,i68 only. Altogether the gross receipts (including 
 £a for " fines for smoking in the Company's carriages ") amounted 
 
 •■wH;^- 
 
 The First Station at Spalding, Lincolnshire. 
 
 From "The lUustrated London News." 
 
 to ^61,682, and from this no less than 57 J per cent, for working 
 expenses had to be deducted, so that the net revenue was not sufficient 
 to pay the guarantees to the East Lincolnshire and Witham and 
 Fossdyke Navigation lessors, much less to pay any interest on the 
 two millions of capital, or thereabouts, which the Company had sunk 
 in its opened lines. 
 
 This, of course, was, on the face of it, a very unsatisfactory result, 
 but Messrs. Denison and Baxter were able to put rather a better com- 
 plexion upon it in answer to shareholders' criticisms at the sixth 
 half-yearly meeting held on 11 August, 1849. 
 
 "You must not expect," said the latter gentleman, "that the 
 moment the line is opened the traffic will jump into your laps without 
 an effort. There must be months to develop the traffic— do not 
 judge of what it is to be by what it is when you have got a cul de 
 sac, open only at one end. When you have got your trunk line opened 
 —when you have got the entrance into Yorkshire from the Eastern 
 
y 
 
 84 
 
 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 Counties and Lincolnshire opened— you will find to your full satis- 
 faction that you have an ample return upon every sixpence of capital 
 laid out." 
 
 " Then why have we not got our trunk line opened instead of this 
 Lincolnshire line?" complained shareholders; and to this also Mr. 
 Baxter had what he described as " a perfect answer." " The London 
 end of the line," he said, " from the weight of the works could not be 
 made in less than three or four years ; the Lincolnshire line could be 
 made in eighteen months. If the directors had laid out a million 
 of capital on the towns line, and then had not got that towns line 
 into London, the capital thus sunk would have been bringing in 
 nothing for the next two years. They had therefore made the line 
 into Lincolnshire first ; and the Company was getting the traffic, such 
 as it was, from that in the meantime." 
 
 All this time Mr. Brassey had been pressing on with his contract 
 with full vigour; and to this meeting in August, 1849, Mr. Joseph 
 Cubitt was able to report that, of the nine and three-ciuarter million 
 cubic yards of earthwork, nearly three- fourths had been executed, 
 and more than one -third of the total length— 4503 yards— of 
 the seven tunnels. These, however, did not include the two short 
 tunnels immediately north of King's Cross, which had been reserved 
 for separate contract ; but in June, 1849, work on the more northern 
 of the two, the Copenhagen tunnel— so called because it was to pass 
 under the still open Copenhagen fields— was begun by Messrs. Pearce 
 and Smith, of Manchester, and a few weeks later yet a third contractor, 
 Mr. Jay, commenced operations between the southern end of this 
 and the Regent's Canal. The proposed tunnel for passenger traffic 
 under the canal had not yet been put in hand, nor had anything been 
 done at this date towards clearing the ground for the passenger ter- 
 minus between the canal and the old St. Pancras Road. But on these 
 the opening of the line into London was not dependent, since it had 
 been decided to erect a temporary passenger station at Maiden Lane 
 on the north bank of the canal adjoining the goods station. Never- 
 theless it had been evident to Mr. Cubitt, since the beginning of 1849, 
 that no opening at all would be possible till the autumn of 1850. 
 
 This accomplished, however, the Company, as Mr. Denison told 
 the shareholders at this August meeting, would have a line to work 
 over from London to York, which— ** loop line" though it was— would 
 be twelve and a half miles shorter than the established route via 
 Rugby, Derby, and Normanton, with gradients which on the average 
 would compare very favourably with those of the London-and-North- 
 Western- cum -Midland. But, on the other hand, jince the Trent 
 
 1849 INDEPENDENT ACCESS TO YORK ABANDONED 85 
 
 Valley line had been brought into use, the West Coast route between 
 London and Edinburgh had become nearly thirty miles shorter than 
 the East Coast ; and so, if the Great Northern were content merely 
 to supply a route to York equal to the present one via Derby, it 
 could not hope to compete on an equality with the London and North 
 Western for the Scotch traffic. But when the towns line was made 
 from Peterborough to Retford, the distances from King's Cross to 
 lulinburgh via Newcastle and from Euston to Edinburgh via Carlisle 
 would be practically identical, viz., 400 miles ; so for this and other 
 reasons the directors decided to put the towns line in hand without 
 further delay. Accordingly, in the early autumn of 1849 the section 
 of fifteen miles from Corby to Grantham, which included the long 
 "Stoke tunnel" and other heavy work, was let to Mr. Jackson, who 
 commenced operations before the end of the year. 
 
 This, however, did not fully satisfy a party among the shareholders 
 headed by Mr. Graham Hutchison, of Glasgow, These urged that the 
 section from Askern to York also should be at once put in hand, their 
 main argument being that this, with the towns line, would make the 
 East Coast distance to Edinburgh about three miles shorter than the 
 West Coast, and so secure to the former the carriage of the mails. 
 On the other hand the directors pointed out that of the Company's 
 potential capital, which with borrowing powers amounted to ^8,284,800 
 in all, nearly 5^ millions had already been spent, while there was a 
 further liability of ih million on existing contracts, so that about 
 ;^i, 200,000 only remained available, and of this a good part was 
 already " ear-marked " for provision of additional working stock and 
 other general expenses. Thus there could only be a small sum— less 
 than half a million probably— left for making the forty-four miles of 
 towns line still unlet, and, therefore, even if the Askern to York 
 section were abandoned, new capital powers would almost certainly 
 be required, while, if the independent line through to York were 
 litisisted with, as much as another million would probably be wanted, 
 all of which would in all likelihood have to be raised by the issue of 
 preference shares. Under these circumstances the shareholders at the 
 meeting on 28 February, 1850, rejected Mr. Hutchison's resolution, 
 though they debated the matter from 11 in the morning till 3.30 in the 
 afternoon, when the landlord of the London Tavern sent up word that 
 he had a large dinner at 4 o'clock and would be glad to be quit of them. 
 The revenue statement presented at this meeting was less unsatis- 
 factory than the preceding one, thanks to the fact that during the last 
 four months of 1849 the through communication between Lincolnshire 
 and Yorkshire had been at work. As the result of great exertions on 
 
h'' 
 
 I y 
 
 'H 
 
 86 
 
 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 the part of both engineers and contractors, the two sections of Une 
 necessary to complete this, namely, the Great Northern line from 
 Doncaster to Retford and the Manchester, Sheffield, and Lincoln Ime 
 from Clarborough, near Retford, to Sykes Junction, near Lincoln, had 
 been opened on 4 September, 1849, just in time for the Doncaster 
 Race Meeting ; and as the South Yorkshire Company's line from 
 Swinton to Doncaster -over which the Midland had secured running 
 powers— was opened at the same time great competition for the race- 
 going passengers took place. The Great Northern provided special 
 trains both from Peterborough and from Leeds, from which latter 
 place, as we already know, it had running powers over the Midland 
 to Methley and thence over the Lancashire and Yorkshire vtd 
 
 Doncaster Station on St. Leger Day, 1849. 
 
 From " The Illustrated London Newt" 
 
 Knottingley to Askern ; but some over-zealous officers of the former 
 Company took the high-handed action of pulling up the junction 
 rails at Methley to prevent these trains from running, and it was only 
 by producing their agreement with King Hudson and threatening legal 
 proceedings "that the Great Northern authorities got them replaced in 
 time. This done, however, the Company was able to profit consider- 
 ably by the race-going excursionists, and they and the passengers by 
 the regular service now given daily between Peterborough and Leeds 
 so far increased its revenue, that after the East Lincolnshire and 
 Royston and Hitchin guarantees and the Witham and Fossdyke 
 Navigations had been paid there remained a balance in hand of just 
 over ^10,000. This was the first profit earned by the Company, and 
 by vote of the shareholders in February. 1850, it was appropriated to 
 
 1849-50 
 
 THE FIRST PROFIT 
 
 pay the interest on the preference stock created in lieu of the forfeited 
 shares. At the same time the directors announced their intention 
 of ceasing to pay interest on the ordinary shares out of capital after 
 30 June, 1850. 
 
 At the beginning of 1850 the Company was working 143 miles of its 
 own and over more than fifty miles of " foreign " lines ; but the traffic 
 was still mainly of quite a local character, the coal business from 
 South Yorkshire having hardly begun, the goods traffic between the 
 West Riding and Lincolnshire being undeveloped, and the through 
 passengers requiring one fast train only each way per day, which 
 occupied 5^ hours in covering the distance between Peterborough and 
 
 One of the "Sharpies" Standing in Grantham Station. 
 
 From a photograph taken in 1858. 
 
 Leeds. For this traffic Mr. Bury, who since the resignation of Captain 
 Laws had been chief executive officer of the Company, had a stock of 
 about 100 engines, viz., the fifty standard passenger " singles " ordered by 
 his predecessor, Mr. Cubitt, from Messrs. Sharp and Company, and 
 commonly known as " Sharpies " ; twenty other similar engines of the 
 "single" class, but with driving-wheels 6 ft., instead of 5 ft. 6 in., in 
 diameter, built by Messrs. R. and W. Hawthorn ; fifteen four-wheel- 
 coupled goods engines, and some also with six wheels coupled, from 
 the same firm ; five " extraordinary -looking saddle tanks " on four 
 wheels with four-wheeled tenders, built by Mr. Bury's own firm, Messrs. 
 Bury, Curtis, and Kennedy ; and a few other goods engines of the 
 " four-coupled " class, built by the Vulcan Foundry Company for Messrs. 
 
/ 
 
 88 
 
 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 Peto, Betts, and Company for use on their contracts, and subsequently 
 sold to the Great Northern. 
 
 This stock did the work as yet required of it without difficulty 
 (though the development of the coal traffic from South Yorkshire 
 into Lincolnshire was beginning to put some strain upon it) ; but 
 it was obvious that the condition of things would be altered altogether 
 when the London to Peterborough section was brought into use. For 
 this would mean not only the working of seventy-six miles of new 
 line with gradients a good deal harder than any yet oj:>ened, but the 
 necessity of putting on through services of trains from lx)ndon to 
 Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, and the North of England generally, to 
 compete with the established and in some respects easier routes of the 
 London and North Western and Midland Companies. Then, too, 
 there was the opening into London of the heavy coal traffic to be 
 thought of. In short, it would be equivalent to the opening through- 
 out at one time of at least one hundred and fifty miles of line, and 
 this was a thing the like of which no railway company had ever before 
 attempted. All the existing lines had been opened piecemeal in 
 short lengths. The shareholders, however, had been promised that 
 the system should be open to London before they met again, and 
 Mr. Denison and his colleagues were determined they should not l^e 
 disappointed. 
 
 Obviously the principal desiderata were good engines and good men, 
 and the directors soon saw that to obtain these they must begin at 
 the top of their executive staff. Mr. Bury was a safe man, as his 
 long tenure of office under the London and Birmingham had proved ; 
 but he was not an enterprising one ; he commanded a very high salary, 
 and his double position as their servant and head of a firm they dealt 
 with was equivocal. So the directors decided to replace him by two 
 younger men whom they found in a more "up-to-date" school — the 
 school of Brunei and Gooch— namely, Mr. Seymour Clarke, who 
 was London traffic manager of the Great Western Railway, and 
 Mr. Archibald Sturrock, the same Company's works manager at 
 Swindon. Accordingly, Mr. Clarke became "general manager" of 
 the Great Northern, and Mr. Sturrock "locomotive superintendent," 
 in place of Mr. Bury resigned. 
 
 These appointments were not made until April and May, 1850; 
 so that the two men upon whom the main responsibility of working 
 the new trunk line from London to Yorkshire was mainly to devolve, 
 had barely three months in which to make preparations for their task. 
 Mr. Clarke .had to find competent staffs for seventeen new stations, 
 including the London terminus, to organize such offices as were 
 
 1850 
 
 THE OPENING FROM LONDON 
 
 89 
 
 immediately necessary at King's Cross, to provide horses, carts, and 
 omnibuses for "collection and delivery," and to attend to a thousand 
 other details of traffic management. Mr. Sturrock, meanwhile, was 
 overhauling the Company's rolling-stock as delivered or on order, 
 supplementing it by new orders to Messrs. R. B. Longridge and 
 Co. and E. B. Wilson and Co., endeavouring to obtain a sufficient 
 number of men for drivers and stokers at a time when, owing to 
 the rapid increase of the railway system, competent men of this 
 class were at a premium, and at the same time planning a new 
 type of engine in which the large heating surface and high steam 
 pressure, which up to this date had given Gooch's broad-gauge 
 "giants" the pre-eminence, might be obtained within the limits of 
 the 4 ft. 8iin. gauge without causing top-heaviness or making the 
 weight of the engine too great for the then standard type of perma- 
 nent way. 
 
 Meanwhile, the completion of the seventy-eight miles of line from 
 Werrington, near Peterborough, to Maiden Lane, London, was being 
 pushed forward with the utmost urgency by no less than four different 
 firms of contractors. From the junction of the loop at Werrington 
 to the south side of the River Nene at Peterborough the work had 
 in the previous autumn been placed in the hands of Messrs. Peto 
 and Betts, but during the winter it had been greatly hampered 
 by floods; so that this contract, which included a considerable 
 viaduct over the river and over the Eastern Counties and London 
 and North Western lines, required even greater haste than the far 
 larger undertaking of Mr. Brassey. On this latter the earthwork 
 both in the London tunnels and in the cuttings was practically 
 completed by May, 1850, but the great viaduct at Welwyn caused 
 some anxiety, as during several weeks in the winter all work upon 
 it had been stopped by frost, and the ballasting, too, was a source 
 of difficulty especially at the London end, where eventually in the 
 lack of better material simple burnt clay had to be used. The 
 tunnel under Copenhagen fields was, as already stated, in the hands 
 of Messrs. Pearce and Smith, who carried it through in good time, 
 but the work of excavation between the south end of the tunnel and 
 the temporary terminus, which Mr. Jay had in hand, was complicated 
 by the fact that the North London Company was at the same time 
 carrying its line from Willesden to the Docks over the same ground 
 by a viaduct, and the sudden collapse of an arch of this caused a 
 temporary "crisis " at this point. However, by the hearty co-operation 
 of all concerned, this and all other difficulties were surmounted ; by 
 the beginning of August, as Messrs. Denison and Cubitt had promised 
 
 !| 
 
 i 
 
1^ 
 
 90 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 in the preceding February, the line was ready for opening through- 
 out for passenger traffic; and at seven o'clock on the morning of 
 8 August, 1850, the first public train-a "Parliamentary" one- 
 started from the temporary station at Maiden Lane en route for 
 Peterborough, at which place it arrived in about two and a half 
 
 hours 
 
 The directors, characteristically, decided not to put the Company 
 to the expense of festivities to celebrate the opening, but they did 
 
 
 Collapse of the North London Viaduct near King's Cross. 
 
 From a rough sketch made oh the sfot. 
 
 not refuse an invitation which Mr. Brassey issued to them and to some 
 four hundred others, to take a trial trip on the line on 5 August- 
 three days before the public working began. The train, which con- 
 sisted of two engines and seventeen carriages, left the temporary 
 station at Maiden I^ne about 9 a.m., and it arrived at Peterborough 
 about 1.30 p.m., an intermediate stop of nearly an hour having been 
 made at Welwyn to allow the party to descend to the valley and 
 view the viaduct from below. Stops were also made at all the 
 principal stations, at many of which cheers were raised by the 
 assembled inhabitants. At Peterborough the invited guests "sat 
 down to a very elegant repast" provided by Mr. Brassey, at which 
 
 1850 
 
 EXIT THE RAILWAY KING 
 
 9' 
 
 speeches were made by the host, Mr. Denison, Mr. Cubitt, and 
 others. On the return journey the train, which Mr. Sturrock was 
 driving, had a narrow escape of running into a ballast engine ; where- 
 upon Mr. Denison, who was on the engine, turned to Mr. Brassey, 
 who was there also, and gave him — host though he was — a sharp 
 reprimand for not having suspended all work during the trip. 
 
 Meantime the coal traffic from South Yorks to Lincolnshire had 
 become fairly established (the Company having supplied 2000 waggons 
 for the purpose) ; but the arrangements at King's Cross and other 
 stations were not at first sufficiently complete to allow of either this 
 or even the general goods traffic being extended to London, and even 
 the passenger had during August to be confined to a small number 
 of slow trains, the best of which occupied two and a half hours in 
 covering the seventy-six miles of new line. Nevertheless, a goodly 
 number of through passengers began to use the new route from the 
 first, and on 17 August— only nine days after the opening — George 
 Hudson was observed to take his seat in a first-class compartment 
 at Maiden Lane as an ordinary traveller en route for Leeds. Here was 
 Nemesis indeed ! It was as if Jack's giant in the fairy story, instead 
 of being killed outright, had shrunk to common size, and then used 
 Jack's beanstalk to come down to live with men. The George Hudson 
 who surveyed from the windows of that Great Northern carriage the 
 monarchy that had been his, was now merely inagtii nominis umbra ; 
 and, as with a few words in praise of the excellence of the journey 
 he left the station at Leeds, he passed also out of the history of British 
 railways. 
 
 A VIEW OF THE "TRIAL TRII'," 5 AUGUST, 1850. 
 From •• The Illustrate. i London News." 
 
 \^ 
 
 \ 
 
i 
 
 f 
 
 \\i 
 
 CHAPTER Vll. 
 
 THE FIGHT WITH THE CONFEDERACY— THE BATTLE OF 
 THE EXHIBITION YEAR— 1850-51. 
 
 THE opening of the Great Northern Railway from London 
 completed two distinct through routes for traffic between the 
 Metropolis and all the more important producing grounds, manu- 
 facturing districts, and ports of the kingdom, and so may be said to 
 have inaugurated a new era in the history of British railways, by 
 making the competition between companies, which prior to this date 
 had found vent mainly in the Committee-rooms of Parliament, a 
 principal factor in the actual working of the lines. That this should 
 happen sooner or later was, of course, an inevitable result of the 
 policy of Parliament, which, without declaring definitely in favour of a 
 competitive system, had never taken any effectual measures to confine 
 companies to separate territories ; but prior to the opening of the Great 
 Northern such competition in working had arisen on a small scale only, 
 and so had been susceptible of speedy extinction. Thus, the first " rate 
 war" in British railway history, that between the Midland Counties 
 and Birmingham and Derby companies, had been put an end to, as 
 we have seen, by the amalgamation of the two into the Midland in 
 1844; and a little later, when the Midland itself with the Manchester 
 and Leeds had begun to compete with the Grand Junction for through 
 traffic between I^ncashire and London, it had been found readily 
 possible to arrange a percentage division of the gross receipts — the 
 first "pool," probably, in railway history — under which the develop- 
 ment of business by both routes became the common interest of all 
 three companies. 
 
 Though rendered precarious when the Manchester and Sheffield 
 line had been opened throughout in November, 1845, this "pooling" 
 arrangement had been maintained for four years after that date, a 
 result which must be credited to the energy of Captain Huish, the 
 very able general manager, first of the Grand Junction and after- 
 wards of the whole London and North Western Company, who had 
 
 92 
 
 f 'I 
 
 1850 
 
 FORMATION OF THE CONFEDERACY 
 
 93 
 
 succeeded in conjunction with the Midland and Lancashire and 
 Yorkshire authorities in shutting out the Sheffield Company from all 
 through traffic for that period. In 1849, however, the East Lancashire, 
 North Staffordshire, and other new lines important as links in through 
 routes had been completed, and early in the following year the 
 Manchester, Sheffield, and Lincolnshire directors had engaged Mr. 
 James Allport as general manager of their railway with the special 
 view of his using the experience which he had gained on the Y^ork, 
 Newcastle, and Berwick to break down the barriers which had been 
 formed around it. Thus in 1850, a re-adjustment had become in- 
 evitable even before the great railway event of that year, the Great 
 Northern opening from London, had actually taken place. 
 
 That such new arrangements, however, could not be securely based 
 except on a recognition of the equality of King's Cross with Euston 
 Scjuare as a terminus for all North of England traffic, was too high 
 a conception for the London and North Western authorities to rise 
 to thus early. They saw only that the monopoly which they had 
 enjoyed for more than a decade was in peril, but they still hoped that 
 by diplomacy they might preserve a great part of it. The policy which 
 they had entered upon for this purpose was to draw the principal 
 provincial companies of northern England into a confederacy with 
 them — a close confederacy, with Euston Square as its base, bound to 
 promote each other's interests, and to block the Great Northern. 
 
 Two of the most important provincial companies, the Midland and 
 Lancashire and Yorkshire, were already, as has just been said, in partial 
 alliance with Euston Square, and, therefore, to make this alliance a 
 closer one had not been a difficult task. Had the Midland carried 
 out the powers it had obtained in 1847 for a southern extension from 
 Leicester to Hitchin, King's Cross would have offered itself as at least 
 an alternative London terminus for its traffic ; but under the pressure 
 of the financial crisis of 1848 these powers had been allowed to lapse. 
 Originally, as we know, its main business had been to carry on the 
 London and Birmingham traffic north-eastwards from Rugby, and now, 
 bereft of the man whose genius had given its system for a time a wider 
 power, and yet burdened with a most costly offspring of its union with 
 him, the 10 per cent. Leeds and Bradford guarantee, it had been only 
 too glad to return to the Euston Square protectorate, like a deserted 
 wife returning to the parental roof. " Euston Square holds the strings; 
 the Midland, I regret to say, has no independent existence " ; this was 
 the language in which Mr. Denison now described the position of the 
 Company which only five years before— when George of York was king 
 — had seemed to be the most powerful and prosperous in the kingdom. 
 
 If, 
 

 I 
 
 94 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 Almost as striking as the fall of the Midland had been the rise-in 
 political importance, not in financial prosperity-of the Manchester, 
 Sheffield and Lincolnshire. To this Company, as we already know, 
 the Great Northern directors had had to go, caps in hand, in 1848, to 
 beg for the use of its Lincoln branch as a link in their through route 
 to the north- a link all-important so long as the towns line was in 
 abeyance; and now, in 1849-50, attention had been forcibly drawn 
 to another fact, the recognition of which had at once exaUed the 
 Manchester, Sheffield, and Lincolnshire into first-class importance in 
 inter-railway politics, namely, that if the Great Northern, when it opened 
 from London, were to join hands with the Sheffield at Retford, a 
 second route might be established between the Metropolis and Man- 
 chester, almost as short as the London and North Western main line. 
 This had meant that the allegiance of the Sheffield Company was a 
 sine qua non of a combination to block the Great Northern in the 
 interests of Euston Square, and so it had become necessary for Captain 
 Huish to execute a complete volte-face in his attitude to this formerly 
 despised Company, and to make every effort to convince its new 
 manager, Mr. Allport, that the friendship of the London and North 
 Western Midland, and Lancashire and Yorkshire, would be of more 
 value to his Company than any alliance with the Great Northern 
 
 could be. r 1 I 
 
 That in these efforts Captain Huish was successful must be 
 attributed partly to his great skill in diplomacy-in which quality he 
 probably excelled any English railway manager yet known except, 
 perhaps, his pupil, Mr. (now Sir) Edward Watkin-and pardy to the 
 fact that he was in a position to confer immediate benefits upon the 
 Sheffield, whereas the advantages of an alliance with the not yet 
 established Great Northern were all in the future. In the light of 
 subsequent events it is natural to wonder why the attractions of a 
 partnership between the Sheffield and Great Northern companies for 
 London and Lancashire traffic did not appeal more strongly to a 
 manager so shrewd as Mr. Allport ; but when we remember that such 
 a partnership could not have been made properly effective till the 
 Great Northern had got its London terminus and its towns hne 
 completed-which, as we shall see, was not accomplished until the end 
 of 1852— and that it would have been at once exposed to the fiercest 
 antagonism of the already firmly-established Euston Square confed- 
 erates we cease to marvel that Mr. Allport and his directors preferred 
 to forego north and south traffic altogether in favour of the assistance 
 which Captain Huish promised them towards the development of their 
 undertaking in what seemed its more legitimate vocation as an east to 
 
 1^50 
 
 ITS OBSTRUCTIVE TACTICS 
 
 95 
 
 west line. The execution of these promises involved some sacrifices 
 on the part of the Midland and Lancashire and Yorkshire companies, 
 which had to consent, for example, to the Manchester, Sheffield, and 
 Lincolnshire being given a monopoly of the Hull traffic ; but this 
 consent was obtained under pressure from Euston Square. The result 
 was that in the spring of 1850 Lord Yarborough, the Sheffield chairman, 
 despite the fact that he had once been, as the reader may remember, a 
 " London and York " man, was persuaded by Mr. Allport to sign a 
 treaty which bound his Company as a member of " the Euston Square 
 confederacy," as the anti-Great Northern alliance was soon nicknamed, 
 for a term of seven years. Consequently, the Great Northern, while 
 still a provincial Company only, found itself harassed by its late ally in 
 a variety of ways. Thus, by Mr. Allport's instruction, the station 
 authorities at Retford refused to continue to supply water there to the 
 (ireat Northern engines, and so the through service between Peter- 
 borough and Leeds was hampered ; w^hile, at the same time, at Grimsby, 
 blocks were placed across the rails so as to prevent the Great Northern 
 from using the running powers which the Sheffield directors had 
 granted it under the agreement of 1848, to carry on its through service 
 to Holland, for Hull. Moreover, on one occasion at least, when the 
 Great Northern passengers did at last reach the Humber ferry, they 
 found that the last boat had been purposely sent away without them, 
 and so had to spend the night in the railway carriages or on sofas at 
 the station. Nor did a suit which the Great Northern instituted in the 
 Court of Chancery have the effect of putting an end to these obstructive 
 proceedings. 
 
 Meanwhile the Euston Square authorities pushed their " protec- 
 tionist" policy so far as to endeavour to bring the North British 
 Company into the "confederacy," so that the Great Northern might 
 be shut out from Scotch traffic; and it therefore became of the 
 utmost importance to the latter to make sure of its access to York 
 and the places beyond. Fortunately its running powers over the 
 Lancashire and Yorkshire line from Askern to Knottingley had been 
 secured under a sealed agreement — had this not been so Euston 
 Square influence might have brought about their discontinuance — and 
 fortunately, too, the York and North Midland directors kept faith as to 
 making the link line from Burton Salmon to Knottingley, which was 
 completed in June, 1850. All, therefore, that now needed to be 
 done was to convert into a formal compact the draft agreement which 
 Captain Laws had made with King Hudson as to the Great Northern's 
 access to York by this route. The Great Northern, of course, still 
 had powers available for a line of its own from Askern to York, and 
 
96 
 
 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 a party of north-country shareholders now again came forward to urge 
 that the Company should even yet make this section of its original 
 plan, and so render itself independent as far as York. But, as 
 Mr. Alderman Meek, of York, and other Great Northern directors 
 pointed out, independence as far as York could be of small service 
 unless it meant also connection with the line further northwards, and 
 this line — the York, Newcastle, and Berwick — shared a station with 
 the York and North Midland. It was far better to give up their inde- 
 pendent powers if by so doing they could make the established York 
 companies their friends. This argument prevailed, and the result was 
 that a new treaty between the Great Northern and York and North 
 Midland was signed in the summer of 1850, under which the latter 
 gave the use of its line into, and station at, York on favourable terms, 
 on the understanding that the Great Northern, so long as the agree- 
 ment was faithfully observed, would not take any steps to make a line 
 or station of its own. Thus it came about that an " end-on " junction 
 at Askern — " in a ploughed field four miles north of Doncaster," to 
 quote a phrase attributed to Mr. Denison — became the northern 
 terminus of the railway which, as we know, was for three years fought 
 over and talked about as " the London and York." 
 
 The objections to this arrangement, however, were chiefly senti- 
 mental, while its advantages were substantial ; for by it, as its directors 
 had hoped, the Great Northern secured the friendship not only of the 
 York and North Midland, but of the York, Newcastle, and Benvick, and 
 the North British, the latter of which had meanwhile resisted Captain 
 Huish's wiles. The result was that in September, 1850— the first month 
 in which the passenger services were properly organized from King's 
 Cross — a through connection with Edinburgh was arranged by which 
 first-class passengers were enabled to perform the whole journey in 
 twelve hours, the same time as by the West Coast route, and about 
 half an hour better than by the old— or, as it now came to be called, 
 the " alternative " — East Coast route via Rugby and Derby. 
 
 But north of Edinburgh no through connections with King's Cross 
 could be arranged in 1850, because the Edinburgh and Glasgow 
 Company, which held the key not only to Glasgow, but to Perth and 
 Aberdeen, had been sworn in to the Euston Square Confederacy. 
 Similarly the Lancashire and Yorkshire and Midland companies 
 refused all facilities for exchange of traffic at Leeds and Wakefield, 
 although, as far as mileage went, the best route between the Metropolis 
 and Bradford and other important places in West Yorkshire was over 
 the Great Northern. In the same way the Manchester, Sheffield, and 
 L icolnshire Company declined to arrange any excliange at Retford 
 
 1850 IMMEDIATE PUBLIC BENEFIT FROM G.N.R. 97 
 
 of Sheffield, Huddersfield, or Manchester traffic, while at Grimsby it 
 continued to obstruct, as much as it dared, the Great Northern traffic 
 with Hull. Even the Eastern Counties Company— though it had 
 little either to fear or gain from Euston Square —was induced to 
 prefer, for such traffic as it had to send to or receive from the north, 
 the old Midland route from Peterborough via Syston to the new and 
 much more direct route of the Great Northern ; and besides this, its 
 directors, anxious to protect their own territory, delayed carrying out 
 their undertaking to make the link line from Cambridge to join the 
 Royston and Hitchin and Shepreth, so that the latter, which had 
 been opened by the Great Northern in March, 1850, could be worked 
 merely as an agricultural branch. 
 
 Thus during the first months of its operations as a London 
 railway the Great Northern was restricted, except between York and 
 Edinburgh, to traffic which it could carry throughout on its own 
 trains; and moreover it was not until about Christmas, 1850, that 
 the station arrangements were sufficiently complete to allow of goods 
 trains being run on the Peterborough to London section. On the 
 other hand, to all the important places except Edinburgh, to which it 
 could book passengers, its route was considerably shorter than the routes 
 from Euston or Shoreditch, the distance saved in the case of York, 
 Newcastle, etc., being nine miles, and in the case of Lincoln and 
 Peterborough no less than thirty miles ; and this meant that, though 
 the Great Northern charged its Parliamentary maxima, the established 
 companies had to reduce their fares not only at the actually competitive 
 points but at all intermediate places. Under the infection of the "mania," 
 the London and York promoters had adopted, in their original Bill, a 
 very low scale of maxima, but, fortunately for the old companies, they 
 had just obtained, in the session of 1850, an Amendment Act empower- 
 mg them to charge more, *'in view," to quote its preamble, "of the 
 generally acknowledged fact that the calculations of railway profits 
 made in 1845-6 were erroneous." Nevertheless the reductions which 
 had to be made on the old routes were considerable, and for making 
 them the directors of the companies owning them took great credit to 
 themselves. But, as Mr. Denison said, the Great Northern had not the 
 slightest objection to other companies following its example of " charging 
 its maxima and taking its chance " ; and the credit (if any was due) 
 belonged to the new comer, which might from the outset have employed 
 the weapon of rate-reductions to break down the barriers which had 
 been raised against the development of its legitimate through traffic. 
 
 As it was, however, an agreement to charge equal fares to points 
 between which competition had already begun preserved a sort of 
 
98 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 jjeace until the end of 1850, and in the meantime negotiations were 
 set on foot for a permanent settlement to prevent what was loosely 
 called "ruinous competition.*' For this two alternative plans pre- 
 sented themselves, namely, division of territory, or division of gross 
 receipts ; but the former was obviously incompatible with the powers 
 already granted by Parliament to the various companies, and so the 
 latter — the "pooling" proposition, to give it its modern name — 
 practically held the field from the first. The advantages claimed 
 for it were that it would remove temptations to " rate-cutting "—to 
 again make use of a convenient modern term— and obviate the 
 necessity of running what were styled "duplicate trains," i.e., trains 
 working between the same points by different routes. These were 
 consummations so devoutly wished for that, as an abstract principle, 
 " pooling " was assented to on all sides. 
 
 But it was much easier to agree to the principle than to carry it 
 into practice, and the negotiations for this did not get far before it 
 became evident that there was still an essential difference of opinion 
 between the two parties. The confederate companies argued that the 
 Great Northern was entitled to share in that traffic only to carry which 
 it had already effective arrangements, whereas the new comer asserted 
 its right to a portion of all traffic for which its lines formed part of a 
 reasonably good route. In other words, the Euston Square party 
 wanted to stereotype the "protectionist" state of things which their 
 treaties had brought about by arranging a division for a term of years 
 on the basis of the traffic as then carried, whereas to the Great 
 Northern, a not yet properly established Company, such a basis of 
 division was obviously unjust. 
 
 In short, however much the Great Northern might favour " pooling " 
 in theory, it could not in justice to itself assent to it in practice, except 
 on condition that due credit was given to it for all reasonable routes 
 available without regard to the barriers which, under Euston Square 
 influence, certain of the provincial companies had raised against it ; 
 and that this was the only really sound position which his Company 
 could take up, Mr. Denison— clear sighted man that he was— seems 
 to have grasped from the first. But the entire novelty and intricacy 
 of the problem seems to have baffled some of his colleagues and Mr. 
 Seymour Clarke, the general manager; and even Mr. Denison was 
 not strong enough to hold to the right principle quite consistently 
 in face of the tremendous pressure brought to bear to dislodge him 
 from it. " Ruinous competition " was the bugbear of railway share- 
 holders at this time; an agreement to divide traffic seemed the only 
 safeguard available; and to withstand the drift of general opinion 
 
 1851 G.N. CONCESSIONS "FOR PEACE AND QUIETNESS" 99 
 
 in such a matter was too hard a task for a single man. Thus it came 
 about that, when in the autumn of 1850 a proposal was drawn up 
 to divide the traffic between London and the places north of York 
 between eight companies, viz., the London and North Western 
 Lancaster and Cariisle, Caledonian, North British, York, Newcastle 
 and Berwick, York and North Midland, Midland, and Great Northern 
 Mr. Denison found himself practically obliged to assent to it, though it 
 gave the Great Northern no share at all of the traffic with Glasgow 
 Perth, or Aberdeen, and what he considered a very inadequate share of 
 the traffic with Edinburgh, Berwick, Newcastle, etc. "I am bound 
 to say," he said in reporting this " Octuple Agreement " to his share- 
 holders in March, 1851, "that unless I put very great value upon 
 peace, harmony, and quietness, I should not have made such con- 
 cessions-for concessions they are-because I am thoroughly convinced 
 that unless there were great efforts made to divert the traffic from your 
 line, your line would get a larger proportion of that traffic than I have 
 consented should be taken. But I was apprehensive of the conse- 
 quences of a severe contest, and therefore I made these concessions " 
 The agreement, however, was limited, mainly by the Great Northern 
 influence, to five years. 
 
 But "peace, harmony, and quietness" between the rival railway 
 companies was specially wanted at the beginning of 185 1 in view of the 
 heavy excursion traffic which was expected in connection with the Great 
 Exhibition to be opened in London on i May of that year; and so the 
 Great Northern directors, after consenting to the " Octuple Agreement " 
 for traffic north of York, made a further departure from the negative 
 attitude towards "pooling," to which, as we have said, they ought in 
 strict justice to have adhered, by themselves suggesting, in February, 
 i»5', a similar agreement as to the traffic south of York This 
 however, they thought it might be possible to limit to such traffic 
 ^ both routes were already actively competing for, and accordingly 
 they named six towns-York, Leeds, Wakefield, Sheffield, Doncaster 
 and Lincoln-the traffic between which and London they were willing 
 to divide. At the same time they named the percentages to which 
 in their opinion the Great Northern route was entitled. The con- 
 federates in reply objected to these percentages, naming others instead 
 which were equally unacceptable to the Great Northern ; and so as 
 a private settlement seemed unattainable, arbitration was suggested 
 and the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone was chosen as arbitrator "He 
 has been at the head of the Board of Trade," said Mr. Denison, "and 
 IS as highly intelligent and as honourable a man as can be found " 
 In accepting this proposal and agreeing to the arbitration the con- 
 

 lOO 
 
 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 federate directors must have been fully aware that the Great Northern 
 intended to limit it strictly to the six towns they had named. Never- 
 theless, the preparation of the reference to Mr. Gladstone had not 
 proceeded far before their representatives took alarm at a casual remark 
 which Mr. Seymour Clarke, the Great Northern general manager, let 
 fall, that for Bradford and other towns not included in the reference 
 the Great Northern still held itself free to charge what fare it liked. 
 This, indeed, was consistent with the attitude which the Great Northern 
 had taken up at first, when they had said that so long as for Bradford 
 and similar places the confederates " blocked " their traffic, they must 
 retain in self-defence full freedom of competition ; but as we have 
 said, their subsequent consent to " pool," if only to a limited extent, 
 was a departure from this originally strict attitude ; and so there was a 
 good deal of force in the contention which the confederates now raised 
 that if the Great Northern retained its freedom in the case of Bradford, 
 the agreement not to compete for the six towns' traffic would be " futile 
 and inoperative." This being repeated before Mr. Gladstone, he 
 judiciously refused to proceed with the arbitration until both sides were 
 agreed that a substantial result was to be expected from it. Thus the 
 matter was brought to a standstill. 
 
 At the ninth half-yearly meeting, held at the London Tavern on 
 6 March, 185 1, no dividend could yet be declared on the ordinary 
 shares, but Mr. Denison was able to give a satisfactory report of the 
 progress of business. 
 
 *'The opening of the line from Peterborough to London," he said, 
 *• has not only added weekly receipts for that portion of the line, but 
 (to my surprise, I confess) has increased materially the average weekly 
 receipts of all the northern part. Whereas the northern end of the 
 line which was first opened produced about £20 or ^£21 per mile per 
 week, when the seventy-six miles of line were opened from Peter- 
 borough to London, it not only maintained its own ^20 per mile 
 per week, but had the effect of raising the average of the whole 
 mileage to nearly ^30, and from that to £za, or £i(i, showing that, 
 although the London end has undoubtedly been very expensive to 
 make — as you all knew and expected it would be— in five years from 
 this time it will pay you better for the outlay than any other part of the 
 railway. Therefore, I once more congratulate you that the gentlemen 
 who divided the Committee in the House of Commons whether the 
 London end should not have been struck off, were not successful." 
 
 The new through traffic developed by the opening into London, 
 however, was not the only factor in this improvement of revenue. The 
 coal traffic, although not yet open to the Metropolis, was already 
 
 1851 
 
 DIFFICULTIES IN SOUTH YORKSHIRE 
 
 lOI 
 
 yielding about ;£'i,2oo a week, and it appeared "likely" — the directors 
 reported — " to be a source of great and permanent income," provided 
 that " economical " arrangements could be made in the principal coal- 
 field — that of South Yorkshire. To this end it was necessary, they 
 added, to " free it from the embarrassments occasioned by the inter- 
 position of an independent company." 
 
 The terms first arranged for the conduct of the coal traffic from 
 South Yorkshire to the Great Northern system had been that the Great 
 Northern should supply the waggons and engines, and that the South 
 Yorkshire Company should receive the ordinary mileage toll for the 
 use of its line, viz., two-thirds of the gross receipts, and these terms had 
 been embodied with other matters in a " working agreement " between 
 the two companies dated September, 1849. But it is rather difficult 
 to understand why the South Yorkshire directors then agreed to 
 this, for very soon afterwards they began to make it the subject of 
 complaint. The Great Northern maximum toll for coal traffic, it will 
 be remembered, had been fixed at \d. per ton per mile ; and so long 
 as the joint traffic had yielded this, the South Yorkshire had really 
 had no grievance, because the two-thirds of it which they got— |^. per 
 ton per mile — was the full amount they themselves were authorized to 
 charge for the mere use of their line. But when the trade began to 
 develop beyond Lincolnshire to more distant and more competitive 
 markets, and particularly when the opening of it into London came 
 to be considered, it became evident that less than the maximum of 
 \d. a mile must be charged — that, indeed, \d. a mile or even less was 
 all that "the traffic would bear," to use a modern phrase, if the 
 competition of the sea-borne coal from Newcastle was to be fairly 
 met. And, although to the Great Northern with its "long lead" of 154 
 miles from Doncaster to London, this \d. per mile was expected to be 
 a quite profitable rate, to the South Yorkshire, with its " short haul " of 
 about sixteen miles only, it promised little margin for profit. Besides 
 this, many of the directors and large shareholders of the South York- 
 shire were coalowners also ; and, when in this capacity they considered 
 the London trade proposed by the Great Northern, they saw that it 
 would mean a highly competitive and therefore low price for the coal — 
 a price not so good perhaps as might be obtained in the nearer markets 
 with which the Midland and Sheffield Companies could bring them in 
 touch. There was a double reason, therefore, why the satisfaction of 
 the South Yorkshiremen with their joint traffic with the Great Northern 
 had begun to cool down, and why they now showed little zeal in 
 seconding the latter's efforts to set going the London trade. 
 
 But on developing this London trade Mr. Baxter had set his 
 
 •\ 
 
 • 
 
I02 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 heart ; and since his position as solicitor to both companies gave him 
 unique influence, a remedy for the difficulties that had arisen was 
 soon devised. This was that the Great Northern should take 
 permanent possession of the South Yorkshire line by guaranteeing 
 a certain fixed dividend to its shareholders. Of course, there was 
 much haggling as to terms, but at last it was agreed that the dividend 
 should begin at 3 per cent., for which the Great Northern was 
 to be entitled to carry 200,000 tons of coal— the then extent of the 
 traffic— and should be increased by J per cent, upon every additional 
 100,000 tons carried until 800,000 tons should be carried and 6 per 
 cent, paid, after which any further quantity was to be carried without 
 additional charge; when, however, the dividend had once reached 
 4J per cent, it was not to recede therefrom. This agreement was 
 signed by the chairmen of the two companies, Mr. Denison and Lord 
 Wharncliffe, in February, 185 1, and in the following month it was 
 recommended to the shareholders of both for adoption at their half- 
 yearly meetings. 
 
 Of course these terms were much more favourable to the South 
 Yorkshire shareholders than was the working agreement of 1849. 
 Nevertheless the shareholders of the little Company were not satis- 
 fied. As already explained, most of them had to consider not only 
 their interest in the railway but their larger interest as coalowners, 
 and they were shrewd enough to see that if they gave the Great 
 Northern the power to force their coal— in the interests of its " long 
 haul" from Doncaster into London— into a market which was not 
 naturally a profitable one, they might lose a good deal more in this 
 way than they would gain by the interest on their railway shares. 
 Moreover, there was talk of their getting as good terms of amalgama- 
 tion from the Midland or the Sheffield companies. So, while the 
 Great Northern meeting approved the arrangement, the South York- 
 shiremen, when called together for the purpose, showed a great 
 reluctance in the matter ; until at last Mr. Denison, who had never been 
 properly converted to his friend Mr. Baxter's faith in the London coal 
 trade, and held that the Great Northern was offering very generous terms 
 for a by no means certain benefit, had some difficulty in controlling 
 his temper. " I remember," he said afterwards, " that in consequence 
 of some remarks being made to me, I used an expression not very 
 classical, I am ready to admit. It was a very bad day, and like 
 other people I had worn a bad hat. The hat was standing before 
 me, and I said: *I don't care that hat whether you accept the 
 terms or not.'" 
 
 Meanwhile, however, a modus vivendi had been arranged between 
 
 1851 OPENING OF COAL TRAFFIC INTO LONDON 103 
 
 the general managers of the two companies by which the South 
 Yorkshire was to receive \od. per ton as its share of the through rate ; 
 and under this arrangement, in the spring of 185 1, the coal traffic into 
 London was, at last, actually commenced, four large groups of coal 
 stores having been erected in the goods yard at King's Cross for 
 its reception. About a year previously the London and North 
 Western authorities had set up a coal depot at Camden, to which they 
 were bringing consignments from the Wigan field ; but compared with 
 the extensive arrangements at King's Cross this was a small affair; 
 and so it may fairly be claimed for the Great Northern that it was 
 the first railway company, not only to project, but to carry out the 
 supply of coal to London on a large scale. Moreover, the Company 
 acted at first not only as carrier, but as coal merchant also, buying the 
 coal from the collieries, selling it to the public, and retaining the 
 balance. As may be supposed, the competition with the sea-borne 
 trade was at first very keen, and under its influence the price to the 
 Metropolitan consumer, which a few years before had averaged 305. 
 per ton, soon fell as low as i "js. 
 
 Meanwhile, in the matter of the reference to Mr. Gladstone as to 
 the "pooling" of competitive passenger and goods traffic, nothing 
 was done up to the end of June, though on the ist of July the 
 cheap excursions for the Exhibition were to commence. For this, 
 however, at the eleventh hour, a temporary agreement to charge equal 
 fares was patched up, and for about a fortnight a crisis was staved off. 
 But then the competition of very cheap fares by sea from Hull led 
 to an unauthorized reduction by a local agent of one of the companies, 
 and this was all that was needed to stir their long-smouldering rivalry 
 into a blaze. Reduction followed reduction; the return fare from 
 places in the West Riding of Yorkshire to London fell first to 15.?., 
 then to loj., and then to 5^., and it would probably not have stopped 
 even at that figure had not the Great Northern excursion agent at 
 Leeds put out a notice that whatever fare the London and North 
 Western and Midland Companies might charge, the Great Northern 
 would carry passengers for dd. less. At Sheffield, too, the London 
 return fare also fell to 5X. ; but after a week or two the King's Cross 
 authorities discovered that they were liable to pay more than this sum 
 per passenger for the use of the Manchester, Sheffield, and Lincoln- 
 shire line between Sheffield and Retford, and so were actually losing 
 money upon every person they carried. Thereupon they discreetly 
 withdrew from the competition. 
 
 Severe as it was, however, the competition on the whole was not 
 so "ruinous" financially as had been expected beforehand, because 
 
104 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 the greater number who travelled made up, to a large extent, for the 
 very low fares they paid ; but this addition to the traffic, which in any 
 case would have been abnormally large, put a very serious strain upon 
 the resources of the companies. In the matter of locomotive power, 
 however, the Great Northern was, fortunately, well prepared. 
 
 We have already noted that Mr. Sturrock had commenced his tenure 
 of office by giving orders for additional engines to two new firms not 
 previously employed by the Company— Messrs. E. B. Wilson and Co., of 
 Leeds, and Messrs. R. B. Longridge and Co. The former had almost 
 immediately supplied two of their well-known "Jenny Lind" type of 
 " singles," with driving-wheels six feet in diameter and inside cylinders 
 1 6 in. by 22 in., and now they were busy completing the delivery of 
 fifteen others of a new class of four- wheel -coupled engines specially 
 designed by Mr. Sturrock in accordance with his plan already men- 
 tioned of adopting upon the narrow gauge the large heating surface 
 and consequent high steam pressure which he had seen introduced with 
 so much success by Mr. Gooch upon the Great Western. Accordingly 
 he had designed these new " four-wheel-coupleds " to have a grate area 
 of 13-2 square feet, a fire-box heating surface of 102 square feet, and a 
 steam pressure of 150. As to the ten express passenger engines 
 delivered to the Company about this same time by Messrs. Longridge, 
 they were built upon the patent which Mr. T. R. Crampton had 
 designed in 1843 for obtaining a large driving - wheel with a low 
 centre-line of boiler. Accordingly they had the largest ''drivers" 
 of any engines yet in use upon the Great Northern, viz., 6' 6" in 
 diameter. 
 
 In the matter of signals the Great Northern was more fully equipped 
 than other lines at this date— that is to say, it had fixed signals not 
 only at the stations but in advance of them ; but unfortunately its 
 engineers had not yet found time to put up the electric telegraph ; and 
 this was a deficiency which even in these primitive days was severely 
 felt. On the London and North Western the whole of the special 
 exhibition traffic was organized by the aid of the telegraph, word being 
 sent by it to Euston every morning as to what trains were to be 
 despatched from each of the provincial termini, and a daily time-table 
 was at once got out. But on the Great Northern, without the telegraph, 
 nothing of this sort was possible; the officials at King's Cross were always 
 uncertain as to how many trains might be on the road, and at Boston— 
 where the locomotive headquarters had been temporarily located—Mr. 
 Sturrock was often similarly in the dark. Under these conditions fi.xed 
 signals could be of little service ; the only effective safeguards were a 
 good look-out ahead, steady but tiot fast running, and locomotives 
 
 i 
 
 1851 THE QUEEN'S FIRST JOURNEY BY G.N.R. 105 
 
 which could draw heavy loads without breaking down. It was, there- 
 fore, very fortunate that in this latter particular both the new class 
 of "four-wheel-coupleds" and the " Cramptons " proved quite 
 satisfactory. 
 
 Besides steady, punctual running and immunity from serious accidents, 
 there was another good quality which speedily gave pre-eminence to the 
 Great Northern passenger service. This was the great civility and 
 attention which Mr. Seymour Clarke enforced amongst the members of 
 the working staff. As Mr. Denison put it in one of his half-yearly 
 speeches, " Formerly when the London and Birmingham and Midland 
 lines were opened, people were almost obliged to go down on their 
 knees to be allowed to enter a carriage. Now directors and managers 
 have to make a most civil and respectful bow to parties to coax them to 
 go " ; and this civility and respect pleased the public. The result was 
 that the Great Northern soon began to be talked of as "the favourite 
 line to the north," despite the circuit which, pending the completion of 
 the " towns line " (from Peterborough to Retford), the trains had to 
 make via Boston and Lincoln, and in August, 185 1, the Queen and 
 Prince Albert set a seal upon its rapidly-acquired reputation by choosing 
 it as their route to Scotland. By Her Majesty's special instructions 
 a slow rate of travelling was maintained on this trip, but absolutely 
 punctual time was kept, and upon reaching York the Queen expressed 
 cordial satisfaction with her journey. 
 
 Following upon the Queen's departure from town came a great rush 
 of country excursionists to return home, and on the next Saturday 
 morning the temporary terminus at Maiden Une was flooded with a 
 crowd of no less than 3000 would-be travellers, only about one-third 
 of whom could be put into the available trains. On this or another 
 similar occasion— according to Mr. Vizier, the veteran station-master at 
 King's Cross— a party of festive Yorkshiremen boarded a train intended 
 for Lincolnshire, declaring that it must take them home; and Mr. 
 Denison, who was on the platform, became so angry at their obstinacy 
 that it was with difficulty he was restrained from attempting to dislodge 
 them single-handed with his stick. In such emergencies as this cattle- 
 trucks had not infrequently to be pressed into use for passenger service. 
 Meanwhile the arbitration by Mr. Gladstone had been at last set in 
 motion— both parties being afraid of the responsibility of obstructing 
 even a partial pacification— and during this August the referee was 
 busily engaged in hearing the arguments in favour of the several routes, 
 and awarding the percentages for the traffic of the six towns referred to 
 him. But still the fares for the exhibition trafic remained unraised ; 
 and in the middle of August, when York races came on, the North 
 
 \ 
 
 
io6 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 Western and Midland companies announced that they would take 
 passengers from London and back again for 15^*, loj., and 5^., for the 
 three classes, though the Great Northern had previously announced 
 that its fares would be 52J. 6d. first class, 40J. second class, and no 
 third. Moreover at the North Western half-yearly meeting about the 
 same time, Mr. Glyn, the chairman, impressed upon the shareholders the 
 necessity of keeping up a large reserve fund, so as to fight the battle 
 without reduction of dividend, a proceeding of which the animus, in 
 Mr. Denison's opinion, was to drive the Great Northern into con- 
 cessions at all costs. "But," said the latter at the Great Northern 
 half-yearly meeting a few days later, "I at this time unreservedly 
 tell you that as long as I am your chairman I will never give way. I 
 am all for peace, but I will defend your interest, and I say at once — 
 and I hope it will go to other companies with whom we compete — I 
 will make no concession that I cannot conscientiously say ought to 
 be made. The moment you compel me to make concessions against 
 my honest conviction of what is right in principle and in your interest, 
 I will make my bow." At this half-yearly meeting the Company 
 declared its first dividend— at the rate of £1 los. per cent, per annum 
 on the original stock. 
 
 On the very same day, 26 August, 185 1, Mr. Gladstone was 
 engaged in completing his award for the six towns. Passenger and 
 goods traffic had of course to be treated separately, so that there were 
 twelve percentages to be fixed for each route. Six of these Mr. 
 Gladstone made more than the Great Northern had asked, two the 
 same, and only four less, the general result being to give the new route 
 63 per cent, of the whole traffic pooled. This was conclusive proof 
 that the Great Northern's claims had on the whole been reasonable. 
 
 Being pleasing to the Great Northern, the award was, of course, just 
 the reverse to the confederate companies, and a few days after its 
 publication, when the Doncaster races came on, they gave vent to their 
 feelings by charging for this the same low fares as to York races, 
 although under the award they stood to receive 5 per cent, only of the 
 passenger traffic between London and Doncaster, and even out of this 
 they had to pay toll to the South Yorkshire Company for running over 
 its line from Swinton. "It is abundantly clear," said Mr. Denison, 
 " that they must have lost money by it, and I can come to no other 
 conclusion than that they were under the influence of feelings which 
 I hope I shall never entertain, and which I do not envy them the 
 possession of." Worse than this, after the fares for the six towns were 
 raised, the confederates still kept them much lower at Normanton and 
 other intermediate points, with the result that passengers soon found 
 
 1851 
 
 MR. DENISON SPEAKS OUT 
 
 107 
 
 It to be to their advantage to book thither and then re-book, and the 
 receipts thus obtained were taken out of the operation of the pool. 
 This course the confederates defended, when challenged, upon the 
 ground that it was the inevitable outcome of the Great Northern's 
 action in confining the pool to the six towns only, and they were very 
 indignant when Mr. Denison described it bluntly as "nothing less 
 than an evasion of the award." "I tell these gentlemen," replied the 
 Great Northern chairman, " if they will do me the honour to read 
 what I say, that I repeat it was an evasion, and an evasion of which 
 they ought to be ashamed. I shall not be afraid of telling any man 
 with whom I come in contact if I find him evading an agreement that 
 he is doing so." 
 
 Meantime Mr. Denison, "first-class fighting man" that he was, had 
 had to meet something like a revolt amongst his own shareholders, the 
 cause of it being an agreement which the directors had made, through 
 the medium of their ever-zealous agent, Mr. Baxter, to work a small 
 system of lines in Norfolk called the East Anglian. To this agreement 
 the objection of the Great Northern shareholders was two-fold, first, 
 that It had been signed by Mr. Denison without authority from them,' 
 and second, that it involved a guarantee to the East Anglian Company 
 of ;£"i5>ooo a year, and this in face of the fact that the guarantees 
 with which the Company was already saddled, viz., the 6 per cent 
 dividends to the East Lincolnshire and Royston and Hitchin 
 companies, and the rentals of the Witham and Fossdyke naviga- 
 tions, had proved confessedly bad bargains. Moreover, guarantees 
 as we know, had been one of King Hudson's favourite weapons, and 
 had fallen with him into bad repute. 
 
 "Mr. Chairman," said one angry Great Northern shareholder a 
 clergyman, " I happen to be a proprietor of shares in those unfor- 
 tunate railways, the York and ^Newcastle and the York and North 
 Midland. Why have they been unfortunate railways? Why have 
 I lost more in them than I hold in the (ireat Northern? Simply 
 because they hung those guarantees round our necks. But my dear 
 brother shareholders, my dear brethren -(laughter) -you will excuse 
 that shp-let us come to the real question. Are the directors of 
 this Company to enter into agreements, and make leases, and hang 
 things about our necks, without ever asking our leave?" 
 
 The lease of the East Anglian system was the less easy to defend 
 because of the difficulties which the Great Northern authorities had 
 already met with in their attempts to work traffic over it. It was 
 of course, much more in the Eastern Counties territory than their 
 own, extending as it did from junctions with that Company's lines at 
 
 '^' 
 
 
}! 
 
 io8 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 Wisbeach and Ely, to a junction with the " Norfolk " line at East 
 Dereham ; and the only access which the (ireat Northern had to it 
 was by running powers over the Eastern Counties from Peterborough 
 to Wisbeach, which running rights it had obtained in return for giving 
 up the powers for a line of its own from Stamford to Wisbeach. But 
 unfortunately between the Eastern Counties* station at Wisbeach and 
 the commencement of the East Anglian line there was half a mile of 
 line belonging to the former Company, over which its directors con- 
 tended the Great Northern had no powers ; and so, when in July, 1851, 
 the latter had endeavoured to begin a through service 7m the East 
 Anglian from Peterborough to Lynn, its officials had found the points 
 at Wisbeach shut against them, and had had to get their passengers 
 transferred by omnibus to East Anglian trains. Of course under 
 these conditions neither passenger nor goods traffic could be properly 
 developed. 
 
 Nor was this by any means the only bone of contention between 
 the Great Northern and the Eastern Counties. The more important 
 matter as to whether or not the Great Northern was to get access to 
 Cambridge still remained in dispute. In the session of 185 1 the 
 Great Northern had promoted a Bill, for the second time, for making 
 a line of its own into that town from the terminus of the Royston and 
 Hitchin at Shepreth ; and although this had been thrown out summarily 
 on second reading by a combination of Eastern Counties and University 
 opposition, the Great Northern— saddled as it was with the yearly 
 liability of nearly ;£"i 5,000 a year to the Royston and Hitchin share- 
 holders—could not accept a decision as final which meant the shutting 
 up of that line at its eastern end. 
 
 "We are bound in defence of our property," said Mr. Denison, 
 "to say that we must by some means or other go from Royston to 
 Cambridge. . . . The Eastern Counties (and I do not presume to 
 find fault with them) are doing the best they can to protect their 
 property, and they say to us, you shall not come into Cambridge. . . . 
 Now, if there be any Eastern Counties shareholders here I will tell 
 them with perfect respect that my duty will be to go to Cambridge. 
 I will do it in the most amicable and harmonious way possible, if they 
 will permit me, but go I must and undoubtedly I shall." 
 
 For once, however, the Great Northern chairman was hardly as good 
 as his word, except in this sense, that he showed that with him the 
 profession of a desire to settle a dispute, if possible, in a harmonious 
 manner, was no empty form. In the autumn of 185 1 negotiations 
 with the Eastern Counties directors were resumed, and it was then 
 strongly urged that in the comparatively small area under dispute with 
 
 , 
 
 
 1851-2 TREATY WITH THE EASTERN COUNTIES 109 
 
 this Company a trial might be given to the principle of division of 
 territory between rival railway systems. In the country at large, as we 
 have seen, this had been rendered impracticable by the competitive 
 powers already granted to the various companies by Parliament ; but 
 in the counties between the Wash and the Thames no directly com- 
 peting lines had yet been laid out, nor had the Great Northern itself 
 been granted any Parliamentary authority to invade this district. What 
 competitive power it possessed there it had acquired, as we know, from 
 companies separately formed, namely, the Royston and Hitchin, the 
 Boston, Stamford, and Birmingham, and the East Anglian ; and, though 
 it was bound in justice to itself to use these powers so long as it was 
 burdened with the liabilities attached to them, it could afford to forego 
 them if the liabilities were taken over by another party. 
 
 This was precisely the arrangement that was now made. As the 
 readiest means of at once securing, and paying for, freedom from 
 Great Northern competition, the Eastern Counties directors offered 
 to take over the latter's agreements with the Royston and Hitchin 
 and East Anglian companies, and to become responsible in the 
 one case for the 6 per cent, dividend, and in the other for the traffic 
 guarantee. With this offer the Great Northern Board very willingly 
 closed, with the single stipulation— insisted on by Mr. Denison— that 
 the transfer of the Royston and Hitchin should be for fourteen years 
 only ; and at the same time they took advantage of the friendly feeling 
 thus created to urge the Eastern Counties to exchange traffic at Peter- 
 borough, offering it a bonus of 20 per cent, on all competitive traffic, if 
 it were consigned via Great Northern instead of being sent as heretofore 
 by the Midland's Syston line. On these terms, accordingly, a general 
 treaty between the two companies was concluded in the autumn of 
 1851 ; and from i April, 1852— as soon, that is to say, as the Eastern 
 Counties had its link line from Cambridge to Shepreth ready for 
 opening— the working of the Royston and Hitchin line was taken over 
 by that Company. 
 
 Thus between the systems springing from King's Cross and Shore- 
 ditch, competition was almost entirely put an end to for a term of 
 fourteen years ; but in the much larger territory into which the Great 
 Northern came into rivalry with the Euston Square confederacy, there 
 still arose difficulties in completing even the partial pacification which 
 was hoped for from Mr. Gladstone's award. In consequence of 
 the "re-booking" artifice a second reference had to be made to 
 Mr. Gladstone, as the result of which he altered the terms of his 
 award so as expressly to prevent this evasion; but still the actual 
 putting into operation of the pool was delayed, the reason being 
 
 )i I 
 
 
I lO 
 
 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 1851 
 
 BRADFORD AND HALIFAX 
 
 1 1 1 
 
 that neither party could be really satisfied with it so long as it 
 was limited to the six towns. Yet so long as the confederacy continued 
 to keep up its obstructive barriers against the Great Northern— so that, 
 for instance, it was only by " bus "-ing and carting to and from Leeds 
 that the latter could do any traffic with Bradford— Mr. Denison and his 
 colleagues could not assent to a complete treaty of peace. In the end, 
 however, the Great Northern gave way to the extent of undertaking not 
 to disturb the rates and fares at places outside the "pool" during the 
 five years for which it was to last, and on this condition it was at 
 last brought into operation, being made retrospective from i January, 
 1851. 
 
 Thus the " protectionist " policy of Captain Huish gained a partial 
 trmmph, but it was a sort of triumph which in the nature of things 
 could be but short-lived. As Mr. Denison said for the consolation 
 of his party : « No fallacy could be so great as to suppose that 
 the British public would travel circuitously if they could go directly ; 
 such a theory might do very well for railway makers, but not for 
 the public ; sooner or later traffic, like water, would find its own level." 
 Indeed, in seeking to keep the Great Northern out of business for 
 which naturally— if no artificial obstructions were raised— it offered the 
 best facilities, the too astute politicians of Euston Square were simply 
 repeating the mistake which King Hudson had made— and paid 
 for— when he had endeavoured to prevent a direct line being made at 
 all because it was contrary to the interests of the companies owning a 
 circuitous route already established. "It is the character of the 
 British public to improve," said Mr. Denison. " It is their spirit and 
 genius to improve ; and sooner or later the traffic must come to the 
 shorter line." 
 
 Already, indeed, the Great Northern had established the truth of this 
 by pushing its way into so many important towns and enforcing its right 
 to the major part of their traffic under the Octuple and Gladstone 
 awards; and already too in the case of the Bradford, Halifax, and 
 other still " protected " traffic of the West Riding, the force of the 
 natural law above stated had begun to assert itself in a way that 
 no general manager's diplomacy could for long effectually resist. At 
 the same time as the Great Northern had been struggling into being, a 
 " West Riding Union Railway Company " had obtained powers, as the 
 reader may remember, after an equally severe struggle, to remedy 
 the deficiencies of the existing accommodation by making direct lines 
 between all the more important towns of that district ; but, unlike the 
 Great Northern, this West Riding Union unfortunately had not 
 succeeded in maintaining its independence, but had been absorbed 
 
 '.] 
 
 I 
 
 in 1847 in the combination which had then given birth to the Lan- 
 cashire and Yorkshire Company. Then had happened precisely what 
 would have happened in the larger sphere had Hudson succeeded 
 in his many attempts to absorb the Great Northern into his com- 
 binations : the owners of the old routes, having regained the ascendency, 
 had found it to be to their interests not to carry out the new direct lines. 
 Thus in the West Riding, at the time we have now reached, a fragment 
 only of the Union scheme had been carried out, namely a sort of 
 "loop" system connecting Halifax, I^w Moor, and Bradford with each 
 other and with the old circuitous Manchester and Leeds line at Sowerby 
 Bridge and at Mirfield ; while what was really the corner-stone of the 
 whole project, the direct line from Bradford to Leeds, which was 
 to furnish also a new direct route between Manchester and Leeds via 
 Halifax, had been abandoned. 
 
 With this state of things, as may be supposed, the public was 
 far from satisfied; still less was it pleased that the Great Northern, 
 though it had forced its way into Wakefield and Leeds, should be 
 hindered from extending the benefits of its direct route from London 
 to Bradford and to Halifax. Therefore there existed in 185 1 a 
 double incentive to a new effort after improvement, and for such 
 an effort to take shape it was only necessary for competent leaders 
 to arise. These were now forthcoming in the persons of Messrs. 
 Edward Akroyd and William Firth, two enterprising West Riding 
 traders. 
 
 These gentlemen had been the most energetic of the original 
 promoters of the West Riding Union, and they had joined the 
 Lancashire and Yorkshire Board as representatives of that scheme, 
 to retire from it subsequently in chagrin when they found that its 
 execution was not earnestly carried on. But so soon as they had 
 seen that public feeling was again with them, and the state of the 
 money market favourable, they had returned to their original idea 
 of accomplishing their purposes by means of an independent 
 company, and accordingly they had taken counsel with Mr. Henry 
 Nelson, an energetic solicitor of Leeds, and with Mr. (afterwards Sir) 
 John Hawkshaw, the distinguished engineer. The result was that 
 in the autumn of 1851 a Bill for a "Leeds, Bradford, and Halifax 
 Junction Railway Company" was deposited, its immediate object 
 being to complete the main part of the West Riding Union scheme 
 by constructing the direct link still missing between Bowling, near 
 Bradford, and Leeds. 
 
 Naturally enough, this attack upon the vested railway interests 
 of the West Riding received all possible encouragement from the Great 
 
 ll 
 
J 12 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 
 Northern, and the result was that the relations between it and the 
 Lancashire and Yorkshire, which the alliance of the latter to Euston 
 Square had strained for some time, now for the first assumed a definitely 
 hostile complexion. In November, 185 1, Captain Laws, the manager 
 of the Lancashire and Yorkshire, resigned the seat which, from the 
 time of the Great Northern's incorporation, he had held upon its 
 Board, and about a month later the Lancashire and Yorkshire directors 
 sent a notice to King's Cross that the running powers which gave the 
 Great Northern access to Wakefield and to Methley (for Leeds) would 
 be withdrawn, unless in future full Parliamentary toll was paid. About 
 this same time, too, the Sheffield Company gave similar notice that 
 it should withdraw its leave for the Great Northern to run between 
 Grimsby and the New Holland ferry; and thus the new year — 1852 — 
 instead of inaugurating the term of " peace and quietness " for which 
 the Great Northern authorities had hoped, found them with two 
 Chancery suits on their hands, upon the issue of which depended 
 their ability to continue some of their most valuable traffic. For- 
 tunately, however, both suits were speedily decided in their favour, 
 so that they had no serious reason to fear but that the policy to which 
 Mr. Denison had pledged himself at the outset of this struggle with 
 the Confederacy, namely, to go on " calmly and quietly asserting our 
 rights," would be crowned with ultimate, if tardy, success. 
 
 CHAPTER VIIL 
 
 FINIS CORONAT OPUS— 1852. 
 
 T T had not been until the year 1849 that any active steps had been 
 1 taken towards the making of the sixty miles of "towns line" 
 between Peterborough and Retford. At the end of that year, however, 
 a commencement had been made at some of its heaviest points, under 
 a contract let to Mr. Jackson, and so by the time of the opening from 
 l^ondon m 1850 good progress could be reported on its heavier 
 cuttmgs Its bridges, and its two tunnels-at Stoke and at Peascliffe. 
 About this time, also, two further contracts had been let-to Messrs 
 Pearce and Smith and to Messrs. Oldham-and a little later the 
 construction of the large bridge across the Trent navigation at Newark 
 had been entrusted to Messrs. Rennie and Logan; so that during the 
 autumn and winter of 1850 work had been going on throughout its 
 whole length. In the spring of 185 1 Mr. Joseph Cubitt had reported 
 that completion by the end of that year might be looked for; but an 
 almost continuous rainfall during the month of July had upset this 
 calculation, and in August, 185 1, there had been no prospect of the 
 tunne Is-which were the key to the whole-being completed before 
 the following spring. Meanwhile, however, the station works had been 
 commenced and rapid progress made with the Newark bridge, the span 
 of which-262 feet-was to be longer than that of any other bridge 
 yet built for the Company. The type of design which Mr. Cubitt had 
 chosen for It was quite unique, being that known as the "Warren 
 iruss, which has not been adopted elsewhere either before or since • 
 nor was the engineer here content, as he had been at Bardney and 
 other places on the loop line, with using timber wholly for the material. 
 At Newark the floor of the bridge only was being made of timber. 
 For the upper part, which may be described as a series of equilateral 
 riangles, fastened at their apices by pins, cast and wrought iron was 
 being employed. 
 
 The other principal work of construction which the Company had 
 still m hand was the permanent passenger terminus at King's Cross. To 
 ' 113 
 
( 
 
 9 
 
 114 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 obtain the site for this a Sniall-pox and Fever Hospital had had to be 
 removed at a cost of about ^60,000, and a good deal of excavation 
 done, both which operations had caused much delay in the commence- 
 ment of the station buildings. Since the beginning of 185 1, however, 
 the construction of these had been going steadily forward under the 
 charge of the architect, Mr. Lewis Cubitt, and the contractor, Mr. Jay. 
 The internal arrangements of the terminus were to be of a very simple 
 character, consisting of two long platforms, one for departure and the 
 other for arrival, separated from one another by fourteen tracks for the 
 use of trains ; and the building to enclose these was to be equally 
 simple, for in laying his plans Mr. Lewis Cubitt had borne well in 
 mind his uncle, Sir William Cubitt's,* dictum, that "a good station 
 could be built at King's Cross for less than the cost of the ornamental 
 archway at Euston Square." It was to consist— and its main outlines 
 are still clearly traceable amid many additions and accretions— of two 
 immense sheds, each 800 feet long, 105 feet wide, and 71 feet high, 
 divided by a wall formed of piers and arches, and covered by an 
 arched roof in two spans. 
 
 This roof, at the time of its construction, was probably the largest 
 of its kind in the world, and the plan of it Mr. Lewis Cubitt 
 borrowed from a riding-school which had been recently constructed 
 at Moscow for the Czar of Russia. The girders which he was em- 
 ploying may be roughly described as bundles of planks so tied 
 together that they overlapped one another lengthways, and thus 
 each complete girder, when secured to the walls, became like a 
 stretched bow. This, of course, necessitated great strength in the 
 outer walls to resist the tendency of the planks to restraighten 
 themselves, and on the west side the weight of a subsidiary building 
 which was being erected there for the Company's offices promised 
 to supply this want in a very satisfactory manner. But the eastern 
 wall had to be built to abut immediately upon the Maiden Lane, 
 now called York Road, where there was not sufficient room even 
 for flying buttresses; and so from the first there were critics- 
 Mr. E. B. Denison (now Lord Grimthorpe) was one at least — who 
 predicted its subsequent failure to bear the strain put upon it. The 
 facade which was to front direct upon the old St. Pancras Road— 
 since diverted — was the only part of the building which was intended 
 to be at all ornamental. Its appearance is too well known to need 
 description. Of the whole building the architect himself said that 
 it was to "depend for its effect on the largeness of some of its 
 
 * He had been knighted as one of the Commissioners for the C'.reat Exhibition 
 of 185 1. 
 
 1852 ** HIGHLY RESPECTABLE" EXCURSIONISTS 115 
 
 features, its fitness for its purpose, and its characteristic expression 
 of that purpose." For material brick was being used almost exclusively 
 except m the roof. 
 
 At the eleventh half-yearly meeting of the Company, held at the 
 London Tavern on 27 February, 1852, a dividend was declared 
 at the rate of ^2 lox. on the original stock, making 2 per cent, for the 
 year. Said the chairman on that occasion : 
 
 "The general receipts of the Company have greatly exceeded those 
 Of the previous six months, and during the first six weeks of the 
 present year the traffic has increased about ^3,000 a week as com- 
 
 •; 
 
 Th. 0«,o,«. "W..«.» t»ss" B,.^. ovkk ™b T^s. Nm.o.t.o. ...„ n.w.hk. 
 
 pared with the corresponding weeks of last year, the increase arising 
 from each of the three chief sonrr^^ r,r froo; ""-rease arising 
 
 mice tiiiei sources or traffic — passencers 2ood<; nnH 
 minerals. With respect to the working expenses'hey L Zlt^ 
 
 l?L " "T''"' "'^ "^ 50 per cent. One reason is that 
 
 Z itTs thaTd '° "1" °' '°"'«" """• •'^""'''^^ -y °f —ting 
 am excl ■"" '"'"'"'" P"'°^ '^'^"y ^^^P^'^'^'ble persons- 
 e.curs,nn? ^ ' '.""' '° ""^ ^°' ^°" sakes-took advantage of the 
 excursion trams, and our ordinary trains often went very nearly emptv 
 o that at that particular period we were running double tainsS 
 Reiving very low fares. With respect to the dividend, I tWnk you 
 
 HbLEd^d."'"^ ''" ""''^^ ^" ''' ^'-""^-"^ ^' '^ ^ ^^^^ -d 
 
 ^fL'!i' «-»<; 'he receipts from the coal traffic had increased to about 
 ^a,ooo a week, and they might have risen a good deal higher than tWs 
 
] 
 
 fi 
 
 
 ii6 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 but for the fact that the supply from the South Yorkshire field had 
 been unequal to the demand. In so far as this could be met by the 
 pit-owners increasing their gettings, it was a difficulty easily surmount- 
 able ; but there was more than a suspicion that the owners were not 
 fostering the London trade, but were preferring to send their output 
 over the Midland and Sheffield systems to nearer markets where higher 
 prices ruled. Now this, as we have already seen, was one of the 
 contingencies to meet which the draft treaty of amalgamation between 
 the South Yorkshire and Great Northern had been framed—" its value 
 to us," Mr. Denison had said in regard to this treaty in March, 185 1, 
 " is the security of the whole of that coalfield to the Great Northern " ; 
 and so, notwithstanding the reluctance which some of the South York- 
 shire shareholders had shown to ratify the action of their directors in 
 the matter, the Great Northern directors had continued to urge the 
 South Yorkshire Board to carry the amalgamation into effect. To this 
 same end, also, all the influence of the common solicitor of the two 
 companies, Mr. Baxter, had been directed, and the result had been that 
 in the full confidence that the dissatisfied parties would in the end be 
 persuaded or outvoted, the two directorates had deposited a Bill in the 
 autumn of 1851 to authorize the amalgamation on the basis of the 
 draft agreement. 
 
 Nor had this confidence proved ill-founded. Shortly afterwards the 
 approval of the South Yorkshire shareholders had been obtained, and 
 on 26 February, 1852— just one day before the Great Northern half- 
 yearly meeting just referred to — the draft agreement had been con- 
 verted by the two Boards into a formal sealed treaty. Then at an 
 extraordinary general meeting held for the purpose immediately after 
 their ordinary meeting, the Great Northern shareholders for the second 
 time approved the terms — though not without protest from one or two 
 of their number — and authorized their directors to join in prosecuting 
 the Amalgamation Bill. 
 
 Meanwhile, simultaneously with this South Yorkshire business, the 
 Great Northern directors had some other negotiations, also with 
 the view to an amalgamation, in hand. These were with the Amber- 
 gate, Nottingham, Boston, and Eastern Junction — a Company of 
 which the reader may remember to have already heard in this same 
 connection; indeed, ever since its incorporation in 1846, the absorp- 
 tion of this cumbrously-named Company into one of the greater ones 
 had appeared imminent. So far, however, it had obstinately retained 
 its independence ; but financial weakness — and the burden of a great 
 deal of canal property forced upon it by Parliament— had prevented 
 it from carrying out in its integrity the extensive undertaking fore- 
 
 3 
 
 J 
 i 
 f 
 
 1852 SHALL THE G.N.R. GO TO NOTTINGHAM? 117 
 
 shadowed by its name. As it was, all the railway it had made so 
 far was a line twenty-two miles in length from a junction with the 
 Midland's Nottingham and Lincoln line at the hamlet of Colwick 
 — four miles east of Nottingham— to the town of Grantham ; and 
 having obtained permission from the Midland to run into, and use, 
 its station at Nottingham, it had worked a local passenger and goods 
 traffic, and also some coal traffic from the Nottinghamshire pits to 
 (irantham since its opening in July, 1850. 
 
 Of this state of things the natural sequel seemed to be the 
 absorption of the Ambergate— as it was still called— into the Midland, 
 and this would almost certainly already have taken place but for 
 the foresight and activity of Mr. Graham Hutchison, already known 
 to us as a large Great Northern shareholder. This gentleman had 
 become much impressed with the value which the Ambergate line 
 would acquire if it could be worked from Grantham in conjunction 
 with the Great Northern towns line. Accordingly he had " made 
 a corner" in Ambergate shares— to use a modern phrase— and by 
 his vote alone had succeeded in defeating a proposal for amalgamation 
 with the Midland and London and North Western, though the terms 
 offered were a permanent 4 per cent, guarantee. Now, therefore, in the 
 spring of 1852, when the Great Northern came forward with a similar 
 offer, Mr. Hutchison's influence w^as by itself sufficient to ensure 
 its acceptance; and so in May, 1852— when the opening of the 
 towns line was in very near prospect — a working agreement was 
 signed by the two companies, under which the Great Northern 
 thought to secure access to the important town of Nottingham, 
 and also through Nottingham to the Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire 
 coalfield, by a route no longer from London than the established one 
 of the Midland and London and North Western. 
 
 But such an important advantage as this the confederate companies 
 were not prepared to see handed to their great rival without a further 
 struggle, and for this they found a weapon handy in the person of a 
 recalcitrant Great Northern shareholder named Simpson, who was per- 
 suaded to bring a petition in Chancery against the Great Northern 
 chairman to restrain him from carrying out the agreement with the 
 Ambergate, on the ground that in signing it he had acted beyond his 
 powers. Mr. Denison's case was defended by his son, Mr. E. B. 
 Denison, already a barrister of eminence, but despite his able advocacy 
 an injunction was granted restraining the Great Northern both from 
 working the traffic of the Ambergate and from guaranteeing it a dividend. 
 This decision was given on the 28th of June, 1852. 
 
 Meanwhile the South Yorkshire Amalgamation Bill had reached 
 
 J 
 
II 
 
 p 
 
 
 I 
 
 ii8 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 Committee stage in the House of Commons, and had there been 
 opposed most strenuously by the Midland Company, which naturally 
 objected to the South Yorkshire coalfield being made the monopoly of 
 its great rival. The Midland's representatives made out a strong case 
 from the point of view, not only of their own rights, but of public 
 interest, with the result that the Committee insisted upon the insertion 
 in the Bill of a clause providing for free interchange of Midland traffic 
 at Swinton Junction — "on the principle of a mileage rate." This 
 meant, as Mr. Denison put it afterwards, that " if the Midland Company 
 were to send twenty-five waggons to the junction, they could say to the 
 South Yorkshire, *take these waggons up to the coalpits, get them 
 loaded, and bring them back again, and we shall pay you the mileage 
 rate'" — a state of things obviously incompatible with the paramount 
 object which the Great Northern had in view, namely, complete control 
 of the traffic from the field. Under these circumstances Mr. Denison 
 and his colleagues would probably have acted wisely if they had at once 
 dropped the Bill. Instead of this, however, they sent it on under 
 Mr. Baxter's charge to the House of Lords, and it passed into law 
 on 21 June, 1852 — a week, that is to say, before the decision in the 
 Ambergate suit. 
 
 During this week the Great Northern Board received through the 
 medium of Mr. Baxter a proposal from the South Yorkshire directors 
 that meetings of the two companies should be convened at once in 
 order to proceed with the amalgamation as authorized by the Bill 
 just passed, on the terms agreed under the sealed contract of the 
 previous February. It was accompanied, however, by a demand 
 that at such South Yorkshire meeting and at future ones the Great 
 Northern must waive the right of voting which it possessed in respect 
 of its holding of South Yorkshire shares; and this demand Mr. Denison 
 and his colleagues declined to accede to, or to act further in the matter 
 of the amalgamation until it should be withdrawn. Thereupon the 
 South Yorkshire responded with a reassertion of "the necessity and 
 propriety " of their proviso, and this response reached the Great 
 Northern directors on 6 July — eight days after the decision in the 
 Ambergate case. 
 
 During these eight days the Great Northern chairman's thoughts had 
 been very busy. He had been considering the effect of the injunction 
 as to the Ambergate in all its bearings, and it had occurred to him that 
 if the agreement with that Company was ultra vires, as the Vice- 
 Chancellor had declared, the agreement with the South Yorkshire 
 must have been also ultra vires — in which inference he found his 
 common-sense reasoning confirmed by the expert opinion of his son. 
 
 
 f. 
 
 1852 
 
 TWO OLD FRIENDS IN CONFLICT 
 
 119 
 
 Of course, as Mr. E. B. Denison pointed out, an agreement with the 
 South Yorkshire could now be legally made seeing that an Act of 
 Parliament for the purpose had been obtained; but liberty to make 
 a new agreement and compulsion to carry out one already made were 
 two different things, and, in view of the new aspect which the whole 
 transaction has assumed since the clause in favour of the Midland 
 Company had been inserted in the Act, the difference seemed to the 
 Great Northern chairman a most important one. This opinion he 
 communicated to his fellow-directors when the matter came up for 
 discussion at their next Board meeting, and the result was that the 
 question, from being merely whether or not the Great Northern should 
 insist upon its view as to a minor point, became the much larger one as 
 to whether or not it should proceed with the amalgamation at all. 
 
 Of course the suggestion of abandoning the amalgamation horrified 
 Mr. Baxter, who strained every nerve to prevent such a collapse of his 
 hopes and labours ; and by his advice the South Yorkshire directors 
 speedily brought the matter to a practical issue by sending in a 
 claim under the agreement (which had been made to date from the 
 beginning of the year) for the sum necessary to enable them to pay 
 their guaranteed dividend for the half-year just expired. This put the 
 Great Northern Board into a very delicate position. To refuse the 
 money was to repudiate a sealed agreement ; to pay it was to commit 
 themselves for the future; moreover, Mr. Denison, particularly, was 
 bound to be on his guard, for his son told him that if the agreement 
 (which bore his signature) should be adjudged, like that with the 
 Ambergate, to be ultra vires, he might be made liable to refund personally 
 any sum paid under it. Under these circumstances the only safe plan 
 seemed to be to pay the South Yorkshire a sum on account " without 
 prejudice," and this accordingly the Great Northern Board decided 
 to do ; but upon receipt of it the South Yorkshire directors declared 
 the full guaranteed dividend to which the agreement entitled them, 
 ingeniously adjusting the accounts by withholding that due to the 
 Great Northern on its shares. 
 
 This, of course, did not tend towards a settlement of the main 
 question, and so the breach between the Great Northern chairman and 
 its solicitor became daily wider— old friends though they were, and 
 fellow-townsmen and comrades in many an honest fight. Mr. Denison 
 could not forget that he had been " always lukewarm, to say the least," 
 about the terms of the amalgamation— indeed, as we know, he had 
 never cordially entertained the high hopes as to the London coal traffic 
 from South Yorkshire upon which the whole transaction was based. 
 Moreover, now that he had had time to realize fully the effect of the 
 
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 120 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 Midland Company's facility clause, he had become firmly convinced 
 that the price which the Great Northern Company had undertaken to 
 pay on the understanding that it would obtain complete control of the 
 coalfield would prove an unprofitable one now that the Midland had 
 been admitted to it on terms almost as good. Mr. Baxter, on the other 
 hand, still held that the Great Northern would benefit largely by the 
 amalgamation ; but, quite apart from this, he maintained that they had 
 no option now but to go on with it, seeing that they had sealed an 
 agreement to do so, and had co-operated with the South Yorkshire 
 to obtain an Act for the purpose. But to this Mr. Denison replied that 
 the agreement was invalid, and the Act permissive, not compulsory, and 
 that therefore it was fairly open to him to advise his shareholders not 
 to make a new agreement under the Act— nay, more, that it was his 
 clear duty to do so, seeing that he now thought the amalgamation 
 detrimental to their interests. This was the view that in the end 
 prevailed. At a full meeting of the Great Northern Board, held on 
 25 August, 1852, a resolution in favour of a policy of masterly 
 inactivity as to the amalgamation was proposed by Mr. Denison and 
 unanimously adopted, notwithstanding some very outspoken protests 
 from the solicitor. 
 
 Meantime a very important event in the history of the Great 
 Northern undertaking proper had taken place — the opening for traffic 
 of the sixty miles of " towns " line between Peterborough and Retford. 
 From 15 July, 1852, goods and coal trains had been allowed to pass 
 over it, and a fortnight later — from i August, 1852 — its opening for 
 passenger traffic had taken place, not only local trains, but the through 
 expresses between London and Yorkshire being at once diverted to it 
 from their original circuitous route over "the loop." This meant that 
 the journey from King's Cross to York and to Leeds was shortened by 
 about twenty miles, the distance to York becoming 190I miles and to 
 Leeds i86| miles — about thirty miles shorter than by the London-and- 
 North-Western-cum-Midland routes. The result was that the best 
 Great Northern express trains now began to do the journey in each 
 case in about five hours instead of in about six as at first, whereas the 
 London and North Western and Midland, having accelerated their best 
 services to about six hours in the case of London-Leeds, and six and a 
 half hours London- York, in answer to the (ireat Northern's original 
 challenge in 1850, were now obliged to submit to being more than 
 an hour behind in both cases. For London-Edinburgh, too, the (ireat 
 Northern's (East Coast) service, being now reduced in time from twelve 
 to eleven hours, became an hour ahead of the West Coast, and practi- 
 cally extinguished the "alternative East Coast route" via Rugby and 
 
 1852 
 
 A LOCOMOTIVE KIDNAPPED 
 
 121 
 
 Derby, though the latter continued to receive a percentage of traffic 
 under the "Octuple Agreement." 
 
 Another important result of the opening of the towns line was that 
 Nottingham was then for the first time brought into connection with the 
 Great Northern system. This was effected by the junction at Grantham 
 with the line of the Ambergate Company. For with that Company the 
 Great Northern remained in potential alliance (pending the passing 
 through Parliament in the next year of an Act to legalize their amalga- 
 mation) ; and accordingly in the Great Northern time-tables for August, 
 1852, the commencement of a service to and from Nottingham via 
 Grantham was announced, by which passengers were to be landed in 
 that town from London in a shorter time than by the established service 
 of the London and North Western and Midland. This, of course, was 
 resented by the confederates, who chose to regard it as a defiance of the 
 Chancellor's injunction ; and when on the opening day, i August, the 
 passengers from King's Cross were actually drawn into the Midland 
 station at Nottingham by a Great Northern engine, the officials there 
 decided that the time had come to take active measures to defend 
 their rights. Accordingly they got a posse of Midland engines together, 
 and sent them, as on an elephant hunt, to hem in the Great Northern 
 trespasser on all sides with its own kind ; and although the driver of 
 the latter — according to an eye-witness — made a desperate effort to 
 charge through his captors, he was, of course, unsuccessful, and had to 
 submit to see his locomotive borne away into imprisonment in a disused 
 shed. The rails leading to this were then pulled up so as effectually to 
 cut off escape ; and although the Great Northern authorities defended 
 the legality of their action by producing documents to prove that the 
 Ambergate Company had hired the engine from them, it was not until 
 seven months afterwards that the release of the captive could be 
 obtained. 
 
 But as in any case the Ambergate had an indisputable right to run 
 passenger trains with its own engines into Nottingham Station, the 
 through connection between King's Cross could be maintained despite 
 this high-handed capture ; and even in goods traffic the new allies were 
 able to do something by carting to or from the Ambergate terminus at 
 Colwick. Such a state of things, however, could not be permanently 
 submitted to, and, accordingly, it was proposed that the Ambergate, 
 with the Great Northern's support, should obtain power to extend its 
 line from Colwick to a new Nottingham station of its own. This, 
 however, meant a heavy capital outlay, which might be avoided if only 
 an amicable relationship with the Midland could by any means be 
 brought about ; and, improbable though this might seem in view of the 
 
 V 
 
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 1.1 
 
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 122 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 ! i 
 
 
 recent action of the latter, there were other reasons which led Mr. 
 Denison and his colleagues to think that an attempt to accomplish it 
 was at least worth the making. 
 
 Of these reasons the chief was that the relations between the 
 Midland and the London and North Western, after having become so 
 intimate in the early part of 1852 that the terms of an amalgamation of 
 the two companies had come within 2^ per cent, of settlement, had, on 
 the failure of these negotiations, become decidedly less friendly. 
 While the Euston authorities had turned their attention to an even 
 more ambitious project — amalgamation with the Great Western, 
 the Midland directors had taken steps to develop its undertaking in 
 directions which pointed away from dependence on Euston Square. 
 Thus in May 1852 they had entered into an agreement to lease for 
 twenty-one years the line of the North Western Company — popularly 
 called the "Little North Western" to distinguish it from its great name- 
 sake—a Hne which extended from Skipton, the northern terminus 
 of the Midland's Leeds and Bradford line to Lancaster; and, more 
 important still, under pressure from local landowners and others they 
 had determined upon an attempt to revive in the next session of 
 Parliament their lapsed powers for the southward extension to Hitchin. 
 Taken together, these two moves obviously pointed to the development 
 of a new Midland "Central" route between London and the north, 
 and the revival of the Hitchin line was sufficient to show that for such 
 a route King's Cross was looked to, temporarily at least, as the London 
 terminus. More than this, the Midland Board had published the 
 opinion at the time when their negotiations for amalgamation with 
 Euston Square were in progress, that it was ** essential " to their 
 Company to be " permanently identified with some Company having a 
 line to and terminus in London." Seeing, therefore, that those 
 negotiations had come to nothing, it was at least not impossible that 
 they might now listen to similar overtures from King's Cross. 
 
 It was under these circumstances that on 16 August, 1852, a fort- 
 night only after the warfare in Nottingham Station, and a fortnight 
 before the final decision not to proceed with the South Yorkshire 
 guarantee, Mr. Denison wrote in his direct way to Mr. Ellis, the Midland 
 chairman, to suggest that in his opinion " an earnest attempt ought to 
 be made to unite the Great Northern and Midland railways upon 
 the principle of a complete amalgamation." "They compete with one 
 another," said he, " in the south and in the north, and they cross each 
 other at two or three important points; there are double stations at 
 several towns, and duplicate trains run where single ones would serve 
 the public equally well. A very large annual expenditure would 
 
 1852 
 
 GREAT NORTHERN AND MIDLAND 
 
 123 
 
 therefore be saved, and an amalgamation is so natural from peculiar 
 circumstances, and (according to Mr. Glyn's published opinion upon 
 the subject of competition and amalgamation) so inevitable that, 
 I apprehend, no Parliamentary objection would be offered." 
 
 " Our Board," wrote Mr. Ellis in reply two days later, " is equally 
 with yourself alive to the serious evils which are the inevitable result of 
 competition between two lines which approach and intersect each 
 other ; they feel, moreover, the great importance, not only of putting 
 an end to the needless expenditure of running double trains, but 
 further and still more the imperative necessity of preventing a reckless 
 outlay of capital in the construction of new lines. You are aware, 
 however, that for many years the London and North Western and 
 Midland companies have cultivated an intimate alliance, and that 
 upon a recent occasion negotiations were on foot for a closer union 
 of the interests of these companies. Candour requires me to inform 
 you that, previously to the receipt of your letter, a proposal has been 
 made to this Company to renew those negotiations." 
 
 This new proposal from Euston Square had, it appeared, been 
 received at Derby two days only before Mr. Denison's letter ; but even 
 had the London and North Western not thus already renewed their 
 overtures— to which step they were probably actuated by fear of what 
 the " Little North Western " lease and Leicester and Hitchin revival 
 might lead to— they would almost certainly have done so directly they 
 had heard that a proposal for amalgamation had been received from 
 King's Cross. As it was, they now pressed their own new proposals 
 with such determination and liberality that the former difficulty as 
 to agreeing to terms was soon removed, and with the consent of both 
 their own and the Midland shareholders a Bill to authorize the amal- 
 gamation of the two companies was deposited for the session of 1853. 
 With regard to the Leicester and Hitchin line, pledges had been given 
 to the local people which could not now be withdrawn, so a Bill to 
 revive the powers for that were also deposited. But the Great 
 Northern directors foresaw that if this line was made and worked 
 under the control of Euston Square, it would be blocked against 
 traffic with King's Cross, and so they opposed it with a counter Bill 
 for a branch of their own from Sandy to Bedford. At the same time 
 other Bills were deposited for the amalgamation of the Ambergate 
 with the Great Northern, and for the extension of its line into 
 Nottingham, and thus there seemed every prospect of a new battle- 
 royal in the coming session between the Great Northern and Ambergate 
 on the one side, and the London and North Western and Midland on 
 the other. 
 
»( 
 
 124 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 On 14 October, 1852, the permanent passenger terminus at King's 
 Cross was opened for public traffic, the first train to use it being the 
 7 a.m. " ParHamentary " bound for York. The building was much 
 admired; its outside was described as "wearing a magnificent appear- 
 ance," and its inside as " presenting a vista of extraordinary effect " ; 
 and from shareholders a good many complaints reached the directors 
 of their "extravagance in erecting so splendid a station." "I am 
 authorized to state," said Mr. Denison in reply, "that it is the 
 cheapest building for what it contains and will contain that can be 
 pointed out in London ; and I am told — I am not the architect, and 
 I do not estimate it — that it will not have cost more than ;£^i 23,500. 
 If that is the case, I have no difficulty at all in saying that it is a very 
 cheap station. Bear in mind, however, that we paid by arbitration and 
 award, I think, about ;£65,ooo for the two old buildings that stood 
 there, and then we had to excavate the ground before the station was 
 erected ; so that I do not pretend to say that the whole cost is only 
 about ^123,000." Mr. Denison added that the Company had still 
 in hand the erection of a hotel at King's Cross at an estimated cost 
 
 For the then passenger traffic of the Company, which consisted of 
 three fast trains and ten slow ones out of London per day, and about 
 as many into it, the accommodation thus provided at King's Cross 
 was, of course, most ample, and the situation of the terminus at the 
 junction of no less than five important thoroughfares at once proved 
 itself a most convenient one for passengers. In respect of goods 
 traffic, however, the directors had already reason for regret that they 
 had not provided the Company with access and station accommodation 
 nearer the heart of the Metropolis. There was no blame attaching to 
 them for this, for had the undertaking been burdened with such an 
 additional expense, it would almost certainly have failed to survive 
 the fierce attacks made upon it ; and, as things were, the Great 
 Northern was at least no worse off in the matter of distance from 
 central London than was the Great Western at Paddington or the 
 Eastern Counties at Shoreditch. Indeed, the only railway terminus 
 of this date which could really be described as in the heart of the 
 Metropolis was that of the London and Blackwall Railway at 
 Fenchurch Street. 
 
 Unfortunately for the Great Northern, however, into this one 
 favoured station its great rival, the London and North Western, had 
 obtained access by running powers over the North London via Bow, 
 and, what was more serious, it had just set up a City goods station 
 on ground of its own at Haydon Square, to which it obtained through 
 
 1852 A CENTRAL LONDON STATION PROPOSED 125 
 
 railway access by this same route. Moreover, by another auxiliary 
 line — the West London — it had access to Kensington, Chelsea, etc., 
 and thus it had an advantage in competition which the Great 
 Northern authorities had already begun to feel keenly. Therefore it 
 was impossible for them to rest quite content, even with the spacious 
 accommodation which they had now just completed at King's Cross. 
 
 But if railway directors themselves are discontented with the accom- 
 modation they are providing, it is a fairly safe inference that the public 
 is still more discontented, though its reasons for dissatisfaction may 
 not be the same. What the London public complained of in this 
 
 
 The Small-Pox Hospital which Occupied the Site of the Great Northern 
 Passenger Terminus at King's Cross, London. 
 
 case was not, of course, that one railway company had an advantage 
 over the others, but that none of them gave, or could give, the direct 
 " through " communication which, in its opinion, should be obtainable ; 
 and to remedy this it was proposed that a central station should be 
 erected— say at Holborn, or the Hay market— to which all the twelve 
 companies should extend their lines. The leading advocate of this 
 scheme was a very eloquent gentleman, Mr. Charles Pearson, who 
 held the position of solicitor to the City Corporation, and he under- 
 took the task of bringing it into favour with the investing public, or, 
 failing that, with the Government. 
 
 Of course the concurrence, at least, of the existing railway powers 
 was a sine qud non^ but when Mr. Pearson attempted to secure this 
 he was met by many difficulties. The London and North Western 
 having been at the expense already of floating the North and West 
 
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126 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 
 London companies, and by this means having obtained an advantage 
 over its competitors, was not at all disposed to sacrifice this for 
 the general good; the Eastern Counties was too much embarrassed 
 financially even to second a new effort ; and other companies had 
 equally valid objections to raise. As for the Great Northern, its 
 directors, as has just been said, were already alive to the desirability 
 of getting better London accommodation for their goods traffic. 
 Moreover they gave Mr. Pearson a very respectful hearing, when he 
 endeavoured to convince them that they would very soon obtain 
 a large and profitable suburban traffic, if they could give to and from 
 his proposed Central Station "a cheap, frequent, and rapid service" 
 with such of their stations as lay (say) within fifteen miles of town. 
 But, seeing that in 1852 there were four Great Northern stations only 
 which fell in with this condition, viz., Hornsey, Southgate, Barnet 
 and Potters Bar, and that a few " mansions, villas, and gardens of the 
 aristocracy and merchant princes " — to quote from the just published 
 Itinerary of the Great Northern Railway— \i^xit the only suburban 
 residences within its district, it is not surprising that this remote 
 prospect of inducing a large daily traffic to and from the City did 
 not seem to the directors solid enough to justify them in undertaking 
 a large liability to spend new capital. As for their City goods traffic, 
 they thought they could do better by following the London and 
 North Western example of utilizing the North London line, with which 
 they had already a junction within their King's Cross goods terminus. 
 Thus the only immediate outcome of Mr. Pearson's exertions was the 
 deposit for the session of 1853, on behalf of an independent company, 
 of a Bill for a "North Metropolitan Railway" to run beneath the 
 "New Road" from Edgware Road to King's Cross — an instalment, 
 merely, of a larger scheme which, it was still hoped, would eventually 
 connect the Great Western, London and North Western, and Great 
 Northern systems with one another and with the City. 
 
 With the completion and opening of the towns line and the 
 King's Cross terminus, the objects of the original promoters of the 
 Great Northern Railway may be said to have been pretty fully 
 accomplished ; but, as is almost always the case with great under- 
 takings of this nature, they found that their actual outlay had far 
 exceeded their first estimates. Up to the end of 1853 their expendi- 
 ture on capital account had amounted to rather more than nine and 
 a half millions, barely five millions of which had been provided by 
 the original stock of the Company, the remainder having had to be 
 raised by preference capital and by debentures; and now in 1852 
 they found it necessary to issue yet further preference capital to the 
 
 1853 
 
 COST OF THE ORIGINAL G.N. SYSTEM 
 
 127 
 
 amount of ;;£,^ 7 5 0,000, in order to meet outstanding liabilities connected 
 either with the general works of the undertaking, the enlargement of 
 inadequate stations, or the provision of extra equipment and plant. 
 Besides this, the East Lincolnshire guarantee, when capitalized, added 
 another ;^ 800,000 to the total, and thus the whole sum which the 283 
 miles of lines now opened had cost amounted, in round figures, to 
 eleven millions, whereas Mr. William Cubitt's final estimate for the 272 
 miles of the main and loop lines, as originally planned, had been, as 
 the reader may remember, ;^5,4oo,ooo only. Thus, even after 
 allowing for the preliminary expenses and the interest paid out of 
 capital during construction (neither of which were, of course, included 
 in Mr. Cubitt's figures), the excess of actual cost over estimate was 
 very large indeed. 
 
 With such an excess of cost over estimate it would not have been 
 surprising if the Great Northern Railway had for many years been 
 quite unremunerative to its original shareholders, but this, as we have 
 already seen, was not the case. At the same half-yearly meeting— that 
 on 26 February, 1853— at which Mr. Denison reckoned up the total 
 expenditure on the line, and told the shareholders that it was "far beyond 
 any calculation that was made originally," he also told them that twice 
 ;^36i,ooo— the amount earned for the six months just closed — gave 
 " a larger sum of money, as earned already, than was calculated would 
 be earned when the scheme came before Committee in Parliament, 
 and," added he, " an immense number of persons, perfectly cognizant 
 of these matters, prophesied we never could receive any such sum." 
 Indeed, had it been possible to spread this revenue equally over the 
 capital of the Company, large as that capital was, without the necessity 
 of deducting a considerable amount first to make up the guarantees 
 and the debenture and preference interest, the dividend that could 
 thus have been distributed in 1852 would have amounted nearly to 
 4 per cent. 
 
 As it was, as we have seen, the holders of original undivided stock 
 had been without dividend for six months only, viz., from 30 June, 
 1850, when the payment of interest out of capital had ceased until 
 I January, 1851, from which the first dividend of 2 per cent, had dated; 
 and now they were to get 2J per cent, for 1852 and over 3J for 1853. 
 Thus from 1853— the first year during which the whole undertaking 
 was at work— the " B " shareholders began to receive the whole of the 
 6 per cent, which they had been guaranteed by the " A," and even the 
 "A" shareholders got something for the second half-year of 1853, viz., 
 £,\ 8j. id. per cent. From that time onward, moreover, for a number 
 of years, as we shall see, the return to these more speculative investors 
 
 \ 
 
 I 
 
128 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 increased in a way which much more than repaid them for such loss 
 and anxiety as they suffered during the first few years in which they 
 had to go without remuneration. 
 
 Moreover, even if the Great Northern Railway had remained for 
 many years entirely unremunerative as an investment, the exertions 
 of those who had carried it into effect would still have been at once 
 justified, in that it had already vastly increased the resources of the 
 districts which it served. A single one of its achievements — the 
 inland conveyance of coal to London — had alone produced an 
 economy sufficient to pay a high interest upon the capital outlay, and 
 the benefits already derived indirectly from this and other improve- 
 ments which it had brought about, were not less real because they are 
 incalculable. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE SOUTH YORKSHIRE SPLIT— THE BREAKING DOWN 
 OF THE BARRIERS— 1853-1855. 
 
 MEANWHILE the breach between the Great Northern and 
 South Yorks companies in general, and Mr. Denison and 
 Mr. Baxter in particular, in reference to the abortive amalgamation, 
 had been growing wider every day. The South Yorkshire shareholders 
 complained that in order to amalgamate with the Great Northern they 
 had refused better offers from the Midland and Sheffield— "Do you 
 believe it?" jeered Mr. Denison; "I do not, or anything of the sort" 
 —and they forwarded resolutions to King's Cross " containing accusa- 
 tions," to quote Mr. Denison again, "of repudiation, and appeals to 
 moral feeling, and such slip-slop as that." "Yes," said the Great 
 Northern chairman afterwards to his shareholders, "I unfortunately 
 said, 'and such slip-slop as that.' The words 'slip-slop,' it was said, 
 ought not to have fallen from the lips of a person who had the honour 
 to hold two or three rather prominent situations. It was thought 
 indecent, and I don't know what besides, and a gentleman belonging 
 to the South Yorkshire read me a lecture ; and I think his observation 
 was that moral rectitude met with its own reward. I should have 
 thought men of business, dealing with merchants, would have known 
 better than to suppose that any such stuff would make any impression 
 at all on a man at all fit to be at the head of a Railway Board." 
 
 In consequence of the remonstrances from the South Yorkshire, 
 a second full meeting of the Great Northern Board was held on 
 I November, 1852, to consider the matter further; but its only result 
 was that the decision of 25 August was confirmed. Thereupon 
 Mr. Baxter tendered the resignation of his firm from their post of 
 jomt solicitors to the Company, declaring that he could no longer 
 be associated with " the dishonourable action " of its directors. These 
 were strong words, but Mr. Baxter was bound to the Board by as 
 strong ties of old friendship and past service; and these ties Mr. 
 *^ 129 
 
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130 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 li 
 
 Denison and his colleagues would certainly not have suffered to be cut 
 through in a burst of temper. Unfortunately they had already been 
 severed past mending by the sharp necessities of the situation. For 
 that one man should continue the confidential agent of two Boards, 
 which were in direct antagonism one with the other, was a state of 
 things obviously unendurable, and, having to choose between the one 
 service and the other, it was equally inevitable that a man of Mr. 
 Baxter's strong will and conscientious character should go the way to 
 which his convictions led.* 
 
 Nevertheless to the solicitor himself, to Mr. Denison, and indeed to 
 all personally concerned, the separation was a very painful one. 
 
 " Is it nothing," asked Mr. Baxter, with real feeling, " to be the legal 
 adviser of the Great Northern Company? I am sure, gentlemen, you 
 will bear with me when I say that I deem it an honour to any man to 
 have such an office. I say nothing of the other fruits of the office, but 
 it cannot be that the man, when discretion belongs to him and when 
 haste has all gone by, will cast away the honour or the profits of such 
 an office. . . . But as I cannot go any further with you on this matter 
 let me retire. I have served, I hope faithfully, the Company by whom 
 I have been employed. I have, with the utmost satisfaction, acted 
 with the Board. Let us part as friends, and let there be no irritation or 
 ill-feeling." 
 
 So, with mutual regret, the resignation was accepted, and the other 
 joint solicitors to the Company — Messrs. Johnson, Farquhar, and Leach, 
 who, it may be remembered, had come into the concern as solicitors 
 to the Direct Northern — had now to take over the whole of the legal 
 and Parliamentary business. In this difficult task they received very 
 valuable assistance from Mr. E. B. Denison, who supplied — as he 
 himself said — "in some degree, however inadequately, the place of 
 Mr. Baxter in having a previous cognizance of all the affairs ! " "I 
 commenced my career," he told the Great Northern shareholders at 
 their next meeting (February, 1853), "in 1845 under the instructions 
 of Mr. Baxter. I was then in daily intercourse, and have been ever 
 since, with the leading men in my profession, Mr. Austin, Mr. Talbot, 
 and Mr. Serjeant Wrangham ; and all those gentlemen have from the 
 beginning to the end expressed their conviction that no Company ever 
 had such a good legal adviser as Mr. Baxter. ... I take leave to say 
 most positively that no Company ever had a better adviser in legal 
 matters — I am not sure that I might not say so good an adviser." 
 
 But now, alas ! — and for a long time to come — the Great Northern 
 directors were to have cause to wish that Mr. Baxter's acumen in legal 
 and Parliamentary business was not so great, for the arts which he had 
 
 1853 
 
 MR. DENISON IN CONSTERNATION 
 
 I3» 
 
 mastered in their service were in the future to be turned against them- 
 selves. His resignation had barely taken effect before he obtained 
 instructions from his South Yorkshire clients to lodge a petition in 
 Chancery against the Great Northern to restrain it from paying any future 
 dividend until the claims of the former under the disputed agreement 
 of P'ebruary had been met; and, when this was dismissed rather 
 summarily by Vice-Chancel lor Stuart, nothing daunted he carried an 
 appeal to the Lords Justices, retaining for his counsel Sir Fitzroy Kelly, 
 one of the most eminent common law barristers of the day. This, 
 however, was also dismissed on 17 February, 1853; and then Mr. 
 Baxter played his trump card : he sent a letter to Messrs. Johnson, 
 Farquhar, and Leach, "couched," as Mr. Denison said, "in very 
 gentlemanly professional terms," to the effect that if the amount 
 owing to the South Yorkshire under the disputed agreement was not 
 paid by the following Tuesday— 22 February, 1853 — the Great 
 Northern's coal trains would be stopped ! 
 
 The Great Northern directors had, in the meantime, decided that, on 
 the assumption that the agreement of Pebruary, 1852, was invalid, they 
 were entitled to fall back upon the prior arrangement under which, as 
 will be remembered, they had been paying the South Yorkshire a mile- 
 age toll of lod. per ton, but this, of course, was indignantly rejected 
 by the smaller company; and so Mr. Denison, who, despite a bad 
 attack of gout, was busying himself down at Doncaster in efforts after 
 a peaceful settlement, had offered on his responsibility to give is. 
 a ton. What happened next may be quoted from the racy narrative 
 which the Great Northern chairman subsequently gave to his share- 
 holders : — 
 
 I said, " I will give you one shilling provided you will allow that a 
 ton of coal shall consist of twenty-one cwt. — twenty-one cwt. being the 
 quantity which is delivered by the coalowners to those who buy the 
 coal, but they said 'No!' and so we parted; and on the following 
 morning, Sunday, at home, I got a copy of the letter which had been 
 received by our solicitor, stating that if a certain sum was not paid on 
 the following Tuesday (Monday alone intervening) they would stop all 
 the coal trains. They must have known on the previous day what was 
 coming and have thought it would distress me, being in the gout, to be 
 told of all these horrors of the trains being stopped. Of course it 
 threw me into a great state of consternation. ... On the Monday 
 night down comes one of our officers to Doncaster, well instructed by 
 the gentlemen in London — * Go to-morrow and meet the general 
 manager of the South Yorkshire and tender him anything that he asks, 
 but with a reservation that it is tendered without prejudice and do not 
 
 ill 
 
I » 
 
 132 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 II' , 
 
 let the trains be stopped ! '—indeed, I understand the direction to him 
 in London under the advice of persons with tolerably good heads was, 
 * Pay 5J. per ton rather than let the trains be stopped ! ' However, they 
 modestly said they must have is. Sd. per ton, * but,' said their general 
 manager, ' I will not accept it unless you pay it to me and take your 
 chance; I will not take it under protest'; and then, drawing himself 
 up, being three feet ten inches, and making himself nine feet six inches, 
 he said, 'No, beyond my stop-signal you shall not go!' So the 
 trains were stopped the whole of Tuesday, the whole of Wednesday, 
 and part of Thursday. 
 
 "What happens in the meantime? The gentlemen in London, 
 with the advice of their solicitors and counsel, applied to the court 
 to prevent the stopping of our trains. The case again comes before 
 this Vice-Chancellor Stuart, as they call him ; and after poking his 
 way a certain time at it he says, ' Well, I will grant an injunction to 
 prevent the stopping of the trains on condition that the Great Northern 
 Company pays is. 6{f. a ton without prejudice, the difference to be 
 paid back in case it shall be found to be too much.' If it had been 
 5^. it would have been paid, for our object was to set the trade free. 
 There were 500 or 600 colliers out of work ; the trains were all 
 stopped ; our engine - drivers were playing marbles or snowballs or 
 something of that sort ; the engines were standing idle ; people were 
 calling out for coals, but coals they could not get ; and when I came 
 up to London on Thursday I looked out of the window of the railway 
 carriage, and there was not a single station with a coal on it, so that 
 if the snowstorm had lasted I don't know where the people would 
 have been. However, by the order of Vice-Chancellor Stuart, the 
 stoppage of the trains ceased, and they began to run again exactly 
 on the same terms which we had proposed to the general manager 
 of the South Yorkshire, namely, that we should pay is. 6d. per ton 
 without prejudice." 
 
 The object of Mr. Denison's journey to London was to attend the 
 half-yearly meetings of the two companies— the Great Northern and 
 the South Yorkshire— and at both of them, despite his gout, he 
 defended his action in very vigorous speeches. There was, however, 
 obviously nothing more to be done now but to fight out the question 
 of the validity of the disputed agreement before the proper legal 
 tribunal ; and, with Mr. Baxter on the one side and Mr. Denison and 
 his son on the other, the contest which ensued was destined, as we 
 shall see later, to be a very stubborn one. Meanwhile, however, we 
 must turn our attention to other matters even more important in their 
 bearing upon the destiny of the Great Northern. 
 
 1853 
 
 AMALGAMATION OR COMPETITION? 
 
 133 
 
 It may fairly be said that at the beginning of 1853 a crisis had 
 been reached in the general policy of the British Government towards 
 railway enterprise. As we have before noted, the completion of the 
 Great Northern lines meant that there was now more than one 
 serviceable route between London and every place of importance 
 m the kingdom ; and, so long as these routes remained under the 
 control of rival companies, it was inevitable that competition should 
 be a predominant factor in their working. But some of the forms 
 which competition had taken, such as the blocking of junctions and 
 the consequent stunting of some lines and unnatural development of 
 others, were not only highly inconvenient to the travelling and trading 
 public, but had become intolerable to the railway interest itself. 
 Under these circumstances the amalgamation of rival interests had 
 been fixed upon by directors and shareholders as their readiest — 
 nay, their only available means of security ; and the union of two 
 of the largest companies — the London and North Western and 
 Midland — had already got so far as the presentation of a Bill to 
 Parliament, this being regarded by many as the preliminary to a 
 general alliance. In other words. Parliament was now asked to 
 sanction the initial step in a process which, if once set going, might 
 bring the whole railway interest under one control ; and the question 
 was, would Parliament set it going, or, if not, what remedy of its 
 own would it devise? For the one thing which all parties were 
 agreed upon was that matters could not be allowed to remain as they 
 were. 
 
 Obviously the subject was one requiring wider and more thorough 
 consideration than was likely to be given it during the progress in 
 their ordinary course of the North Western-cum-Midland and other 
 minor Amalgamation Bills. It was accordingly agreed that the Bills 
 should be " hung up " while a Select Committee of the House investi- 
 gated the problem in all its bearings ; and this Committee— of which 
 Mr. Cardwell, President of the Board of Trade, was chairman, and Mr. 
 Gladstone a leading member— recommended, in its turn, a further 
 period of suspense and deliberation, during which amalgamations, or 
 alliances of the nature of amalgamation, between railway companies 
 should be altogether prohibited. Thus the union of the London and 
 North Western with the Midland and of the Great Northern with the 
 Ambergate were both put out of court for the session of 1853. 
 
 This decision of Parliament was not only beneficial in averting the 
 very expensive contests which would inevitably have been waged had 
 these Bills reached Committee stage, but, by showing the companies that 
 larhament was by no means so inclined as they had imagined to favour 
 
 T\ 
 
i 
 
 ; 
 
 134 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 their sovereign remedy of amalgamation, it induced them to make new 
 efforts to put an end to their skirmishes and blockades by other means. 
 Accordingly, in the spring of 1853, the warfare at Nottingham was 
 terminated by the confederate companies agreeing that the Great 
 Northern and Ambergate should be given access to that town for 
 London traffic under an extension of the Gladstone pool ; and in like 
 manner it was agreed that if the Great Northern withdrew its Bill for a 
 Bedford branch and allowed the Leicester, Bedford, and Hitchin to 
 pass without opposition, the Midland would undertake to make that 
 line an open one to Great Northern traffic, that is to say, to run on 
 it, when completed, a reasonable number of trains to fit in at Hitchin 
 Junction with the Great Northern services, both passenger and goods. 
 Thus the Great Northern, in addition to establishing its footing in 
 Nottingham, secured access in the near future to two other Midland 
 towns — Bedford and Leicester. In this same session of 1853, moreover, 
 the Leeds, Bradford, and Halifax Junction Company — whose works were 
 now in full progress — carried a " Further Powers " Act, under which 
 the Great Northern secured running powers, not only over the new 
 line from Leeds into Bradford, but also into Halifax over the portion 
 of the West Riding Union scheme already constructed by the 
 Lancashire and Yorkshire. 
 
 Thus the barriers originally raised against the Great Northern were 
 gradually going down — as Mr. Denison had predicted they must — 
 before its steadfast assertion of its rights ; but there still remained two 
 important districts, at least, from which it was altogether excluded — the 
 district west of Sheffield and the district north of Edinburgh, although 
 to both of these King's Cross should have been in the natural order of 
 things as convenient a London terminus as Euston Square. The 
 remedy, of course, was to convince the Manchester, Sheffield, and 
 Lincolnshire in the one case, and the Edinburgh and Glasgow and 
 Scottish Central companies in the other, that it was to their interest to 
 arrange " through bookings and facilities " with the new route, and this 
 was an object of which Mr. Denison and his colleagues never lost 
 sight. On the other hand, to keep these companies bound to the old 
 route exclusively was an equally ever-present object with Captain 
 Huish and his directors ; and great still was the potency of Euston 
 Square. The result was that overtures from King's Cross were 
 repeatedly rejected; with the Scotch companies practically nothing 
 could be accomplished ; and the negotiations with the Sheffield resulted 
 in little more than the settlement on a somewhat firmer basis of the 
 existing agreements under which the Great Northern obtained its access 
 to Great Grimsby, to Hull, and to Sheffield. 
 
 i. 
 
 1853 
 
 "TAPPING NEW STRATA OF TRAFFIC" 
 
 »35 
 
 We have already noted how, subsequent to the completion of the 
 towns line and the London terminus, the Great Northern directors 
 had been obliged to raise ;£^7 50,000 of new capital, and this prepares 
 us to find that even though the Company had now ceased to 
 add to its mileage, its engineer, Mr. Joseph Cubitt, had still a con- 
 siderable amount of constructive work on hand. This chiefly consisted 
 of additions to stations, such as engine-houses, carriage-sheds, granaries, 
 coal-depots, warehouses, sidings, and stables for horses— for instead of 
 depending, like the London and North Western, upon Messrs. Pickford 
 and other established carriers, the Great Northern was doing street 
 " collection and delivery " itself. When some of the shareholders were 
 disposed to grumble that these "extras" were too expensive, Mr. 
 Denison assured them that he was thoroughly convinced that they 
 would pay for their cost better almost than any other portion of the 
 undertaking. 
 
 " If you do not give your customers this accommodation," said he, 
 " they will not send traffic by your line. If we had not built a very 
 large corn warehouse in Ix)ndon the corn would not have been brought 
 to us. Then, too, we have a very large potato trade — we bring 
 potatoes up from Yorkshire as well as from Lincolnshire, which have 
 hitherto been brought up by sea into the Thames, and the parties to 
 whom they are sent must have places of deposit for their reception. 
 The consequence has been that we have been driven to the necessity 
 of building in the goods station at King's Cross a warehouse— not a 
 very large warehouse, but one that will cost about ;^4,ooo — for the 
 purpose of receiving the potatoes, and thereby setting the waggons at 
 liberty. If you do not give all your customers the best means of 
 accommodating their traffic when it comes upon the line you will lose 
 the traffic." 
 
 Thus we see that the principle which was at the base of the Great 
 Northern's coal business, that, namely, of "tapping new strata" of traffic 
 by offering extra facilities, was being applied in other directions ; and 
 of this a fresh instance was given about this time by the Company 
 joining with the Midland and Sheffield to start a traffic in fish from 
 Grimsby by setting a small fleet of smacks afloat. 
 
 To Mr. Sturrock, their locomotive engineer, the instructions of the 
 directors were — " Expend such a sum as will ensure efficiency without 
 reference to cost per mile," and the result was that the working stock 
 of the Great Northern soon became larger proportionately than that 
 of any other company. Said Mr. Denison on this point : " When the 
 manager applies to the Board for twenty-five or thirty engines, which 
 ^^^^ ^3»ooo each, or for 1000 waggons, which cost about ^^75 each, 
 
 t ; 
 
 Hi 
 
 
 ..■I 
 
iK 
 
 i 
 
 
 136 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 it makes one stare; but then the question is whether it is prudent 
 to say, 'No, we will not have these engines and waggons,' for that 
 would at once stop the increase of traffic. " One reason why the Great 
 Northern needed more rolling-stock than other companies was because 
 it alone supplied waggons for the coal traffic. '*But," said Mr. Denison, 
 '•there is another reason— our carriages are so much preferred by the 
 public that, although our line extends practically to York only, yet 
 an immense number of our carriages run through to Edinburgh, York 
 being only 200 miles, while Edinburgh is 400 miles. The traffic is 
 a long traffic, and it requires us to have a large stock of carriages." 
 
 For the same reason, namely, that the Great Northern— in an apt 
 phrase— is "fed from its extremities," the Company had from the first 
 to have not only more locomotives, but those of better quality than 
 were possessed generally by the other companies. \Ve have already 
 seen how Mr. Sturrock, to meet this want, had introduced on to 
 the 4' 8J" gauge several of the features which in the "forties" had 
 given an undoubted pre-eminence to the broad-gauge engines of the 
 Great Western, and this process he now consummated by placing on 
 the rails his well-known "No. 215," which was built from his designs 
 by Messrs. Hawthorn and Company, of Newcastle-on-Tyne, and 
 delivered for work on 6 August, 1853. The chief features of this 
 engine w^ere the large diameter of its driving-wheels and the great 
 extent of its heating surface, the former being 7' 6" and the latter 
 1718-2 sq. ft. Its weight in working order was 37 J tons, and it stood 
 on eight wheels, two pairs of "leaders," one of "drivers," and one small 
 pair of " trailers." In short— in the words of Mr. Clement Stretton— 
 it was " practically a narrow-gauge edition of ' the Great Western.' " Its 
 designer claims that a speed of seventy-five miles an hour was frequently 
 attained with it on favourable lengths of line, and that with engines of 
 its class it would have been possible, had there been the demand, to 
 run a train from King's Cross to Edinburgh in eight hours. The facts 
 remain, however, that No. 215 was the only one of the class built, and 
 that it was broken up in 1870. In 1853 Messrs. R. and W. Hawthorn 
 also built for the Company from Mr. Sturrock's design twelve new 
 "single" engines for express passenger traffic with driving-wheels 6' 6" 
 in diameter — i.e., the same diameter as the " Cramptons." 
 
 On 31 August, 1853, occurred the first serious accident upon the 
 Company's system. On the afternoon of that day the five p.m. 
 express from King's Cross bound for Yorkshire collided at Hornsey 
 with a broken-down coal train, though the fixed signal in advance 
 of the station had been set at danger. The driver, it appeared, had 
 relied upon an ample "time-interval,' and had neglected to keep 
 
 1853 LORD MAYOR AND BISHOP IN A COLLISION 137 
 
 a proper look-out ahead. The accident was very alarming to the 
 shareholders, because two very exalted personages— the Lord Mayor 
 of London and the Bishop of Lincoln — happened to be on board 
 the express, and since the passing of "Lord Campbell's" Act the 
 liability of railway companies for compensation had been made pro- 
 portionate to the income of the person injured. Fortunately, however, 
 the rapping of two august heads together proved to be the extent 
 of the injury in this case. 
 
 It was in this year, 1853, that the locomotive headquarters of the 
 Company were removed from Boston, where, as we have seen, they 
 
 ;t 
 
 
 yi 
 
 Thk Great Northern Locomotive, " No. 216.' 
 
 were at first temporarily located, to their present site at Doncaster, that 
 place being considered better situated for obtaining a supply of labour, 
 of coal, and of iron. The original building there erected consisted 
 of a repairing establishment only, but this had hardly been completed 
 when the directors decided to increase the accommodation so as to 
 provide for the building, as well as of mending, of both engines 
 and carriages; and by the end of 1853 the operations already carried 
 on had reached such dimensions that 949 mechanics were employed. 
 These, with the 536 women and 1026 children which formed their 
 families, and the new tradespeople of various sorts necessary to supply 
 their requirements, made an addition to the population of Doncaster 
 in one year of more than 2500 souls. 
 
 Towards these people, in Mr. Denison's opinion, the responsibility 
 
I 
 
 i 
 
 ' 
 
 
 138 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 of the Company extended further than to the mere payment of their 
 weekly wages and the provision of cottages for such of them as could 
 not find accommodation in the existing town, and he accordingly 
 proposed that the Company should forthwith build a church and 
 schools at Doncaster at a cost which was estimated at ;^8ooo. This 
 proposition was endorsed by the Board and brought formally before the 
 shareholders at their fifteenth half-yearly meeting held on 25 February, 
 1854; but it became immediately evident that it was likely to arouse 
 much opposition and dissension. "I am not for stopping church 
 extension — (iod forbid!" said one speaker; "let us have as many 
 churches as you please, but they must not be paid for out of the 
 capital of a trading company." "Is it intended to alter the name 
 of this Company ? " asked another. " Is it intended to be a railway 
 Company or a Church Extension Society ? " And a third one wanted 
 to know where the end was to be if they were to become "first, 
 coal merchants, then hotel-keepers, and after that lay improprietors." 
 To this Mr. Denison answered, " with perfect respect," that he would 
 " not consent to live day by day," when he was at Doncaster, " seeing 
 the children of the great population brought there in the Company's 
 service running about the streets without having in the week a school 
 to go to or on Sundays a church for worship"; and in the matter 
 of the schools he carried his point, for ^1000 was straightway voted 
 for their construction. But for the church an Act of Parliament had 
 to be obtained, and this gave time for the shareholders' opposition 
 to gather strength. 
 
 Meantime, the suit with the South Yorkshire Company as to the 
 validity of the agreement to absorb that undertaking had been dragging 
 along a slow and expensive course. Immediately after the temporary 
 stopping of the trains already described it had been carried bijfore the 
 Court of Exchequer ; but the members of that court had first deferred 
 judgment in order to have time for the fullest consideration, and then, 
 in June, 1853, given seriatim opinions which conflicted with one 
 another. As, however, one learned Baron only had held the agreement 
 to be ultra vires, while two had ruled in favour of its validity, the actual 
 judgment had gone in favour of the South Yorkshire Company, despite 
 the fact that the Lord Chief Baron, being unable to attend, had sent 
 word that " the inclination of his opinion " was on the other side. 
 
 Needless to say, the Great Northern authorities had not hesitated to 
 appeal, and accordingly, in November, 1853, the case had been re- 
 argued before the Court of Exchequer Chamber. It was not until 
 I February, 1854, however, that judgment was given. It proved 
 confirmatory of the decision of the court below; but, as the Great 
 
 1853-4 
 
 THE ORIGINAL PERMANENT WAY 
 
 139 
 
 Northern's counsel still held that these decisions of the law judges 
 were quite at variance with those given by the Courts of Equity in 
 similar cases, the directors resolved to appeal to the House of Lords. 
 " We have a painful duty to perform," said Mr. Denison, when making 
 known this resolve to the Great Northern shareholders at their half- 
 yearly meeting on 25 February, i854--the same at which, as just 
 related, the proposition for a church at Doncaster first came up for 
 discussion. "We have a high respect for all the parties; we are 
 doing a great deal of business with them; we take an immense 
 quantity of coal from them. All we want to know is what are the 
 rights of the respective parties. I only want to be assured what the 
 law indisputably is, and then I will submit." 
 
 Since the opening in August, 1852, of the "towns line" between 
 Peterborough and Retford, much trouble had been occasioned upon it 
 by landslips, which on one occasion had buried a passing goods train, 
 and on several others had necessitated the diversion of the through 
 traffic for a day or more to its older course via the loop. In these 
 same deep cuttings, too, trouble of a similar kind had been occasioned 
 by snowdrifts. It was at the London end of the system, however, that 
 renewal work of an expensive sort had first to be taken in hand. Here, 
 it may be remembered, in the hurry to get the traffic running, burnt 
 clay had been used for ballasting, and for this good clean gravel had 
 now, in 1853-4, to be substituted; nor had this operation been 
 thoroughly completed before it became necessary to commence re- 
 ballasting generally. It was necessary also to renew at places the rails 
 themselves, for it was found that, especially on the falling gradient 
 between Potters Bar and the terminus, the traffic— and particularly the 
 heavy coal traffic — had already, in 1854, inflicted serious injury upon 
 the " up " road. The switches and crossings had also to be renewed at 
 most of the principal stations. 
 
 The rails originally laid down throughout the system were "double- 
 headed reversibles," in i8-feet lengths, weighing 72 lbs. to the yard, 
 and resting in joint chairs, weighing 40 lbs. each, and intermediate 
 chairs, 21 lbs., secured with two wooden trenails apiece to triangular 
 sleepers. For the renewals, however, it was thought wise to use 82-lb. 
 rails in 21 -feet lengths, and to substitute "fish-joints"— which were 
 just at this time coming into vogue — for the joint chairs. Even these 
 heavier rails, however, had many of them to be re-renewed after a " life " 
 of about three and a half years only, and for the first twelve years of 
 its existence as a working railway the average annual charge which 
 the Great Northern had to pay for renewals was ;£35,2 73 — a sum 
 which would have paid an additional i per ctnt. dividend upon its 
 
 
 r I 
 
 
 % 
 
 il^ 
 
 'V 
 
I 
 
 I 
 
 j 
 
 I 
 
 ! I 
 
 140 HrSTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 open stock.* In this way the coal traffic was responsible for an extra 
 expense which its promoters had not reckoned upon beforehand. 
 
 Another operation which Mr. Joseph Cubitt took vigorously in hand 
 in 1854 was "the establishment of the electric telegraph from and to 
 every station between London and Hatfield for the purpose of regulating 
 and controlhng the passage of all trains and the intervals between 
 them," with the object of "guarding against the possibility of one 
 tram bemg overtaken and run into by another." As we have 
 already noted, the Great Northern had been, at the time of its first 
 openmg from London, entirely without the telegraph, which on other 
 Imes was already much valued as an aid to the "time-interval" system 
 of traffic- working; but in 185:^ six wires, erected by Messrs. Reid 
 Brothers, had been opened from London to Peterborough, and very 
 shortly afterwards all the " first-class stations " on the system had been 
 brought by this means into instant communication. But that this was 
 not sufficient for the safety of the trains-few and far between though 
 they were in those days-had been demonstrated by the Hornsey 
 accident. Hence the determination of the managers to endeavour 
 to secure a " space-interval " by establishing the telegraph at every 
 station. But-in Mr. Cubitt's own phrase-" the more extended 
 application " of this tentative block system was dependent upon the 
 result of the experiment of its working between London and Hatfield 
 
 On I August, 1854, the line of the Leeds, Bradford, and Halifax 
 Junction Company from Leeds to Bowling, near Bradford, was opened for 
 traffic, and from that date the Great Northern trains began to run over it 
 and also over the Lancashire and Yorkshire line between Halifax and 
 Bradford, thus affording those two important towns for the first time a 
 direct communication with London without break of journey This 
 gave the Great Northern the right to call itself /./^ exce//e;ice the 
 London and \\'est Riding Railway, an object at which, as we know, 
 Mr. Denison and some others of its promoters had aimed from the 
 first ; and a still further improvement of its position in this important 
 district was now promised from the passing of an Act in the session 
 of 1854 for a direct line from Wakefield to Leeds, over which the 
 Great Northern was empowered to work traffic. It was to be con- 
 structed, however, by an independent company promoted by the same 
 party to whom the Leeds, Bradford, and Halifax owed its existence • and 
 so, while the Great Northern's running powers in the West Riding were 
 to be thus further extended, it was still to remain in the anomalous 
 
 * I take this figure and the details about the rails given alx,ve from a valuable 
 statistical paper read by Mr. R. Price Williams before the Institution of CivH 
 bngmeers. v.-**" 
 
 1854 THK G.N. TERMINUS "IN A PLOUGHED FIELD" 141 
 
 • 
 situation of not being able to call a single yard of railway there fully its 
 own. It had bought from the Uncashire and Yorkshire a half-share in 
 a viaduct at Leeds; it had set up goods stations in several towns, and it 
 was joint owner of the passenger stations at Leeds, at Wakefield, and 
 Knottingley. But its own rails— to recall Mr. Denison's phrase— still 
 terminated "in a ploughed field four miles north of Doncaster," from 
 which point to the West Riding, as well as to York, it was dependent on 
 running powers over other companies' lines. 
 
 Meanwhile Parliament had been grappling strenuously with the general 
 problems of railway politics ; but, as was not surprising, considering the 
 inconsistencies to which it was already committed, it had not succeeded 
 m evolving— much less in acting upon— any uniform principles with 
 regard to them. Between " protection " and " free trade " it still wavered 
 —between the fear of impairing the privileges which it had granted to 
 the old companies under their original charters, and the wish to give 
 the public the full benefits of the enterprise of the new ones ; and the 
 result, as far as the session of 1854 was concerned, was the passing 
 of a number of Acts, and the rejection of others, for reasons beneath 
 which it is impossible to find any consistent reasoning whatever. The 
 chief of these Acts, of course, was the first Railway and Canal Traffic 
 Act, the " Cardwell Act " as it was, and is still sometimes, called, after 
 the President of the Board of Trade who fathered it. 
 
 This Act, in motive and design at any rate, was a very decided step 
 towards freer competition, and away from monopoly, for it invested the 
 Court of Common Pleas with powers to compel any company to give 
 "all reasonable facilities" at junctions, etc., to the through traffic of 
 others. But, on the other hand, clauses which Mr. Cardwell originally 
 embodied in it, making " through bookings " everywhere compulsory, 
 had been withdrawn in deference to the protests of the established 
 interests; and, even as it was, the Act would probably not have 
 been allowed to pass had not the shrewdest of its opponents felt 
 sure that it would be inoperative to secure the full objects which its 
 authors had in view. Nor did it need a very keen eye to see that 
 the opposite policy of protection to vested interests was still dear 
 to Parliament, for in this very same session of 1854 an Act amalga- 
 mating the York, Newcastle, and Berwick, York and North Midland, 
 and Leeds Northern into the " North Eastern " had been passed— an 
 Act which placed the traffic of an important district in the hands of 
 a single company. 
 
 On one point, however, there was no longer room for doubt. This 
 was that the " protectionist " policy in its full development— the policy 
 upon which Captain Huish had acted in forming the Euston Square 
 
 HI 
 
 " 1 
 
 fl 
 
 I 
 
142 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 I 
 
 llfl 
 
 I II 
 
 liii 
 
 confederacy originally and upon which his desire to absorb the Midland 
 entirely was now based— would certainly not be furthered in any way by 
 Parliamentary sanction. On the contrary it was against this policy, 
 evidently, that the Cardwell Act, such as it was, was directed, and 
 however inconsistent and wavering the action of the Legislature 
 might have been, it was impossible to hope that it would stultify 
 itself utterly by first passing a general Act to check practices for which 
 two companies were mainly responsible, and then passing a special Act 
 to strengthen those very companies' hands. Accordingly, when it 
 had become evident that in some form or other the " facility clauses " 
 of the Cardwell Act would pass, the London and North Western and 
 Midland directors had found no course open to them but to withdraw 
 their Amalgamation Bill. But this did not mean that they had deter- 
 mined to abandon the policy which Captain Huish had so long fostered. 
 On the contrary, it meant that that very astute tactician, recognizing that 
 he could not hope for success in flaunting a general law publicly, but at 
 the same time recognizing that that general law was a futile one, had 
 determined to pursue his aims by private treaty instead of by public 
 act, and hoped to evade the disapproval of the Legislature by the 
 simple expedient of not consulting it. 
 
 That this course was foredoomed to failure sooner or later even 
 the London and North Western manager himself must have felt in his 
 calmer moments, when he remembered the fate of so comparatively 
 innocent a private treaty as that which the Great Northern two years 
 before had made with the Ambergate, but from future risks of this kind 
 Captain Huish appears to have deliberately averted his eyes, and to have 
 fixed them only upon the immediate danger which he dreaded. This 
 was that the Great Northern by way of its existing junction with the 
 Manchester, Sheffield, and Lincolnshire at Retford and the new junction 
 which the Midland was about to form with it at Hitchin, would, under 
 the encouragement of the Cardwell Act, force its way into the whole 
 Midland district and into Lancashire. This was the contingency to avert 
 which, as we know, the confederacy had been formed originally; and, now 
 that the same danger seriously threatened for the second time, the only 
 weapon available against it was to strengthen the confederacy ; if such 
 strengthening were ultra vires, well there was nothing for it but to 
 run the risk. These apparently were the considerations which led 
 the London and North Western manager, in July, 1854, to make 
 propositions to Mr. Allport, who in the previous year had left the 
 Manchester, Sheffield, and Lincolnshire to become general manager 
 of the Midland, and to Mr. Edward Watkin, who had gone from 
 Euston Square to succeed Mr. Allport on the Sheffield, for new 
 
 . I 
 
 1854 THE SOUTH YORKSHIRE DISPUTE SETTLED 143 
 
 treaties between his company and theirs ; and these propositions being 
 accepted, a new confederacy was then formed on the old basis of 
 working as one interest and preventing the Great Northern from 
 getting any share in through traffic west of its existing system. It 
 was no wonder that Mr. Denison complained afterwards to a House 
 of Commons Committee that " the general managers laughed at the 
 Cardwell Act." 
 
 E'ortunately, however, in view of the new difficulties which thus 
 threatened it, the Great Northern had just got rid of an old trouble. 
 The law proceedings with the South Yorkshire Company had been 
 terminated by mutual consent. As almost invariably happens in 
 such cases, the agreement now arrived at was of the nature of a 
 compromise. The Cireat Northern agreed to settle the South York- 
 shire accounts up to 31 December, 1854, on the terms of the 
 disputed agreement, upon the understanding that from that date 
 matters should proceed upon an entirely new footing. This meant 
 that the South Yorkshire Company was to give up for the future all 
 claim to a guaranteed dividend and rest content with receiving a 
 mileage toll, plus a reasonable terminal charge, upon the traffic 
 actually carried. Under the circumstances this was probably as 
 good an arrangement as could be arrived at; but, as we shall see, 
 it left the door open to many future difficulties and disputes. 
 
 All this time, despite the disagreements we have been describing in 
 regard to its principal field of supply, the Great Northern's revenue 
 from coal traffic had been steadily increasing; and in the year 1854 — 
 the fourth year only in which the trade had been carried on in London 
 — the gross receipts amounted to more than ^300,000, the sum which 
 had excited so much derision when included in the early estimate 
 of the London and York promoters. This was a result of which all 
 concerned had good reason to be proud, and especially was credit due 
 to the general manager, Mr. Seymour Clarke, who from the commence- 
 ment of his connection with the Company had been most zealous 
 in developing this branch of its business, and to his brother, Mr. 
 Herbert Clarke— a name destined to be widely known in the London 
 coal trade— who had been installed at King's Cross almost from the 
 beginning of the traffic as " sole agent for the sale of the coals carried 
 by the Company." The method upon which these two energetic 
 brothers, however, conducted the trade did not escape criticism, and 
 at the half-yearly meeting in August, 1854, Mr. Plimsoll— a man whose 
 name is now chiefly known for his efforts in the cause of seamen, 
 but who at that time was endeavouring to establish himself as a 
 dealer in South Yorkshire coals — made an attack upon what he 
 
 . 11 i 
 
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If 
 
 ^1 
 
 f 
 
 I 
 
 144 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 rather intemperately described as " the pettifogging, contemptible, and 
 wretched policy" which was "ruining the trade of the district." 
 
 "The coalowners," said he, "feel that great oppression is being 
 exercised; that only one buyer can buy in the market— that is Mr. 
 Clarke, and that the price is subject to his dictum— and I venture 
 to say that if any five men with the ordinary capacity of barndoor fowls 
 would investigate the subject they would perceive a very easy means of 
 remedy. The plan I would suggest is, let any coalowner who pleases 
 send his coal to London, paying you as much freight as you can get. 
 The whole case lies in a nutshell. For the sake of some comparatively 
 minor advantage, such as working the trucks more rapidly under the 
 management of one person, you emasculate the whole thing and 
 consequently cannot arrive at any proper development of the traffic." 
 
 In this complaint there was undoubtedly a good deal of truth as the 
 sequel was to prove ; but Mr. Denison in his reply showed that the 
 matter was more complex than Mr. PlimsoU imagined. "The coal- 
 owners of the South Yorkshire field," complained he on his side, "will 
 not meet the Great Northern Company upon fair and liberal terms. 
 They will not supply us either with the quantity or with the regularity 
 that we require ; they have raised the price upon us at two or three 
 different times ; and we have been driven to the necessity of sending 
 trucks into Durham, and of making arrangements with gentlemen who 
 have coalfields at the back of Wakefield from whence a large quantity 
 is now brought. In order to encourage the coal trade, we have bought 
 a very large number of waggons, contrary to the practice adopted on 
 other railways, but without which you would not have obtained 
 anything like the coal traffic you now have. Mr. Plimsoll's proposition 
 is to find waggons himself, and to send coal to London on his own 
 account. He is perfectly entitled to do so, and we must take his 
 waggons on certain terms; but I cannot consent that he should 
 carry on his trade unfairly to the trade carried on by us." 
 
 But besides the lukewarm attitude of the South Yorkshire coal- 
 owners— an attitude which, as we have seen, they had maintained 
 from the very first, and which had by this time cooled considerably the 
 enthusiasm for the London coal trade with which Mr. Seymour Clarke 
 and other Great Northern authorities had at its outset been infected 
 by Mr. Baxter— another adverse influence was now being brought 
 to bear upon this important branch of the Company's business. 
 This arose, though the Great Northern did not know its primary 
 cause at the time, from the new alliance between the London and 
 North Western and Midland Companies, which, notwithstanding the 
 decision in the Great Northern-Ambergate case, had, without a shadow 
 
 18 4-5 G.N.R. ESTABLISH IiD IN NOTTINGHAM 145 
 
 of legal authority, secretly taken the form of a "common-purse agree- 
 ment." Ten years before, as. the reader may remember to have 
 been informed incidentally already, the " London and Birmingham " 
 directors had contemptuously refused to encourage a Metropolitan 
 traffic from the Midland collieries on the ground that the rates it 
 could pay were too small to be profitable ; but gradually the influence 
 of the Great Northern's example had made itself felt at Euston Square, 
 and for some years the North Western had been doing a considerable 
 coal trade, not only at a chief depot at Camden, but at auxiliary 
 stations in London, to which the lines of the North London and West 
 London companies gave it access. Therefore, it only needed the 
 stimulus of this common-purse agreement with the Midland— with 
 its consequent removal of all difficulties as to settling proportions 
 of through rates-to cause an increase in the "confederate" trade 
 from the Derbyshire field, which almost brought it abreast, in 1854, 
 of the Great Northern trade from South Yorkshire. In the following 
 year, 1855, moreover, the Midland was actually able to send to 
 Camden some of the South Yorkshire coal itself, the South York- 
 shiremen being glad, one may be sure, to show that at a pinch they 
 could be independent of the Great Northern even for the London 
 trade. The Eastern Counties Company, too, had, since 1852, been 
 bnngmg up a considerable quantity of Midland coal, v/d Peterborough. 
 From these various competitive influences the Great Northern tra'de 
 did not continue to develop at the same rate as at first. 
 
 Meanwhile, however, the Great Northern itself had obtained a very 
 useful new weapon, both for defence and attack, in powers which 
 It had at last obtained from Parliament in the session of 1854, "to 
 work, lease, or purchase" the Ambergate line. In that same session, 
 too, the Ambergate Company itself had obtained an Act for its 
 extension to Nottingham, so that the Great Northern had now, 
 potentially, established itself in that Midland town, despite all the 
 eff-orts of the confederacy to prevent this. From April, 1855, it took 
 over the working of the Ambergate line on the terms of paying that 
 company 30 to 35 per cent, of the gross receipts of the traffic. In 
 view of the growth of the coal trade the possession of this line by 
 the Great Northern assumed a new and very great importance, because 
 It enabled the Great Northern to " tap " the Derbyshire field, and so 
 to prevent that growingly important district from becoming an exclu- 
 sive monopoly of the Midland. 
 
 There was another barrier, too, which the Great Northern succeeded 
 m breaking down in 1855— the barrier at Edinburgh. Strengthened by 
 the amalgamation which in 1854 had given birth to the North Eastern, 
 
 1 
 
 I 
 
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146 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 N 
 
 i 
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 ' • 1' 
 
 the East Coast allies had renewed their efforts to get a share in the 
 traffic of northern Scotland, and, through rates by the established route 
 being still refused them, they had tried as a pis alUr to open a new 
 route through Fifeshire in conjunction with the Edinburgh, Perth, and 
 Dundee Company, and by ferries across the F'orth and Tay. In 
 the autumn of 1854, however, a quarrel had arisen between the 
 Caledonian and the Edinburgh and Glasgow companies, which at 
 last gave the East Coast the opportunity it had so long waited for; 
 and the result was that from i January, 1855, a through service and 
 through bookings were arranged with the Edinburgh and (ilasgow and 
 Scottish Central as far as Perth, and shortly afterwards extended over 
 the Scottish North Eastern to Aberdeen. But as in the case of the 
 Eastern Counties traffic with the north, so in this case, the small 
 companies were able to extort the " blackmail " of a bonus on the 
 through receipts in addition to their legitimate mileage proportion, 
 as their price for letting in the new route. 
 
 Since the winter of 1852-3 the Company had raised no new capital, 
 and the result was that at 30 June, 1854, its liabilities for further 
 expenditure on capital account were found to exceed by about 
 ^£450,000 the small unexpended balance of the eleven millions 
 odd which it had raised, as already noted, up to that date. These 
 liabilities consisted of unsettled purchases of land, the completion of 
 the Doncaster Locomotive Works, additional works on the line (in- 
 cluding a new coal depot at Holloway, and a " ticket station " there), the 
 purchase from the Lancashire and Yorkshire Company of half the 
 viaduct at Leeds already referred to, and contracts for engines and 
 various kinds of rolling stock to meet the steadily increasing traffic and 
 to provide for the working of the completed Leeds, Bradford, and 
 Halifax, the authorized Bradford, Wakefield, and Leeds, and four new 
 lines— from Kirkstead to Horncastle, from l^arkstone to Sleaford, from 
 Essendive to Stamford, and from Welwyn to Hertford — the construction 
 of which also independent companies had in hand under agreements 
 with the Great Northern to work them when completed. Accordingly, 
 in August, 1854, the directors obtained the shareholders' authority to 
 raise a million new capital, and having deposited a Bill to authorize 
 this, they on 12 December, 1854, issued "scrip" for it rateably to the 
 proprietors of the existing stocks— a similar course to that which they 
 had taken in regard to their last increase of capital in 1852-3. 
 
 Then, however, it had been found quite easy to get the new stock 
 taken up by the existing holders as ^10 4^ per cent, preference shares, 
 redeemable at six months' notice at 10 per cent, premium; but now in 
 wartime — for the Crimean War was in progress— it was not thought 
 
 1855 
 
 PROPOSED GREAT NORTHERN CHURCH 
 
 HI 
 
 safe to attempt a repetition of this, albeit the position of the Company 
 was stronger in 1854 than in 1852. What was now offered was 
 80,000 shares of ^2 loj. each, bearing a 5 percent, preference dividend 
 and redeemable at 20 per cent. ; and even on these terms, at the first 
 call due on 13 January, 1855, scrip representing 14,000 of the new 
 shares came back unaccepted. Nevertheless, seeing that the call paid 
 on the 66,000 accepted shares, together with payments in advance of 
 future calls, brought in at once ^305,000— nearly one-third of the 
 amount required — the directors were justified in reporting to the share- 
 holders at their seventeenth half-yearly meeting held at the Albion 
 Tavern on 28 February, 1855, that the operation might be considered 
 a success. 
 
 ii 
 
 •« 
 
 The Original "Ticket Station" at Holloway, London. 
 
 At this half-yearly meeting the dividend declared was at the rate of 
 5 J per cent, on the original undivided stock, making the rate for the 
 year 4J per cent. ; and it would have been more but for the war, which 
 had caused a rise in price in iron, in oil and tallow, in wages — " in point 
 of fact "—to quote from Mr. Denison's speech, " in every item of railway 
 expenditure." With the increase of gross receipts the ratio of working 
 expenses to them had sunk from the 50 per cent, already noticed for 
 1851 to 45 per cent, in 1853; but in 1854 it had risen again nearly to 
 50 per cent. 
 
 The principal question discussed at this meeting in February, 1855, 
 was the proposed church for the employees at Doncaster, for the 
 construction and endowment of which the directors were promoting 
 a Bill in Parliament this year. In the ordinary course this Bill would 
 not have been discussed until the Wharncliffe meeting, necessary 
 before it could become an Act; but so opposed were some of the 
 shareholders to the project that they had determined, if possible, to 
 put an end to it before it went further. Accordingly, no sooner had 
 
 IM 
 
11 
 
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 148 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 the chairman made his opening half-yearly speech than a shareholder, 
 Mr. Billings, moved "that no money be spent by the Company for 
 religious purposes until the dividend amounts to 8 per cent." Other 
 amendments and motions similar in purpose were also proposed and 
 strenuously supported; but in the chairman, with whom, as already 
 stated, the church project had originated, and in Mr. E. B. Denison, 
 now a Q.c, who was present as a shareholder to support his father, the 
 opposition party found formidable antagonists. 
 
 " The object of the gentlemen who oppose this proceeding," said the 
 younger Denison, "is to stop the Bill in the House of Commons. But 
 no resolution of theirs ipso facto can stop the Bill in the House of 
 Commons. The answer to that resolution will be that it was obtained 
 at a small meeting by persons who came there for the express purpose 
 of voting against the thing without any public notice to the share- 
 holders. I state, therefore, distinctly, that if that resolution is passed 
 to-day it will be stated distinctly and deliberately by the directors, if 
 they do not omit their duty, that this was a packed meeting." 
 
 Naturally enough, this caused a tremendous uproar. Cries of " No ! 
 no ! " " Shame ! shame ! " " He has insulted us," came from all sides, and 
 one shareholder with stronger lungs than the rest made it heard that 
 " for a father and son to call the meeting a packed one was more than 
 he could stand." 
 
 "Some observations," said the chairman, rising amid confusion, 
 " have been made by that young gentleman, who is my son. You are 
 perfectly welcome to know that I am proud of him. He is in the 
 habit of standing and arguing cases before quite as intelligent a com- 
 munity as is here. He is in the habit of making whatever observations 
 occur to him, and he is answerable for them. You may deal with him 
 as you think proper, but do not interrupt him." 
 
 In the end the resolutions against the Bill were withdrawn, but when 
 — two days later — it came on for second reading in the House of 
 Commons, it was there met with much the same objections as it had 
 encountered amongst the shareholders. The object in view was 
 approved almost unanimously ; but that this method of carrying it out 
 was a wrong one was a view so repeatedly and justly urged by people 
 of so many different shades of opinion that Mr. Denison found the 
 same conclusion practically irresistible. Accordingly, he consented to 
 the withdrawal of the Bill. In January, 1855, however, the schools at 
 Doncaster had been opened, their cost having exceeded by about £^Zq 
 only the ^1,000 voted for them in the previous February, and in them, 
 in addition to valuable secular instruction, some religious teaching was 
 already being ^iven under the devoted superintendence of the Rev. J. 
 
 1855 
 
 WORK WITHOUT PAY 
 
 149 
 
 Campion, one of the clergy of the town. ' A church was subsequently 
 erected by subscription amongst the shareholders and others, and 
 opened in 1858. 
 
 Without question the most important event to which the Company 
 had now to look forward was the termination of the " Gladstone " (or 
 "Six Towns") and "Octuple" (or Anglo-Scotch) agreements, both of 
 which were to expire by lapse of time at the end of the year 1855. ^^e 
 have already noted that in strict justice to itself the Great Northern 
 ought not to have consented to either of these "pools," seeing that it 
 was a corollary of them that it should be shut out from all share in the 
 traffic of places beyond their scope ; and in actual working they had 
 entailed a further hardship upon the Great Northern. They had 
 involved it in the doing of a great deal of extra work for little or 
 no pay. 
 
 This state of things had arisen from the fact that to all the "six 
 towns " and to all the places covered by the Octuple agreement (except 
 Edinburgh, in which case, however, better gradients turned a mileage 
 equality into an advantage for the East Coast) the Great Northern 
 route from London had become a good deal the shorter since the 
 opening of its " towns " line. Accordingly since that event, as we have 
 seen, it had been able to give the quicker service to all these places, 
 its advantage in most cases amounting to a full hour. At first the 
 confederate companies seem to have resented this state of things 
 as challenging them to extra exertions, and to have urged that it 
 was contrary to the spirit of the pooling arrangements, which they 
 seem to have regarded as intended to put an end to strenuous com- 
 petition of any sort. In other words, they seem to have thought it 
 the duty of the Great Northern to accommodate its better route to 
 their worse ones. 
 
 The Great Northern authorities — anxious above all else to 
 demonstrate the capacity of their route to the full in view of a new 
 division of traffic after the five years— had refused to take any such 
 view, and so the attitude of the confederates seems to have undergone 
 a change. Recognizing that the proportion of revenue which each 
 company was at liberty to appropriate remained the same, no matter 
 whether it continued to carry the traffic or not, they seem now to have 
 settled down very complacently to a state of things under which the 
 Great Northern did the bulk of the work, in passenger traffic at least, 
 while the pay continued to be pretty equally divided. Under the two 
 agreements, it is true, an additional allowance was provided for in 
 the case of any company working traffic in excess of the percentage 
 allotted to it; but by arrangement between the general managers— 
 
 I 
 
 t 
 
 ♦I 
 
 
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t 
 
 I 
 
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 150 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 when making which Mr. Seymour Clarke does not seem to have 
 been very wide awake — this extra allowance had been limited to 
 twenty per cent., which by no means covered even the out-of-ix)cket 
 cost of the extra work done. The result had been that the sums 
 paid over by the Great Northern out of its actual takings under the 
 two "pools" had amounted to ^37,268 in 1853 and to ;£"5o,i2i 
 in 1854. 
 
 " There cannot be a more honourable or a more clever man than 
 Mr, Gladstone," Mr. Denison had already said in the matter; "but 
 I tell you that as a result of his award and of the Octuple agreement 
 we are paying away j£"iooo a week. You will say they were injudicious 
 bargains to make ; I say I was forced into them." 
 
 It is not surprising that the Great Northern authorities now looked 
 forward with relief and hope to the approaching revision, for from it 
 they were entitled to expect to benefit in two ways : first, by getting 
 a larger percentage of the traffic already divided ; and second, by 
 gaining admittance to other traffic from which they were, as things 
 stood, excluded. 
 
 i) 
 
 'iS j 
 
 ' 
 
 ill- 
 
 ( 
 
 Mi 
 
 
 { : 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 "THE BATTLE OF THE RAILWAYS"— BREAK-UP OF THE 
 
 CONFEDERACY-1855-1858. 
 
 THE clearer view we have now obtained of the raison d'etre of the 
 " pooling " arrangements under the Six Towns and Octuple agree- 
 ments furnishes the key to a problem which in the last chapter must 
 have seemed somewhat obscure to the reader. I refer to the persistency 
 of the London and North Western Company, in 1854, in forming its 
 new and closer alliances with the Midland and Sheffield companies, 
 despite the knowledge that such alliances were distasteful to Parliament, 
 contrary to the spirit, if not to the letter, of the Cardwell Act, and 
 moreover that they might be upset at any time, as the Great Northern's 
 private alliance with the Ambergate had been, by an injunction from 
 the Court of Chancery. As we remarked at the time, the Euston 
 manager, Captain Huish, appeared deliberately to avert his eyes 
 from this last-mentioned risk, and to think only of the more immediate 
 dangers which the new private treaties themselves prevented, namely, 
 the opening of the junctions at Retford and Hitchin to the Great 
 Northern ; and now we see why the prevention of this in 1854 
 appeared to him so important as to justify almost any cost and any 
 risk. It was in preparation for the renewal of the Gladstone " pool " 
 in the following year. 
 
 For, as the reader now sees, the policy of the "pools" was linked 
 hand in hand with the policy of the "junction barriers." The 
 formation of the latter had been the preliminary in the first instance 
 to the proposal of the former, and so it was to be again. If the whole 
 railway system north of the Metropolis had in 1 850-1 been as equally 
 open to King's Cross as to Euston Sc^uare, Captain Huish would not 
 then have been found insisting upon the pooling of competitive 
 traffic as the only possible preventative of " ruinous competition " ; 
 on the contrary, he would soon have been persuaded, as he had since 
 been in similar negotiations with the Great Western, that an agreement 
 to charge equal rates and fares — the shorter distance ruling— was fully 
 
 151 
 
 \* 
 
i5« HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 kM 
 
 ' 'A 
 
 sufficient to meet this end. But, as we have already said, the necessity 
 for preventing " ruinous competition " was only the ostensible argument 
 for pooling ; it was not the real argument— at any rate, it was not the 
 whole argument. Ostensibly recommended solely as a device for 
 preventing, in the interest of all parties, wasteful expenditure and 
 loss of revenue, the real value of the " pooling " arrangements in the 
 eyes of their inventors was an adjunct to his protectionist treaties. 
 Unless he had first been able to renew his obstructive confederacy 
 in 1854, Captain Huish would not have greatly cared whether the 
 pools were renewed in the following year or whether they were 
 dropped. But having renewed his treaties at great cost and risk 
 for this special purpose, he was now most anxious to renew the 
 pools also— and to extend them, as he had originally purposed that 
 they should be extended, over the whole field of possible competition 
 —because he hoped by that means to prolong, possibly to render 
 permanent, that artificial restriction of traffic into his own channels, 
 which it was the aim of his whole policy to promote. 
 
 Of course to the extent to which, as recorded in the last two chapters, 
 the Great Northern had broken down the barriers originally raised 
 against it, the London and North Western manager could not, in 1855, 
 hope to accomplish all that he had hoped for in 1850. He could not, 
 for instance, exclude the Great Northern from Bradford, Halifax, or 
 Nottingham, seeing that its own trains were now running daily to and 
 from those places, and he could not raise again the barrier which the 
 East Coast companies had just broken down at Edinburgh. As a 
 terminus for Anglo-Scotch traffic, indeed, King's Cross now stood 
 irrevocably on an equal footing with Euston Square ; and so, whether 
 or not that traffic was again "pooled" might have been a matter of 
 indifference to Captain Huish, if the only competition for it had been 
 that of the two ''coast" routes. This, however, was not the case. 
 Since 1850, by way of the link line which the (little) North Western 
 Company had provided between Skipton (Yorks) and Lancaster, a 
 tentative third or "central" route had been in existence. 
 
 When the first "pool" had been made it had been possible to ignore 
 this, simply because the " poor wretched little creature "—as Mr. E. B. 
 Denison afterwards called the (little) North \\^estern— could not make 
 its voice heard in the councils of the larger companies. But now that 
 the Midland, in its brief effort after independence in 1852, had acquired 
 a lease of the North Western for twenty-one years it had become a 
 factor of more importance. Accordingly by his common-purse agree- 
 ment with the Midland in 1854, Captain Huish had taken pains to 
 secure not only, as we already know, that the junction to be shortly 
 
 1855 THINGS A RAILWAY CHAIRMAN HAS TO DO 153 
 
 formed at Hitchin should be closed against the Great Northern, but 
 that all idea of developing the (little) North Western as a through route 
 should henceforth be put aside. Having obtained this latter stipulation, 
 he now regarded the renewal of the Octuple agreement as a matter of 
 great moment, because, though he could no longer use that "pool," as 
 he had done five years before, as the means of keeping the East Coast 
 companies from getting beyond Edinburgh, he could use it in a precisely 
 similar way to crush altogether the incipient development of a third — a 
 central — route. 
 
 With his usual clearsightedness Mr. Denison very soon saw through 
 this strategy, and he no sooner saw through it than he condemned it ; 
 but again, as in 1850-r, he found himself almost alone in this attitude. 
 His general manager, Mr. Seymour Clarke — "the best of traffic 
 managers but the worst of negotiators," to quote again a description 
 from the future Lord Cirimthorpe — seems never really to have grasped 
 the drift of Captain Huish's tactics, either in 1850-1 or now. Accord- 
 ingly, in this proposed new Anglo-Scotch alliance he saw only a proposal 
 to divide the traffic, not only of Edinburgh as hitherto, but of Glasgow, 
 Perth, etc., also on terms of practical equality between the two "coast" 
 routes. Now equal terms with the West Coast was, as we know, an 
 object for which Mr. Clarke, in common with the managers of the 
 other East Coast companies, had been fighting for five years ; and, now 
 that it was at last within his grasp, he was not at all tempted to 
 let it slip in order to clutch at other advantages, the most important 
 of which seemed to him to be the very shadowy one of getting through 
 to western Scotland over the (little) North Western route. 
 
 As for the injustice which the new agreement would inflict on the 
 shareholders of the (little) North Western (whose main object both in 
 building their line originally and in leasing it to the Midland had been 
 to obtain through traffic with Scotland), this was a consideration which 
 does not seem to have affected Mr. Clarke at all. So Mr. Denison, 
 though himself keenly alive to that injustice and ready, as we shall see 
 later, to make very great efforts to remove it when a more favourable 
 opportunity offered, did not think it was his duty to refuse to sanction 
 an arrangement warmly recommended by his general manager as a good 
 one for their own shareholders simply because he knew that other 
 shareholders, for whose welfare he had no responsibility, must suffer 
 seriously from it. * 
 
 * With his usual frankness Mr. Denison afterwards told a House of Commons 
 Committee, when cross-examined as to his action in this very matter, that a man was 
 sometimes forced to do things as a railway chairman which as a private person 
 he would shrink from. 
 
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 154 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 "Some only of the managers met," wrote he in a subsequent account 
 of the affair, " and from time to time discussed, and at last concocted, 
 a new Octuple agreement into consent to which one or two dissatisfied 
 companies were actually bullied by the majority. It was a semi-traffic 
 and semi-territorial arrangement, and I never gave my cordial assent 
 either to the principle upon which it was based or to the manner in 
 which it had been accomplished. But when it was brought up before 
 the Great Northern Board for confirmation I did not choose to take 
 upon myself the responsibility of objecting to it." 
 
 This new " English and Scotch alliance " was practically concluded 
 in July, 1855, though the Lancaster and Carlisle Company stood out 
 from it for some months in the hope of getting better terms for the 
 (little) North Western route ; and immediately afterwards Captain 
 Huish, Mr. Seymour Clarke, and Mr. Allport approached the even 
 more difficult and critical problem — the renewal of the Gladstone 
 treaty. This, in its existing form, embraced ten towns, for in 
 addition to the six — York, Leeds, Sheffield, Wakefield, Doncaster, 
 and Lincoln — which it had covered originally, four others — Nottingham, 
 Newark, Stamford, and Peterborough— had subsequently been included 
 in it ; and both the confederate managers and Mr. Clarke now 
 approached its renewal with the idea of extending it over a wider 
 area, especially into " the district west of Sheffield." But the objects 
 which the two parties had in view in wishing for such an extension were, 
 it need hardly be said, very diverse. 
 
 Mr. Clarke seems to have thought that he would thus be able to 
 secure to the Great Northern in western England the same benefit 
 which under the English and Scotch alliance it had just obtained 
 in Scotland, namely, such a share of the traffic as it was by its 
 geographical position fairly entitled to ; but Captain Huish's aim all 
 along had been, as we know, not to divide traffic according to 
 geographical position, but to keep it in defiance, one might almost 
 say, of geography, from breaking away from the older channels. So, 
 when he proposed an extension of the Gladstone agreement, he meant 
 to use it, as he had used all the arrangements of the same kind from the 
 first, simply to confirm for a further term of years the artificial barriers 
 in favour of his own company which by his confederate treaties he had 
 raised. "Certainly," said he now to Mr. Seymour Clarke, "let us 
 make the new treaty to cover as much ground as possible. By all 
 means let the district west of Sheffield be included in it " ; but this did 
 not, of course, mean that he was prepared to recognize the right of 
 King's Cross to share the traffic of that district equally with Euston 
 Square. On the contrary, it meant that having previously taken 
 
 "855 
 
 THREE AGAINST ONE 
 
 155 
 
 elaborate pains to prevent the Great Northern from obtaining any 
 footing west of Sheffield, he was now anxious to divide that traffic 
 for a term of fourteen years between the companies which had a footing 
 there, in order that for that period he might stereotype the exclusion of 
 the Great Northern from it, just as under the English and Scotch 
 alliance it had just stereotyped the impotency of the (little) North 
 Western as regards the London traffic with Scotland. 
 
 In carrying out this characteristic scheme Captain Huish had the 
 warm support of both the other confederate managers — his familiar 
 allies — Mr. Allport and Mr. Watkin ; and so at every one of a series of 
 general managers' conferences which were now held Mr. Seymour 
 Clarke found himself confronted by this formidable triumvirate of 
 opponents. As regards one part of his case, however, he stood on 
 such firm ground that he could not be intimidated by superior 
 numbers — namely, in insisting that, in view of the heavy payments 
 which under the existing arrangements the Great Northern had to make 
 out of its actual earnings, it was entitled to larger percentages of the 
 traffic of the towns already "pooled." This all parties were obliged 
 almost from the first to admit. 
 
 While they admitted it, however, the confederate managers were so 
 niggardly in the increases they offered that Mr. Clarke found it 
 necessary to claim a new reference to arbitration. To this the con- 
 federates assented, but claimed, as they had done five years before, that 
 the reference should not be limited to the towns already covered, but 
 should be extended over the whole area of possible competition. 
 Moreover, in this connection they drew up certain "provisions and 
 principles of division " to which they urged the arbitrator should be 
 requested to " give due weight." The essence of these was to recognize 
 the existing routes only (/>., those by which traffic was already travelling) 
 as entitled to have percentages allotted to them ; in short, they con- 
 tained all that the confederates wanted to enable them to carry out 
 what we have already seen to be their chief object in view, and as such 
 the Great Northern general manager should have resisted them most 
 strenuously. But Mr. Clarke had not, as we have already said, 
 properly grasped from the first the design of his opponents, and so 
 now he naturally failed to see the objectionable character of the 
 machinery which they had framed for bringing it about — the more 
 so as that machinery was connected with a most specious proposal for 
 extending the division of traffic over an area from which the Great 
 Northern had up to this time been excluded. Accordingly he 
 allowed himself to be persuaded into signing the "principles and 
 provisions " and recommending them as the basis of the new refer- 
 
 JH 
 
ki 
 
 156 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 ence to arbitration. With this and a supplementary agreement that, 
 between the lapsing of the existing arrangements and the conclusion of 
 new ones, the stattts quo should in every respect be preserved, the general 
 managers wound up their conferences on 17 December, 1855. 
 
 That this result gave the greatest possible satisfaction to Captain 
 Huish goes without saying, and within three days he secured the 
 confirmation of it both by his own and the Midland directors. There, 
 however, his satisfaction was destined to cease. On 19 December, 
 1855, the Great Northern Board met, with Mr. Denison as usual in the 
 chair, but in this case the general managers' conclusions, instead of being 
 at once confirmed, were read and discussed in detail, and the more they 
 were discussed, the stronger Mr. Denison's disapproval of them grew. 
 Very soon he saw that Mr. Clarke had been out-manoeuvred by his more 
 astute coadjutors, and, disagreeable task though it was virtually to throw 
 over his own general manager, he quickly made up his mind that 
 this was the only course open to him, if his duty to the Great Northern 
 shareholders was to be done. For the effect of the general managers' 
 recommendations as he summarized them was to " preclude the Great 
 Northern Railway Company for fourteen years from any participation 
 in the traffic arising at and between London and any town on the 
 Manchester and Sheffield Railway lying west of Sheffield, or from any 
 new railway west of the Midland Railway, while the London and 
 North Western and Midland companies would participate in the traffic 
 arising at and between London and nearly every town lying east of 
 Sheffield"; and this view being endorsed by a majority of the 
 directors, they resolved that they were " not justified in adopting the 
 recommendations," despite the fact that one of the four signatures 
 to them was that of their own representative, Mr. Seymour Clarke. 
 
 When Mr. Denison and his colleagues decided upon this bold line 
 of conduct, they probably knew pretty well what it would cost them. 
 With their experience in the negotiations as to South Yorkshire 
 amalgamation still fresh in their memories they could not have been 
 unprepared for the cry of " repudiation ! " which was now, as on that 
 occasion, raised against them, nor could they have felt much hope 
 that a new war in fares could now be averted, seeing that they had 
 raised disagreement veritably at the eleventh hour. Nevertheless, 
 what could be done to postpone the catastrophe they did. They 
 agreed to a month's "armistice" on the basis of the old percentages- 
 unfair though these admittedly were to the Great Northern— and in the 
 meantime they neglected nothing that correspondence or interviews 
 could suggest to promote a peaceful settlement on lines to which they 
 could assent without sacrifice of essential principle. 
 
 
 1856 
 
 MR. DENISON'S DEFIANCE 
 
 157 
 
 The confederate directors, however, felt that they had the advantage, 
 and they were determined to keep it. They would hear of no pooling 
 arrangement except on the basis agreed on by the general managers ; 
 and they rejected unconditionally a Great Northern proposal to 
 abandon pooling and to adopt "the principle of equal rates and 
 fares instead," though this had already worked well for a year between 
 the London and North Western and Great Western companies. 
 Thus all negotiations failed, and at last, on 26 January, 1856 — five 
 days before the armistice expired — a letter reached Mr. Clarke at 
 King's Cross, signed " Mark Huish, James Allport, and Edward 
 Watkin," informing him that their companies were " forced to resume a 
 competition for passenger traffic," though it was not their intention to 
 make any change in the existing rates for goods and cattle. 
 
 Again, as at the time of the South Yorkshire crisis, Mr. Denison was 
 confined to his house at Doncaster with a sharp attack of gout, but as 
 soon as he heard that an actual declaration of war had been received at 
 King's Cross, he summoned up his energies to write a letter to the con- 
 federate chairmen. Lord Chandos, Mr. Ellis, and Mr. Chapman. This 
 he himself described as "a final appeal ere it becomes too late,' but 
 to write an appeal really worthy of the name was not at all in Mr. 
 Denison's vein. So the letter, opening as a remonstrance, ended as a 
 defiance. "Say if you like," it said, " ' We decline to negotiate at all, 
 or to refer the case for revision and settlement,' and I shall not in the 
 least complain, but pray forgive me for saying that if negotiation or 
 reference is to depend upon our confirmation of the four managers' 
 minutes I must respectfully but irrevocably declare that I cannot 
 consent." 
 
 This letter was sent to Lord Chandos on 29 January, 1856; on 
 the following day Captain Huish sent to Mr. Clarke a notice of the new 
 fast trains at greatly reduced fares which the confederates proposed to 
 run from London to Yorkshire and Lincolnshire ; and from i February, 
 1856, the trains and fares came into actual operation. Meanwhile, 
 however, as the result of a chance meeting in the train between Mr. 
 Clarke and Mr. Watkin, negotiations for peace had been once more set 
 on foot, and on 6 February Mr. Denison, despite his gout, came to 
 London by special arrangement to meet the directors of the other 
 companies. Two long conferences, however, produced no settlement, 
 and meanwhile all the Yorkshire and Lincolnshire passengers were 
 being swept by the low fares into Euston Square; so on the nth the 
 Great Northern reduced its fares. Then what the newspapers began to 
 call " the battle of the railways " began in earnest. 
 
 As in the exhibition year the first reductions were quickly followed 
 
 rtj 
 
 I.- 
 
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 158 HrSTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 by others. As then, so again, the people of Yorkshire and Lincoln- 
 shire flocked to the stations to take advantage of the cheap trips. " If 
 this goes on," said Mr. Denison, " I should think the great majority of 
 my West Riding constituents, washed and unwashed, will visit London 
 in the course of next week." Meanwhile the Great Northern chairman, 
 full of righteous indignation, had carried the dispute into the columns 
 of the Times^ and the readers of that paper enjoyed some fine examples 
 of his epistolary style. "Such are the principles, moral and com- 
 mercial," he ended his last letter, "on which this Euston Square 
 confederacy is not ashamed to deal with smaller companies who have 
 the audacity to make a stand against them. If railway business is to 
 be carried on in this way it is of little use for Parliament to reject 
 Amalgamation Bills. All the shareholders in the kingdom must sooner 
 or later acknowledge the general managers at Euston Square as their 
 masters." 
 
 As may be supposed this did not help to mend matters, and on 
 22 February, the day before the Great Northern half-yearly meeting, 
 the morning papers announced further reductions on the part of the 
 confederates ; for instance, from London to York, first-class, 5J. ; 
 second-class, y. (\d. ; and from London to Peterborough, first-class, 2^. ; 
 second-class, \s. On the very same day, however, a proposal 
 previously made by Mr. Denison and rejected, namely, that Mr. 
 Gladstone should be asked to re-divide the traffic for which the Great 
 Northern already competed without prejudice to the larger question 
 as to whether or not its right to compete west of Sheffield should 
 be allowed, was revived at Euston Square and assented to at King's 
 Cross. The result was that the first thing the Great Northern share- 
 holders heard, to their agreeable surprise, when they met next day was 
 that a settlement had at last been arrived at, and that a circular was 
 about to be issued by the four general managers withdrawing the low 
 fares on and after the ist of March. 
 
 This circular it had not been intended to publish until the last day 
 of Februar)', and premature disclosure of it at this Great Northern 
 meeting on the 23rd had a curious effect. For the knowledge that 
 there was one week— and one week only— during which the cheap fares 
 were to remain in operation, greatly increased the rush of travellers 
 to take advantage of them, and the Great Northern, being the shorter 
 route to London from all the places in competition, was more than 
 ever flooded with country people eager to avail themselves of a unique 
 opportunity of visiting the Metropolis. During the last five days of 
 February, according to a return published in the Times newspaper, 
 21,843^ passengers were booked to London by the Great Northern at 
 
 1856-7 EUSTON SQUARE ILLEGALITY EXPOSED 159 
 
 the cheap fares, and the total receipt, ;£"3756 155-., was more than double 
 the ordinary earnings from the traffic in question. Under these circum- 
 stances, of course, the competition was far from being " ruinous " to the 
 shareholders; but on the other hand, as in 1851, the increased cost of 
 working and the strain upon the working-stock and staff of the system 
 were very great. It was very creditable to the latter — as the directors 
 testified in a special vote of thanks — that no accident of any kind 
 occurred. 
 
 Meanwhile, a new attack had been levelled against the protectionist 
 policy in the form of a Bill presented to Parliament by the (little) 
 North Western Company, seeking running powers over the Midland 
 and Lancaster and Carlisle lines, in order to enable it to carry Anglo- 
 Scotch traffic in conjunction with the Great Northern. This Bill Mr. 
 Denison supported in the witness-box, despite the fact that the new 
 English and Scotch agreement was now in full operation. Of course, 
 the whole force of the confederacy was against the Bill ; but, neverthe- 
 less, with such champions as the two Denisons and Mr. Baxter (who 
 was its solicitor), the (little) North Western— the adjective, said Mr. 
 Hope Scott, Q.c, was now used "almost endearingly" by the Great 
 Northern — was able to make a very plucky fight; and it was only 
 because of a technical objection on the part of the Standing Orders 
 Committee that it failed to obtain substantial redress. As it was, a 
 nominal victory cost the confederacy ;£"! 5,000 in expenses, and— what 
 was even more serious to it— Mr. 1 )enison, q.c, was able to extract in 
 cross-examination a full confession of what had up to this time been 
 kept quite secret— the terms of the illegal common-purse agreement 
 between the London and North Western and Midland. 
 
 This disclosure left the confederacy obviously at the mercy of a 
 Chancery suit similar to that which had put an end to the working 
 agreement between the Great Northern and the Ambergate four years 
 before; but from some cause not apparent to the present writer — 
 perhaps because the attention of the (ireat Northern directors became 
 engrossed by a domestic calamity to be described in the next chapter, 
 or perhaps only because of "the law's delay"— it was not until the 
 spring of the following year — 1857— that this gun could be brought to 
 bear. Then, however, Mr. Isaac Burkill, of Leeds, a director both of 
 the (little) North Western and of the Great Northern, took upon 
 himself to file the necessary petition, whereupon the Euston Square 
 authorities were informed by their legal advisers that it could not be 
 defended. Accordingly on 12 May, 1857, their common-purse agree- 
 ment with the Midland was declared to be at an end. 
 
 This, of course, meant practically the break-up of the confederacy. 
 
 I 
 
 1^ 
 
 I' 
 

 i6o HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 and the consequent collapse of the whole policy to carry out which 
 it had been formed ; but still Captain Huish struggled against the 
 inevitable with that desperate courage and ingenuity which men of his 
 type display to the full only when they have committed themselves 
 beyond withdrawal to a hopelessly wrong course. Ever since the 
 conclusion of the rate-war in February, 1856, he had been trying hard 
 to take back the concession as to the limitation of the '* pool," which 
 he had then been forced to make, and, as in 185 1, so now again, this 
 had delayed the arbitration proceedings. The result was that it was 
 not till quite late in the year that the hearings before Mr. Gladstone 
 could be held. 
 
 Thus the award of that statesman as to the traffic referred to him 
 was given almost simultaneously with the Chancery decision just 
 mentioned, />., in May, 1857, and so, before the actual putting of the 
 pool into operation, Captain Huish was able to make yet one more 
 attempt to extend its scope in such a way as, he hoped, might even yet 
 save his "protectionist policy" from disintegration. Obviously, as he 
 could no longer bind the Midland and Sheffield companies to his 
 interests by private agreements, his object must now be to bring about 
 a state of things under which such binding would be unnecessary ; in 
 other words, he had to aim at a hard and fast territorial division 
 between the Great Northern traffic and his own. Accordingly, at an 
 interview with Mr. Seymour Clarke at King's Cross, on 19 May, 
 1857, he offered to give to the Great Northern more liberal terms on 
 the eastern side of England than even the Gladstone award assured to 
 it, on condition that it should forego, for the fourteen years over which 
 the new pool was to last, all share in London traffic west of Sheffield 
 and the longitude thereof. This, said he, will "complete the good 
 work Mr. Gladstone has commenced," and give to the pacification 
 which his arbitration has brought about a stabiHty which it must 
 obviously lack so long as the Great Northern retains power to 
 invade new districts. 
 
 By this time, however, Mr. Seymour Clarke had learnt to look for 
 more in Captain Huish's proposals than they bore on the face of them, 
 and so the real drift of this new scheme did not escape him. He saw 
 what we have just pointed out — namely, that now the maintenance of 
 private treaties was impossible. Captain Huish was seeking a new form 
 of " protection " which would be independent of confederates ; and he 
 was tactician enough to see that Euston Square's extremity might 
 be King's Cross's opportunity — that if the Sheffield and Midland found 
 that the North Western was playing fast and loose with them, they 
 might choose to outplay it at its own game. Accordingly, he turned 
 
 1857 
 
 A FISH DINNER AND AFTERWARDS 
 
 161 
 
 a deaf ear to Captain Huish's proposals and took the first opportunity 
 — it happened to be at a "fish dinner" given by the Earl of Yarborough 
 at Grimsby on i June, 1857— to make them known to a gentleman 
 upon whom he felt sure the news of them would have a decided effect 
 — Mr. Edward Watkin, the Sheffield manager. 
 
 What effect Mr. Clarke expected from his communication may be 
 judged from the fact that he took in his pocket down to Grimsby 
 a copy of some proposals which he had had occasion to draw up — 
 though without result— three years before for a complete interchange 
 of traffic between his own and the Sheffield companies. Nor was he 
 disappointed in his calculations. Mr. Watkin, as the reader already 
 knows, had served a long apprenticeship at Euston Square ; he had 
 learnt his first lessons in railway diplomacy from Captain Huish 
 himself; he knew every move in his late master's game. There was 
 no need for Mr. Clarke to tell him at this time of day that a territorial 
 division between the London and North Western and the Great 
 Northern " meant annihilation " to the Sheffield Company, or to remind 
 him that the abandonment of the Midland's common-purse agreement 
 without a struggle meant that the existing treaties between his Company 
 also and Euston Square were waste paper in the eyes of the law. 
 These were considerations which Mr. Watkin had already taken into 
 account. His recognition of them had led him already during the 
 preceding six months to strain his relations with the North Western 
 almost to breaking point ; and now he could feel no doubt but that 
 the time for decisive action had come. So, there and then, when 
 the fish dinner was over, the two managers sat down at a table with 
 Mr. Clarke's draft proposals between them, and they did not rise from 
 it until they had laid the foundations of a most thoroughgoing alliance 
 between their companies — an alliance based on the fullest and freest 
 interchange of traffic between the two systems. 
 
 The work thus begun at the "fish dinner" was completed in an 
 equally quiet way a week or so later in a window of the gallery of the 
 House of Commons, and then in his bedroom at Eccleston Square — 
 for he was again laid up with the gout — Mr. Denison gave his approval 
 to what had been done. He stipulated, however, that the Sheffield — 
 "the railway flirt" as it was afterwards not inaptly called— must prove 
 itself to be quite "off with the old love" before being "on with the 
 new," and further, that the new alliance should be an open one in 
 every respect. So, when the former condition had been satisfied 
 by Mr. Watkin producing a resolution of his Board which declared all 
 agreements with the London and North Western at an end, the latter 
 was provided for by the summoning of special general meetings of both 
 M 
 
 i 
 -I 
 
 H 
 
 i 
 
 • 
 
 i?i 
 
If 
 
 1 
 
 ill 
 
 1 
 
 1' 
 
 t 
 
 ; i 
 
 162 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 companies. The Great Northern meeting was held on 8 July, 1857, 
 when the full terms of the agreement were read to it, and a resolution 
 authorizing the directors to make application to legalize them in the 
 next session of Parliament was put to a poll and carried by a majority 
 of i3»597 votes and ;^i, 443,501 of stock. 
 
 The part of the agreement which it was desirable, in view of past 
 experience, to legalize by Act of Parliament was the giving to the 
 Sheffield of a " bonus mileage " on the division of the joint London 
 traffic and the guaranteeing to that company of a gross traffic of 
 ;^ 1 0,000 a week— this being the price the Great Northern had agreed 
 to pay for the Sheffield's volte-face. For the putting into effect of 
 the alliance, so far as thfe actual interchange of traffic was concerned, 
 no Act of Parliament was necessary, because not a yard of new railway 
 had to be constructed, nor did either company wish any new running 
 powers over the other's lines. The junction at Retford, as we know, 
 had been in existence since 1849; since 1851 the Great Northern had 
 been running to Sheffield ; and since the opening of the towns line in 
 1852 the complete route between London and Manchester had been 
 available. Whether it could be effective or not was wholly a matter of 
 harmony or discord of train service. 
 
 Under the domination of Euston Square, the Sheffield managers 
 had been forbidden to fit their Manchester trains even with the Great 
 Northern local trains to and from Peterborough and Grantham, lest— as 
 Serjeant Wrangham put it in a speech to which we shall presently 
 refer— "a single through passenger should escape from the London 
 and North Western net " ; and now all that had to be done to bring 
 the new policy into effect was to reverse completely the time-table 
 arrangements. The result was that from i August, 1857— from which 
 date the new arrangements came into vogue— passengers could travel to 
 or from London Road Station, Manchester, from or to King's Cross in 
 five hours twenty minutes— the same time as from or to Euston Square. 
 
 The putting of this through service into operation was, of course, 
 an actual attack upon the London and North Western's long cherished 
 monopoly, and it wassail that was needed to kindle the latter's 
 smouldering wrath into a blaze. Armed with the fullest sanction of 
 warfare from an enraged half-yearly meeting, the Euston authorities 
 proceeded to arrange their September time-table in the spirit of fiercest 
 competition— to put on eleven trains each way instead of eight, to 
 accelerate their " express " time to four hours forty minutes, and their 
 " Parliamentary " time to seven hours,* to abolish " express " fares, and 
 to offer numerous cheap excursions for the Manchester " Art Treasures 
 
 * It had been ten hours forty-five minutes. 
 
 1857 
 
 PHYSICAL STRIFE AT MANCHESTER 
 
 163 
 
 Exhibition" which, like the Great London Exhibition of 185 1, had 
 come by coincidence to make the struggle hotter than it might other- 
 wise have been. To these measures the new allies had, of course, 
 to retaliate. They were handicapped, however, by a route fifteen miles 
 longer, by harder gradients, especially west of Sheffield, and by the 
 inferior condition into which, under the stress of constant poverty, the 
 Manchester, Sheffield, and Lincolnshire permanent way and rolling 
 stock had been allowed to fall. 
 
 It was, and is, 40 miles only by the Sheffield Company's route 
 between Sheffield and Manchester, and yet Mr. Watkin, in 1857, could 
 not, consistently with safety, get the distance covered in less than 80 
 minutes. So, upon the shoulders of the Great Northern, which was 
 working the through trains between London and Sheffield, the full 
 brunt of maintaining the competition fell. But again, as in 185 1, 
 Mr. Seymour Clarke, " the best of traffic managers," and Mr. Sturrock, 
 most ready of locomotive engineers, proved equal to the emergency. 
 Their 162 miles were covered daily in 220 minutes — 44 miles per hour 
 — and, though this meant five hours for the whole journey, i.e.^ 20 
 minutes longer than what was now the best time of the North Western, 
 the punctuality of the allies was so superior that very often the King's 
 Cross passengers were landed first at the common station at Manchester 
 — London Road. Moreover, as a concession to the Sheffield poverty, the 
 allies' trains were made up almost entirely of Great Northern coaches, and 
 these were admittedly superior to the North Western stock of that day. 
 
 We have said that the North Western and Sheffield companies had 
 at Manchester a station in common, and here were seen the most 
 exciting incidents of the fray. For not only was there a daily " race 
 to Manchester," which anticipated the modern " race to Aberdeen " 
 and made the junction outside London Road station a prototype of 
 " Kinnaber," but there was actual physical strife between the joint 
 owners which outdid even the engine-capture at Nottingham already 
 described. According to a subsequent statement of Mr. Denison, q.c. : 
 
 *' The North Western authorities began to take people into custody 
 for coming by the Sheffield trains into the Manchester station ; they 
 frightened an old lady out of her wits, and distracted several feeble 
 people ; but at last they got hold of a lawyer, who showed them they 
 had ' caught a tartar ' ; and so after that no more passengers were 
 apprehended. We " {i.e. the Manchester, Sheffield, and Lincolnshire, as 
 whose counsel Mr. Denison was speaking) " had painted up our names 
 over our shop, but they, being in possession, which is nine points of 
 the law, swept them out with their brush. They kept a truck standing 
 in front of the platform, and left timber trains in front of our express 
 trains. They turned our clerks out of the booking-office" — indeed 
 
f 
 
 f! 
 
 164 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 they nailed up the part which the Sheffield Company had been accus- 
 tomed to use, and when one of the clerks, acting under instructions, 
 made his way in through the window, they ejected him by the same 
 way — " not, I hope," wrote their solicitor, *' with unnecessary violence." 
 
 The lawyers could afford to treat the matter facetiously, for they 
 — and they only — profited by it. 
 
 Not content with all this, the Euston authorities carried the war into 
 the enemy's countr>'. They reduced rates for traffic between Lanca- 
 shire and Leeds, Lincoln, Peterborough, and other eastern places — 
 a proceeding which, naturally enough, led the Midland, North Eastern, 
 and other companies to cry out. Some abortive negotiations, however, 
 served only to intensify the strife, and in February, 1858, both 
 belligerents began to carry excursion passengers between London and 
 Manchester for 55., there and back, "giving them 15-inch seats, stuffed 
 cushions and backs to lean against," to c^uote from the protest of an 
 indignant Great Northern shareholder. But meanwhile a "Great 
 Northern and Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Traffic Arrange- 
 ments Bill " had been introduced into Parliament ; and the conflict on 
 the rails was overshadowed for a time by the greater importance of the 
 issue to be decided in the House of Commons Committee-room. 
 
 It was in some respects like a repetition of the " London and York " 
 fight, especially on the promoters' side, where Mr. Denison, Mr. Baxter 
 — who, as Parliamentary agent to the Sheffield Company, was solicitor 
 to the Bill — Serjeant Wrangham, and Mr. E. B. Denison once more 
 fought side by side. The main issue, too, was the same — improvement 
 versus vested interest ; and King Hudson found a not unworthy 
 successor in Captain Huish, fighting with his back to the wall for 
 a sinking supremacy and a pre-condemned cause. Over twenty-one 
 sittings the fight raged. Mr. Hope Scott made a most elaborate 
 and ingenious speech for the opposition, and Serjeant Wrangham, 
 during more than two hearings, poured out argument and rhetoric for 
 the Bill. "A decision in favour of the petitioners," he concluded, 
 " will tell the world that their obstructive agreements for locking up the 
 traffic of a commercial country are looked upon with distinguished 
 favour by a tribunal such as this, and that the sanction of the legisla- 
 ture has been given to that which legislation has previously sought to 
 control. It is for you to say whether, yielding to the arguments of my 
 learned friend, you shall denounce competition in the free passage 
 of commerce between, perhaps, our largest emporium and the greatest 
 and wealthiest of the world's capitals. With you it is to say, whether 
 that route existing, constructed, in which untold millions are invested, 
 shall be rendered available for the public, or shall be inflexibly closed 
 
 1858 
 
 TRIUMPH OF THE GREAT NORTHERN 
 
 165 
 
 against it. It is for you to choose between the two courses laid before 
 you — to give to commerce that which is her life — freedom, or, if you 
 please, to make monopoly immortal." 
 
 At the conclusion of this speech the Committee deliberated for six 
 hours. Then its chairman. Sir John Hanmer, announced a unanimous 
 decision in favour of the Bill, at the same time declaring the private 
 agreement of 1854 between the London and North Western and 
 Sheffield companies to be u/tra vires and contrary to public policy. 
 Nevertheless, the opposition was renewed in the House of Lords, but 
 with, if possible, less effect; and the Bill became an Act on 23 July, 
 1858. A month previously the London and North Western had 
 agreed to adopt equal fares with the allies both for Manchester and 
 Liverpool, so that the new route via Retford had now the recognition 
 both of the rival interest and of Parliament. 
 
 Meanwhile the volte-face of the Manchester, Sheffield, and Lincoln 
 had been imitated more slowly, but hardly less completely, by the 
 Midland. Even as early as April, 1857, when the Leicester and 
 Hitchin line had been first brought into work, some goods traffic had 
 been sent through by it to and from King's Cross, and, when in the 
 following month the common-purse agreement with the North Western 
 was given up, there was no reason why this " surreptitious " interchange 
 —that was the adjective which the Euston authorities had indignantly 
 applied to it — should not become a free and open one. In the summer 
 of 1857, moreover, Mr. Allport, who, as we have seen, had been all 
 along Captain Huish's most zealous supporter in the " protectionist " 
 policy, left the Midland to become partner in a shipbuilding firm, and 
 this made rapprochement with King's Cross all the more easy. The 
 result was that in the autumn of 1857 an agreement was included 
 under which not only was the new junction at Hitchin made a fully 
 open one, but running powers between it and King's Cross were given 
 to the Midland on the usual terms, namely, two-thirds of the gross 
 receipts. Thus on i F^ebruary, 1858, Midland trains began to run in 
 and out of the Great Northern's London terminus; and from i August, 
 1858, through bookings with King's Cross to and from Midland 
 stations were brought into operation as fully as with Euston Square. 
 Moreover, in July, 1858, the Gladstone Award was cancelled by notice 
 from the London and North Western— a notice which, as before stated, 
 it had been entitled to give directly the Great Northern went west of 
 Sheffield; and so, except the English and Scotch agreement (which as we 
 shall see remained in force for eleven years longer), nothing now remained 
 of the elaborate edifice which Captain Huish during his twelve years 
 regime had raised on behalf of the vested interests of Euston Square. 
 
 ii 
 
 I ^! 
 
 ml 
 
n 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 AN ISOLATED INCIDENT:— THE FRAUDS OF LEOPOLD REDPATH. 
 
 1856- 1858. 
 
 " A/'OU have fought your way into a most respectable position ; you 
 X are in a position which not one person in fifty in 1846 or 1847 
 believed you would obtain. Your property is perfectly sound ; your 
 prospects are in my opinion exceedingly good ; you have nothing in 
 the world to be afraid of. If you choose to take my assurance that 
 everything is looked after as diligently as it can be, accept that 
 assurance. If not differ from me, and propose a committee of in- 
 vestigation. I never laboured so hard in my life, either for myself or 
 for anybody else, as I have done for the proprietors of the Great 
 Northern Railway. I take no credit to myself; it was my duty to do 
 it; and what I say of myself I say of my brother directors around 
 me ; I never saw men who looked more closely over their own 
 accounts than they do after those of the Great Northern. I will say — 
 and I say it with great pleasure — with respect to every officer who 
 works under us, that I do not know any set of men whom I would 
 sooner trust. The general manager stands here, and he is perfectly 
 welcome to the admission that the line is worked in admirable order ; 
 and I will say of the other officers, from the secretary down to the 
 humblest porter (and I do not believe we have a dishonest man in the 
 whole lot), that I will turn my oflficers out against any officers in the 
 kingdom. I will have men of honour and gentlemen about me if I 
 am to be your chairman or one of your directors. The line shall be 
 well worked." 
 
 So spake Mr. Denison in his characteristic downright fashion to the 
 Great Northern shareholders at their twentieth half-yearly meeting on 
 23 August, 1856. He spoke with perfect sincerity, and the greater 
 part of what he said was strictly true ; nevertheless, the utterance of 
 it could not have been more unfortunately timed. Three months after 
 this unqualified expression of their chairman's confidence in the Great 
 Northern staff, the whole country was startled, and the shareholders 
 
 166 
 
 1854 "COMPARATIVELY TRIFLING DISCREPANCIES" 167 
 
 thrown into consternation, by the announcement that frauds of the 
 most wholesale character had been perpetrated upon the property of 
 the Company, that by manipulation of the accounts of the share- 
 registration department a sum exceeding ;^'2oo,ooo had been stolen, 
 and that the head of the department, Mr. Leopold Redpath, had 
 disappeared. 
 
 We have said that Mr. Denison had spoken the words just quoted 
 with perfect sincerity, but it must be also said that he had spoken them 
 rashly. For he had been personally informed in the preceding January 
 that " a discrepancy " had been discovered between the books of the 
 registration and accountant's departments, and he knew that an inquiry 
 into the origin of the supposed " errors " was on foot. As long before 
 as February, 1854, indeed, the then chief registrar, Mr. W. H. Clark, 
 had been informed that there was a "comparatively trifling discrepancy" 
 — on the side of excess — between the amount paid in dividends and 
 the amount due to be paid on the stock registered, and, according to 
 his own subsequent statement, he "had lost no time in taking steps 
 to investigate the matter and to probe where the error lay." Un- 
 fortunately, however, he had been already under notice to retire from 
 his position, to which he had been appointed immediately after the 
 incorporation of the Company in 1846, as part of the agreement of 
 amalgamation with the "Direct Northern" Committee to which he 
 had been secretary— on the ground that " the Registration Office 
 ought not to be loaded with the cost of its present staff," and so, 
 when his notice had taken effect on 30 April, 1854, what he termed 
 "the examinations for the adjustment of the accounts" had been 
 uncompleted. It " has been resumed," he had written to Mr. Mowatt, 
 the secretary — his official superior — on 25 April, 1854, "now that 
 the pressure of current business has been disposed of, and in reference 
 to it my successor will not experience any difficulty ; in short, I feel 
 confident that I shall leave everything in the department in a business- 
 like condition." 
 
 Mr. Clark was quite right in thinking that his successor would 
 "experience no difficulty" in reference to the discrepancies, for that 
 successor was Leopold Redpath himself. He had received his first 
 appointment ?n the registration office at the same time as Mr. Clark, 
 and though a clerk only, while the latter was the departmental chief, 
 he had had from the first the practical control of the office. For he 
 had entered it with a knowledge of stock-registration work previously 
 acquired in the service of the Brighton Railway Company, whereas 
 Mr. Clark had been appointed, as has been already said, not for his 
 capacity for this particular duty, but as compensation for displacement, 
 
 ^ 
 
li 
 
 i68 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 and had, on his own subsequent admission, "no knowledge whatever 
 of book-keeping or registration business." In his capacity of chief 
 clerk, moreover, Redpath had conducted himself apparently "with 
 regularity and propriety," and so upon Mr. Clark's retirement it had 
 seemed quite natural that he should be promoted to be chief 
 registrar; yet already, as was afterwards computed, he had stolen 
 from the Company the sum of ;^ 120,537. 
 
 This being so, it was not surprising that the books showed " dis- 
 crepancies," nor that, under Redpath's now absolute command there, 
 they were not "probed" further in the registration office itself. In 
 another department, however— that of the accountant — similar dis- 
 crepancies very soon aroused uneasiness, particularly in the mind 
 of the chief book-keeper, Mr. William Grinling; and he, in April, 
 
 1855, informed his friend, Mr. Henry Oakley, the chief clerk in the 
 secretary's office, that he felt sure that the dividends were being 
 regularly overpaid. Mr. Oakley reported the matter to the secretary, 
 Mr. Mowatt, who immediately requested Redpath to furnish certain 
 statements to clear up the matter, but the latter preferred to conduct 
 an " inquiry " on lines of his own. 
 
 Meanwhile, Mr. Grinling himself had prepared a statement showing 
 among other things that the dividend to 31 December, 1853, had 
 been paid on a stock larger by ;^90,i36 than the registered stock 
 of the Company, and this he forwarded on 26 June, 1855, to the 
 accountant — his chief— Mr. Reynolds, at the same time suggesting 
 a course which in his opinion ought to " be adopted at once in order 
 to ascertain the cause of the discrepancy. I am urged to do this," 
 he wrote, "because the plan adopted by Mr. Redpath, although 
 necessary in order to the ultimate settlement of the question, leaves 
 untouched at present the most important point. . . . The excess 
 on the A and B stock presents a very grave cjuestion and one that 
 I submit demands immediate attention, and if not taken up before 
 everything else may hereafter reflect upon those who have had charge 
 of the matter." Mr. Reynolds, however, being on terms of personal 
 intimacy with Redpath, and having perfect confidence in his integrity, 
 did not feel called upon to substitute the course of inquiry suggested 
 by Mr. Grinling for that which the registrar professed to have himself 
 adopted for the same purpose. 
 
 So matters were allowed to slide until November, 1855, when the 
 secretary again took up the matter, but it was not until 29 January, 
 
 1856, that he at last received Redpath's long promised statement, 
 together with another from the accountant. These showed beyond 
 doubt that dividends had been overpaid on some of the stocks, and 
 
 1856 
 
 ARREST OF REDPATH 
 
 169 
 
 they were passed on immediately by the secretary to the chairman, 
 who upon his next attendance at the offices made some inquiries. He 
 allowed himself to be satisfied, however, with the information that 
 an investigation had been commenced by the registrar, which, it was 
 hoped, would soon show where the " alleged errors " existed. 
 
 In September, 1856, Mr. Denison's attention was again directed 
 to the matter by the secretary, who stated that the registrar did not 
 pursue his inquiry " with anything like vigour." Thereupon Redpath 
 was again pressed in regard to it, with the result that early in October 
 he tendered his resignation. Then at last suspicion was fairly aroused, 
 for the similar frauds committed by Robson in the transfer office of the 
 Crystal Palace Company had just been revealed to the world, and on 
 the 17th and i8th October returns were at last obtained which showed 
 that stock to the amount of ;^i 37,000 was registered in excess in the 
 books of the Company. This, moreover, was confirmed by a state- 
 ment of the dividends paid, which the accountant had in the meantime 
 furnished. 
 
 Redpath was now definitely called to account by the chairman; 
 but he declared that " every discrepancy admitted of adjustment," and 
 offered his " best assistance " to this end, while persisting in his desire 
 to resign. But Mr. Denison, of course, told him that his resignation 
 under the existing circumstances could not be accepted, and authorized 
 the secretary to commence at once a full inquiry. The result was that 
 a frightful system of fraud and forgery was brought to light ; and upon 
 the discoveries being reported to the chairman on 10 November, 1856, 
 Leopold Redpath fled to Pans. 
 
 Apparently, however, he no sooner took this act of flight than he 
 repented of it, for on the following day a telegraphic message was 
 received from him, promising his return, and he actually passed en 
 route the police officers who had been despatched in quest of him. 
 He had named 4, Ulster Place, New Road, London, as his future 
 address, and there on the morning of 14 November, 1856, he was 
 found by Mr. Mowatt and a police officer, undisguised and apparently 
 enjoying a hearty breakfast. Some days earlier a clerk in the regis- 
 tration office, named Kent, had also been arrested for complicity in 
 the frauds, and on 15 November the two prisoners were charged 
 at the Clerkenwell Police Court. 
 
 Immense public interest had been excited in the case, and at the 
 first hearing the purlieus of the Court were densely crowded, but the 
 details were at once too technical and too simple to hold the interest of 
 any but those who were shareholders smarting under the sense of loss 
 and wrong. Redpath had had, it appeared, practically unchecked 
 
 li 
 
 fl 
 
 ( • 
 
 i(, 
 
* 
 
 i 
 
 170 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 control over the machinery of the registration department, and, 
 though the cash transactions of that department were limited to 
 the daily receipts of a few half-crowns for transfer fees, he had 
 succeeded in robbing the Company of the huge sum of over 
 ;^2 20,000. The very a priori impossibility of the thing had been 
 his greatest assistance. Until the Robson frauds, which were brought to 
 light a month only before those of Redpath, no one had dreamed that 
 a joint-stock company — a comparatively new kind of institution, be it 
 remembered — could to any large extent be robbed through its registra- 
 tion department ; consequently, checks and counter-checks had not 
 been thought of. In the Great Northern offices, as in the offices of all 
 the other large companies in the kingdom, what appeared to be the 
 simplest and most effective machinery of registration had been adopted 
 without any special care to safeguard it against misuse. The result had 
 been that an artful and audacious rogue, assisted partly by luck and 
 partly by the remissness of his superiors, had been able to add to 
 existing figures or to manufacture new entries in such a way as to 
 create fictitious stock for almost any amount that he pleased ; and this 
 having been done, the conversion of the stock into hard cash, through 
 the medium of brokers, had been a matter only of inventing a few names 
 and forging the signatures of them on forms which were ready to his 
 hand. About June, 1848, the first of these fraudulent sales had been 
 carried out by Redpath, and the list, which for the purposes of the 
 prosecution was obtained from his brokers, extended from that date to 
 October, 1856 — the very date of the revelations — and embraced 365 
 distinct sales of Great Northern stock to the amount of ;^2o6,o47 ioj., 
 and 131 purchases amounting to ;^48,8oo. 
 
 Of course, directly the first revelations were made, a multitude of 
 circumstances presented themselves which might have been expected 
 to have aroused earlier suspicion. Redpath had left his first situation 
 under a cloud; then becoming an insurance broker, or a wine and 
 spirit merchant — or both — he had failed for ^^5000, and been sold up 
 at his suburban residence in Dartmouth Terrace, Blackheath. He had 
 entered the Great Northern service, it was true, with good credentials 
 from the Brighton Company, and had lived quietly for some years 
 afterwards, but at the time of his promotion to the chief registrarship 
 in 1854 he had had a town mansion. No. 27, Chester Terrace, Regent's 
 Park, and a "country place" at Weybridge, and yet he had been 
 apparently eager to obtain an office, the salary of which was only 
 ;^25o a year ! That he paid ^£"30 a year to his cook, had a courier to 
 accompany him on his travels, and a fisherman and punt for angling 
 excursions at Weybridge, kept a dozen other servants, gave splendid 
 
 ' 
 
 1&57 
 
 HIS EXTRAORDINARY DOUBLE LIFE 
 
 >7i 
 
 dinners, was intimate with peers, and as highly esteemed for taste by 
 the rich as by the poor for benevolence— these and a hundred things 
 like them were now excitedly gossiped over, and the wonder grew that 
 they had not formed the ground of suspicious inference long before. 
 But there is no place in which a man may live a double life with so 
 little comment as in London. The reputation of being a successful 
 speculator who, at the same time, clung to regular, respectable employ- 
 ment, had been sufficient for eight years to cover all the contradictions 
 in Redpath's extraordinary career. Now, however, it was ended for 
 ever, as far as his native country was concerned, for on 16 January, 
 1857, he was convicted at the Old Bailey and sentenced to transporta- 
 tion for life. Kent, his worst dupe, was acquitted of all criminal 
 intent, and remained for years afterwards a respected servant of the 
 Company. 
 
 After Redpath's conviction, however, the really serious part of the 
 trouble created by his villainy still remained to be dealt with. To 
 convict him, proof of a few specimen forgeries had been sufficient; the 
 main tangle of his misdeeds had yet to be unravelled. Not feeling 
 equal to the task themselves, the auditors of the Company called in the 
 assistance of a professional accountant, who reported that it would be 
 necessary to trace through all the transfers of stock from the birth of 
 the Company in 1846, and for this purpose he brought a staff of about 
 fifty clerks to King's Cross. The result was that in a few months an 
 expense of ;£"47oo had been incurred and only two out of seven 
 stocks had been examined ; while it was found that the practical effect 
 of the operations was merely to reproduce certain results which Mr. 
 Oakley, Mr. Grinling, and one or two others of the ordinary staff, 
 working sometimes beyond midnight, had already arrived at. So, by 
 general consent, the professional expert's services were forthwith dis- 
 pensed with, and an immediate saving effected of about ;^ 1 00 a day. 
 
 Meanwhile, the question of how the heavy loss was to be dealt 
 with had become pressing with a view to declare the dividend for the 
 half-year ended 31 December, 1856. In order to ascertain their 
 legal powers and responsibilities, the directors consulted the Attorney- 
 General, Sir Richard Bethell (afterwards Lord Westbury), and Mr. 
 Rochfort Clarke, q.c, and these authorities stated that they considered 
 the loss arising from the frauds " in the same light as any loss resulting 
 to the Company from some great calamity, such as the falling of a 
 tunnel or viaduct or an inundation, the cost of which would have to be 
 defrayed before any profit capable of division could be considered to 
 have accrued." They, therefore, recommended that before any divi- 
 dend was declared by the Company '* provision should be made for 
 
 
 W 
 
 f • 
 
 1 1 
 
^w-iM 
 
 
 I 
 
 172 
 
 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 purchasing and extinguishing stock equal to the amount fraudulently 
 created." As this had already been shown to amount to about 
 ;£"2 20,000 there did not, under these circumstances, seem much 
 prospect of any dividend worth the name being paid for the half- 
 year; and if there had been, another part of the legal gentlemen's 
 opinion would have at once extinguished it, for they declared that 
 as it was impossible to avoid paying on the fictitious stock ecjually 
 with the stock legitimately issued, it followed "as a necessary conse- 
 quence" that the Company could not "at present legally pay any 
 dividend whatever." Under these circumstances, it was a decided 
 aggravation of the shareholders' sufferings to be informed that the 
 profit balance of ^£"243,923 available would have enabled the directors, 
 under ordinary circumstances, to have proposed a distribution which, 
 added to that declared in the previous August, would have made the 
 whole year's dividend— for the first time in the Company's history — 
 amount to 5 per cent, upon the ordinary stock. 
 
 Of course, at the first shareholders' meeting after the discovery of 
 the frauds — the twenty-first half-yearly meeting, held on 4 March, 
 1857 — there was a great deal of pent-up indignation to be worked 
 off, and Mr. Seneca Hughes gave the first vent to it by proposing a 
 resolution that the directors should be made "personally responsible" 
 for the loss. Common sense, however, soon showed the angry share- 
 holders that it was one thing to pass such a resolution and quite 
 another to enforce it. Accordingly Mr. Hughes' motion was negatived 
 by a large majority, and another was passed appointing a " committee 
 of inquiry," consisting of three shareholders and two directors, to inquire 
 fully into "the accounts of the Company, including the registration," 
 and to report to a special meeting to be convened for the purpose. 
 
 But an inquiry into the system of accounts, it was already evident, 
 was a mere shutting of the stable door after the theft of the horse ; 
 the real matter to be fought now was how the loss was to be distributed 
 amongst the various classes of shareholders. In the opinion already 
 quoted from, the Attorney - General and Mr. Rochfort Clarke had 
 suggested — somewhat inconsistently, it would seem, with their view 
 as to the loss being one to be defrayed immediately out of profits — 
 that the shareholders should agree to apply to Parliament for a 
 Bill to legalize the fraudulent stock. This course accordingly the 
 directors had recommended in their report to the meeting, with the 
 proviso, however, that the Bill must not be one to "throw upon the 
 preference stocks any portion of the loss in question, and thereby 
 shake the confidence of the public in all such stocks." Moreover, 
 without waiting for the meeting, they had had a Bill on these lines 
 
 1857 
 
 A LAW LORD TALKS "ARRANT STUFF" 
 
 173 
 
 prepared; but when on 7 March, 1857 — after the publication of 
 the report, but before the meeting — it had come before the Standing 
 Orders Committee of the House of Lords, Lord Redesdale, the 
 chairman of that Committee, in the arbitrary manner for which he 
 was dreaded, had absolutely refused to allow it even to be introduced, 
 declaring that " no bad precedent must be set," because the loss was 
 a large one, but that it "must be charged to the revenue and not 
 to the capital of the Company." Moreover, on 12 March — one 
 day before the meeting— a deputation of holders of open stock had 
 waited upon the directors to urge practically the same course, namely, 
 that the loss should be at once met out of the half-year s revenue ; 
 and the result was that at the meeting itself the directors consented 
 to an amendment to the report being adopted to this effect. Accord- 
 ingly for the Bill originally framed a new one was substituted to 
 authorize the application of the net revenue of the Company available 
 for dividend for the half-year to 31 December, 1856, to buying up 
 and then cancelling stock of the Company to the extent of the 
 forgeries and to paying all the expenses of Redpath's prosecution, etc. 
 
 Notwithstanding their previous declaration against "throwing any 
 portion of the loss upon the preference stocks," the directors made 
 no secret that the new Bill was intended to distribute it alike amongst 
 all classes of shareholders ; and when it was pointed out to them 
 that its wording in this respect was ambiguous, they introduced an 
 amendment to make it quite clear. This amendment was accepted 
 by the Lords Committee, but opposed most virulently on third reading 
 by two champions of the preference shareholders. Lord St. Leonards 
 and Lord Wensleydale, both of them law lords, and the former an 
 ex-Lord Chancellor, who abused the directors in unmeasured terms.* 
 Nevertheless the Bill passed intact through the Upper House, where 
 it had been first introduced ; but in the Commons a vigorous private 
 canvass against it was organized, with the result that there the clarifying 
 words were expunged. Thus the precise effect of the Bill was again 
 made doubtful; but to drop it at this point would have meant deferring 
 all declaration of dividend for another year, and so the directors had 
 no option but to take it as it stood, with the chance that it might 
 be held in law to carry out their intentions. 
 
 Accordingly it became an Act, and a scheme of dividend was 
 prepared for the half-year to 30 June, 1857, under which the 
 preference shareholders were made to suffer equally with the others. 
 
 * *'Lord St. Leonards is a great authority," said Mr. Denison to the Great 
 Northern shareholders, **but I must take the liberty of saying that no man living 
 ever talked such a quantity of arrant stuff." 
 
 if:ii 
 
 u 
 
174 
 
 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 
 Against this, however, some of the former appealed to the Court of 
 Chancery; and on 26 August, 1857— three days only before the 
 half-yearly meeting — the Vice-Chancellor gave a decision that no 
 dividend could be declared except on the footing of paying the 
 preference shareholders their claims in full. The directors decided, 
 in the interests of the ordinary shareholders, to appeal against this 
 decision, and all declaration of dividend had again to be postponed. 
 
 The indignation of the shareholders had now reached fever-heat. 
 To their original anger at the lax supervision which had allowed frauds 
 of such magnitude to be carried on so long was added an almost 
 universal dissatisfaction at the course which the directors had taken 
 since their discovery. With the preference shareholders the Board was 
 now at open war, while the ordinary proprietors distrusted them because 
 they had at the outset sided with the other party. The result was that 
 the twenty-second half-yearly meeting held at the London Tavern on 
 29 August, 1857, was perhaps the stormiest ever held in railway 
 history. Hostilities commenced at the very outset by the shareholders 
 objecting to allow the Chairman to affix the seal of the Company to the 
 register of shareholders. 
 
 " There was a time,"' cried one indignant speaker, " when you could 
 have affixed that seal to the register, and when you could have affixed 
 your signature to any document, be it what it would, and the confidence 
 of this proprietary would have gone with you. But the discussion 
 which has occupied the last five minutes ought to serve to show you 
 that their confidence in you has utterly gone" (loud applause) 
 "deservedly, justly, irrevocably gone. And, sir, if any expression of 
 opinion— if any description of question which this meeting can put 
 should serve to relieve this Company of such a head as they are now 
 ashamed of" (applause) "no time can be wasted, no consumption of 
 time can be a loss of time if it serves to redeem, to rescue, and to 
 save this vast property from a management which every man feels to 
 have been the reverse of right, sound, and faithful." 
 
 The weight of this gentleman's eloquence, however, was somewhat 
 discounted when it was found that he was the proprietor of barely more 
 than ;^ioo of stock. 
 
 Mr. Denison stated that he had never before in all his life been so 
 abused, both in speech and by letter. He believed, in short, that 
 many people were more enraged with him than they were with 
 Redpath; and his son, Mr. E. B. Denison, Q.c, being present at 
 the meeting to support his father, now came in for a share of the 
 personalities. One speaker alluded to him as " the young May-moon 
 on the chairman's right," whereupon the future I^rd (irimthorpe rose 
 
 A "FIRST-CLASS FIGHTING MAN" 
 
 175 
 
 to protest against his assailant "sitting at the end of the table squirting 
 out his venomous observations " (hisses and confusion). Upon being 
 appealed to to use his influence to restrain his son, the Chairman 
 said : " If my son has had insulting language aimed at him he is not 
 
 Mr. Edmund Denison in 1856. 
 
 Frcm apkotos:rapk by Mault &• Fox, Piccadilly, W. 
 
 worthy of being my son if he does not repel it instanter" (loud applause). 
 At last the elder Denison himself, goaded beyond all patience, aroused 
 an uproar louder than all by declaring that he would " be damned if he 
 would answer a question hypothetically." 
 
 The meeting was adjourned to await the result of the appeal against 
 
 ( 
 
 i» 
 
 H 
 
m 
 
 M^ 
 
 176 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 the Vice-Chancellor's judgment, but this, when received in the following 
 November, 1857, proved an unqualified triumph for the preference 
 shareholders. In a word, it placed them in the position of guaranteed 
 proprietors, entitled to their full dividend and all arrears before any- 
 thing could be distributed upon the open stock. As already stated, 
 the whole profits for the half-year ended 31 December, 1856, had 
 already been appropriated to making good the Redpath loss. Con- 
 sequently, the dividend in arrear to the preference shareholders for 
 that half-year had first of all to be paid out of the profits of the 
 following half-year before any dividend could be distributed on the 
 "original," the "Bj"' or the "A." The result was, of course, that this 
 section of the proprietary bore the whole loss from the frauds, receiving 
 nothing at all in dividend for one half-year, and only a fractional 
 amount, viz , 6j. per cent, original and ms. per cent. B stock, the next. 
 The directors could only plead in excuse that it was not their fault that 
 the action of Parliament had thwarted their best endeavours to carry 
 out the resolution of the March meeting, and remind the shareholders 
 that no good could come of further complaints. 
 
 Meanwhile the Committee of Inquiry had concluded its investi- 
 gations, and 7000 copies of the evidence it had taken, together with 
 a report drawn up by the three shareholders' nominees, had been 
 circulated at an expense of about ^100 for postage alone. The 
 inquiry had ranged, not only over the accounts and registration, but 
 over all the affairs and traffic arrangements of the Company, and a 
 number of matters had been selected for animadversion and suggested 
 amendment. The vagueness and triviality of the charges, however, 
 were in themselves proof that the laxness of supervision had been 
 confined to the registration department, and that the general affairs of 
 the Company were in a thoroughly sound state. But Mr. Denison was 
 the last person to leave criticism of any kind unanswered, and accord- 
 ingly the directors issued, with their report to the adjourned half-yearly 
 meeting, a reply to the Committee, which was drawn up in the chair- 
 man's most vigorous and trenchant style. 
 
 " It is difficult," it concluded, " to see what good such a report as 
 this can have done to anybody— except, indeed, that it must have 
 convinced some persons who were not sufficiently sensible of it before, 
 that the ability to declaim at meetings against an existing railway 
 government and in favour of reform, is consistent with the smallest 
 possible capacity for undertaking either the one or the other." 
 
 In the accompanying report the directors issued what may be 
 fairly described as their "ultimatum." "If," they wrote, "the 
 peaceful and rational majority of the proprietors think the character 
 
 1857 
 
 MR. DENISON'S ULTIMATUM 
 
 177 
 
 of the Company worth preserving, and that the time is come to 
 make an end of the business which has caused so much ill-feeling, 
 it is neither prudent for themselves, nor fair to those who have to 
 fight their battle for them, to leave their opponents in even apparent 
 command of the meeting. It is impossible to foresee what course 
 may be taken at the approaching meeting by those who have created 
 the disturbance at the last two. But the time is coming when no 
 Company will get persons of character to serve them as directors 
 if they are to be insulted by their constituents whenever they meet 
 them publicly, and not even allowed to make the speeches necessary 
 to conduct the business without interruptions. If the proprietors 
 think their business would be better done by such persons as those 
 who usually distinguish themselves by imputing the worst possible 
 motives to the present directors in all their acts, it is easy for them 
 to say so, and so soon as that opinion is deliberately expressed it 
 shall be immediately acted on. But they must make their choice, 
 and the proceedings of the ensuing meeting will probably be taken 
 to indicate that choice in one way or the other." 
 
 This appeal produced the effect for which it was intended. Among 
 the business announced for the adjourned half-yearly meeting which 
 was held on i December, 1857, was a vote of censure on the 
 directors for "their long mismanagement and neglect of the regis- 
 tration department." The resolution was moved, but its proposer 
 was listened to with manifest impatience, and several of the subsequent 
 speakers strongly appealed to the meeting to bury the history of 
 the frauds in oblivion, and to leave their affairs with confidence in 
 the hands of a directorate which, with this one exception, had done 
 so well for them in the past. "You are perfectly welcome to know," 
 declared Mr. Denison, amid repeated bursts of cheers, "that if I 
 had not had a sincere respect for those whose property is embarked 
 in this great undertaking, no consideration should have induced me 
 to remain where I am. I know perfectly well that I lay myself open 
 to observation when I repeat that, if I had not believed that under 
 some particular circumstances if I had left the direction the property 
 might have been damaged, I certainly should have made my bow 
 to the board years ago. I have gained nothing by it. I ask for 
 nothing. I have done my duty to the public ; I have done my duty 
 to you ; and so long as I remain in the position in which I stand, 
 no language that can be used will drive me from this position. I 
 know perfectly well from conversation, from letters, and from my 
 estimate of public opinion, that a very great majority of the share- 
 holders in this concern do place the greatest confidence in the board 
 N 
 
178 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 with which I am connected." The result of the meeting proved 
 that this estimate was a right one. When the resolution of censure 
 was put about twenty hands only were held up in its favour, and 
 the mover did not think it worth while to go to a poll. 
 
 It was not until the following August that a complete account 
 could be submitted showing the exact amount of the loss to the 
 Company from Redpath's frauds. The amount expended in the 
 purchase of stock to extinguish that fraudulently created was 
 ;£"2 2 7,835 ; the loss by dividends paid on the fraudulent stock was 
 ;^2 1,405 ; law charges, including the cost of the prosecution of 
 Redpath, obtaining the Act of Parliament, and defending the suit 
 in Chancery, had consumed no less a sum than jC7S75 j ;£^3937 
 had been paid to the professional accountant, and just over ^3000 
 more had been spent by the Company itself in additional staff for 
 adjusting the stock registers, stationery, and sundries. There was 
 also a loss on income-tax of ^7649, resulting from the profits for 
 the half-year ended December, 1856, not having been divided; but 
 this was nearly counterbalanced by a credit of ^£^6702 for interest 
 received from time to time on this money while in reserve. On the 
 credit side also was the very considerable sum of ;£2 5,099 received 
 from the proceeds of Redpath's estate. The net result was that 
 out of the amount of ^^243,923 which had been set aside to meet 
 the loss, only ;^4248 remained unexpended, and this was carried 
 forward to the net revenue account of the current half-year. It is 
 significant of the strong position which the Great Northern Railway 
 Company had already attained, that so heavy a loss, occurring so 
 early in the history of the undertaking, could thus be met out of 
 a single half-year's profits. 
 
 I' 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE MIDLAND AGGRESSION— 1858-1863. 
 
 THE break-up of the Euston Square confederacy and the 
 admission of the Great Northern in alliance with the Sheffield 
 Company to the north-western parts of England meant that the third 
 epoch in the history of the northern railways of England had defi- 
 nitely commenced. The first epoch, as we have seen, had extended 
 from the opening of the London and Birmingham Railway in 1838 
 up to 1850, during which period the through traffic between London 
 and the northern parts of the kingdom had all flowed to and from 
 a single Metropolitan terminus— Euston Square. In 1850 a second 
 terminus— King's Cross— had been opened, having physical con- 
 nection with all parts of the North; but, as we have seen, from 
 1850 to 1858 — the second epoch — traffic to and from King's 
 Cross had been limited and hampered in the interests of the hard- 
 dying monopoly of Euston Square. In 1858, however, the death- 
 blow had at last been given to this monopoly by the verdict obtained 
 from Parliament in favour of the establishment of the joint Great 
 Northern and Manchester, Sheffield, and Lincolnshire route between 
 London and I^ncashire; and so, as has just been said, a third epoch 
 had then commenced— the epoch of the dual control, if you like 
 so to call it— the epoch during which there were two equal through 
 routes for the northern traffic of the kingdom, the one starting from 
 Euston Square, and the other from King's Cross. 
 
 Having thus fought its way to the proud position of equality with 
 the London and North Western, it may be thought that the Great 
 Northern has now put its fighting days behind it; but this is true 
 in the sense only that in our subsequent pages it will not figure 
 as the aggressor in great railway fights— that it has ceased to be 
 the ** Ishmael of railways," to recall the nickname given to it soon 
 after its birth, when its official tide was "the London and York." 
 Having now won for itself recognition as a first-class power in the 
 railway world, the Great Northern will not need in the future to wage 
 
 179 
 
 > . 
 
 1 
 
 
 Iff 
 
178 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 with which I am connected." The result of the meeting proved 
 that this estimate was a right one. When the resolution of censure 
 was put about twenty hands only were held up in its favour, and 
 the mover did not think it worth while to go to a poll. 
 
 It was not until the following August that a complete account 
 could be submitted showing the exact amount of the loss to the 
 Company from Redpath's frauds. The amount expended in the 
 purchase of stock to extinguish that fraudulently created was 
 ;£"22 7,835 ; the loss by dividends paid on the fraudulent stock was 
 ;£^2 1,405; law charges, including the cost of the prosecution of 
 Redpath, obtaining the Act of Parliament, and defending the suit 
 in Chancery, had consumed no less a sum than ^£75 7 5 ; ;^3937 
 had been paid to the professional accountant, and just over ;£^3ooo 
 more had been spent by the Company itself in additional staff for 
 adjusting the stock registers, stationery, and sundries. There was 
 also a loss on income-tax of ^£^7649, resulting from the profits for 
 the half-year ended December, 1856, not having been divided; but 
 this was nearly counterbalanced by a credit of ^^6702 for interest 
 received from time to time on this money while in reser\'e. On the 
 credit side also was the very considerable sum of ;£2 5,099 received 
 from the proceeds of Redpath's estate. The net result was that 
 out of the amount of ^243,923 which had been set aside to meet 
 the loss, only ;£4248 remained unexpended, and this was carried 
 forward to the net revenue account of the current half-year. It is 
 significant of the strong position which the Great Northern Railway 
 Company had already attained, that so heavy a loss, occurring so 
 early in the history of the undertaking, could thus be met out of 
 a single half-year's profits. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE MIDLAND AGGRESSION— 1858-1863. 
 
 THE break-up of the Euston Square confederacy and the 
 admission of the Great Northern in alliance with the Sheffield 
 Company to the north-western parts of England meant that the third 
 epoch in the history of the northern railways of England had defi- 
 nitely commenced. The first epoch, as we have seen, had extended 
 from the opening of the London and Birmingham Railway in 1838 
 up to 1850, during which period the through traffic between London 
 and the northern parts of the kingdom had all flowed to and from 
 a single Metropolitan terminus— Euston Square. In 1850 a second 
 terminus— King's Cross— had been opened, having physical con- 
 nection with all parts of the North; but, as we have seen, from 
 1850 to 1858 — the second epoch — traffic to and from King's 
 Cross had been limited and hampered in the interests of the hard- 
 dying monopoly of Euston Square. In 1858, however, the death- 
 blow had at last been given to this monopoly by the verdict obtained 
 from Parliament in favour of the establishment of the joint Great 
 Northern and Manchester, Sheffield, and Lincolnshire route between 
 London and Lancashire; and so, as has just been said, a third epoch 
 had then commenced— the epoch of the dual control, if you like 
 so to call it— the epoch during which there were two equal through 
 routes for the northern traffic of the kingdom, the one starting from 
 Euston Square, and the other from King's Cross. 
 
 Having thus fought its way to the proud position of equality with 
 the London and North Western, it may be thought that the Great 
 Northern has now put its fighting days behind it; but this is true 
 in the sense only that in our subsequent pages it will not figure 
 as the aggressor in great railway fights— that it has ceased to be 
 the " Ishmael of railways," to recall the nickname given to it soon 
 after its birth, when its official title was "the London and York." 
 Having now won for itself recognition as a first-class power in the 
 railway world, the Great Northern will not need in the future to wage 
 
 179 
 
 n\ 
 
 1 
 
i8o HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 offensive warfare ; but the state of inter-railway politics, like that of 
 international politics, is ever a state either of war or of "armed 
 peace"; and the position which the Great Northern has acquired it 
 will be found necessary for it to defend from attack with unceasing 
 vigilance. One main trunk line between London and the North 
 did not, as we have seen, satisfy the British public for long ; and now 
 that there are two routes these cannot give contentment to every 
 interest. First a third, then a fourth, and then a fifth trunk railway are 
 destined to be demanded, and against each of these in turn we shall 
 find the Great Northern called upon to fight almost as stubbornly as 
 we have seen that it was itself fought against in its early days. 
 
 To look back a little, then: — the sympathy with which we may 
 so far have followed the progress of the Great Northern must not 
 blind us to the fact that its success had already involved considerable 
 hardship to other companies — more especially to the Midland and 
 to the Eastern Counties. As laid out originally, as we know, by 
 George Stephenson, the main trunk of the Midland system had been 
 intended not only to connect a number of important provincial 
 towns, but to form in connection with the southern part of the 
 " London and Birmingham " line a main trunk route between London 
 and Yorkshire; and, similarly, the Cambridge line of the Eastern 
 Counties had been originally planned, as we saw at the time, as 
 part of a " Northern and Eastern Railway " between London and 
 York. True, the promoters of both these lines had made the serious 
 mistake of supposing that the public would accommodate itself to 
 the interests of the railway -makers by being content to travel 
 circuitously, whereas the Great Northern promoters had clung with 
 splendid perseverance to a truer faith — the faith which Mr. Denison 
 expressed when he said, "traffic, like water, will find its own level; 
 it will go by the shortest line." Still, when error on the one side 
 and sagacity on the other are fully admitted, it cannot be denied 
 that it was hard on the Midland and Eastern Counties shareholders 
 that, having laid out their money largely with a view to getting 
 "through" long-distance traffic, they should now find themselves 
 deprived of almost the whole of it by the construction of a new route 
 more direct than their own. 
 
 During what we have just called our second epoch — the epoch 
 of " the confederacy " — the Midland, as we have seen, had been able 
 to obtain some compensation for its losses in the form of " blackmail " 
 extracted from the London and North Western by threats of allying 
 itself with the Great Northern, and this had lasted until the collapse 
 in 1857 of the illegal common-purse agreement between the two 
 
 1858 
 
 POSITION OF THE MIDLAND 
 
 181 
 
 companies. But, all this time, the Midland, as we also noted, had 
 been careful not to carry its subservience to Euston Square so far 
 as to neglect to make its southern extension from Leicester to Hitchin • 
 and the result of this wise policy had been that, as recorded in our 
 last chapter but one, almost simultaneously with the collapse of the 
 common-purse agreement, the long-threatened alliance with the Great 
 Northern had been obtained. It had been obtained, moreover, on 
 terms much more advantageous to the Midland than would have been 
 forthcoming if a direct connection between the two systems had still 
 been to seek. 
 
 The reason for this is very obvious. By coming so far south as 
 Hitchm the Midland had put itself well on the road to follow up what 
 smce the opening of the Great Northern had become its only sound 
 and safe policy-the development of itself as a through north and 
 south system, independent both of London and North Western and 
 Great Northern ; and so, in addition to their natural desire to divert 
 the Midland's London traffic from its original route via Rugby to 
 the new route via Hitchin, the authorities at King's Cross had a 
 second reason for giving the Midland liberal facilities. If they did not 
 do so, it might at once follow up its Hitchin extension with a further 
 extension into the Metropolis itself. The terms actually given under 
 the agreement made between the two companies in 1858 were full 
 running powers for the Midland trains between Hitchin and King's 
 Cross and separate terminal accommodation for its goods traffic— a 
 great concession, obviously, to a competing company ; on the other 
 hand, it meant immediately an increase of income to the Great 
 Northern, seeing that the Midland undertook that the toll it was to 
 pay for the running powers should amount to not less than ^'20 000 
 a year. Nevertheless, it may reasonably be doubted whether on the 
 whole the treaty was a good move for the Great Northern. While 
 It staved off an immediate application on the part of the Midland for a 
 hne of its own to London, it encouraged that Company in two other 
 steps hardly less dangerous to Great Northern interests. These were 
 the conversion of its working agreement with the (little) North 
 Western into a complete amalgamation, so that Anglo-Scotch traffic 
 by the "central route" might be developed in earnest, and a strenuous 
 effort to establish a Midland route between London and Lancashire 
 
 The latter effort was precipitated by certain arrangements which the 
 London and North Western, Great Northern, and Manchester, Sheffield 
 and Lincolnshire companies sought to make in order to conclude pe/ 
 manently their Lancashire rate-war of 1857-8. That war, as we saw in 
 our last chapter but one, had been put an end to in June, 1858 by 
 
 ,i) 
 
i82 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 a temporary agreement to charge equal rates and fares by both routes 
 — rates and fares considerably lower than those which the London and 
 North Western had charged before the Great- Northern -cum-Sheffield 
 invasion ; but, instead of being content with this, and recognizing what 
 is now an axiom of English railway politics, that within the limits 
 of equal rates, competition between rival routes is inevitable, the three 
 companies, despite all past experience, started off again in pursuit 
 of that will o'-the-wisp which, as we have seen, had led Captain Huish 
 into such disaster — in pursuit of arrangements to prevent competition 
 of all kinds. For this purpose they made an agreement in November, 
 1858, to divide the whole of the London and Lancashire traffic amongst 
 themselves in certain agreed proportions, and to work it for the common 
 interest under the management of a Joint Committee. In a word they 
 revived the "protectionist" policy with the alteration that instead of 
 being directed against the Great Northern as before, it was directed 
 by a combination, which included the Great Northern, against the 
 Midland. 
 
 There was another important respect, however, in which this " Triple 
 Alliance," as it was called, differed from the similar alliances contracted 
 under the regime of Captain Huish. It was made quite publicly — nay 
 more, the three companies parties to it, acting apparently under the force 
 of a reaction caused by the bad odour into which Captain Huish's ultra- 
 legal methods had fallen, deposited a Bill in Parliament for the purpose 
 of obtaining legal sanction for the arrangements. The sequel, however, 
 demonstrated the much greater shrewdness which Captain Huish had 
 shown in preserving strict secrecy in regard to all traffic agreements of 
 this character. For no sooner were the terms of the " Three Companies 
 Bill " — as it was called — made public, than the Midland, North 
 Staffordshire, and other companies whose lines formed parts of alterna- 
 tive routes between London and Lancashire, entered most energetic 
 protests against it on the ground that it would act most prejudicially upon 
 the development of their alternative routes ; and the Midland especially 
 was able to make out a strong case on this ground, because already it 
 was doing a small amount of London and Manchester traffic by carrying 
 it on its own trains from King's Cross, via Hitchin and Leicester into 
 North Derbyshire, and thence forwarding it by the London and North 
 Western lines via Stockport. The result was that in consequence of the 
 opposition of the Midland Company, the "Three Companies Bill,'* 
 after passing the Commons, was thrown out by the Lords. 
 
 There could be no doubt as to the reason why the Lords Committee 
 rejected the Bill, for they accompanied their decision with a rider to the 
 effect that no arrangements of the kind contemplated could be regarded 
 
 
 \ 
 
 185960 "LAUGHING AT THE CARDWELL ACT" 183 
 
 as satisfactory unless the Midland was included in them. Accordingly, 
 for the session of i860, a new Bill was framed in which provision was 
 made for the inclusion of the Midland ; but at the same time a new 
 " Three Companies Bill " was also deposited, in the hope, apparently, 
 that if the one failed the other might pass. The latter, however, was 
 again thrown out on the opposition of the Midland, and the "Four 
 Companies Bill" on that of the North Staffordshire; and then the 
 members of the Triple Alliance realized that if other companies were 
 to be kept out of the through traffic with Lancashire, it must be 
 done not publicly but privately, after the manner of Captain Huish. 
 Accordingly, after the rejection of the Bills, the London and North 
 Western and Sheffield Companies, going back to their old policy of 
 " laughing at the Cardwell Act," refused to take on traffic which the 
 Midland wished to forward into Lancashire from London and other 
 competitive places. In a word, they "blocked" their junctions at 
 Stockport and Beighton against the Midland just as in the days of the 
 confederacy they had blocked the junction at Retford against the Great 
 Northern. 
 
 In this way the development of the Midland's route to Lancashire 
 was entirely arrested, and about the same time, />., in the spring of 
 i860, steps of a rather more complicated character were taken to arrest 
 the development of its " central route " to Scotland. It will be remem- 
 bered that under the English and Scotch Alliance of 1856, as well as 
 under the Octuple Treaty of 1851, the existence of this central route 
 had been practically ignored, as far, at least, as London traffic was 
 concerned. The Midland, in return for considerations which it had 
 received under its " confederate " alliances with the London and North 
 Western, had been content to claim such proportions only of the 
 through traffic with Scotland as it was entitled to as part owner of 
 the "alternative East Coast route "z^/i Derby and Normanton. But 
 upon the collapse in 1857 of its common-purse agreement with the 
 London and North Western, the advantages which had made it worth 
 the Midland's while thus to minimize its powers as regards Anglo- 
 Scotch traffic had of course ceased. Thereupon, as we have just seen, on 
 the strength of the running powers it had secured in 1858 over the 
 Great Northern, it had at once made new arrangements with the (little) 
 North Western, whereby, instead of starving that " poor wretched little 
 creature " as heretofore, it had absorbed it and begun to send its 
 Scotch traffic over it, instead of by the East Coast lines via Normanton 
 and York. 
 
 If the traffic thus sent, however, had been thrown into the English 
 and Scotch "pool," obviously the Midland would have gained no 
 
 • 
 
 \ \ .1 
 
 ' I 
 
 k 
 
 iti 
 

 184 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 benefit from its change of route ; and, recognizing this, its representa- 
 tives had so managed matters so far that the " central route " receipts 
 were not "pooled," but were divided between the several companies 
 over whose lines the traffic passed in the more ordinary way according 
 to mileage. But this, as obviously, was a questionable proceeding; 
 accordingly, early in i860, it was brought officially to the notice of the 
 other members of the alliance. Thereupon the Midland urged that, as 
 it was sent via Hitchin— />., by a route which had come into operation 
 since the formation of the alliance— the " central " traffic might legiti- 
 mately be kept out of the "pool" ; but the majority of the companies 
 refused to accept this view, and so, pending the settlement of the 
 dispute, the Railway Clearing House was directed to collect the whole 
 receipts of the central route in future, and to hold them in suspense. 
 Thus the Midland appeared for the time to be rather neatly " hoist with 
 its own petard " ; for, but for its own former subservience to Euston 
 Square and indifference to the injustice which its acceptance of bribery 
 from that quarter had entailed upon the (little) North Western, a proper 
 status might have been given to the central route at the time the English 
 and Scotch Alliance had been made. Nevertheless, that the con- 
 struction now put upon the terms of that alliance by the West and 
 East Coast companies involved great injustice to the Midland cannot 
 be denied, especially in view of the fact that the opening of the long- 
 projected link between Ingleton and Tebay was in a few months' time 
 considerably to improve the central route. 
 
 It was under these circumstances that Mr. Allport was invited to give 
 up his shipbuilding business and return to the general managership of 
 the Midland to strengthen that Company and to break down the barriers 
 which had been formed against it, just as in 1 850 he had broken down 
 similar barriers formed against the Sheffield. He accepted the in- 
 vitation, and the first step he took was to cultivate an alliance with the 
 Lancashire and Yorkshire. This, of course, was directed against the 
 Triple Alliance of the London and North Western, Great Northern, and 
 Sheffield— in fact, it at once opened up Lancashire, circuituously, to 
 Midland traffic ; and its announcement, coupled with a rumour that a 
 complete amalgamation of the Midland and I^ncashire and Yorkshire 
 was in course of arrangement, led the Joint Committee of the Triple 
 Alliance, at one of its meetings in the autumn of i860, to take into 
 serious consideration a far-reaching proposition which had been hinted 
 at several times before. This was that the London and North Western 
 and Great Northern should jointly absorb the Manchester, Sheffield, 
 and Lincolnshire. 
 
 This, indeed, seems to have been the end which the ever-scheming 
 
 i860 
 
 WATKIN F, DENiSON 
 
 185 
 
 
 
 manager of the Sheffield, Mr. Watkin, had had in view from the 
 beginning of the friendly relations between the three companies ; but 
 Mr. Denison had, as he said afterwards in evidence before a Parlia- 
 mentary Committee, "turned a deaf ear — a cold shoulder— to it; he 
 did not care about the matter at all." Indeed, one can well believe 
 that this was the attitude of the Great Northern chairman to the whole 
 of the Triple Alliance proceedings. One can hardly believe that he 
 can have entered with any zest into a policy so similar to that against 
 which he had fought with all his might when it was directed against his 
 own Company. Probably he acquiesced in the Triple Alliance, as we 
 saw he acquiesced in 1855 in the English and Scotch Alliance, simply 
 because he would not take upon himself the responsibility of standing 
 in the way of arrangements which, however objectionable they might be 
 from the point of view of true railway statesmanship, were from the 
 point of view of the traffic returns and the next half-year's dividend very 
 highly recommendable. 
 
 However this may be, the fact remains that towards the close of 
 i860, despite Mr. Denison's "cold shoulder," a strong disposition 
 showed itself amongst the directors of the three companies to pursue 
 the policy which had dictated their alliance a step farther by converting 
 the Manchester, Sheffield, and Lincolnshire from an independent com- 
 pany into the joint property of the London and North Western and 
 Great Northern. 
 
 The first measure taken was to depute the three general managers to 
 meet and discuss terms, and, as usually happened when Mr. Watkin 
 met other managers, Mr. Watkin did not come off second best. On 
 this occasion he persuaded Mr. Seymour Clarke and Mr. Cawkwell 
 (the latter had succeeded Captain Huish at Euston) to agree that the 
 Sheffield Company should be guaranteed a dividend to begin at i J per 
 cent, in 1861, and to rise by i per cent, stages until it reached a 
 permanent 3 J per cent, in 1866; and, though the former figure and 
 not the latter had been, and proved in the future to be, the normal 
 dividend of the Sheffield open shareholders, these terms of amalgama- 
 tion were, on their general manager's recommendation, adopted by the 
 London and North Western directors by a majority of twenty-five to 
 one. This minority of one consisted of none other than the chairman 
 of the company. Lord Chandos, who thereupon resigned his position 
 and wrote a private letter to Mr. Denison explaining his reasons for so 
 doing. 
 
 The Great Northern chairman received the letter— as we have already 
 seen him receiving other important communications — when he was in 
 bed with the gout at Doncaster. It being Christmas time, however, he 
 
 
 V 
 
 * 
 
i86 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 had a competent counsellor at hand in the person of his son, Mr. E. B. 
 Denison, q.c, and the father and son were not slow in coming to the 
 conclusion that the bargain which Messrs. Clarke and Cawkwell had 
 made with Mr. Watkin was a most improvident one, in spite of the 
 contrary opinion of the London and North Western Board. As usual, 
 Mr. Denison was able to carry his own Board with him. The result 
 was that on 23 January, 1861, the Sheffield Company was informed 
 that the Great Northern Company declined to proceed further with the 
 proposed joint amalgamation, at any rate on the basis suggested by the 
 general managers. 
 
 Mr. Watkin was, of course, greatly chagrined at this upset to his 
 schemes. On the very next day, 24 January, 1861, he spent several 
 hours closeted with Mr. Robert Baxter at the latter's office at West- 
 minster, and the same evening he dined, according to previous engage- 
 ment, with Mr. Seymour Clarke at the Great Northern manager's 
 residence at Hatfield. Walking to the station after dinner, Watkin 
 said, " I have been doing a thing to-day which will make the ears of 
 you Great Northern tingle." A few days later it was announced that an 
 agreement had been concluded between the Manchester, Sheffield, and 
 Lincolnshire and South Yorkshire directors under which the former 
 undertook to absorb the undertaking of the latter on the terms of a 
 dividend-guarantee. 
 
 In a speech which he made to the House of Commons Committee, 
 before which this South Yorkshire transfer came up for sanction, Mr. 
 Denison, q.c, did not hesitate to charge Mr. Watkin with making the 
 arrangement simply to spite the Great Northern. " Do you not see," 
 he said, " by the mere juxtaposition of those two days, that Mr. Watkin 
 went, red-hot from the disappointment at losing his own guarantee, to 
 go and buy up the South Yorkshire ? Nothing more than the two dates 
 is necessary to explain the motive of the Manchester, Sheffield, and 
 Lincolnshire Company in making this agreement." On the other hand, 
 however, it must be remembered that absorption of the South Yorkshire 
 by the Sheffield had been within the range of practical railway politics 
 since 185 1, that more recently the two companies had entered into 
 intimate relations in order to carry on jointly a coal traffic to the port 
 of Grimsby, and that at this very time they were engaged together in 
 promoting new railways in North Lincolnshire with a view of providing 
 a direct route from Yorkshire and Lancashire to Grimsby, and also of 
 opening up the newly-discovered Keadby ironfield. But at a Sheffield 
 half-yearly meeting a year or two later Mr. Watkin himself declared that 
 "the South Yorkshire agreement was entered into {ox political as well as 
 for commercial purposes," and on this occasion and many others he 
 
 , 
 
 1861 COMPETITION BETWEEN THE COALFIELDS 187 
 
 complained that the terms of the agreement between the Sheffield and 
 Great Northern to do London and Lancashire traffic jointly was working 
 unfairly to his Company. It seems pretty certain, therefore, that his pre- 
 dominant motive in securing the South Yorkshire was the calculation 
 that if the Sheffield system was thus enlarged so as to comprise the 
 Great Northern's means of access not only to Lancashire but to the 
 coalfield, the King's Cross Board would be compelled by sheer political 
 necessity to give better terms to the Sheffield Company, if not, sooner 
 or later, to buy it up. South Yorkshire and all. 
 
 For it was a fact, plain for every railway politician to see, that 
 no matter how strong a justification Mr. Denison had had for going 
 back upon the South Yorkshire amalgamation agreement in 1852, the 
 failure of the Great Northern to secure control of the coalfield railway, 
 either in that way or some other, had seriously arrested the develop- 
 ment of its coal traffic to London. Since its commencement in 185 1, 
 the coal traffic from South Yorkshire to King's Cross, as we have 
 already seen, had grown continuously, and was now far in excess of the 
 original estimate; but it had almost certainly not grown at anything 
 like the rate at which it might have grown, had the Great Northern had 
 the working of it entirely in its own hands. The Great Northern, as 
 we have seen, had been the pioneer of the railway coal traffic to 
 London, and for a year it had carried a tonnage far in excess of that 
 of other companies; but it was rapidly losing its supremacy in this 
 respect. 
 
 This supremacy had been first threatened, as we have already 
 seen, in 1854, when the Midland and London and North Western, 
 under their "common-purse" agreement, had commenced to develop 
 traffic vigorously from the Derbyshire, Leicestershire, and Nottingham- 
 shire fields ; and now that by virtue of its running powers from Hitchin 
 the Midland was for all practical purposes a London company, the 
 competition between it and the Derbyshire coalfield on the one hand, 
 and the Great Northern and the South Yorkshire coalfield on the other, 
 had entered upon a new and critical stage. 
 
 In such competition the Midland field had the great natural 
 advantage that now the route via Hitchin was open, it was, broadly 
 speaking, thirty miles nearer to London than the South Y'orkshire. On 
 the other hand, in the latter district the seams of coal were proving 
 generally thicker and the roofs stronger, making working less expensive. 
 More important still, the quality of the coal was better when got. 
 Under these circumstances there was privia facie little reason why the 
 two coalfields should not be on an equality as regards the London 
 market. 
 
 
 
 i 
 
 % 
 
1 88 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 What seemed likely to turn the scale in favour of the Midland trade, 
 however, was, that the Midland Railway Company, when it had com- 
 pleted a new depot for coal which it was building on land of its own 
 adjoining King's Cross, would be in a position to carry it on "in one 
 hand" from the pits to the Metropolis; and that— more important still 
 — Mr. AUport and his directors, as their purchase of this land showed, 
 were determined to develop quite a new coal-producing industry in 
 Derbyshire with a single eye to the London market. On the other 
 hand, the cultivation of the South Yorkshire trade was in three hands, 
 the coalowners (who had originally established themselves, be it re- 
 membered, by the help of water carriage), the South Yorkshire Railway 
 Company, and the Great Northern; and the aims and interests of 
 these three had never properly been harmonized. It was not only that 
 the South Yorkshire Company, under the agreement substituted for the 
 abortive amalgamation, insisted on having id. per mile, and sometimes 
 more, for the passage of the coal over the sixteen miles "average 
 distance " of its line between the pits and Doncaster, and so prevented 
 the total rate to London from being a really low one, though the (ireat 
 Northern contented itself with half that amount for each mile of its 
 longer haul. What was more serious was that the coalowners— and in 
 a sense the small railway company also— had never resolutely set them- 
 selves to cultivate the London market. On the contrary, as we have 
 already seen, they often starved that market when it suited them to 
 send a larger proportion of their output to their older markets nearer at 
 hand. 
 
 That this was the prime cause of the stunted development of 
 the Great Northern coal traffic had been proved by the failure of 
 prescriptions to remedy that complaint, which had been based upon 
 other diagnoses. Thus, some of the chief buyers of South Yorkshire 
 coal in London, and the coalowners themselves also, had per- 
 sistently declared, as we have already seen Mr. Samuel Plimsoll 
 declaring, that the root of the evil was that one buyer only had 
 been allowed to deal at first-hand— that, in short, the Company 
 itself had acted as coal-merchant through the agency of Mr. Herbert 
 Clarke; and, the drawbacks to this system having been proved to 
 outweigh its advantages, the directors had, in the summer of 1859, 
 modified it to the extent of allowing other men besides Mr. Clarke 
 to act as agents to the coalowners. Moreover, from July, i860, 
 as the result of a Chancery suit, the Company had been compelled 
 to desist altogether from selling the coals on its own account, and 
 Mr. Herbert Clarke's connection with it, other than as a "freighter," 
 had ceased. These changes, however, had not, so far, materially 
 
 1861 
 
 "A DIRTY TRICK" 
 
 189 
 
 
 
 improved the trade, and the reason for this clearly was that the prime 
 diflSculty remained untouched. Not through many agents any more 
 than through one would the South Yorkshire coalowners properly 
 cultivate the London market. It was by fits and starts only that they 
 were really in earnest about it, when from exceptional causes their trade 
 nearer at home was slack. 
 
 That this state of things was remediable by any measures which the 
 Great Northern Company could have taken seems, in the light of after 
 events, highly problematical ; but this much is certain, that the move 
 which, as just recorded, Mr. Watkin made so dramatically in January, 
 1 86 1, of buying up the South Yorkshire Railway for the Sheffield 
 Company threatened, if not met by some counter-move, not only to 
 deprive the Great Northern of all remaining chance of remedying it, 
 but to aggravate it in a considerable degree. For, if the " embarrass- 
 ment occasioned by the interposition of an independent company in 
 their principal coalfield"— to quote the phrase used prophetically by 
 the Great Northern directors just before the commencement of their 
 London coal trade in 1851 — had been one of the prime causes why 
 that trade had not developed satisfactorily, it was obviously likely to 
 become a more potent cause of evil when the " independent company '* 
 which interposed was converted from a small affair into a much larger 
 and more powerful one, with interests which, as far as the coal trade 
 was concerned, might conflict diametrically with the interests of the 
 Great Northern. It was, as we said, the competition of nearer markets 
 mainly which was preventing the London trade from South Yorkshire 
 from increasing more rapidly. Now it was over the system of the 
 Sheffield Company — the new lessors of the South Yorkshire Railway — 
 that these nearer markets were mainly reached. 
 
 Thus in calculating— to adopt a colloquialism often used after- 
 wards to describe the transaction — that he would "get at" the 
 Great Northern by his acquirement of the South Yorkshire, Mr. 
 Watkin showed his usual shrewdness; and when he had heard of 
 Mr. Denison's surprise and wrath at the news, and how with his 
 usual bluntness the Great Northern chairman had characterized the 
 proceeding as "a dirty trick," he probably chuckled and said to 
 himself that the shaft had gone home. For, however angry he 
 might be, Mr. Denison could not shut his eyes to the fact that 
 Mr. Watkin's move had made his former attitude of "deaf ear — 
 cold shoulder" to a more intimate relationship with the Sheffield no 
 longer tenable. So when, as the second move in his game, Mr. 
 Watkin offered a half-share in the South Yorkshire lease to the 
 Great Northern, Mr. Denison could do nothing else but agree that 
 
 h 
 
 1 
 
 \ 
 
I 
 
 190 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 Mr. Seymour Clarke should meet the Sheffield manager and see if 
 they could arrange "equal terms." 
 
 But equal terms could not be arranged, though the two managers 
 had many meetings over the business. It was not only that Mr. 
 Watkin had so far let his " political " motives outweigh his 
 "commercial" instincts — not an uncommon thing with him — in the 
 bargain he had made with Mr. Baxter as to have pledged himself to 
 give exorbitant terms to the South Yorkshire Company. There was a 
 difficulty much more fundamental, namely, that the purposes for which 
 the Great Northern wished to obtain control of the coalfield system 
 were, as the reader will readily see, quite incompatible with the sharing 
 of that control with the Sheffield Company upon equal terms. The 
 result was that the Great Northern directors came to the conclusion 
 that they could gain nothing, and might lose a good deal, by involving 
 themselves in a half-share in the improvident bargain which Mr. Baxter 
 had extorted from Mr. A\'atkin. 
 
 But, as has been said already, there can be little doubt that Mr. 
 Watkin had all along calculated that sooner or later the Sheffield 
 shareholders would be relieved of this and of all their other burdens 
 by the amalgamation of their whole property either by the London 
 and North Western and Great Northern jointly (as he had already so 
 nearly accomplished), or by the Great Northern alone; but unfor- 
 tunately for this, as for most of the schemes in which he embarked 
 in the course of his remarkable career, his energy and ambition were 
 too abundant for him to concentrate his attention on one object at a 
 time. In this instance, instead of settling down to follow out the 
 difficult line of policy which he had marked out for the Sheffield 
 Company, he undertook in July, 1861 — not instead of the Sheffield 
 general managership, but merely as a piece of extra work — a mission 
 to Canada to investigate the embarrassed affairs of the Grand Trunk 
 Railway Company; and in his absence the men who were left in 
 charge of the Sheffield took a step which upset completely his long- 
 cherished schemes. 
 
 In his book on the Midland Railway, Mr. F. S. Williams* has already 
 told the story of how in the autumn of 1861 Messrs. Beale, Hutchinson, 
 and Allport, of the Midland Company, were out examining the country 
 between Buxton and Manchester — surveying it, in fact, in connection 
 with a new through line into Manchester which the Midland had all 
 but resolved to promote as a weapon against the Triple Alliance — 
 when unexpectedly in a by-lane they came upon a dog-cart in which a 
 director and two officers of the Sheffield Company were riding. The 
 • 'J'he Midland Raihoay^ pp. 1 16 17 (popular edition). 
 
 1861 
 
 SHEFFIELD-CUM-MIDLAND ALLIANCE 
 
 191 
 
 representatives of the two companies spent the rest of the day very 
 amicably together, and shortly afterwards Mr. Allport entered into 
 negotiations with Mr. Chapman, the Sheffield chairman. The result 
 was the conclusion of an agreement under which the whole policy of 
 the Triple Alliance was reversed by the Sheffield Company under- 
 taking to admit the Midland traffic to Lancashire, instead of excluding 
 it therefrom. Temporarily the route was to be by the existing junction 
 between the two systems at Beighton, but for the session of 1862 the 
 Midland was to deposit a Bill to make, not a new through line as it had 
 proposed, but a link line only from Buxton to join at New Mills a 
 branch of the Sheffield's system, over which into Manchester it was to 
 have perpetual running powers. This agreement, in Mr. Watkins' 
 view, robbed the Sheffield property of half that value in the eyes of 
 the Great Northern and London and North Western which he had 
 schemed so long to give to it, and his anger was such that he at once 
 resigned the general managership of the Company. 
 
 Nor was Mr. Watkin the only person who thought he ought to have 
 been consulted before the agreement between the Midland and Sheffield 
 was made ; the Great Northern directors also thought they should have 
 had a say in the matter. For it was for London and Lancashire traffic 
 primarily, as we know, that the prior agreement between the Great 
 Northern and Sheffield— the " Fifty Years Agreement," as it was now 
 and afterwards called— had been made in 1857, and of this agreement 
 one of the clauses (which the reader will do well to bear carefully in 
 mind) was : " Neither Company party to this agreement shall make any 
 bargain, treaty, agreement, or arrangement with any other Company, or 
 do any act which can in any way directly or indirectly affect the traffic 
 of the other Company, or prejudice this agreement, without the consent 
 of the other Company party thereto." Moreover, the agreement— this 
 clause and all — had, in accordance with a general Act recently passed, 
 been approved by the Board of Trade as recently as 10 April of this 
 very year, 1861. Yet here was the Sheffield Company making an 
 agreement which would have the effect of setting up a new Midland 
 route between London and Manchester without so much as giving its 
 Great Northern partners notice of the matter. 
 
 Under these circumstances the Great Northern directors applied in 
 December, 1861, to the Court of Chancery for an injunction to prevent 
 the Sheffield and Midland companies from carrying out their new 
 treaty. Both this application, however, and an appeal were dismissed ; 
 nor did Parliament, in the session of 1862, listen to the Great Northern 
 plea that on account of the Sheffield's breach of faith the Midland's 
 Bill for its extension line to New Mills should be thrown out. 
 
 * ;'1 \ 
 
 I 1 
 
11 
 
 192 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 Thus the Midland was put on the road to become a "first-class 
 power," as far as traffic between London and Lancashire was con- 
 cerned ; and meantime Mr. Allport was working hard to raise it to a 
 similar position in regard to traffic between England and Scotland. In 
 September, 1861, the "short cut" line from Ingleton to Tebay was 
 opened, and at the same time a still more important contribution to the 
 formation of a really effective " central route " was being provided by 
 the North British Company, which was on the point of reaching 
 Carlisle by an extension of its Hawick line. Thus there was every 
 encouragement to the Midland to develop an Anglo-Scotch traffic 
 independently of the East and West Coast routes, had it not been for 
 the construction which the companies owning those routes were seeking 
 to put upon the English and Scotch Alliance of 1856. For, as we 
 have already seen, if that construction was the correct one, no matter 
 how hard the Midland might work to develop a new through service, 
 it could earn no more from Anglo-Scotch traffic than the very meagre 
 proportion it was already receiving. 
 
 Accordingly, it had become a great object of policy with Mr. Allport, 
 either to upset the alliance altogether, or to secure a revision of it in 
 favour of more liberal treatment of the central route, and looking about 
 for a lever which he might use for this purpose, he found what he wanted 
 in a conference which was held towards the close of 1861 between the 
 managers of the principal companies, with the view of agreeing upon a 
 scale of excursion fares to be charged for the special traffic in connection 
 with the International Exhibition to be held in London in 1862. With 
 the experience of the 1851 Exhibition traffic still fresh in their memories, 
 the representatives of the railway interest were naturally anxious to 
 avoid the recurrence of "ruinous competition"; but just as in 1851 
 the measures proposed to this end were objected to by the Great 
 Northern on the ground that they were prejudicial to its larger 
 interests, so now, in 1862, the Midland manager took a precisely 
 similar stand. He declared that he would make no agreement to 
 charge equal fares for the Exhibition traffic until a more adequate 
 share of the traffic between England and Scotland was assured to his 
 Company. 
 
 Had the decision rested with the Great Northern alone, this claim 
 of the Midland would probably have been fairly met — at any rate, 
 Mr. Denison told a Parliamentary Committee in 1863 that he was 
 quite prepared to revise the English and Scotch Alliance in order 
 to do more justice to the central route; but of course the Great 
 Northern was one only of nearly a dozen companies interested. 
 Moreover, the company most opposed to revision was the North 
 
 1S62 
 
 THE SPECIAL EXHIBITION TRAFFIC 
 
 193 
 
 Eastern, which had a good deal to lose if the Midland's Scotch 
 traffic definitely left its old route, via Normanton and York, in 
 order to go by the new route via Skipton, Ingleton, and Carlisle; 
 and with the North Eastern and the North British the Great 
 Northern had, in i860, succeeded in making arrangements for the 
 formation of an " East Coast joint stock," />., carriages belonging 
 jointly to the three companies to run daily between King's Cross and 
 Edinburgh— a partnership too valuable to be imperilled by a difference 
 of policy with regard to the rival interest of the Midland. Against 
 the central route, too, both the Great Northern and North Eastern had 
 a special bond of opposition in the fact that its further development 
 would be a temptation to the North British to become less zealous for 
 the East Coast partnership in the interest of its new Hne to Carlisle. 
 The result was that the Midland's claim to a revision of the English 
 and Scotch Alliance was refused, and in retaliation the Midland com- 
 menced a competition in fares for the Exhibition traffic, which, though 
 not so severe as that of 185 1 and 1856, brought the return fare from 
 Yorkshire to London down to 155. first class, and 85. second; moreover, 
 it had an element of real warfare which the earlier battles had lacked, 
 inasmuch as both Midland and Great Northern trains ran into, and out 
 of, the same terminus — King's Cross. 
 
 As to the working of the Exhibition trains en route, this in 1862 
 was greatly facilitated by the electric telegraph (which the reader 
 may remember had not yet been installed on the Great Northern in 
 1 851). For this was not only very useful for keeping the officials 
 all over the line well informed as to what " specials " were running, 
 but by its aid some progress had been made, as we have already seen, 
 in working traffic upon the " block system," i.e., in keeping an interval 
 of space as well as an interval of time between following trains. Only in 
 the case of the four longer tunnels, it is true, was this new system as 
 yet worked "absolutely"; on the lines generally a cross between 
 working by time-interval and working by space- interval had been 
 evolved which, according to a high authority, was " probably properly 
 understood only by the Great Northern managers themselves.* Never- 
 theless there can be no doubt that the danger of one train catching up 
 and running into another had been greatly minimized and the risks 
 of running a heavy special excursion traffic considerably diminished 
 since 185 1. Still the responsibility resting personally upon the 
 managers and men was much heavier than in our era of almost 
 perfected safety appliances, and it is not at all surprising that under 
 
 Mr. Preece, the eminent electrician, vide a paper he read before the Institution 
 of Civil Engineers in i86j. 
 
19+ HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 the strain Mr. Seymour Clarke's health temporarily broke down. When 
 all was safely over, the directors expressed their relief and thankfulness 
 by voting a sum of ;;^4ooo to be distributed in bonuses amongst the 
 working staff in consideration of the fact that " 280,943 additional 
 passengers had been conveyed with safety and regularity." 
 
 Meanwhile the Midland had been pushing on with the construction 
 of its separate coal depot adjoining King's Cross — the nucleus of the 
 St. Pancras of the future, — and by the summer of 1862 the work was 
 so far advanced that the Great Northern managers, being badly in 
 want of more siding room for the Exhibition trains, thought there was 
 no injustice in giving the Midland notice that by 30 June, 1862, it 
 must give up the accommodation for coal traffic in the Great Northern's 
 own premises which it had enjoyed since 1858. Unfortunately, however, 
 the Midland was not able to make it convenient to quit so hurriedly ; 
 and thereupon the Great Northern officials, in their anxiety to clear the 
 sidings, took certain summary action which by the aggrieved Midlanders 
 was described as an " eviction in the night." Added to the ill feeling 
 which the competition for the Exhibition traffic had aroused, this proved 
 " the last straw " in breaking down the patience of the Midland with 
 the equivocal position it occupied in London. Already the project had 
 been set on foot by some independent promoters for making a new 
 line from London to join the Midland at Hitchin ; now, under the 
 leadership of Mr. Allport, the Midland decided to take up this scheme 
 — to promote, in short, an extension to the Metropolis. 
 
 Prior to taking this decision finally, however, the Midland directors 
 applied to the Great Northern for running powers between Hitchin 
 and King's Cross in perpetuity, the existing powers being terminable 
 on either side at seven years' notice. But this the Great Northern 
 directors could not see their way to grant. As Mr. Denison put the 
 matter to his shareholders, "giving a right in perpetuity would 
 practically be giving a share in the freehold; you could not eject 
 them afterwards." So instead of it the Great Northern offered to give 
 more permanent running powers, and to undertake to double their 
 line between Hitchin and London (for which, they pointed out, they 
 already had the land), provided that the guarantee of traffic on the 
 part of the Midland was raised from ;£"2o,ooo to ^60,000 a year. 
 In the enlightened belief, however, that even four lines between 
 Hitchin and London would not for long prove sufficient for the traffic 
 of the two companies, Mr. Allport and his directors refused to be 
 turned from their original purpose, and in October, 1862, they decided 
 definitely to promote an Extension to London Bill in the next session 
 of Parliament. The proposed line was to start from a junction with 
 
 i-i. 
 
 1862 MIDLAND EXTENSION TO LONDON PROPOSED 195 
 
 their Leicester and Hitchin line at Bedford, and to run through Luton 
 St. Albans, and Mill Hill (all places which the Great Northern was 
 already tapping by branches) to a London terminus at St. Pancras, 
 a terminus the nucleus of which, as we have said, they already 
 possessed in their newly-opened coal depot at Agar Town. 
 
 It was avowedly the coal traffic from the Derbyshire field to which 
 the Midland authorities looked chiefly to make this extension to 
 Ix)ndon profitable— a hope in which they were encouraged, not only 
 by the rate at which that traffic had increased in recent years, but 
 by the fact that, with a view specially to the London market, a great 
 many new pits were being opened in the district. These same facts 
 however, had not escaped the attention of the Great Northern directors! 
 On the contrary, when considered in connection with the Sheffield's 
 acquirement of the South Yorkshire Railway, they had convinced the 
 Board at King s Cross that their Company must obtain a footing in 
 the Midland Counties coalfield. Accordingly in the summer of 186 1 
 —immediately after the Sheffield purchase of the South Yorkshire— 
 they had obtained permanent possession of the Nottingham and 
 Grantham line at a guarantee to its shareholders of a £4 2s 6d. 
 dividend (with the right to purchase the whole property on the 
 repayment of the capital at par value) ; and now, in this autumn of 
 1862, they followed up this step, and met the new aggression of the 
 Midland, by depositing a Bill to extend the Grantham and Nottingham 
 line from Colwick up the valley of the Erewash into the very heart 
 of the Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire coal district, side by side 
 with the existing line of the Midland. 
 
 This new " Codnor Park line »— as it was called after the place in the 
 Erewash Valley at which it proposed to terminate - was not necessary 
 however, for the making of physical connection between the Great 
 Northern system and the coalfield. There was a through route already 
 Via a junction at Nottingham between the Nottingham and Grantham 
 and Midland lines, and over this Derbyshire coal had passed on to the 
 Great Northern ever since it had first made connection with the 
 Grantham and Nottingham in 1852. This, however, was "local" 
 coal chiefly; anything like a proper traffic through to London vm 
 Grantham could not be developed because the Midland Company 
 had persistently refused to make through rates. From Clay Cross-- 
 Ihe centre of the Derbyshire field-to Nottingham Junction thev 
 exacted the high toll of 2.. 2^. per ton, and this had proved fatal-1 
 as they meant it should-to competition with their own routes to 
 London v/d Hitchin and Rugby. 
 
 In going to Parliament, therefore, for a line of their own, the Great 
 
 h 
 
 ill 
 
196 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 Northern directors had in view, not so much actually making such 
 a line as forcing the Midland by the threat of one to give through 
 rates. Accordingly, when the Midland authorities showed a disposition 
 to accede to this without forcing a contest in Parliament, they on their 
 part were quite ready to withdraw their Bill. But, while recognizing 
 that the recognition of the Great Northern as a carrier to London 
 from the Derbyshire coalfield was now inevitable, Mr. Allport and his 
 directors were not inclined to concede this without obtaining some 
 quid pro quo. The Midland itself had a grievance in the matter of 
 through rates. This was that, to protect its South Yorkshire coal 
 traffic, the Great Northern, when giving the running powers in 1858, 
 had stipulated for a minimum toll of \s. ^d. per ton for its thirty-two 
 miles of line between Hitchin and London, which compelled the 
 Midland still to send the bulk of its coal traffic via Rugby. Accord- 
 ingly they on their part insisted that any agreement which gave the 
 Great Northern free access to Derbyshire for coal traffic must give the 
 Midland also free access (without any minimum toll) to its new St. 
 Pancras depot. 
 
 They insisted further that it must provide for stability of rates 
 to competitive points, and — most important of all — must provide 
 that *' the rates from the Yorkshire, Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, and 
 Leicestershire collieries, carried by either or both companies to Ix)ndon " 
 should " be equitably adjusted to each other," so that '* as far as possible 
 the through charge from the various collieries " should " be made fair 
 one with the other." Accordingly these principles were embodied in a 
 " Coal Traffic Agreement," which the reader will do well to bear care- 
 fully in mind, for it will become of great importance at a later stage in 
 this history, and this Mr. Allport and Mr. Walter Leith (the latter acting 
 as deputy for Mr. Seymour Clarke) signed on behalf of their respective 
 companies on 23 January, 1863. In accordance with this agreement 
 the Great Northern withdrew its Codnor Park Bill. 
 
 But its Extension to London Bill the Midland on its part could 
 not be persuaded to withdraw, nor could the Great Northern 
 directors see their way clear to allow it to pass unopposed, so a 
 Parliamentary contest could not be avoided. In this the Great 
 Northern expected to have the powerful support of the London and 
 North Western Company, but at the eleventh hour Euston Square 
 withdrew its opposition to the Bill, and Mr. Denison and Mr. Walter 
 Leith had to appear alone as railway witnesses against it. But with 
 a strong case for public interest at its back and an exceptionally 
 powerful array of counsel to the fore, the Midland Bill would probably 
 have borne down the strongest opposition. As it was, it passed 
 
 1863 
 
 THE THIRD TRUNK LINE AUTHORISED 
 
 197 
 
 \ 
 
 through Committee stage with comparative ease. The " London and 
 York*' Bill to make a second trunk line to the North had been, the 
 reader remembers, seventy days before a Commons Committee, and 
 then the decision had not been conclusive. This Midland Bill, to 
 complete a third trunk line, was disposed of by a similar tribunal 
 within ten days. On the basis of the tolls paid to it by the Midland 
 in 1862, the Great Northern had to expect a loss of ;^9o,ooo a year 
 when the new. line was made, and all the consolation Mr. Denison and 
 his colleagues had was that under the agreement of 1858 the Midland 
 had had to give seven years' notice, until the expiration of which, in 
 February, 1870, it must pay its minimum traffic guarantee of ^20,000 
 a year. 
 
 \\n{ 
 
1 862 
 
 THE WEST RIDING AND GRIMSBY LINE 
 
 199 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 THE GREAT EASTERN ATTACK AND OTHER MATTERS -1863- 1865. 
 
 WE have already noted the anomalous nature of the position 
 which for a number of years after its opening to London the 
 Great Northern Railway occupied in the West Riding of Yorkshire. 
 To provide a direct route between the West Riding and London was, 
 as we have more than once seen, one of the main objects for which the 
 Company was promoted, and since the completion of its towns line in 
 1852— nay, even for two years before this, when its main route north- 
 wards had been via Boston and Lincoln— it had given by far the best 
 service between London and two of the most important West Riding 
 towns, Leeds and Wakefield ; yet for access to these towns it had been 
 at first entirely dependent upon running powers over Lancashire and 
 Yorkshire and Midland rails. In 1854, as already noted, these running 
 powers had been extended into Bradford and Halifax by the opening 
 of the main line of the Leeds, Bradford, and Halifax Junction Company, 
 and in 1857 they had been still further extended by the opening of the 
 Wakefield, Leeds, and Bradford— afterwards called for greater clearness 
 the West Yorkshire— Company's line, providing a direct route between 
 Wakefield and Leeds, on to which the Great Northern through traffic 
 was at once diverted from its original route to l^eds vid Methley. In 
 1859, moreover, a Great Northern through service between London 
 and Huddersfield had been commenced under joint arrangements with 
 the Manchester, Sheffield, and Lincolnshire Company, the route being 
 vi& Retford and Penistone, whence to Huddersfield the Sheffield Com- 
 pany had running powers over a line belonging to the Lancashire and 
 Yorkshire ; and in Parliament that same year full facilities by this route 
 had been secured to the allied companies by the insertion of " through 
 booking and forwarding clauses " in the Lancashire and Yorkshire and 
 East Lancashire Amalgamation Act. Thus, to all the more important 
 towns of West Yorkshire the Great Northern had, by the end of the 
 fifties, obtained an access which from London was more direct than 
 that of other companies, and in all these towns it had provided itself 
 
 19$ 
 
 with station accommodation — separate for goods and joint for passen- 
 gers. Yet in every case between these station holdings and its own rails 
 the lines of two or more " foreign " companies intervened. 
 
 This was a state of things which could no more be completely 
 satisfactory to the Great Northern than as we have just seen a similar 
 position of dependence with regard to access to London was satisfactory 
 to the Midland. Accordingly, efforts to improve their footing in the 
 West Riding had already been made by the King's Cross Board. Thus, 
 in i860 they had revived the project for a direct line from Doncaster to 
 Wakefield which, it will be remembered, had formed part of the original 
 "London and York" undertaking; but this had been strenuously opposed 
 by the I^ancashire and Yorkshire Company on the ground that it was 
 a breach of the agreement under which access to the West Riding over 
 its lines had been secured to the Great Northern, and after a severe 
 contest the Bill had been thrown out, though by a bare majority only 
 of the House of Commons Committee. In the following session of 
 1 86 1 it had been revived again with the warm support of important 
 West Riding commercial bodies, but again on the opposition of the 
 Lancashire and Yorkshire it had been rejected. Yet, strange to say, in 
 the next year, 1862, powers for practically the same lines were obtained 
 with the addition only of a fork to join the South Yorkshire system at 
 Stainforth. 
 
 The reason why Parliament had thus authorized in 1862 a line which 
 it had refused to authorize, not only in the two preceding years, but on 
 two other previous occasions, must be sought in the different circum- 
 stances under which the last Bill for the purpose was promoted. In 
 the first place, the applicants this time were not the Great Northern, but 
 independent promoters, nor could these be accused of being Great 
 Northern "jackals," as had been the case once before in 1857, when 
 the line had been promoted by a separate company ; on the contrary, 
 they were actually opposed in Parliament by the Great Northern because 
 they sought compulsory running powers over the West Yorkshire and 
 Leeds, Bradford, and Halifax lines. Secondly — and more important 
 still — they promoted the line, not as before under the title of the 
 Doncaster and Wakefield, but under a brand new one, "The West 
 Riding and Grimsby " ; and the object they put in the forefront was, 
 not to provide a new route for the Great Northern's West Riding traffic, 
 but, in conjunction with the South Yorkshire system and certain new 
 lines which, as already noted, the South Yorkshire and Sheffield com- 
 panies were promoting jointly through North Lincolnshire to provide a 
 new direct route whereby the manufactures of the West Riding could 
 reach the sea. Thus it came about that this West Riding and Grimsby 
 
,Jj 
 
 '<1 
 
 f 
 
 
 I 
 
 200 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 Company obtained powers in 1862 to make the direct line which the 
 Great Northern had so long wanted between Doncaster and Wakefield. 
 
 Turning now from Yorkshire to Lancashire we find that by means 
 of its alliance with the Manchester, Sheffield, and Lincolnshire Com- 
 pany, the Great Northern had, by the date we have now reached, 
 obtained a footing not only in Manchester, but also in Liverpool. 
 Free access for their traffic to Liverpool, indeed, had been a concession 
 on the part of Euston Square upon which the allied companies had 
 insisted as one of the conditions upon which the Lancashire rate-war 
 of 1857-8 should be permanently concluded, and it had eventually 
 been made one of the principal bases of the "Triple Alliance" that 
 by buying up the undertaking of the St. Helens Company and making 
 a new line from its terminus at Garston to Liverpool, the London 
 and North Western should provide a second route between Manchester 
 and Liverpool— in addition to George Stephenson's original line- 
 principally to accommodate the Sheffield and Great Northern traffic. 
 Owing to the rejection by Parliament of the Triple Alliance Bill, 
 however, this arrangement had been interfered with; and then, after 
 the failure of the proposals for the absorption of the Sheffield system 
 by the two larger companies, Mr. Watkin had persuaded the Great 
 Northern to join with his company in making the line from Garston to 
 Liverpool jointly, and at the same time to seek running powers 
 between Garston and Manchester. A Bill for this purpose accordingly 
 had been obtained in the session of 1861. 
 
 But this was not all. In this same session of 186 1 Bills had been 
 promoted by local parties for lines from Stockport to Timperley and 
 from Northwich to Helsby— the latter under the title of the West 
 Cheshire Railway; and as these lines, together with others under 
 construction, promised to provide a direct route from the Manchester, 
 Sheffield, and Lincolnshire system not only to Liverpool (without going 
 through Manchester), but also to the important salt district of Cheshire 
 and to the port of Birkenhead, both the Sheffield and the Great 
 Northern companies had at the instigation of Mr. Watkin subscribed 
 to this capitals, the Great Northern's share being ^50,000 to the 
 Stockport and Timperley, and ^£"65,000 to the West Cheshire. In the 
 following session of 1862, moreover, a further subscription of;£8ooo 
 to the West Cheshire was authorized; and now, in 1863, seeing 
 that for lack of funds the construction of the new through route to 
 Liverpool and Cheshire still lagged, the allied companies obtained 
 power to subscribe a further ^^220,000 each to be divided between 
 the Stockport and Woodley, the Stockport and Timperley, the Cheshire 
 Midland, and the West Cheshire. Thus, by degrees and under 
 
 I 
 
 f 
 
 1859 "GREAT NORTHERN, HOLBORN, AND CITY" 201 
 
 pressure from their Lancashire allies, the Great Northern directors 
 were sliding into an expenditure on lines altogether remote from their 
 own system, and for purposes which had not for one moment been 
 contemplated at the time of the original promotion of the Company. 
 
 This was the more curious and difficult to justify, inasmuch as 
 at the base of their own system — in London itself — they had shown 
 a quite contrary disposition with regard to subsidizing new under- 
 takings. Thus, they had been pressed most strongly to subscribe to the 
 Metropolitan Railway Company when this had been incorporated 
 in 1854 to take over the powers given in 1853 to the North Metro- 
 politan Company and to extend its Paddington to King's Cross line 
 into the City; but Mr. Denison had said that, though he sincerely 
 wished the "underground" line to be made, he could not make up 
 his mind that it would be wise for the Great Northern to risk money 
 in it. The result had been that, though the Great Northern had taken 
 powers to subscribe ;£■! 75,000, the money had never actually been 
 found, and the Metropolitan had almost collapsed for lack of support. 
 Meanwhile, in 1859, another scheme, called the "Great Northern, 
 Holborn, and City," had been set on foot, and this again the King's 
 Cross Board had refused to support, though their own solicitors, 
 Messrs. Johnson, Farquhar, and Leech, had been amongst its principal 
 promoters. 
 
 In the light of after events there can be little doubt that the Great 
 Northern would have benefited greatly, in the long run, if not im- 
 mediately, by having an extension of its own into the City of London. 
 Nevertheless, there were good reasons why the directors allowed this 
 Holborn scheme to drop. In the first place, they had already, after 
 some trouble, established their right to have their traffic forwarded 
 between King's Cross and the City over the North London line, had 
 set up a City goods depot at Royal Mint Street, approachable by this 
 North London route via Bow, and had just obtained powers (in 1859) 
 to make a new junction with the North London at Maiden Lane to 
 supersede the one originally constructed there, which was on a very 
 bad gradient* In the second place, the Metropolitan Railway was 
 to be made, notwithstanding their refusal to subscribe, and their 
 Company was to have running powers over it from King's Cross 
 to Farringdon Street. In the third place, it seemed very doubtful 
 whether, having already authorized the Metropolitan, Parliament would 
 subsequently authorize a Great Northern extension. Under these 
 
 * Nevertheless, it had been used on occasion for through traffic, the Queen 
 having travelled that way more than once between Windsor and the Great Northern 
 system. 
 
 I 
 
 il 
 
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lot HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 h 
 
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 r- 
 
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 circumstances the refusal of the Great Northern Board to commit itself 
 to support the "Great Northern, Holborn, and City Bill" seems 
 to have been very reasonable. 
 
 The result was that the Metropolitan Company was left in the 
 posesssion of the field, and, having obtained the right man for engineer 
 in Mr. John Fowler, it pressed on at last with the construction of its 
 line. But the bursting of the Fleet Ditch and other difficulties had still 
 had to be surmounted, and so it was not until January, 1863, that the 
 first section from Paddington vm King's Cross to Farringdon Street 
 was ready for opening. Nor was it until August of the year that the 
 Great Northern trains came first upon the line. 
 
 The occasion for their first coming was rather dramatic. The 
 Metropolitan was laid originally as a " mixed gauge " line— />. its rails 
 were laid on both broad and narrow gauge— and it was worked at the 
 outset by the Great Western Company. Towards the close of July, 
 1863, however, a dispute between the Great Western and Metropolitan 
 Boards culminated in a summary notice from the former to the latter 
 that after 9 August, 1863, they should withdraw their rolling stock. 
 Thus Mr. (afterwards Sir Myles) Fenton, the manager of the Metro- 
 politan, found himself in the position of having to find within ten days 
 sufficient engines and carriages to work at least a quarter- of-an-hour 
 service over his line. In this emergency he threw himself upon the 
 generosity of the Great Northern and London and North Western, and 
 from both these companies he obtained the loan of carriages; but 
 engmes were not so easy to find, seeing that under the Metropolitan 
 Company's Acts those emitting steam and smoke in the ordinary way 
 could not be used. Fortunately, however, Mr. Sturrock had already 
 prepared at the shops at Doncaster a few smoke-condensing engines for 
 the Great Northern's own " underground " traffic— the commencement 
 of which had been arranged for i September, 1863— and some others 
 he now adapted within the time available by fitting them with a pipe and 
 flexible tube leading from the exhaust pipe of the engine to the tender. 
 
 When the rolling stock was thus provided, however, a new difficulty 
 presented itself. This was that the "middle rail" for narrow-gauge 
 working was found to be defective. Consequently the first few days of 
 the new arrangements were a time of great anxiety to all concerned. 
 However, all difficulties were successfully surmounted, and on 
 I October, 1863, the Great Northern's "suburban and city" service 
 was commenced. The passengers by the first through train to 
 Farringdon Street are said to have expressed their delight by swooping 
 down in force upon a refreshment buffet, newly opened at the station, 
 and consuming all it contained. 
 
 1861-2 BEGINNINGS OF THE SUBURBAN TRAFFIC 203 
 
 Being still confined to a few stations on the main line, the suburban 
 traffic was as yet quite a small affair. The through connection with 
 the City, however, was expected at once to increase it; moreover, in the 
 session of 1862 an Act had been obtained by an independent company 
 for branches to Highgate, Finchley, and Edgware, primarily for suburban 
 residential traffic. Near the crossing over the Seven Sisters Road, at 
 which point the new branch was to leave the main line, a couple of 
 
 GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY. 
 
 On and after the 1st July, 
 
 A NEW STATION 
 
 WILL BB 
 
 OPENED 
 
 AT 
 
 SEVEN SISTERS' ROAD, 
 
 HOLLOWAY, 
 
 At which Passenger Trains will call as under : 
 
 DOWN. 
 
 WEEK DAYS. 
 
 teturday 
 only 
 ■ r- , -. , ■**'■" w*™- »«»» »tter after •ri«r alter after 
 
 Kine'«CroBg...dep. 6 30. 9^5. 11.20, 3.0, 5.10. 6 5, 7.0. 9.20 
 
 SUNDAYS. 
 
 UP. 
 
 Seven Sisters' Road ■.dcp.8'20. 9.18. 1T25, ^20, 5*50, 7JI5. 841 
 
 morn morn after afte» 
 
 7.30, 90, 5.20, 6 
 
 •«f» after tfter. 
 
 9.35. SJ2S, 8.55 
 
 Fares between King's Cross and Seven Sisters' Road Stations 
 SINGLE. RETURN 
 
 IjCUu. 2ndCl«. 3"1CU«L IrtCU.. 2;dC1.H. 
 
 7d. 4d. 2|d. lOd. 6d. 
 
 i« a«. ...iTTo £3To £.,*T6 £^7 e in. i^Te £.*T?6 x's'Te x'e n 6 i';"^ 
 
 SEASON TICKETS. 
 
 £3 16 £4 7 e £4 H Xo 7 6 £6 
 »ndClw... 1116 20 6 2 89 a 16 3 3 3 3 90 3 14 3 8 18 9 ~4 4 6 '4 10 
 
 Wo Goods or Coal basineu will be conducted at Seven Sieten' SUtion. 
 
 By order. SEYMOUR CLARKE, 
 
 London, King*! Crew Sutioo. 28tb Jun^ 1861. General Mananr 
 
 WMKlM u« Sw^ rrlaan, Cwrmm- 1 
 
 WaU. 
 
 wooden platforms, hardly deserving the name of a station, had been 
 opened from i July, 1861, for the accommodation of the few residents 
 in that rural neighbourhood. This was the very humble beginning of 
 the important station now known as Finsbury Park. 
 
 The new junction with the North London at Maiden Lane, which 
 was opened in 1862, proved at once very useful not only for traffic to 
 and from the Royal Mint Street Depot, but also for traffic with the 
 London Docks; but the Company had not had to wait for this before 
 
 . ; ! 
 
f 
 
 ' \ 
 
 1 
 
 204 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 commencing a through London dock traffic. Since March, 1858, it 
 had enjoyed a very serviceable through route to the docks by way of 
 the Wehvyn and Hertford Railway. As early as 1853 an independent 
 company had been formed to construct this line, seven miles in length, 
 with the object principally of connecting the Great Northern and 
 Eastern Counties systems at their southern ends ; and, in accordance 
 with this object, arrangements had been made under which the line, 
 when opened, had been worked over by both those companies. At the 
 same time a system of " through booking " to and from Great Northern 
 stations and Victoria Docks, Blackwall, and other Eastern Counties 
 stations near London had been brought into force. These arrangements 
 had lasted until i860, when an extension of the Hertford and Welwyn 
 line on the western side of the Great Northern to Luton and Dunstable 
 had been completed, giving the centre of the straw plait industry 
 its first railway communication. Thereupon the Great Northern 
 directors had entered into negotiations with the small Company — 
 now called the Hertford, Luton, and Dunstable — which had ended 
 in its being permanently absorbed into the Great Northern in 1861 
 at a guaranteed dividend. 
 
 Though continuing the through bookings to and from the London 
 Docks, the Eastern Counties directors showed a disposition to regard 
 the presence of the Great Northern with its own line at Hertford 
 as a breach of the territorial division of 1852 ; nor was this the only 
 act of the sort of which they found cause to complain about this time. 
 For the session of 1862 the King's Cross Board joined in promoting a 
 Bill to enable their Company to acquire the undertaking of the " Norwich 
 and Spalding Company," the part of whose line already opened, from 
 Spalding to Holbeach, the Great Northern was already working, and as 
 the whole undertaking, despite its title, extended as far as Sutton Bridge 
 only, they at the same time entered into negotiations with another 
 small company which had just obtained powers to continue the through 
 route to Norwich from Sutton as far as Lynn. Under these circum- 
 stances it is not surprising that the Eastern Counties directors took 
 alarm. It looked as if the Great Northern, not content with having 
 thrust the Eastern Counties aside from sharing in all the best of the 
 " through " traffic, was now going to make its own route from the North 
 to Norwich, and thus divert from the established route vid Peterborough 
 some more of such scanty long-distance traffic which the Eastern 
 Counties Company still possessed. As matters turned out, however, 
 the alarm proved groundless. The Great Northern and Norwich 
 and Spalding Amalgamation Bill was withdrawn before reaching 
 Parliament, the latter Company preferring to await the completion 
 
 1862 
 
 THE GREAT EASTERN COMPANY 
 
 205 
 
 
 j 
 
 of a line which another small company had just projected from 
 Spalding to Bourn in the hope that together with the Bourn and 
 Essendine and Essendine and Stamford Railways they might in time 
 make up a trunk route between the Midlands and the east coast.* 
 
 Nevertheless, the peace which, since the territorial division of 
 1852, had reigned between the Great Northern and Eastern Counties 
 companies, was not destined to last much longer. Under the treaty 
 of 1852, as the reader may remember, the country east of the Great 
 Northern main line, between the Wash and the Thames, had been 
 given over, so far as London traffic was concerned, to the Eastern 
 Counties Company for a term of fourteen years — the Hitchin and 
 Shepreth line having been physically transferred under the arrange- 
 ment, — and at the same time it had been arranged that the latter 
 should receive a bonus of 20 per cent, on all through traffic to the 
 north which it handed over to the Great Northern at Peterborough. 
 As to through traffic from the north, however, there had been no 
 arrangement, and thus the Eastern Counties Company had not been 
 able to obtain any adequate share in the traffic to London from the 
 coalfields and manufacturing districts of Yorkshire. From Derbyshire, 
 by way of the Midland's Syston and Peterborough line, it was able to 
 obtain some coal, not only for its country stations but for a 
 Metropolitan depot which it had opened at Whitechapel; but the 
 route over the " sigmoid flexure " (as Charles Austin had once called 
 the Syston and Peterborough line), and thence from Peterborough via 
 March and Ely, was very circuitous, and the traffic consequently was 
 not very profitable. 
 
 This state of things nothing but sheer weakness had compelled the 
 Eastern Counties Company to put up with so long, and so matters had 
 assumed a different aspect when, in 1862, the amalgamation which 
 produced the Great Eastern Railway had at last been successfully 
 carried through. Prior to this the Board at Shoreditch had been 
 obliged to devote what little spare strength it had to keeping peace 
 between the numerous small companies which occupied the northern 
 parts of its district. Now their combined energies could be directed 
 to a revival of the policy of King Hudson and his predecessors — 
 the policy of converting the line from Shoreditch to Cambridge into 
 a through route between London and the north. 
 
 Indeed, if the Great Eastern was to be made to pay, this policy was 
 
 * Meantime the Norwich and Spalding (which from i July, 1862, was opened 
 throughout to Sutton Bridge), the Bourn and Essendine (opened June, i860), and the 
 Stamford and Essendine (opened October, 1856) were all worked by the Great 
 Northern as branches. 
 
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 \: 
 
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 V 
 
I 
 
 /I 
 
 206 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 practically the only one available. In the existing state of things, as Mr. 
 Hope Scott put the matter to a Parliamentary Committee, the Company 
 was " in the painful position of having a great deal of railway which had 
 cost a great sum of money, but very little traffic." True, it had now 
 had the monopoly of a large district ; but, as Mr. George Parker Bidder 
 — the man who had done more than any other to bring about the Great 
 Eastern amalgamation— said on the same occasion, "land has its limits 
 of production. It can only grow a certain quantity of wheat and grain, 
 and feed a certain quantity of cattle. We are therefore driven to go 
 out of our district for traffic." "What you want," retorted Mr. Hope 
 Scott, " is to take some of the fat off the Great Northern dividend and 
 apply it in the form of lard to your more meagre system. You have 
 gone to the sea for fish, you have gone to Holland for Dutchmen" 
 —this was in allusion to the steamboat service which the Great 
 Eastern had just started from Harwich— "and now you want to 
 invade the Great Northern district for coals." 
 
 It was, indeed, a coal traffic from the Yorkshire field after which 
 the newly-formed Great Eastern Company specially hankered ; for, as 
 things were, a few thousand tons only was all of South Yorkshire 
 coal which found its way to the Whitechapel depot. For this, of 
 course, the reasons were obvious : first, that the best route available 
 —via Peterborough -was circuitous; and, second, that it did not suit 
 the Great Northern directors to make favourable through rates by this 
 route, inasmuch as traffic over it would in all likelihood be diverted 
 from their own route to King's Cross. Accordingly, to improve their 
 position effectually, the Great Eastern had to do two things— first, to 
 shorten their route, and, second, to obtain a power to fix through 
 rates ; and with this view its directors promoted a Bill in the session 
 of 1863 for a new line from March to Spalding, whence to Doncaster 
 they had asked for running powers over the Great Northern's loop and 
 main lines. In opposition to this the Great Northern directors them- 
 selves promoted a line from Spalding to March, and over this they 
 offered to the Great Eastern, not running powers, but full facilities for 
 exchange of traffic at March. 
 
 Between these two conflicting proposals it was found impossible to 
 effect a peaceful compromise. Accordingly, a Parliamentary contest 
 resulted. In the Commons the Great Northern secured a complete 
 victory, their Bill being passed and that of the Great Eastern thrown 
 out ; but in the Lords the Great Eastern secured running powers over 
 the new line to Spalding. By another Act the Great Northern obtained 
 power to flatten the gradients of its loop line between Spalding and 
 Gainsborough ; but the attempt which it revived again this session to 
 
 I*! 
 
 1863-4 
 
 THE BUSY "B'S" 
 
 207 
 
 get powers to make the loop really what its name implied, by extending 
 it to a second junction with the main line near Doncaster (and so 
 superseding the circuitous run over the Manchester, Sheffield, and 
 Lincolnshire line to Retford), proved fruitless. The district south-east 
 of Doncaster is a great hunting country, and again, as in 1848 (if the 
 reader has not forgotten the rejection of the same line then), " horse- 
 flesh proved stronger than iron." 
 
 However, in view of the designs of the Great Eastern Company, 
 the Great Northern directors realized that they must make new 
 exertions if they were to retain their hold upon the South Yorkshire 
 coal traffic and upon Lincolnshire. So, for the session of 1864, they 
 deposited a Bill for the fifth time for the completion of the loop from 
 Gainsborough to Doncaster, while in a second Bill for the same session 
 they sought powers to make a new line, about eighteen miles in length, 
 from Honington to Lincoln, in order to shorten the distance between 
 London and Lincoln, by making a new route via Grantham. In 
 connection with this latter scheme, they proposed to absorb the 
 undertaking of the Boston, Sleaford, and Midland Counties Railway 
 Company— from Barkstone, near Grantham, through Honington and 
 Sleaford to Boston— the working of which they had already in hand.* 
 They further proposed to make a new line from Sleaford southwards to 
 Bourn, also about eighteen miles in length, and to absorb the under- 
 taking of the Bourn and Essendine Company, thus providing themselves 
 with a new loop line. By these measures they reckoned to block the 
 advance of hostile lines by the Great Eastern. 
 
 These precautions were the more necessary because the Great 
 Eastern was far from being satisfied with the running powers it had 
 obtained to Spalding (which, indeed, were of little use to it), and 
 so was coming to the session of 1864 with a really bold and 
 far-reaching plan of campaign. In this the prime mover was none 
 other than Mr. Robert Baxter, who had been called in by the Great 
 Eastern Board as their Parliamentary adviser, and he had brought to 
 the business not only ripe experience and an intimate knowledge of 
 railway promotion in the district, but a personal enthusiasm for the 
 principal object which the Great Eastern authorities had in view. As 
 we have already noted, what Mr. Bidder and his colleagues wanted 
 above all things was to develop a coal traffic from South Yorkshire to 
 their London terminus, and the reader does not need to be told that 
 there was no man who believed more strongly in the possibilities of 
 such a traffic than Mr. Baxter. It was he who had startled the railway 
 world by first proposing it in 1845 ; now he startled the railway world 
 ♦ Opened, Barkstone to Sleaford, June 1857 ; Sleaford to Boston, April 1859. 
 
 f 
 
 ■if' 
 
 . 1 
 
 I 
 
 'Ji 
 
 
2o8 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 again by declaring that, notwithstanding the large traffic which the 
 Great Northern was already doing from South Yorkshire, and notwith- 
 standing the certainty that with the completion of the Midland system 
 to London the competition of Derbyshire coal would become keener 
 even than it already was, there was room for the construction of a 
 new line, the primary object of which was to be the supply to the 
 Metropolis of South Yorkshire coal. 
 
 The idea of constructing a trunk line to London for coal traffic only 
 was not itself a novel one. No less an authority than " old George 
 Stephenson" is said to have favoured it in earlier days, and a line 
 of the sort from the Durham coalfield to the Metropolis had been 
 actually projected by a Mr. Thomas Wood of Durham. Later Mr. 
 (afterwards Sir John) Hawkshaw had taken up with the notion, and 
 now this eminent engineer was persuaded by Mr. Baxter to join with 
 Mr. John Fowler, who was just fresh from his triumph over the Fleet 
 Ditch and other " Metropolitan " obstacles, in laying out a " coal line " 
 to run from South Yorkshire to the Great Eastern system. It was 
 christened the " Great Eastern Northern Junction Railway," promoted 
 by a new company, half the capital of which was guaranteed by the 
 Great Eastern and half by the " General Credit and Finance Associa- 
 tion," and supported in Parliament, not only by the Great Eastern, but 
 by the West Riding and Grimsby and South Yorkshire companies. 
 
 The Hne which Messrs. Fowler and Hawkshaw produced was 
 planned to run from Long Stanton, a place on the Great Eastern 
 system between Cambridge and St. Ives, via Peterborough, Bourn, 
 Sleaford, Lincoln, and Gainsborough, to a junction with the West 
 Riding and Grimsby Company's system at Askern, a distance of io8 
 miles ; in other words, it proposed to occupy the country between the 
 main and loop lines of the Great Northern, following much the same 
 course as Hudson's Cambridge and Lincoln line of 1845. But, though 
 it professed to serve the towns just named, it was laid out to pass, not 
 i/irough them as an ordinary line would have done, but oufsi^fi them, 
 making connection with them by branches. These made up its total 
 length of 134 miles in all. By thus avoiding town property it was 
 hoped to ensure cheapness in the cost of construction, despite the fact 
 that to ensure cheapness of working no gradient on it was to exceed 
 I in 400 ; that, in fact, the line was to be on a dead level throughout 
 
 its whole course. 
 
 It was upon this proposed levelness that the main argument for the 
 new line was based. On such a line, it was contended, the maximum 
 train-load of coal for one engine might be increased from 240 tons— 
 the then limit on the Great Northern— to 400 tons ; in short, the line 
 
 MAP OF RAILWAYS IN LINCOLNSHIRE, &c. 209 
 
 RErCRENCI 
 
 Great Northrm RaihmyfiknntLoof^LutmJ slumi tLu - 
 
 Great Eastern^ Ncrdum, Jtwciion Haudmgf.fuvpot^J. iSCf — — 
 
 (hoLOvncrsAucciMfiZoruLorvJLailwmy m UT^ - 
 
 XuilMiJJiManckefUr,Sheffie/dJcLuu»fnJurrXfy. t8^ 
 
 Cr^ot Sas/em^ NortJtem £xttnsw»' Xmilmny.p'fvpaaetl 1S)¥ „. _«. «. — •— «— 
 
 , 
 
2 Id HISTORY OF GREAT NOkTHEkN RAILWAY 
 
 V 
 
 
 was put forward as " incomparably the finest in the kingdom " for coal 
 traffic, and "equivalent to the invention of a new machine to do the 
 same work as the old at two-thirds of the cost." Moreover, the Great 
 Eastern authorities, under Mr. Baxter's advice, gave practical proof of 
 their belief in its possibilities by offering to carry long-distance coal 
 over it at the unprecedentedly low rate of Jd. a mile — "the fascinating 
 farthing," a facetious counsel called it — provided the coal was handed 
 to them in full train-loads. 
 
 These were the principal features of the "Great Eastern Northern 
 Junction Railway," as it was first prepared for presentation to 
 Parliament in 1864 by Messrs. Baxter, Bidder, and Bartholomew 
 (the reader remembers the latter as manager of the South Yorkshire 
 Railway in 1852); but when the counter-plans of the Great Northern 
 became known to them, the three "busy B's, bent on bettering 
 themselves," as the promoters were nicknamed, found it necessary 
 to alter their project a little. For, while for coal traffic the Great 
 Northern loop line, when its gradients were flattened, and it was 
 completed to Doncaster, promised to afford almost, if not quite, as 
 efficient a " machine " as their own, the Great Northern's other 
 proposed extensions offered what in its original form their " rude coal 
 line " had no pretensions to, namely, substantial improvements to the 
 general accommodation of the locality. Consequently, despite the 
 fact that as a main line their scheme was to give Lincoln, Peter- 
 borough, and the other towns the go-by, and to neglect small 
 consignments in search of full train-loads, Mr. Baxter and his associates 
 had to endeavour to prove that for general local requirements — for 
 Lincoln passengers, Haxey potatoes, and Ancaster stone, for example 
 — they could give as efficient a service as the Great Northern. 
 
 The result was that "the Busy B's" modified their plans. As 
 eventually presented to Parliament, their scheme was described not as 
 a coal line simply, but as a line " perfect in all respects, with a special 
 adaptation to the carrying of coal." " Mr. Fowler," said Mr. Hope 
 Scott, when on behalf of the Great Northern he came to criticise the 
 engineering evidence, "adopts the French specialite^ and just as a 
 French tailor would put up specialiie de pantalons, when he wanted you 
 to buy coats and waistcoats quite as much as nether garments, so Mr. 
 Fowler, laying out his line for the general merchant tailor business, 
 makes a specialiie of this particular adaptation." 
 
 The fight before the House of Commons Committee was the longest 
 since the historic fight over the "London and York." It lasted through 
 twenty-five sittings, and the chairman, Sir John Hamner, being in bad 
 health to start with, became so knocked up before the end that on some 
 
 1864 
 
 MR. DENISON'S FIGHTING DAYS DONE 
 
 211 
 
 days he had to be carried between the committee-room and his bed. For 
 the promoters and against the Great Northern Mr. Baxter worked as 
 hard and as zealously as nineteen years before he had worked for the 
 Great Northern and against a line almost identical with the one he 
 now championed. According to Mr. Hope Scott, who with Mr. E. B. 
 Denison conducted the opposition, "Mr. Baxter drew Mr. Burke's 
 brief; Mr. Baxter drew the greater part of Mr. Bidder's evidence, and 
 Mr. Baxter was called himself." The Committee had "Baxter a la 
 Burke, Baxter a la Bidder, and Baxter au tiaturel'' Nevertheless, 
 in spite of all this, and in spite of the weighty engineering evidence of 
 Messrs. Fowler, Hawkshaw, and Daniel Gooch, the Great Eastern 
 Northern Junction Bill was rejected, and every one of the Great 
 Northern proposals was authorized, except the Sleaford and Bourn 
 line, which, however, got through in the following session. 
 
 The " Busy B's," however, were not yet beaten, and in the House of 
 Lords they renewed the contest with a view to securing running powers 
 for the Great Eastern. All they obtained, however, was "facility 
 clauses " providing for the passage of Great Eastern traffic over the 
 Great Northern loop line at rates to be mutually agreed, with an appeal 
 in case of disagreement to an arbitrator— clauses which the Great 
 Northern had offered before the Parliamentary fight and the fairness of 
 which was now confirmed by both Houses. In this same session, 
 in view of the lapsing in 1866 of the agreement under which the 
 Great Eastern was working the Shepreth and Hitchin line, the Great 
 Northern renewed its application for admission to Cambridge ; and, by 
 threatening to make a line of its own into the town, obtained running 
 powers from Shepreth over the Great Eastern, the latter promising to 
 double its line between Shepreth and Shelford for the purpose. 
 
 In this great fight of 1864 the historian has missed — and the reader 
 too, perhaps — the inspiring presence and "swashing blows" of Mr. 
 Edmund Denison. The fact is that the old chairman's fighting days 
 were nearly over. At the age of 77 gout and other ailments could not 
 as in the old days be shaken off at the call to battle ; and not only was 
 Mr. Denison not in the committee-room, but he could not occupy his 
 place at either of the Great Northern half-yearly meetings in 1864. He 
 was a remarkably robust man, and he had ten more years yet to live ; 
 nevertheless, and in spite of the unanimous resolution of his colleagues 
 to the contrary, he resigned in December, 1864, not only the chairman- 
 ship but his seat on the Board, on the ground that he was no longer 
 strong enough to perform the duties adequately. He had been the 
 leader of the undertaking, as we know, almost from its first origination 
 twenty-one years before, and from 1847 he had been its titular as wel 
 

 212 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 as its real head. " From the beginning," said his successor, Colonel 
 Packe, who also had been associated with the Company since its 
 origin, "his whole mind has been devoted to one object, namely, to 
 bring the Company to perfection, and to work it for the benefit of the 
 shareholders." 
 
 In this, as the reader knows, he had encountered continuous and 
 extraordinary opposition, but in the end he had been singularly 
 successful. For the half-year to 31 December, 1864, the dividend 
 declared by the directors was at the rate of ;^'8 15^. on the original 
 stock, making the rate for the year ^7 2s. 6d. — the highest yet reached ; 
 while for the two preceding years it had been jQ6 10s, In short, 
 to quote again from Colonel Packe, there was "no other undertaking 
 so large and having overcome so many difficulties which was paying a 
 better dividend." Mr. Denison had " succeeded in getting and work- 
 ing one of the best railways of the country." He had shown himself 
 at times, perhaps, unduly combative, and in return he had been, as we 
 have seen, the recipient of a very large amount of public, and even 
 personal, abuse. But the feeling cherished with regard to him by the 
 vast majority of those with whom he came in contact cannot be better 
 demonstrated than by a quotation from a speech delivered at the time 
 of his retirement by Mr. Seneca Hughes — a Great Northern share- 
 holder who, like Mr. Denison, had been associated with the under- 
 taking from its beginning, and who at the time of the Redpath frauds, 
 as we have seen, and at many others had been a constant assailant 
 of the policy of the Board. "Mr. Denison," said Mr. Hughes, "was 
 an example of what a chairman ought to be at a public meeting. He 
 displayed remarkably good temper, though he had every opportunity 
 given him of displaying irascibility. Throughout he manifested so 
 good a disposition that I believe he won the hearts of all who attended 
 these meetings." He was succeeded on the Great Northern Board by 
 his son, Mr. Christopher Denison. 
 
 Before leaving behind the Parliamentary session of 1864, we must 
 note that in it had been settled the very vexed question of the destiny 
 of the South Yorkshire Railway. So long before as June, 1861 — 
 to refresh the reader's memory — the Manchester, Sheffield, and 
 Lincolnshire Company had formally agreed to lease this line ; but 
 in the spring of 1862 the negotiations for making the lease a joint one 
 with the Great Northern had been revived informally by the chairmen 
 of the two companies, Messrs. Denison and Chapman, and then, 
 for the second time, the Great Northern had come very near to getting 
 a control of the coalfield system. On the first occasion, in 1852, 
 it will be remembered, it had been Mr. Denison's " lukewarmness " 
 
 1864 DESTINIES OF FOUR YORKSHIRE RAILWAYS 213 
 
 chiefly which had broken off the matter, but in these second negotia- 
 tions the course of events had been the reverse of this. After 
 Mr. Denison had agreed with Mr. Chapman to take the half lease (on 
 the condition that the exorbitant terms extracted by Mr. Baxter from 
 Mr. Watkin should be reduced to a fixed 5 per cent, guarantee to the 
 South Yorkshire), a majority of the Great Northern Board had refused 
 to ratify the bargain. The result had been that in the session of 1863 
 the Sheffield Company had promoted a Bill to authorize it to take the 
 lease alone. 
 
 This Bill the Great Northern had opposed on the ground that 
 its access to the coalfield had not been properly secured under it, 
 and the fight before the House of Commons Committee had proved a 
 very fierce one. Nominally the victory had gone to the Great Northern, 
 for the Committee had reduced in its favour the tolls chargeable on coal 
 exchanged at Doncaster ; but really the triumph had proved an empty 
 one, for the Sheffield directors had declined to proceed with the Bill on 
 these terms. In the session of 1864, however, they had introduced 
 another, and before this had reached committee stage the parties, 
 wearied of conflict, had come to an agreement as to the tolls, which, 
 while it fell short of the Committee's decision in 1863, gave security 
 and some relief to the Great Northern traffic. On these terms 
 the Bill had been allowed to pass, and thus the Manchester, Sheffield, 
 and Lincolnshire Company had obtained possession of the South 
 Yorkshire Railway, albeit at a cost which was to prove very oppressive 
 to itself. To what extent Mr. Watkin (who had returned to the 
 Sheffield in 1863, and in January, 1864, had become its chairman) was 
 able to compensate the shareholders for the "commercial" badness of 
 the bargain by using it as a "political" weapon against the Great 
 Northern, we shall see as this history proceeds. 
 
 Meantime the destinies of three other small Yorkshire railways in 
 which the Great Northern was interested— the Leeds, Bradford, and 
 Halifax, the West Yorkshire, and the West Riding and Grimsby — 
 remained to be settled. The latter was not yet ready for traffic, but the 
 two former, as the reader knows, had now been worked over by the 
 Great Northern for a good number of years. They had been worked 
 over since their first opening also by the Lancashire and Yorkshire 
 Company, in whose direct route between Lancashire and the West 
 Riding, indeed, they formed links almost, if not quite, as important as 
 in the Great Northern's route between the West Riding and London. 
 It had therefore been for some time pretty obvious that either the 
 Great Northern or the Lancashire and Yorkshire, or the two companies 
 jointly, would sooner or later acquire full possession of the two small 
 
 \ 
 
 m 
 
 f 
 
2 14 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 systems ; but the fact that there were thus two would-be purchasers in 
 the field was making the sale of them a more complex and tedious 
 operation than it might otherwise have been. 
 
 The Leeds, Bradford, and Halifax Company (which in 1856-7 had 
 added to its original Leeds to Bowling line an extension through 
 Gildersome to join the West Yorkshire at Ardsley) was the first to 
 be brought to terms, it being arranged in 1863 that it should be leased 
 permanently by the Great Northern for the guarantee of 7 per cent, 
 dividend for every 5 per cent, the Great Northern earned. But when 
 sanction for this arrangement was sought from Parliament in the session 
 of 1864 the opposition of the Lancashire and Yorkshire brought about 
 its refusal. In the meantime, however, the Great Northern had come to 
 terms with the West Yorkshire Company also, having agreed to lease 
 its undertaking — a main line from Wakefield to Leeds, branches to 
 Batley and to Ossett, and a third share in a joint line to Methley — at 
 a guarantee of a minimum dividend of 6 per cent.; and, as this 
 arrangement strengthened their claim to secure the Leeds, Bradford, 
 and Halifax, the King's Cross Board decided to prosecute Bills for 
 both in the session of 1865. As for the Lancashire and Yorkshire, to 
 it they were willing to give full facilities for the passage of its through 
 trains over the lines, but with this, they contended, it ought to be 
 satisfied. Twenty years before it might have made the direct lines 
 between the West Riding towns itself, but instead of that— as we noted 
 in an earlier part of this book — it had first opposed, and then acquired 
 only to abandon, the " West Riding Union " undertaking, leaving the 
 objects of this to be subsequently carried out by the Leeds, Bradford, 
 and West Yorkshire companies. In short — in the language of Mr. 
 Hope Scott — the Lancashire and Yorkshire had " endeavoured to keep 
 out the tide of railway improvement in the West Riding by arguments 
 little better than Mrs. Partington's, which was a mop, you know"; 
 whereas the Great Northern had come in with, and moved with, the 
 tide. Was it not about time, then, that Mrs. Partington should step 
 aside ? 
 
 But Mrs. Partington would not step aside. On the contrary, that 
 "most wealthy, most respectable, and most conservative company" — 
 to quote a description of the Lancashire and Yorkshire given by Mr. 
 Baxter in 1864 to a House of Commons Committee — was roused by a 
 sense of injury to unprecedented exertions. That it had lost its chance 
 of buying up the two Leeds lines was not the only grievance it had at 
 this time. A second grievance was that by a subterfuge the direct 
 route from Doncaster to Wakefield had been obtained, on to which the 
 Great Northern's through traffic was about to be diverted from the old 
 
 1864 "MRS. PARTINGTON" IN THE WEST RIDING 215 
 
 Knottingley route ; and yet a third, that the North Eastern Company had 
 just obtained powers for a direct line from York to Doncaster, to follow 
 the same course as the abandoned Askern and York section of the 
 " London and York," and that by this, too, the use of the Lancashire 
 
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 and Yorkshire's Askern to Knottingley line was to be superseded. That 
 these substitutions of direct for circuitous lines were inevitable results 
 of the rise of the tide of improvement Mrs. Partington refused to 
 recognize. She felt only that she was being hardly used. 
 
 The result of this feeling was a violent reaction, under stress of 
 
 
I i 
 
 h 1 
 
 i. I 
 
 2i6 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 which the Lancashire and Yorkshire passed at one bound from being 
 the most conservative to being the most revolutionary of railway 
 companies. In the autumn of 1864 its directors joined hands with the 
 directors of the Great Eastern with no less an object than to revive the 
 just rejected Long Stanton to Doncaster project. But this time it was 
 not to be put forward as a coal line primarily. It was to be a main 
 connection between the Great Eastern and the Lancashire and 
 Yorkshire systems — a new fourth trunk line, in short, between 
 London and the North. 
 
 The effect of this proposal was felt in every railway boardroom in 
 England ; but the companies which it concerned most were the Great 
 Northern and Manchester, Sheffield, and Lincolnshire. It threatened 
 them together as joint carriers between London and I^ncashire, and it 
 threatened them separately, the one as the London and West Riding 
 railway and the other as the main railway between Lancashire and 
 Lincolnshire. They were bound, therefore, to draw together for 
 defensive action; and that that action should be thoroughgoing 
 became Mr. Watkin's peculiar care. His policy of forcing the 
 Great Northern to buy up the Sheffield for "political" reasons had 
 by this time recovered from the shock administered to it by the in- 
 opportune admission of the Midland to Manchester. He still 
 calculated that amalgamation was sure to come sooner or later, and 
 that the more intimate he could make the relationship of the two 
 companies the quicker and better terms he would get for his 
 shareholders. 
 
 From this point of view he felt it to be extremely fortunate that 
 the direct line from Doncaster to Wakefield— a line more important 
 than ever to the Great Northern now that the Lancashire and Yorkshire 
 had turned hostile— was in the hands of the West Riding and Grimsby 
 Company. For, as the reader knows, this undertaking, besides being a 
 direct railway between Wakefield and Doncaster, was also, as its name 
 expressed, a link in a through route between the West Riding and 
 Grimsby; and, because it was this, the Sheffield Company, in the 
 interest of its docks at Grimsby, had subscribed to its capital. For 
 these reasons Mr. Watkin had a considerable hold on the small 
 company; and so when, in the autumn of 1864, the Great Northern 
 wanted to buy it up so as to prevent it from falling into the hands of 
 the Lancashire and Yorkshire and Great Eastern combination, he was 
 able to urge, very reasonably, that, if it was bought up at all, not the 
 Great Northern, but the Great Northern and Sheffield jointly must 
 be the purchaser. Thus, without appearing to have any ulterior 
 motives, he was able to put the Sheffield on the way to becoming 
 
 1S64 
 
 MR. WATKIN'S BOLD STRATEGY 
 
 217 
 
 half- owners of the Great Northern's future means of access to the 
 West Riding. 
 
 Thus one new partnership between the Great Northern and Sheffield 
 was set on foot ; but Mr. Watkin had a much larger enterprise of the 
 same kind in view, to understand which we must turn aside for a 
 moment to see how matters have been progressing in Lancashire. Of 
 the four " Cheshire lines," in financial support to which the Sheffield 
 and Great Northern companies were already, as we know, jointly 
 involved, two — the Stockport and Woodley and Cheshire Midland — 
 had been opened in 1863, and the Garston and Liverpool — also a joint 
 Sheffield and Great Northern affair — had at the time we have now 
 reached just been opened, completing, in conjunction with a series of 
 London and North Western lines, over which, it may be remembered, 
 the Great Northern and Sheffield had obtained running powers, a new 
 route between Manchester and Liverpool. Since the authorization of 
 these arrangements, however, the Midland, as we know, had obtained 
 access over the Sheffield system into Manchester, and it naturally wanted 
 to get to Liverpool also. Accordingly, it was now proposed that the 
 Midland should be admitted to a third share in the Garston and 
 Liverpool line, and that the Cheshire lines should at the same time 
 be wholly bought up and vested in the same tripartite ownership. 
 This, with the running powers they possessed from Manchester to 
 Garston, promised to secure to the three companies access to Liver- 
 pool and the territory west of Manchester generally, no matter what 
 competition the Lancashire and Yorkshire or London and North 
 Western might set up. 
 
 These arrangements were agreed to, and embodied in a Bill, but 
 they did not fully satisfy Mr. Watkin. With one of those bold and 
 sudden strokes with which he was wont to disconcert, not only his 
 opponents, but his allies, he deposited at the same time another Bill 
 for a new direct line from Manchester to Garston on the ground that 
 the " running-power route " was not adequate for the three companies' 
 traffic. The Bill was deposited in the name of the Sheffield Company 
 only, but obviously Mr. Watkin calculated upon receiving support in 
 Parliament, and financial aid afterwards, from the Great Northern and 
 Midland; nor was he disappointed. In view of the proposed com- 
 bination between the Lancashire and Yorkshire and the Great Eastern, 
 the Great Northern and Midland had special reasons for wishing to 
 strengthen their positions in Lancashire; they were also both quite 
 dependent there upon alliance with the Manchester, Sheffield, and 
 Lincolnshire. They thus found themselves compelled by "political" 
 more than by commercial considerations to back Mr. Watkin's new 
 
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 I 
 
 ■4 
 
 I! 
 
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 tt 
 
 THE CHESHIRE LINES" 
 
 1865 
 
 A FIFTH LINE 
 
 219 
 
 «ii 
 
 
 ; 
 
 direct line against the opposition of the London and North Western 
 and I^ncashire and Yorkshire. 
 
 Thus to the fighting session of 1864 succeeded a fighting session 
 of 1865 ; but one of the most important battles in it — the battle with 
 the "Great Eastern and Lancashire and Yorkshire Junction Bill" — 
 was easily decided. The Bill was not allowed to reach Committee 
 stage ; it was thrown out on second reading in the Commons on 
 14 March, 1865. In vain did Mr. John Bright and other Radical 
 members — practically ignorant of the merits of the question — plead 
 in favour of ** free trade in railways," and protest that the Great Eastern 
 was being excluded from the north because its line would be so much 
 the best — so much more efficient a " machine," to recall Mr. Baxter's 
 word — that it would ruin the existing ones. The Great Northern was 
 not trying to exclude the Great Eastern from the north ; it had offered 
 full facilities for interchange at March, and it had even gone so far 
 in October, 1864, as to offer running powers for coal traffic from 
 March to Doncaster at rates to be mutually -agreed or settled by 
 arbitration. Seeing that this was more even than a Parliamentary 
 Committee after the fullest consideration had considered the Great 
 Eastern entitled to, the House rightly decided that the Great Northern 
 should not be put to the expense of fighting the battle in Committee 
 over again. 
 
 There were contests in Committee, however, over the Leeds, 
 Bradford, and Halifax and West Yorkshire Amalgamation Bills, and 
 over the Bill for the new direct line between Manchester and Liver- 
 pool ; but in all of them the Great Northern was on the winning side. 
 The two Leeds lines were secured without great difficulty (though Mr. 
 Vernon Harcourt worked hard for the Lancashire and Yorkshire) ; but 
 the Manchester and Liverpool Bill evoked a battle-royal. However, 
 with Mr. Watkin as chief witness and Mr. Denison, q.c, as leading 
 counsel (an unusual spectacle this Watkin-cum-Denison combination !), 
 the Sheffield and its allies bore down all opposition, and the "fifth 
 line" between Manchester and Liverpool received the sanction of 
 Parliament. 
 
 Thus as the outcome of two fighting sessions the Great Northern 
 repulsed the aggression of the Great Eastern, and consolidated its 
 position as a trunk line to the West Riding of Yorkshire, to Lincoln- 
 shire, and to Lancashire. These were great things to do, but as we 
 shall see later they were not done without cost. Mr. Denison was very 
 fortunate in leaving the Company when he did. Its status among the 
 established lines had been secured, and the effect of new competition 
 had not yet been greatly felt. 
 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 GENERAL PROGRESS, INTERRUPTED BY A STARTLING ACCIDENT. 
 
 1866-1867. 
 
 I 
 
 
 IN following up the part played by the Great Northern Company 
 in the development of traffic between England and Scotland, it 
 is important to distinguish between the East Coast route and 
 the East Coast joint service. The title " East Coast Route," 
 though now often applied to the whole line of railway from 
 King's Cross vm York, Newcastle, and Berwick to Edinburgh, 
 properly belongs only to the part of this line north of York; 
 and that part, as we saw in an earlier section of this book, 
 was carried through by Hudson and the Stephensons prior to the 
 construction of the Great Northern between York and London, and 
 without any regard for Great Northern interests. It was in the interest 
 of the old route between York and London — the Midland route via 
 Derby and Rugby — that the Railway King worked so hard to connect 
 York with Edinburgh ; but, by the irony of fate, it was decreed that 
 the Midland should enjoy the through traffic for a very few years 
 only. Almost from its first opening into London, as we have seen, 
 the Great Northern — Hudson's bete-noir — superseded the Midland as 
 the channel for " East Coast " traffic to and from the Metropolis. 
 
 But, whilst the East Coast route itself was thus to the Great 
 Northern a fortunate inheritance bequeathed to it in spite of himself 
 by its great opponent, the East Coast joint service, so far as it was 
 established at the date we have now reached, was to a very large 
 extent the Great Northern's creation. It had been the Great Northern 
 which, by running (as soon as its towns line was opened in 1852) its 
 191 miles between London and York in five hours, had enabled the 
 whole 402 miles between London and Edinburgh to be covered by the 
 East Coast in eleven hours, an hour less than by the rival West Coast 
 route ; and it had been the Great Northern which, despite shareholders' 
 grumblings as to increased working expenses, had supplied the carriages 
 which had run through between King's Cross and Edinburgh almost 
 
 220 
 
 i860 EAST COAST JOINT SERVICE ESTABLISHED 221 
 
 from the first. Moreover, it had been at the suggestion of the Great 
 Northern that a special stock of carriages had been provided for this 
 purpose from i860 — the common property of the Great Northern, 
 North Eastern, and North British companies, and known from that 
 date as the East Coast Joint Stock. 
 
 This event marked the definite admission of the Great Northern 
 as London partner in the East Coast alliance. The " alternative East 
 Coast route," via Norman ton and Derby, had, as we know, been given 
 some prominence in the English and Scotch "pool" of 1856, but by 
 i860 it had become a mere shadow. The Great Northern, North 
 Eastern, and North British companies were recognized from that date 
 onwards as the three " East Coast Companies," and as such they began, 
 as we shall now see, to work together to protect their interests in 
 northern Scotland. 
 
 Under the agreement of 1856, as the reader already knows, the 
 East Coast route had been admitted to a half-share of the traffic 
 beyond Edinburgh; nevertheless, its position in Glasgow, Perth, 
 Aberdeen, etc., had by no means been secured. The North British 
 rails ended at Edinburgh; for access westwards and northwards of 
 that capital it was dependent upon facilities given it by the Edinburgh 
 and Glasgow and Scottish Central companies, and these companies 
 were "West Coast" by traditional sympathy; so much so, indeed, 
 that but for the opposition in Parliament of the East Coast companies 
 they would have become definitely "West Coast" in i860 by amalga- 
 mation into the Caledonian. Accordingly if, when the agreement of 
 1856 expired and a new division of the Anglo-Scotch traffic had to 
 be made, the East Coast companies were to be in a position to 
 enforce their claim to as large or a larger share than they already had, 
 it seemed necessary that their status beyond Edinburgh should be 
 improved. 
 
 It had been under these circumstances that Mr. Richard Hodgson, 
 the very able and ambitious chairman of the North British Company, 
 had conceived the idea of bridging the estuaries of the Forth and 
 the Tay, acquiring the system of the Edinburgh, Perth, and Dundee 
 Company (over whose route through Fife, it will be remembered, 
 the East Coast companies had made an attempt to work in con- 
 nection with ferries across the Forth and Tay in 1854, when the 
 Edinburgh and Glasgow and Scottish Central had held the door 
 to the north shut fast against them), and so making an East Coast 
 route proper not only to Perth, but also to Dundee, for Aberdeen. 
 The plan, of course, had seemed a startlingly bold one from an 
 engineering point of view ; but it had been at once taken up in 
 
 I 
 
 I 
 if 
 
 
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 )' 
 
 1 1^ 
 
 22 z HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 earnest by the North British engineer, Mr. (afterwards Sir) Thomas 
 Bouch, and he had prepared designs for Forth and Tay bridges. The 
 former was to consist of a number of large spans of 500 feet 
 each, with approach viaducts in shorter spans at either end. 
 
 The next step of the North British Company had been to seek 
 powers . to absorb the Edinburgh, Perth, and Dundee system, and 
 this it had accomphshed by an Act of 1862. Then a great deal 
 of plotting and counter-plotting had taken place between the North 
 British and its allies, on the one hand, and the Caledonian and its 
 allies on the other; and the outcome of it all was the signing on 
 12 May, 1865, of a "Scotch Territorial Agreement." Under this Mr. 
 Hodgson secured the withdrawal of Caledonian opposition to his 
 company's bills for bridges across the Forth and Tay, and to the 
 amalgamation of the Edinburgh and Glasgow with the North British. 
 But, as the price of it, he had himself to consent to the Caledonian 
 acquiring the Scottish Central. 
 
 Thus, by the exertions of their Scotch partner, the East Coast 
 companies secured the ownership of a route to Glasgow, and the 
 prospect of a route of their own to Perth and Dundee ; but, having 
 regard to the magnitude of the works involved, the latter prospect was 
 rather a remote one : and, meanwhile, by the amalgamation of the 
 Scottish Central with the Caledonian, the existing route was to be 
 given over to definite West Coast ownership. This to the North 
 Eastern and Great Northern did not seem to be a state of things 
 in which it was safe to acquiesce. Accordingly, notwithstanding 
 the agreement which their ally had made, they vigorously opposed 
 the Scottish Central Amalgamation Bill in Pariiament in 1865. They 
 were not successful in throwing out the Bill, but they secured the 
 insertion in it of very stringent clauses in favour of East Coast 
 traffic. 
 
 In the following session of 1866, however, practically the same 
 contest had to be fought over again. Then, the Caledonian came 
 to Pariiament for power to acquire the Scottish North Eastern 
 Company's system extending from Perth to Aberdeen, and a long- 
 drawn out and very expensive fight resulted. Again the Caledonian 
 Company carried its Bill, but again the East Coast companies 
 obtained clauses in their favour— the most stringent clauses which 
 their lawyers could devise— which went so far as to say that the 
 Caledonian must treat the East Coast traffic "as if it were its own 
 proper traffic or traffic it was desirous of cultivating to the utmost." 
 
 Thus the long Pariiamentary warfare between the two coast routes 
 ended in leaving them on a practical equality ; and meantime, as we 
 
 M4 
 
 THE ALLIANCE IN CHANCERY 
 
 223 
 
 have already seen, they had been making common cause to check the 
 development of a central route. This, indeed, as we noticed at the 
 time, had been the prime object with which the English and Scotch 
 Alliance had been formed in 1856 ; but we have already seen how the 
 Midland, from the time when the payment to it of " blackmail " from 
 Euston Square had been declared uUra Tires, had joined hands with 
 that " poor, wretched little creature," the (little) North Western, to upset 
 the alliance; and when in July, 1862, the North Brirish Company had 
 completed its extension from Hawick to Carlisle, it also, despite its 
 prior East Coast attachment, had begun to agitate on behalf of the 
 central route. In the following year, moreover, had come the passing 
 of the Midland's Extension to London Act, and this of course had 
 made the case for a revision of the Anglo-Scotch arrangement very 
 much stronger than before. 
 
 Still, however, no general agreement to revision could be obtained ; 
 and at last, to bring matters to a head, the Great Northern had given 
 notice (12 August, 1863) that until the matter was settled, it should 
 object to any further division under the agreement of any receipts what- 
 ever. Already, since April, i860, as the reader may remember, the 
 Railway Clearing House had been directed to collect all the " central " 
 receipts and to hold them in suspense ; and now, owing to the Great 
 Northern's action, it had to treat all the divisible "coast" receipts in 
 the same way. Nevertheless another year passed without an amicable 
 settlement having been arrived at, and so the Midland, on 22 July, 
 1864, filed a Bill in Chancery against the other members of the 
 alliance, praying that the rights and interests of themselves and the 
 several other railway companies might " be ascertained and declared " 
 by that "honourable court," or "in such manner as the honourable 
 court shall think fit to direct." 
 
 For reasons not clear to the present historian (perhaps because he 
 is no lawyer) this Chancery suit did not come on for hearing until 
 17 July, 1866, all but two years after its filing; and in the meantime 
 the Midland, under Mr. Allport's bold leadership, took a decisive step 
 to establish the central route. It obtained powers from Parliament in 
 1866 for an access on its own rails all the way to Carlisle. Against 
 such a new fact as this no ten-years-old agreement could possibly have 
 prevailed, even if it had had all the power of the law behind it, 
 and when on 28 July, 1866, Vice-Chancellor Kindersley condemned 
 altogether the construction which the West and East Coast companies 
 had sought to put upon the alliance, and declared that if it had been 
 intended to bear such a construction it was uUra vires, it became 
 obvious, even to the most confirmed "protectionists" amongst the 
 
224 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 coast companies' managers, that any further attempts to check the 
 natural development of the central route were foredoomed to failure. 
 Until the Bedford and London and Settle and Carlisle lines were com- 
 pleted its full power to compete with the coast routes would not, 
 of course, be established; but after that it must so compete, and 
 in anticipation of this event, the Great Northern and North Eastern 
 companies had good reason to congratulate themselves that they had 
 secured running powers from Berwick to Edinburgh for their joint 
 traffic, and also facilities beyond Edinburgh independent of the North 
 British. For there was good reason to fear that the latter might now 
 be tempted to neglect East Coast interests in order to develop its new 
 " Waverley route " to Carlisle. 
 
 Thus by the summer of 1866 the Midland had fully asserted, and 
 partly realized, itself as a third trunk route between London and the 
 North. Meanwhile, however, the attempt to develop a fourth trunk 
 route via Cambridge and Lincoln had utterly failed, and the Great 
 Eastern had fallen back, in apparent hopelessness, into the seclusion of 
 the Eastern Counties. This, however, had not been due to any 
 unreasonableness on the part of the Great Northern. "The moment 
 the Bill " {i.e., the Great Eastern and I^ancashire and Yorkshire Junc- 
 tion Bill of 1865) *'was thrown out," Colonel Packe had said to the 
 Great Northern shareholders, " in coming out of the lobby, I said to 
 one or two of the Great Eastern directors, * Now I am quite as ready 
 to make an arrangement with you as I was twenty-four hours ago'"; 
 and the result had been that negotiations between the two companies 
 had been once more set on foot. The Great Northern had already 
 offered running powers over the loop line for coal traffic, with power to 
 the Great Eastern to fix its own rates for coal, and this offer it now 
 renewed. 
 
 But though this might have satisfied the Great Eastern a year before, 
 when its eyes had been fixed upon the South Yorkshire coalfield only, 
 it did not satisfy it now that the greater ambition of reaching the West 
 Riding of Yorkshire, and Lancashire also, had been aroused. What 
 its directors now wanted was a line of their own to the North ; and, 
 obviously, the chief reason why they had not got this from Parliament 
 was that the Great Northern already occupied the district through 
 which their advance had to be made with its " loop " and other lines. 
 Accordingly what now came to be proposed was that the Great Eastern 
 should become half-owners of the part of the existing " loop " between 
 Spalding and Gainsborough at a price to be agreed or settled by arbitra- 
 tion, and should pay half the cost of construction of the extensions 
 which the Great Northern was making from Spalding to March and 
 
 ( 
 
 1865-6 THE GREAT EASTERN'S EMBARRASSMENTS 225 
 
 from Gainsborough to Doncaster ; and to this the Great Northern 
 agreed. 
 
 The arrangements, however, did not end there. Having been put on 
 the road to become half-owners of a through route from its existing 
 system at March to Doncaster, the Great Eastern, it was agreed further, 
 was to have running powers to Wakefield over the West Riding and 
 Grimsby line, the joint purchase of which the Great Northern and 
 Sheffield companies undertook at once to complete; while for Lan- 
 cashire traffic it was to obtain facilities by arranging to exchange with 
 the Sheffield Company at Lincoln. "By these arrangements" the 
 Great Northern directors said in their report of August, 1865, "the 
 Great Eastern will obtain access to Lancashire, Yorkshire, and the 
 North, an unnecessary outlay in the construction of new lines will be 
 saved, the existing railways of the Great Northern and Manchester, 
 Sheffield, and Lincolnshire companies will be utilized, and the con- 
 venience of the public secured." 
 
 The arrangements, of course, involved a considerable outlay on the 
 part of the Great Eastern Company, but so far, apparently, were its 
 directors from thinking this beyond their strength that they strongly 
 pressed the Great Northern, after the first treaty had been made, to 
 enlarge it so as to include the joint construction of a new direct line 
 from Spalding to Lincoln. This was somewhat reluctantly agreed to, 
 and the King's Cross Board joined with the Great Eastern and Sheffield 
 in promoting the necessary Bills for the session of 1866, in the full 
 expectation that a very troublesome question had been at last disposed 
 of and a most costly contest terminated. This confidence, however, 
 was very soon rudely shattered. 
 
 In the middle of February, 1866— after the publication of the Great 
 Northern report announcing the completion of the arrangements, but 
 before the half-yearly meeting of the Company— Mr. Oakley, the Great 
 Northern secretary, received a curt letter from the Great Eastern 
 secretary enclosing a resolution of his Board to the effect that "in the 
 present position of the Company " it was " undesirable to proceed with " 
 the Arrangements Bill. Mr. Oakley was instructed to reply immedi- 
 ately expressing " surprise and regret " on the part of the Great Northern 
 directors, and demanding " the honourable fulfilment " of the Great 
 Eastern " obligations " ; but the case was one in which honour, per- 
 force, had to be left out of the question. There had been a "revo- 
 lution " at Shoreditch— one of a series which followed one another 
 there in the second half of the sixties ; a committee of investigation 
 had sat, and the result of its report had been that the leaders of the 
 Board which had made the agreement with the Great Northern had 
 
 M 
 
 I 
 
226 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 i\ 
 
 't 
 
 t 
 
 received their conge. Their successors, no doubt, had every wish in the 
 world to fulfil honourably the obligations handed over to them. But 
 their predominant obligation, of course, was to the shareholders who had 
 elected them, and this obligation seemed to them to overrule the other. 
 A company which was not only paying no dividend, but was under the 
 urgent necessity — so the committee of investigation had reported — of 
 raising i J million of new capital as the least sum which would enable it 
 to put its existing undertaking properly into repair, was in their opinion 
 not in a position to incur such extensive new liabilities as the half- 
 purchase of the Great Northern loop and the joint construction of the 
 new Spalding and Lincoln line involved. There was nothing for it, 
 they insisted, but for both companies to accept the situation and to 
 withdraw the Arrangements Bill from Parliament. 
 
 Nor was this the full extent of the inconvenience which the financial 
 embarrassments of the Great Eastern inflicted on the Great Northern 
 in 1866. The reader has already been told that in anticipation of the 
 re-transfer of the Royston and Hitchin, and as the price of the with- 
 drawal of a Great Northern extension to Cambridge, the Great Eastern 
 had agreed before a Parliamentary Committee in 1864 to give running 
 powers over its existing line between Shepreth and Cambridge, to 
 double the part of it between Shepreth and Shelford, and to provide 
 additional station accommodation in the University town. But when 
 at the end of March, 1866, the agreement of 1852 expired, and the 
 Hitchin and Shepreth line had to be handed back to the Great 
 Northern, the work for these purposes had not even been begun. 
 Consequently the Great Northern's Cambridge traffic was conducted at 
 first at a great disadvantage. 
 
 Nevertheless, the Great Northern was, from i April, 1866, estab- 
 lished at Cambridge, and in this same year it succeeded in gaining 
 a footing in another not unimportant Eastern Counties' stronghold, 
 Lynn. For some years, as the reader has been already informed, it 
 had been working the so-called Norwich and Spalding line, from 
 Spalding nearly due eastwards to Sutton Bridge, but we have seen how 
 an attempt made in 1862 to absorb this and the Sutton and Lynn 
 Company into the Great Northern had been unsuccessful, the reason 
 being that a third small company obtained powers in that year to carry 
 on the east-and-west line of communication from Spalding to Bourn. 
 Now — in the session of 1866 — the Sutton and Lynn and the Spalding 
 and Bourn promoted a Bill to amalgamate themselves under the title 
 of the Midland and Eastern Company, to acquire a lease of the Sutton 
 and Spalding line, and to construct a further extension of their system 
 due westwards from Bourn to join the Midland at Saxby. 
 
 1866 
 
 NEW ROUTE TO LEEDS OPENED 
 
 227 
 
 This Bill was supported by the Midland Company and opposed by 
 the Great Northern, and a Parliamentary contest resulted. In the 
 course of it, the Great Northern made an offer that, if the new 
 Bourn to Saxby line were given up, it would give running powers over 
 an existing route from Bourn to the Midland system via Essendine (a 
 place just north of Peterborough on the Great Northern main line) and 
 Stamford — a route constructed by two small companies but now 
 absorbed into the Great Northern. This offer the Midland and 
 Eastern Company thought it worth while to accept, while, to pacify the 
 Midland, the further arrangement was made that the new route should 
 be worked jointly by it and the Great Northern, the Midland and 
 Eastern Company being guaranteed a minimum rental of ;£"i 5,000 a 
 year. The result was that from i August, 1866, a connecting service 
 of trains was put on which brought the Great Northern's main line at 
 Essendine and its loop line at Spalding into direct communication with 
 Leicester (via Stamford and Syston) and with Lynn (via Sutton Bridge). 
 
 Meanwhile, despite the collapse of the Great Eastern, the Great 
 Northern and Sheffield companies had proceeded with their Bill for 
 becoming joint owners of the West Riding and Grimsby Railway, and 
 in the session of 1866 it passed into law— the terms, as far as the Great 
 Northern was concerned, being that it should give ;^2 10,000 of its 
 ordinary stock for a like amount of West Riding and Grimsby stock. 
 Already, from i February, 1866, the line from Doncaster to Wakefield 
 had been open, and at once the Great Northern's trains to and from 
 the West Riding had been diverted to it from the old route via 
 Knottingley, thus saving twenty minutes on the through journey. The 
 Great Northern's express time between London and Leeds, a distance 
 of 186 J miles, had thus become 4 hours 35 minutes. Yet another 
 important opening in 1866 was that of the link line of the Chatham 
 and Dover Company from a junction with the Metropolitan at Farring- 
 don Street to Blackfriars. This enabled the Great Northern to 
 commence a through traffic in coal and goods to the south of the 
 Thames, in consideration of which advantage the Company had con- 
 tributed ;;^3oo,ooo to the construction of the link line at 3J per 
 cent, interest secured as a rent charge on the Chatham and Dover 
 undertaking. 
 
 The Great Northern Railway had now been open from London for 
 sixteen years, and all that time it had worked passenger trains at a high 
 rate of speed; yet, during a period throughout which, owing to the 
 imperfection of appliances, fatal railway accidents had been lamentably 
 frequent, it had enjoyed an enviable immunity in this respect. In 
 1853, as already recorded, there had been a collision at Hornsey; in 
 
 i 
 
i 
 
 228 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 1857, one of the then new Manchester expresses, which even then 
 covered the seventy-six miles from London to Peterborough in ninety- 
 five minutes, had been thrown off the rails at Carlton (between Newark 
 and Tuxford), owing to a large piece of the line having been washed 
 away by flood-water;* in 1859, a mistake on the part of a signalman 
 and the absence of interlocking, had caused a collision between a 
 Great Northern and Midland train at Hitchin junction; and in i860, 
 owing to the neglect of a drunken guard to apply his hand-brakes, a 
 Manchester excursion train had run into the " dead-end " of King's 
 Cross Station.t In none of these accidents, however, had fatal 
 injuries been received by passengers. Indeed, it seems that the 
 one and only passenger killed outright on the system up to this time 
 was, curiously enough, the eldest son of one of the original promoters 
 and directors of the Company, Mr. Francis Pym, of Biggleswade, who 
 had met his sad death in April, i860, by the wrecking of an express — 
 again one of the Manchester " fliers "—when it was passing through 
 Hatfield station, the cause being the displacement of a rail, which flew 
 up and killed a platelayer at the same time. Unfortunately for the 
 Company, Mr. Pym died intestate, leaving a widow and nine children, 
 and, as the property was all entailed to the eldest son, the others were 
 legally unprovided for. Under these circumstances a jury awarded 
 ;£iooo compensation to the widow, and ;^i5oo to each child — 
 ;£i 3,000 in all, and the Company, after appeal, had actually to pay 
 ^£^9000 and about ;£^2ooo costs besides. 
 
 This Pym case, as may be supposed, had troubled the shareholders 
 a good deal, but it had not affected the reputation which the Great 
 Northern had gradually acquired in the minds of the general public of 
 being an exceedingly safe line to travel upon. Consequently the 
 sensation created was very great, when on the morning of Monday, 
 II June, 1866, the newspapers announced that an accident of the 
 most alarming and unprecedented kind had occurred on the system — 
 that three trains had come into collision in the middle of a tunnel, 
 that the debris had been converted into a huge bonfire, and that it was 
 still unextinguished. The details of this sensational " Welwyn Tunnel 
 accident " are briefly as follows : — 
 
 • Being unable to prove negligence, as required by Lord Campbell's Act, the 
 unfortunate sufferers by this accident did not obtain a penny of compensation, though 
 they brought a whole series of actions for the purpose. At the last of these Lord 
 Campbell himself was the judge, and, when the jury could not agree, he is reported 
 to have told them, by way of a stimulus, that in days gone by they would have been 
 liable to be " taken in a cart to the confines of the county and thrown into a ditch.'* 
 t This accident nearly terminated the career of Charles Bradlaugh, whose life Mr. 
 Vizer, the stationmaster, claims to have saved by prompt action. 
 
 1866 
 
 THREE TRAINS ON FIRE IN A TUNNEL 
 
 229 
 
 Half an hour after midnight, between Saturday and Sunday, 9 and 
 10 June, 1866, a train of empty coal waggons on its way from King's 
 Cross northwards broke down in the centre of the long tunnel just 
 north of Welwyn, owing to the bursting of a boiler tube of the engine. 
 Very shortly afterwards its rear was collided with by a Midland goods 
 train on its way to Hitchin Junction, the impetus being such that some 
 of the Midland trucks were thrown over so as to foul the " up " line. 
 Hardly had this occurred when a meat train from the north bringing 
 the supply of Scotch beef for London's Monday market, and travelling 
 at a good speed, dashed into the debris^ producing a mingled ruin of 
 nearly one hundred trucks, which in places was piled up almost to 
 reach the " soffit " of the tunnel. 
 
 The engine of the meat train was overturned and the coal scattered 
 from its furnace, and, as luck would have it, some casks of oil, which 
 some of the waggons of the Midland train had contained, were also 
 strewn upon the ground. The result, of course, was that a roaring 
 fire was ignited, and fanned from an air-shaft, which happened to be 
 immediately overhead, it soon spread throughout the whole debris. 
 This was the state of affairs when Mr. Seymour Clarke, who had been 
 called up from his bed at Hatfield, Mr. Johnson, the chief engineer, 
 who came from Barnet, and such other officers and men as could be 
 hastily collected, arrived about dawn at the south end of the tunnel. 
 The situation that confronted them was an appalling one. From the 
 mouth of the tunnel suffocating clouds of smoke and waves of intense 
 heat were issuing, and the sound which came from within was like the 
 roar of a mighty cataract. At intervals, too, came the terrifying 
 reports of explosions. Finding it impossible to effect an entrance at 
 this end, Messrs. Clarke and Johnson led their men over the fields to 
 where the rails again issued near Knebworth, and as they scaled the 
 high ground beneath which the tunnel passes they saw flames every 
 now and then emerge from the top of the air-shaft. This, they knew, 
 was more than eighty feet above the level of the rails ! From the 
 Knebworth end it was found possible to enter with a gang of men and 
 remove the rear waggons of the " Scotch meat " ; but as the men 
 neared the seat of the fire the intense heat drove them back. Nothing 
 more could be done until the fire had to some extent expended its 
 fierceness. 
 
 By this time the column of flame issuing from the air-shaft had 
 aroused the countryside, and the only fire-engine available— a small 
 one belonging to the Marquis of Salisbury's Hatfield estate — had been 
 despatched to the scene. This was brought to play on the conflagra- 
 tion from the south end of the tunnel, water being brought to it by 
 
230 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 IT 
 
 I 
 
 locomotives in tenderfuls ; and, meanwhile, the country people 
 gathered from all parts to see the sight. Fortunately, being Sunday, 
 the ordinary traffic of the line was sparse, and what there was Mr. 
 Clarke soon arranged to be diverted on to the Hertford and Cambridge 
 branches, between the termini of which a circuitous connection was 
 available over the Great Eastern Railway. At the same time urgent 
 messages were sent to King's Cross, Doncaster, and elsewhere, that as 
 large a force of men as possible might be mustered, in order to renew 
 the attack on the debris as soon as its fiery defence had been broken 
 down. 
 
 It was not until six o'clock on the Sunday evening— seventeen hours 
 after the collisions— that an entry could be effected from the south end 
 of the tunnel. Then Mr. Johnson and Mr. Budge of the locomotive 
 department led in a gang of about 450 navvies and mechanics, and 
 soon sufficient of the outlying debris was cleared away to allow the 
 fire-engine to be brought to bear upon the centre of the fire— a 
 smouldering and still sometimes flaming mass beneath the air-shaft. 
 When this was at last deadened two powerful cranes were brought in to 
 assist in the removal of the heavier wreckage ; but so great was the 
 accumulation that it was not until nine o'clock on the Monday 
 morning that even goods trains could be allowed to pass, and not till 
 the Tuesday that the passenger service could be resumed. Fortunately 
 the tunnel itself was but slightly damaged. 
 
 Among the debris were found the charred bodies of two men, whose 
 tragic fate had in it an element of retribution. Neither of them had 
 any business to have been where they met their deaths. One of them 
 was identified as a fireman in the employ of the Metropolitan 
 Company, and it became clear that he had been attempting to make 
 a free and illicit journey north in the brake-van of his friend, the guard 
 of the coal train. The other was this guard himself, whose place of 
 death convicted him of neglecting his elementary duty of going back 
 when the breakdown had first occurred, to give warning to any 
 following train. 
 
 Inquiry showed, however, that it was the system of signalling which 
 was most at fault, and this was the more alarming because the accident 
 had occurred in a long tunnel, />., on one of the few sections of the 
 line where, as already noted, an attempt had been made to introduce 
 properly the newly-invented and much bepraised "block system." 
 " We have had the block telegraph system in operation for a consider- 
 able number of years, and find it very beneficial," Colonel Packe had 
 said at the half-yearly meeting in the preceding February ; yet it seems 
 more than likely that had there been no block working on the line at 
 
 ,866 PROBLEM OF THE "NECK OF THE BOTTLE" 231 
 
 all, this particular accident would not have occurred. For it was, no 
 doubt, reliance upon the new system which caused the guard of the 
 coal train to neglect to carry back the danger-signal himself, and, 
 indeed, though it was his duty according to rule to do so, no ill 
 consequence would have occurred from his neglect, had not the 
 telegraph signalling completely failed. 
 
 The moral, of course, was not that the principle of the block system 
 was wrong, but that, if worked at all, it must be worked with appliances 
 which could be depended upon. Accordingly Mr. Johnson was in- 
 structed to provide new telegraphic stations between London and 
 Hitchin, while Mr. F. P. Cockshott, the newly appointed " superinten- 
 dent of the line," was set to work to revise the code of communications. 
 These precautions were all the more necessary because of the rapid 
 rate at which, thanks to a general expansion of trade throughout the 
 country, the traffic of the line had increased, and was still increasing, 
 especially at the London end. True, the withdrawal of the Midland 
 traffic between Hitchin and London was shortly expected ; but already 
 since the passing of the Midland's Extension to London Act in 1863 
 the Great Northern's own general traffic had so increased as to promise 
 more than to make up for this loss when it should come ; and besides 
 this, there was the new traffic of the Luton and Dunstable, Hertford 
 and St. Albans* branches— all of which join the main line in the neigh- 
 bourhood of Hatfield— and, above all, the largely increasing suburban 
 traffic to be provided for. Consequently for some years the question of 
 widening between London and Hatfield had been before the directors. 
 
 In regard to this question the great difficulty was, and still is, that 
 there are no less than seven tunnels within the first thirteen miles 
 of the Great Northern line out of London. On this account the 
 directors had shrunk from proposing an actual duplication of this 
 section of the line ; so, instead of this, they followed up a suggestion 
 which Mr. Denison had made just before his retirement. They 
 proposed to make a loop line to leave the main line near Hornsey, to 
 pass through the promising residential district around Enfield, and to 
 join the main line again at Welwyn by way of a junction at Herting- 
 fordbury with the Welwyn and Hertford branch. This, they thought, 
 would have the double advantage of relieving the main Ime and 
 opening up a new suburban district, and despite the opposition of the 
 Great Eastern Company, which also wanted to tap the locality of 
 Enfield, they obtained Parliamentary powers for it in 1865 under the 
 title of " the Hornsey and Hertford Railway.'* 
 
 * This had l)een constructed by a separate "Hatfield and St. Albans Railway 
 Company," incorporated in 1862. 
 
 
 
232 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 
 i 
 
 Still, however, the problem of congestion between Hornsey and 
 King's Cross remained, and it became intensified as the completion 
 of the Edgware and Highgate line drew near. Moreover, in addition 
 to the increasing " City and suburban ''' traffic, an entirely new traffic 
 
 The Great Northern System near London. 
 (Showing the abortive " Hornsey and Hertford " scheme.) 
 
 was expected in connection with the " Alexandra Palace " in course of 
 erection on Muswell Hill, to which the Edgware Company (with the 
 support of the Great Northern) had obtained powers in 1865 to make 
 a branch from Highgate. As things were, passenger trains— express 
 and slow— goods trains and coal trains had all to use the same two 
 
 1867 
 
 THE LOOP LINE COMPLETED AT LAST 
 
 233 
 
 tracks; and although in the immediate vicinity of King's Cross 
 a separation was effected from the fact that the goods and coal trains 
 (except the few bound to and from the south of the Thames) issued 
 from, and branched off into, their depots without passing through the 
 Maiden Lane tunnel, yet, on the other hand, this made the congestion 
 between the Maiden I.ane and the Copenhagen tunnels especially 
 bad, because "up" goods and coal trains in order to reach their 
 destination had to cross the " down " line on the level. This, clearly, 
 was a state of affairs most dangerous to a frequent traffic, and so in the 
 session of 1866 the directors applied to Parliament for powers to make 
 a second Copenhagen tunnel as a separate channel for goods and coal 
 traffic, while about the same time they instructed Mr. Johnson to lay 
 down additional lines between Seven Sisters Road and the north end 
 of this tunnel. Between Seven Sisters and Holloway they had already 
 acquired a large piece of land for new sidings for goods and coal 
 traffic, in addition to the forty-five acres bought originally for the 
 King's Cross goods station. 
 
 Meanwhile the construction of the three new Lincolnshire lines 
 was being rapidly pushed forward, and before the August half-yearly 
 meeting in 1867 they were all opened: the March and Spalding, 
 nineteen miles, on i April; the Lincoln and Honington, eighteen 
 miles, on 15 April; and the Doncaster and Gainsborough, eighteen 
 miles, on 15 July. The completion of the latter would no doubt 
 have been deferred had it been necessary to construct a new bridge 
 over the Trent, as contemplated when the Act for it was obtained ; 
 but, as it was, arrangements were made to use the existing Trent 
 Bridge of the Sheffield Company. At the same time the Sheffield 
 made a claim for traffic diverted from its line between Sykes Junction 
 and Retford, which, of course, was now superseded by the new route 
 vi'ii Gainsborough. The whole matter was referred to the arbitration 
 of Mr. T. E. Harrison, the eminent engineer, and he awarded the 
 Sheffield Company a sum of ^^25,450 as compensation for diversion, 
 and a toll for the use of their bridge equal to one mile's receipts on all 
 traffic passing over it. 
 
 A through route from the Great Eastern system at March vid 
 Spalding, Boston, and Lincoln to Doncaster being thus complete, 
 both the Great Northern and Great Eastern Boards were anxious that 
 it should be used in the manner most profitable and fair to the two 
 companies. With this view, accordingly, new negotiations had been 
 set on foot, with the result that a fresh agreement had been drawn up 
 and signed by the two chairmen, Colonel Packe and Mr. C. H. Turner, 
 on 12 March, 1867, after an interview of ten hours. Under this it was 
 
234 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 u^ 
 
 
 arranged that the Great Eastern should have running powers from 
 March to Doncaster immediately, on the condition that within seven 
 years it purchased half of the through route between those points. In 
 return the Great Northern was to obtain access via Cambridge to 
 Newmarket, and also to the Great Eastern station at Lynn. After all, 
 however, this agreement came to nothing, for the Great Eastern 
 claimed a right under it to exchange traffic with the Lancashire and 
 Yorkshire Company at Doncaster, which the Great Northern in its 
 own interest and in that of its ally, the Sheffield, felt obliged to refuse. 
 Moreover, a second modified agreement signed on 7 August, 1867, 
 also came to grief, because Mr. Turner was soon afterwards thrown 
 out of office by another " revolution " in the Great Eastern directorate. 
 It seemed as if this " Great Eastern Question " never was, but " always 
 to be," settled. 
 
 On 22 September, 1867, the Edgware and Highgate line was 
 opened for traffic. As already noted this consisted of a branch, eight 
 miles in length, from a junction with the Great Northern main line 
 near Seven Sisters Road Station, through Crouch End, Highgate, and 
 Finchley to Edgware; and the powers for it had been obtained in 
 1862 by an independent company, to whose original capital, however, 
 the Great Northern had subscribed one-third. In the session of 1866 
 this company had promoted an extension from Finchley to High 
 Barnet, and this had been authorized despite the opposition of the 
 Great Northern, which had taken up with a rival scheme from Finchley 
 to Potters Bar, hoping again to combine suburban development with 
 " loop " relief. This event had led the Great Northern Board to deter- 
 mine they had better obtain complete control of the too independent 
 little company, and accordingly they had made an agreement in June, 
 1866, under which the Edgware and Highgate undertaking, including 
 the Barnet branch, was taken over at a guaranteed dividend beginning 
 at 2 per cent, rising by stages to 5 per cent, and then giving way 
 to the conversion of Edgware and Highgate into Great Northern 
 stock, in the proportion of ;^78 105. of the latter to £\oq of the 
 former. 
 
 The Edgware and Highgate was the last completed of a series of 
 extensions and amalgamations which within seven years nearly doubled 
 the original Great Northern undertaking both in mileage and in capital. 
 Up to the end of i860 the mileage owned by the Company had 
 remained at its original figure, 283 miles (though the miles worked 
 over had increased from 130 to 194), and little more than another 
 million had been added to the eleven millions (in round figures) which 
 we saw the original system cost. From that date, however, as we have 
 
 1867 
 
 A SAFE SEVEN PER CENT. CONCERN 
 
 235 
 
 seen, a period of rapid extension and accretion had commenced. In 
 1 86 1 the Nottingham and Grantham, and Hertford, Luton, and Dun- 
 stable lines were permanently acquired, and the expenditure on the 
 Cheshire lines commenced; in 1863 and 1864 powers for the Lincoln- 
 shire extensions were obtained, and the Boston and Sleaford and 
 Bourn and Essendine companies absorbed; and in 1865 the amalga- 
 mations of the Leeds, Bradford, and Halifax, and West Yorkshire were 
 carried out. In 1866 the Royston and Shepreth line reverted; the 
 half-purchase of the West Riding and Grimsby was carried out; the 
 Edgware and Highgate was absorbed ; and, a fact not yet fully noted, 
 the whole system of railways in Cheshire and Lancashire, extending 
 from Godley to Chester, and from Manchester to Liverpool, and in- 
 cluding Mr. Watkin's new direct line between the two latter towns and 
 a new "central station" in Liverpool, were vested in the Manchester, 
 Sheffield, and Lincolnshire, Great Northern, and Midland companies 
 jointly, a separate managing body being created by delegations from 
 the three Boards, entitled "The Cheshire Lines Joint Committee." 
 The result was that by the end of 1867 no fewer than 200 miles had 
 been added to the system originally owned by the Great Northern, 
 making its total mileage 487, and its total capital cost, including fixed 
 charges, quite twenty millions. 
 
 Those who are wont in season and out of season to denounce 
 additions to a railway company's capital account will do well to note 
 that this rapid expansion was accompanied by a substantial rise of 
 dividend. At the end of the fifties, as the reader knows, the Company 
 had only just begun to pay 5 per cent. ; at the time our history has 
 now reached it was regarded, with good reason, as a safe 7 per cent, 
 concern. Moreover, it had passed almost unscathed through the 
 financial crisis of 1866 — a crisis fatal to several ambitious railway 
 administrations. 
 
 ■ 
 
 I 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 
 H 
 
 i 
 
 u 
 
 THE COAL WAR AND THE C.O.A.L. LINE-1868-1871. 
 
 TOWARDS the close of Chapter XII. of this history the reader 
 was warned of the importance likely to be assumed in the future 
 by a certain " Coal Trafific Agreement," which we then saw made by 
 Mr. Allport on behalf of the Midland Company, and Mr. Walter Leith 
 on behalf of the Great Northern (23 January, 1863). The occasion 
 of this agreement, it will be remembered, was the admission of the 
 Great Northern vui Nottingham into the Derbyshire coalfield, and its 
 main principle was that the two companies, now that they were both to 
 be carriers from the two coalfields from which the rail-borne supply of 
 the Metropolis was principally drawn, should not only charge equal 
 rates from the same collieries to all competitive points, but should so 
 regulate these rates that the charge from one colliery should be 
 "equitably adjusted" to the charge from another. The rates, it was 
 further agreed, were to be based, as far as their calculation by mileage 
 went, on the shortest railway route from each colliery; but the pro- 
 vision as to "equitable adjustment" meant that the strict mileage 
 principle was not to be pushed so far as to exclude the more distant 
 pits, or the more distant coalfield, entirely from a market. On the 
 other hand, it meant also— in the view of Mr. Allport at least— that 
 geographical superiority was to be given an " equitable " value— that it 
 was to be taken into consideration along with other natural advantages 
 which the various collieries might possess. 
 
 The great difficulty of putting a principle of this kind into actual 
 practice— of giving considerations of geographical and other natural 
 advantages a fair value in the shillings and pence of rates— is very 
 obvious />n'//i(i facie, but in this particular instance there was a special 
 difficulty. This was, that as regards the South Yorkshire field neither 
 the Great Northern nor the Midland had a free hand. Between both 
 of them and the pits was the South Yorkshire Railway, and this 
 company — which was before Parliament in 1863, it will be remem- 
 bered, for power to transfer its undertaking to the Sheffield Company— 
 
 236 
 
 1863-8 "EQUITABLE ADJUSTMENT": ITS RESULTS 237 
 
 though invited to come into the agreement, had declined to do so. 
 The fact was that in this transition stage of its existence, the South 
 Yorkshire's attitude towards the London coal trade was even more 
 undecided and confused than it had been before. What it was chiefly 
 concerned with in 1863 was to preserve its power to take its \d. per 
 ton per mile out of the whole London rate, and so all it was able to 
 promise was that, when its charging powers were adjusted under its 
 Transfer Act, it would treat both Great Northern and Midland alike. 
 
 It was with the ground to this small extent cleared before them that 
 Mr. Swarbrick, the accountant of the Midland, Mr. James Grinling, 
 the accountant of the Great Northern, and three other officers met at 
 King's Cross on 12 February, 1863, to decide what the rates from the 
 various collieries were for the future to be. The crucial point was, how 
 much value was to be given to the thirty miles geographical advantage 
 as regards the London market which, on the average, the Derbyshire 
 pits possessed over the South Yorkshire pits, and this was ultimately 
 decided by agreeing to fix the rates from Doncaster and Swinton to 
 London so that, with the addition of the South Yorkshire Company's 
 toll, whatever it might be, the South Yorkshire rate to London should 
 always be \s. ^. more than the rate from Clay Cross, the most central 
 of the Derbyshire collieries. When the actual rates fixed on this 
 principle were worked out on the mileage of the shortest routes, this 
 was found to mean that South Yorkshire coal was to be carried by the 
 Great Northern from Doncaster to King's Cross at -39^. per ton per 
 mile, whereas on Derbyshire traffic from Clay Cross to St. Pancras the 
 Midland was to receive -45^/. only ; and from this point of view, there- 
 fore, it looked as if South Yorkshire coal was being rated on a lower 
 scale per mile than Derbyshire by way of " equitable adjustment " of its 
 greater distance from the market. Moreover, the " gross differential " of 
 IS. 4d. fixed under the agreement was 3^. less than the actual difference 
 between the South Yorkshire and Clay Cross rates at the time the 
 agreement was made. Nevertheless, if the Great Northern officials 
 thought they were acting generously towards South Yorkshire they 
 deceived themselves. When to the -39^. per ton per mile which the 
 Great Northern agreed to put up with on its "long lead" of 156 miles 
 from Doncaster to London, was added the id. per ton per mile which 
 the South Yorkshire Company demanded for its "short haul" of 
 sixteen miles " group distance " from the pits to Doncaster, the rate to 
 be charged on South Yorkshire coal throughout became -46^. per ton per 
 mile — a fraction more, that is to say, than the rate charged throughout 
 on Derbyshire coal from Clay Cross. In other words, the fixed " differ- 
 ential" meant that Derbyshire was to have the whole benefit of its 
 
 
 r 
 
If 
 
 It 
 
 ;l 
 
 238 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 geographical superiority, notwithstanding all the talk about " equitable 
 adjustment." 
 
 This was a curious and, as events proved, a very unfortunate outcome 
 of the Coal Traffic Agreement ; but while the advantage which Derby- 
 shire gained under it may be fairly credited to the diplomatic ability of 
 Mr. Allport, the disadvantage to South Yorkshire cannot so fairly be 
 placed upon the shoulders of the Great Northern. For, as the figures 
 just quoted show, the Great Northern, in the interests of South York- 
 shire, agreed to accept a lower rate per mile from Doncaster than the 
 Midland was to have from Clay Cross ; and, though in view of the 
 Great Northern's longer " lead " this could hardly be called a serious 
 sacrifice, yet, on the other hand, it must be remembered that to make 
 serious sacrifices for South Yorkshire was not a thing which at this 
 time of day the Great Northern could be reasonably expected to do. 
 The whole raison d'etre of this agreement of 1863 was that in the 
 future, as regards the London coal traffic, the Great Northern was to 
 be a Derbyshire Company as well as a South Yorkshire Company. It 
 was really only natural that Derbyshire should get the better of South 
 Yorkshire under the agreement, seeing that, of the two companies 
 making it, one— the Midland— was already, and the other- the Great 
 Northern— wished to be, closely identified with Derbyshire's interests, 
 whereas the company which was taking South Yorkshire's interests into 
 its keeping— the Manchester, Sheffield, and Lincolnshire— held aloof 
 from the whole affair. 
 
 Thus it came about that, at this early stage in the contest for the 
 possession of the Metropolitan coal market, Derbyshire was able to 
 enter the lists with its full geographical advantage secured to it in 
 terms of shillings and pence— an average advantage of \s, 4^. in its 
 rates to London fixed for " five years certain," and unalterable except 
 after reference to arbitration— and under these circumstances what 
 under other conditions might have proved a fierce fight between the 
 two coalfields became simply a " walk over " for the nearer one. True 
 that, as already said, the South Yorkshire had in the years before 
 the agreement of 1863 contended with some success, thanks to the 
 better quality of its coal and other advantages, against a higher 
 "differential" than \s. 4^.— at one time, indeed, it had been as high 
 as 2s. 2d.\ but in those years the Derbyshire field had been com- 
 paratively undeveloped, the Midland's facilities for sending the coal 
 to London had been much less than they had since become, and 
 there had been periodical outbreaks of "rate cutting" which had 
 made the higher differential not a thing to be depended upon. From 
 1863 onwards all this was changed. The differential was fixed; the 
 
 1868 
 
 "SOMETHING MUST BE DONE'* 
 
 239 
 
 Midland had its own coal depot in London ; there was an alternative 
 Great Northern route available via Nottingham, and there was the 
 stimulating prospect of the speedy opening of the Midland's own 
 Bedford to London line. Under these circumstances it was not sur- 
 prising that in the years immediately following 1863 very many new 
 pits were sunk in the Derbyshire district with the special view of 
 supplying the London market. 
 
 As often happens in such cases, several exceptional circumstances 
 contributed to "fill up the cup" of South Yorkshire's misfortunes. 
 It was harassed by labour troubles, from which Derbyshire remained 
 happily exempt ; a more than usually terrible accident occurred at 
 one of the principal pits, the financial crisis of 1866 was followed by 
 general depression of trade, and then, on the top of all, came the 
 exceptionally mild winter of 1867-8, followed by an exceptionally hot 
 spring and summer, in consequence of which the house-coal trade 
 became very slack. Trade depression and slackness, it is true, were 
 influences which affected all coalfields alike ; but whereas Derbyshire 
 could console itself that, when a revival came, the opening of the 
 Midland's line to London (which took place in 1868) would place 
 it in a specially favourable position to take advantage of it, South 
 Yorkshire had no such consolation. It saw in the Midland's new 
 line, on the contrary, an additional "handicap" to competition. As 
 regards the London market, the position of South Yorkshire had 
 become desperate, and Mr. Seymour Clarke voiced a very general 
 sentiment when in writing on i September, 1868, to Mr. Underdown, 
 the general manager of the Sheffield, he said : " Something must be 
 done if the South Yorkshire trade is to be kept together." 
 
 Of course, the obvious "something" to be done was to make a 
 reduction in the South Yorkshire rate, and this, in fact, was what 
 Mr. Clarke suggested to Mr. Underdown. " If," wrote he, " we will 
 undertake to carry South Yorkshire coal at a rate that will give us 
 no more than we get for Durham coal, say \d. per ton per mile, will 
 your Company take \5. toll (instead of \s. 4^.) from all collieries 
 to Doncaster? This matter will come up for discussion at the 
 London Conference on Monday. Please reply as early as you can." 
 
 The London Conference mentioned in this letter was an association 
 of directors and general managers which had been formed a few 
 months before, with a view to the amicable settlement of questions 
 affecting the interests of railways generally, and before this tribunal 
 the general question of "equitable adjustment" of coal rates to 
 collieries had already been raised by Mr. Clarke, with the view of 
 re-opening the specific problem of South Yorkshire v. Derbyshire. 
 
 I 
 
 I 
 
 If 
 
i 
 
 t 
 
 t 
 
 
 
 240 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 Before carrying the matter further, however, he naturally wished to 
 know what attitude the Sheffield Company would take up. Would it 
 repeat its aloofness of 1863, or was it ready to second an effort on 
 behalf of the declining trade of South Yorkshire ? 
 
 This question, however, the Sheffield could not answer off-hand 
 Mr. Ijnderdown, in the first place, had to consult his chairman, and 
 Mr. Watkin was too busy with a hundred other matters-South 
 Eastern, Grand Trunk, Great Eastern, Humber Ironworks, and 
 receivmg the honour of knigthood from the Queen-to give the subject 
 attention at once. In the second place, when he did give it attention, 
 there was the old question of the "commercial" use of the South 
 Yorkshire lease as against its "political" use to be carefully weighed 
 Commercially, the Sheffield Company had suffered a heavy loss from 
 the lease; even the large coal traffic which it had developed from 
 South Yorkshire to Grimsby had not made up for this, because it was 
 ' hard coal " chiefly that was wanted at Grimsby, while for the soft coal 
 7u^ tT^. coal-which had to be mined at the same time, the 
 Sheffield had been able to open up no sufficiently large markets on its 
 own system. Commercially, therefore, an improvement in the South 
 Yorkshire trade to London was very desirable in the Sheffield's interest 
 but Sir Edward Watkin was not disposed to purchase that improvement 
 at the cost of too great a "political " concession to the Great Northern 
 Consequently, before Mr. Seymour Clarke got his answer, a lot 
 of discussion had to take place, and possibly he would not have 
 received a favourable answer at all, had not a new influence in the 
 meantime been brought to bear. This took the shape of a memorial 
 from the South Yorkshire coalowners-the " culmination " of com- 
 plaints they had been making during the previous few years In 
 this they represented that their trade was "seriously suffering from 
 the very heavy and unequal rates imposed on South Yorkshire coal 
 compared with the rates between London and the Derbyshire and 
 Durham coalfields," and they assured the directors of the Sheffield 
 and Great Northern companies that unless a remedy could be applied 
 they would be "compelled to take steps permanently to curtail 
 the get of coal " at their collieries. This memorial was signed by 
 Earl Fitzwilliam, Lord Whamcliffe, and all the principal coalowners 
 of the district; but the leader of the movement, the reader will 
 not be surprised to hear, was Mr. Robert Baxter, who, moreover 
 acted as spokesman to a deputation which presented the memorial 
 to the Great Northern Board on 5 January, 1869. 
 
 The Great Northern directors, of course, answered that they were 
 already bringing pressure on the Sheffield Company for the relief of 
 
 1869 
 
 "WHY NOT GO TO ARBITRATION?" 
 
 241 
 
 South Yorkshire, and recommended the coalowners to concentrate 
 their influence upon that quarter. The result was that about a 
 month later, 9 February, 1869, the basis of a combined effort on 
 behalf of the South Yorkshire coalfield was arranged between Sir 
 Edward Watkin and Colonel Packe. Under the agreement then made 
 the Great Northern obtained, for the first time in its history, the 
 power to fix a through rate on a uniform scale per mile from the 
 South Yorkshire collieries to London, the Sheffield agreeing to 
 exchange its fixed toll of is. ^d. for a proportion of this new through 
 rate equal to thirty miles— its actual distance, it will be remembered, 
 was sixteen miles — with a minimum of is. " If, however," the 
 memorandum significantly added, " the rate, in competition with 
 the Midland, is reduced so low as \d. per ton per mile, then the 
 Sheffield Company's minimum shall be lod" 
 
 That they made this last proviso shows that the allied companies 
 fully anticipated a fight with the Midland ; nevertheless, the Great 
 Northern directors did their utmost to avert hostilities. On the very 
 next day after the signing of the agreement between Colonel Packe 
 and Sir Edward Watkin, Mr. Oakley, the Great Northern secretary, was 
 instructed to write to the Midland Board inviting it to appoint a 
 deputation to confer with a deputation from the Great Northern Board 
 "with a view to a re-arrangement of the rates for the coal traffic of the two 
 Companies to London on a more equitable basis than at present exists," 
 as a preliminary to the general discussion of the question of coal rates 
 which had been fixed to take place at the London Conference in the 
 following April. " I am further explicitly to state," wrote Mr. Oakley, 
 "that this invitation is given in the most friendly spirit and with a 
 sincere desire to meet the present difficulties by a fair and businesslike 
 settlement." 
 
 But Mr. Allport and his directors, on their part, were conscious 
 of no " present difficulties," nor had they any desire to re-arrange the 
 rates either in a friendly spirit or otherwise. In their opinion " a fair 
 and businesslike settlement" already existed under the agreement 
 of 1863. If the new points which the Great Northern wished to 
 raise affected the railway interest in general, then they might be dis- 
 cussed, as arranged, at the London Conference. But if a revision 
 of the agreement of 1863 was what the Great Northern really wanted, 
 then it ought to take the steps to this end which were provided by that 
 agreement itself. The agreement provided for a reference to arbitra- 
 tion in case of any difference arising in regard to the matters dealt with 
 under it. Why, then, did the Great Northern not go to arbitration ? 
 This, in substance, was the answer which the Great Northern got 
 
 ir 
 

 I 
 
 1-* 
 
 f 
 
 242 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 to the above letter and also at the April meeting of the London 
 Conference. Thereupon Mr. Seymour Clarke announced that his 
 directors accepted the situation, and would go to arbitration. 
 
 The effect of this decision, of course, was that, pending the arbitra- 
 tion, no effect could be given to the agreement made between Colonel 
 Packe and Sir Edward Watkin, and this gave the latter an opening 
 of which he was not slow to make use. At the next meeting of the 
 Great Northern and Manchester, Sheffield, and Lincolnshire Joint 
 Committee, held on 12 May, 1869, he told the Great Northern 
 representatives bluntly that if the existing state of things in South 
 Yorkshire was not shortly remedied the Sheffield Company would be 
 " compelled to liberate the coalfield " by the construction of a new line 
 to connect with the Great Eastern. 
 
 This threat was the more serious because Sir Edward Watkin, 
 besides being the Sheffield chairman, was now also a director of the 
 Great Eastern, having been elected to a seat on its Board as the result 
 of the second "Shoreditch revolution" — the "change of ministry" 
 which, the reader remembers, upset the agreement made with the 
 Great Northern in August, 1867. Sir Edward was not supreme at 
 Shoreditch, it was true ; for the shareholders, having been so fortunate 
 as to secure the services of Lord Cranborne (who almost immediately 
 became, and still is, Marquis of Salisbury) had preferred to elect ///>//, 
 and not Mr. Watkin, as their chairman. But, on the other hand, the 
 Marquis of Salisbury was in favour of a forward policy. " We are 
 poor at present," he said in reference to a temporary traffic arrange- 
 ment made with the Great Northern in June, 1868, "and so must 
 put up with what other people give us, but we mean some time to have 
 a line of our own to the North." And so, with Sir Edward Watkin on 
 its Board and the possibility of an alliance with the Sheffield to 
 stimulate it, there was no knowing what the Great Eastern might 
 not do. However, the Great Northern was now committed to the 
 arbitration, and had to go through with it. If it could convince the 
 arbitrator that the obnoxious differential must be reduced and so make 
 its peace with the South Yorkshire coalowners, all might yet be well. 
 
 Meantime, while the preliminaries of the arbitration were being 
 settled by the lawyers, another very important question pressed for 
 attention at the Great Northern and other Boards. At the end of this 
 year, 1869, the English and Scotch Alliance was to expire by lapse 
 of time — what, if anything, was to take its place ? Since the decision 
 in the Midland's favour of the Chancery suit of 1866, the "pooling" 
 provided for under the alliance had been confined to the traffic of the 
 two coast routes, whilst the traffic of the central route had been 
 
 1S69 
 
 AN ANGLO-SCOTCH CRISIS 
 
 2+3 
 
 divided by mileage between the companies carrying it. Should a new 
 agreement now be made to include all three routes in a pool, or should 
 pooling and percentage division be in the future dispensed with and 
 the companies owning the several routes be allowed to compete freely 
 for the traffic and retain all that they got according to mileage, subject 
 to an agreement to charge equal rates and fares? This was the new 
 question which for the time being superseded that of coal rates in 
 interest for the Great Northern and other Boards. 
 
 Amid much that was uncertain, as to one thing at least there could 
 be no two opinions at King's Cross — that, in view of either contin- 
 gency, the East Coast companies must show that they could hold their 
 own. A serious difficulty in regard to this, however, was the position of 
 the North British. The financial storm of 1866 had worked havoc upon 
 
 in 
 
 Express Passenger Engine "7' o" Single." 
 
 BUILT FROM MR. STIRLING'S DESIGNS IN 1868. 
 
 many railway companies, but the North British had felt its effect most 
 of all. Its ambitious chairman, Mr. Richard Hodgson — "the Scotch 
 Hudson" — had fallen; the Forth Bridge had gone under financially 
 even before its engineer, Mr. Bouch, had been able to sink an 
 experimental pier; and then, in a violent reaction from its former 
 aggressive policy, the North British had actually entered into "a 
 common-purse agreement" with the Caledonian. Fortunately, how- 
 ever, as we already know, the Great Northern and North Eastern had 
 foreseen and provided against such a contingency as this, and now 
 at this critical juncture in the Anglo-Scotch traffic arrangements they 
 brought the remedy they had provided into play. From the beginning 
 of June, 1869, the North Eastern began to use its running powers 
 between Berwick and Edinburgh for the joint traffic, and, together 
 with the Great Northern, it enforced the independent facilities which 
 the two companies had obtained in 1865-6 as regards the lines 
 beyond the Scotch capital. The result was that the public got a 
 ten-hour service between London and Edinburgh, a new train being 
 
M! 
 
 ,J! 
 
 244 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 put on — the Aberdeen racing train of the future — which left King's 
 Cross at 8 p.m., and was timed to reach York at 12.40, Edinburgh 
 at 6.5, Perth at 8.59, and Aberdeen at 12.20. 
 
 Hardly had these arrangements been made when it became evident 
 that no renewal of the English and Scotch Alliance would be carried 
 out. The fact was that as a preventative of competition "pooling" 
 had proved a complete failure. Unable by competition to increase 
 immediately their share of the " pooled " traffic, the companies, never- 
 theless, had been afraid to cease to compete, lest they should be 
 unable to enforce their claim to a proper share when a revision of the 
 pool had to be made. It is true that equality and stability of rates and 
 fares had throughout been secured, but this had been obtained just as 
 well in regard to other competitive traffic by a simple agreement to 
 charge equally. Under these circumstances the prevention of "ruinous 
 competition " could no longer be put fon\'ard with any show of reason 
 as necessitating " pooling " ; and, on the other hand, the policy which, 
 as we have several times before pointed out, had been the real basis 
 upon which the Gladstone, Octuple and English and Scotch pools 
 were all formed — the "protectionist" policy invented by Captain 
 Huish — was by this time utterly discredited. It is not surprising, 
 therefore, to find that, from 30 June, 1869, the last of these cum- 
 brous arrangements — the English and Scotch Alliance — was put an 
 end to " by mutual consent," and its place taken by a simple agreement 
 to charge equal rates and fares between competitive points. The Great 
 Northern benefited immediately by this change, because the traffic it 
 had actually carried had throughout been in excess of the percentages 
 allotted to it under the agreements. 
 
 In July, 1869, the arbitration upon the Coal Traffic Agreement of 
 1863 commenced, the arbitrator being Sir John Karslake, the Attorney- 
 General of the day. The appointment of a lawyer instead of a practical 
 railway man for an arbitration of this character was subsequently 
 condemned in strong terms by Mr. Denison, q.c, lawyer though he 
 was himself, and the choice of Sir John Karslake for the work certainly 
 had this drawback, that, being a man much engaged with other matters, 
 he was able only at long intervals to give days for the hearing. Two 
 meetings were held before him in July, 1869, two more in October, 
 one in January, 1870, one in February, and one in May, when the 
 evidence of the railway managers, coalowners, and others was at last 
 concluded, but even then the parties had to wait three months longer 
 for the award. 
 
 During this period of thirteen months, of course, a great many 
 things happened; but the only one which it is important for us to 
 
 ,870 RETIREMENT OF MR. SEYMOUR CLARKE 245 
 
 note here is the resignation of Mr. Seymour Clarke. About the time 
 of the commencement of the arbitration his health had again broken 
 down, and after waiting for nearly twelve months, in the hope that it 
 might recover, the directors were reluctantly obliged to accept his 
 resignation and to fill the vacant general managership by the appoint- 
 ment of Mr. Oakley, who had been in the service of the Company 
 since 1849, and its secretary since 1858. As we have already noted, 
 it is to Mr. Seymour Clarke, next to Mr. Denison, that credit must be 
 given for the very notable success which the Great Northern Railway 
 had achieved since it began its career as a 
 carrier from London in 1850. Through- 
 out the whole of these twenty years Mr. 
 Clarke had been its general manager, and 
 he had done his work in such a way as 
 not only to satisfy the shareholders, but 
 to serve the travelling public in no 
 ordinary degree. 
 
 On 22 August, 1870 — two days after 
 the Great Northern half-yearly meeting, 
 at which Mr. Seymour Clarke's resigna- 
 tion was announced— Sir John Karslake's 
 award was published. It proved to be 
 as short as the proceedings incident to 
 it had been long. After rehearsing the 
 circumstances under which the reference 
 to him had been made, the Attorney- 
 General said : " I award that no alteration 
 be made in the rates for coals in the said 
 agreement or submission to arbitration 
 mentioned and referred to." Being a wise man he did not name 
 his reasons for this decision, but it appeared that the argument 
 that had most weight with him was that, as already pointed out, 
 the Great Northern was charging less per mile on South Yorkshire 
 coals from Doncaster to London than the Midland was charging on 
 Derbyshire coals from Clay Cross to St. Pancras, and this being so he 
 did not think that it would be an " equitable adjustment " for the Great 
 Northern's rate to be further reduced. The fact that the Sheffield 
 Company's high toll for its "short haul" made the throughout rate 
 per mile on the South Yorkshire coal actually higher than the Derby- 
 shire throughout rate despite the longer distance of the former from the 
 market. Sir John Karslake seems to have thought it right to leave out 
 of account, seeing that the Sheffield Company was not a party to the 
 
 Mr. Seymour Clarke, 
 
 general manager of the 
 
 great northern railway, 1850-187o. 
 
 i 
 ? 
 
^¥ 
 
 \l 
 
 fl^ 
 
 I': 
 
 it» 
 
 H 
 
 246 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 arbitration. In other words, he interpreted the phrase " equitable 
 adjustment " as having reference only to the charges made by the Great 
 Northern and Midland companies. He ignored the action of the 
 Shefifield Company, and by so doing failed to give any weight to the 
 larger meaning of "equitable adjustment" — the putting of the two 
 coalfields on a fair footing to compete in the London market. 
 
 Thus the net result of the proceedings, which from first to last had 
 consumed sixteen months, was «// as far as relief to the South Yorkshire 
 coalfield was concerned ; and, needless to say, such a result could not 
 be the end of the matter. Mr. Allport, of course, was thoroughly 
 satisfied to let it rest where it was, and so also might the Great 
 Northern have been — for were they not also in the Derbyshire field? 
 But there were two other parties — the South Yorkshire coalowners and 
 the Shefifield Company — to be reckoned with, parties represented by 
 such formidable champions as Mr. Baxter and Sir Edward Watkin, and 
 the latter took immediate action. " The untoward award of Sir John 
 Karslake," he wrote to Colonel Packe on 3 September, 1870, "com- 
 pels me to ask what your Board have to propose in reference to the 
 South Yorkshire coalfield, which cannot be allowed to be closed as 
 respects the London market '' ; and when no reply came in time for 
 the Sheffield Board meeting, he telegraphed for one to be sent back 
 by wire. "Subject referred to a committee" was the answer he 
 received from King's Cross (9 September, 1870). 
 
 At a Cheshire Lines Committee on 21 September, when Sheffield, 
 Great Northern, and Midland representatives all met. Colonel Packe 
 and Sir Edward Watkin arranged that the latter should attend a 
 conference at King's Cross at the end of the month ; but before that 
 meeting took place the South Yorkshire coalowners had taken the field. 
 At a meeting at Barnsley on 27 September a deputation consisting of 
 Messrs. Baxter, Bartholomew, and eight others was appointed to take 
 immediate steps to contest the right of railway companies to act on 
 the principles confirmed by the award, and the prompt remedy was 
 resolved upon of negotiating with the Sheffield Company for a specially 
 low rate to the port of Grimsby, so that by steamers (which it was 
 proposed, if necessary, to charter for the purpose) South Yorkshire coal 
 might be sent to London by sea. At the same time "some astute 
 coalowner" — perhaps Mr. Baxter— suggested that, having regard to the 
 fact that the rates agreed between the Great Northern and Midland in 
 1863 included one from Retford to London (fixed for the benefit 
 of a few collieries near the former place) which was 7^. less than the 
 much-abused rate from Doncaster, some advantage might be gained 
 if the Sheffield could be persuaded to make Retford instead of 
 
 1870 
 
 THE RETFORD ARTIFICE 
 
 247 
 
 Doncaster in future its chief place of delivery of coal to the Great 
 Northern. But an objection to this, of course, was that the route from 
 South Yorkshire to Retford was very circuitous. 
 
 On the following day (28 September, 1870) the deputation of coal- 
 owners headed by Mr. Baxter waited upon Sir Edward Watkin, when 
 the Grimsby and Retford suggestions were then both discussed. To the 
 former Sir Edward willingly acceded, agreeing to make a special rate of 
 IS. 2d. per ton from South Yorkshire to Grimsby plus a proportion of 
 the profit, if any, on the sale of the coal in London ; and, with regard 
 to the suggested delivery to the Great Northern at Retford, he men- 
 tioned that his company would be shortly opening a new piece of line 
 at Mexborough which would shorten the distance for them. He added, 
 however, that he doubted whether the plan would be of any real service. 
 Meanwhile the Retford suggestion had reached the directors at King's 
 Cross and had been rather eagerly caught at by them as a means of 
 extricating themselves from the " mess "—the word is Colonel Packe's 
 —in which they felt themselves to be. So when on 29 September Sir 
 Edward Watkin arrived to keep his engagement to meet them, one of 
 the first things he was asked was : " Can you deliver the coal to us at 
 Retford? because, if so, we feel ourselves fully at liberty to take it on at the 
 lower Retford rate." Upon Sir Edward Watkin answering that, though 
 the thing would be awkward until the new Mexborough line was opened, 
 nevertheless it might be done from some of the nearer South Yorkshire 
 pits at any rate, the matter was clinched there and then. Accordingly 
 next day Mr. Underdown wrote to the coalowners* announcing this, 
 and stating the readiness of the Sheffield Company to perform the 
 carriage to Retford for u.— a reduction of A,d. on its Doncaster toll, 
 which, added to the id. difference between the Great Northern's 
 Retford and Doncaster rates, would make a total reduction of \\d. in 
 the through rate,— provided that the coalowners would agree to reduce 
 their prices for the London market by 2s. per ton— /.^., to make an 
 additional sacrifice themselves of \s. \d. On 4 October, 1870, the 
 coalowners again met at Barnsley and decided to accept this proposal. 
 
 One day during this first week of October, 1870, it chanced that Mr. 
 Allport and Mr. Oakley drove together in a cab to attend a meeting at 
 the Great Eastern offices at Shoreditch. The conversation, naturally 
 enough, turned upon Sir John Karslake's award, and Mr. Allport, 
 
 • Afterwards, when the wrath of the Midland broke, Sir E. Watkin tried hard to 
 prove that this Retford artifice was first suggested by the Great Northern at his 
 meeting with them on 29 September, but that it had been previously discussed 
 between the Sheffield and the coalowners is conclusively proved by Mr. Underdown 
 writing to the latter about it on 30 September as of a thing already known to them. 
 
t^;^ 
 
 
 248 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 as Mr. Oakley thought, began to "crow" about the result of the 
 arbitration. " I flatter myself," said he, " that I know more about the 
 coal traffic than any of the managers ; even Clarke himself, I think, 
 never understood it properly." Thereupon the desire arose in Mr. 
 Oakley's mind to "disturb," as he afterw^ards said, such "amiable self- 
 satisfaction " ; and, knowing as he did that by the diversion to Retford 
 the differential in favour of Derbyshire was to be reduced from is. ^d. 
 to $d. without any breach of the agreement of 1863, he retorted: 
 " Wait a bit ! We may circumvent you yet." The remark struck the 
 Midland manager at the time as " foreshadowing some action," but he 
 afterwards dismissed it as " a mere playful expression, not to be taken 
 seriously." 
 
 It recurred to his mind, however, on the morning of Monday, 
 8 October, when he found in that day's Leeds Mermry a report of the 
 coalowners' meeting at Barnsley, already referred to, which stated that 
 in accordance with Mr. Underdown's letter, promising a reduction 
 in the rate, it had been decided to reduce the price of coal sent via 
 Retford by 2s. a ton, " to enable the South Yorkshire owners to meet 
 the competition of the Derbyshire and North of England collieries 
 in the London market." Mr. Allport's immediate action was to write 
 a peremptory letter to Mr. Oakley. " We cannot assent," said he, " to 
 the terms of our agreement being evaded in this way. The present 
 rate for South Yorkshire coal to London is 8j. 2d. a ton, and it will be 
 necessary for you to charge from Retford whatever rate will, with the 
 reduced charge of the Manchester, Sheffield, and Lincolnshire Com- 
 pany, bring the rate to that amount. I shall be glad to hear from 
 you by return that you will do this, and that it is not the intention of 
 your Company to assist the South Yorkshire colliery owners or the 
 Manchester, Sheffield, and Lincolnshire Company in evading our 
 agreement with you." 
 
 Needless to say, the Great Northern authorities did not admit either 
 that the agreement was being "evaded," or that they were under 
 obligation to raise the agreed Retford rate, and, as Mr. Oakley had 
 gone away for a short holiday, Mr. Allport got no answer whatever 
 to his letter. He waited for a fortnight, and then upon pressure from 
 Derbyshire coalowners who represented that the report of a reduction 
 in the South Yorkshire rate was already stopping their trade, he wrote 
 again, on 24 October, 1870, both to Mr. Oakley and to Sir Edward 
 Watkin, threatening reprisals if the request made in his former letter 
 was not promptly attended to. The Great Northern manager now 
 replied that the matter had not seemed to him to be pressing, 
 as very little coal had yet passed by Retford, but that he would be 
 
 1870 
 
 MR. OAKLEY BETWEEN TWO FIRES 
 
 249 
 
 pleased to see Mr. Allport on the subject at King's Cross on the 
 following Friday, before the meeting of the Great Northern Board. 
 
 The position of the newly-made Great Northern manager was 
 undoubtedly a trying one. He was between two fires-fires directed 
 by two of the most experienced and adroit campaigners who have ever 
 borne arms in railway warfare. 
 
 On Friday, 28 October, Mr. Allport came to King's Cross more 
 peremptory than ever in his demands, and, hardly had he strode out 
 of Mr. Oakley's room, indignant at the " meagre answers " he had 
 received, and declaring that he should strongly advise his Board to 
 reduce at once their rates for Derbyshire coal to London, than there 
 came an equally peremptory telegram from Sir Edward Watkm :— 
 
 "As your Board is sitting, please answer the following question 
 specifically : If we lower the South Yorkshire toll, will you become 
 bound to keep the rates from Doncaster and Retford at their present 
 amount without augmentation ? " 
 
 "Promise to increase the Retford rate!" Mr. Allport thundered. 
 " Promise not to increase it ! " demanded Sir Edward Watkin. We 
 will do " nothing contrary to the agreement with the Midland," was all 
 the Great Northern Board could reply to Sir Edward Watkin. " We 
 will go again to Sir John Karslake, if you like, and ask him if under 
 the circumstances we are bound to raise the Retford rate," was the 
 utmost concession they could make to Mr. Allport. 
 
 And, as if Mr. Allport and Sir Edward Watkin were not enough, 
 there were Messrs. Baxter and Bartholomew also to be reckoned with 
 the Busy B's who were proving more than ever worthy of their nick- 
 name. They had carried through the Retford artifice, and had arranged 
 also for a service of boats from Grimsby, but these were temporary 
 measures only. Something more was needed to " liberate " the South 
 Yorkshire coalfield permanently, and in their own minds Messrs. Baxter 
 and Bartholomew had already decided what that something was to be. 
 The "coal line" of 1864 was to be revived, and revived, too, in the 
 next session of Parliament. Some men would have thought it im- 
 possible to deposit in November the plans of a line the promotion 
 of which they had not resolved upon until October. Not so the 
 Busy B's. If the Sheffield and Great Eastern companies would assist, 
 the thing could be done, and they had already broached the subject to 
 Sir Edward Watkin. The result was that, when on i November, 
 1870, Mr. Allport wrote again to Mr. Oakley complaining of the "non- 
 • chalance " with which, in his opinion, the Great Northern was treating 
 the coal question, the Great Northern manager could retort that it was 
 not he, but Mr. Allport who did not appreciate the "only really 
 
 >i 
 
 h 
 
1^ 
 
 2 5° HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 i 
 
 n 
 
 ' I 
 
 < 
 
 i 
 
 serious " point. " This," he added, " you will probably admit, when 
 you know that Messrs. Watkin, Baxter, and Bartholomew met at 
 Doncaster on Saturday last, and decided to apply for a new line on 
 the east of our own. Mr. Johnson, our engineer, tells me to-day " 
 (2 November) "that he met one of their surveyors measuring near 
 Sleaford yesterday. I forbear from further words lest I should 
 aggravate the position." 
 
 Mr. Allport, however, refused to swerve in the least from the position 
 which he had all along taken up. In his view the maintenance of the 
 difference of is. 4^. in the rates was absolutely necessary for the pro- 
 tection of the Derbyshire coal traffic, and this difference the Great 
 Northern had, he said, agreed to preserve under all circumstances. 
 The justice of this agreement, moreover, had been confirmed after 
 prolonged arbitration proceedings. Yet by the diversion of the 
 traffic to Retford the spirit of it was being broken— and not only 
 the spirit but the letter, for was there not a clause in the agreement 
 directed against "booking short," which "expressly provided against 
 the very mode of evasion which was now being attempted?" What, 
 under such circumstances, could the Midland do but retaliate ? So on 
 9 November, 1870, its Board decided, on Mr. Allport's advice, to 
 reduce its Derbyshire rates by the same amount by which the South 
 Yorkshire rate had been reduced by the Retford artifice, viz., iij^., so 
 as to bring back the differential again to is. 4^. 
 
 This meant the commencement of a rate war, and it filled the 
 Board-room of every northern railway with excitement. A special 
 meeting of the Great Northern directors was hastily summoned, but 
 before it could meet Sir Edward Watkin had time to write to Colonel 
 Packe to know whether the Doncaster and Retford rates would be 
 reduced to meet the Midland reduction, and the day of the Great 
 Northern meeting he twice telegraphed the same inquiry. The Great 
 Northern Board replied that they were fonvarding a resolution to the 
 Midland expressing their willingness to return to the s/a/us quo before 
 the Retford diversion, if the Midland would consent to a new arbitra- 
 tion. "Do you mean that you are going back to the is. 4//. 
 differential?" responded Sir Edward at once. "We mean what our 
 resolution says," replied Mr. Oakley. 
 
 But after all it was impossible for the Great Northern to avoid 
 following up the fight. The Midland would hear of no new arbitra- 
 tion, and so before November was out not only was the Great Northern 
 obliged to reduce its Derbyshire rates, but the London and North 
 Western, Great Western, and Great Eastern also found it necessary 
 to make reductions in their coal charges. Lord Salisbury, on behalf 
 
 ,870 BAXTER, WATKIN, AND GREAT EASTERN 251 
 
 of the Great Eastern, Mr. H. S. Thompson of the North Eastern, and 
 Sir Edward Watkin, all pressed for a reference to a " practical umpire," 
 but in vain. On 7 December, 1870, the Midland Board passed a 
 resolution " respectfully but firmly declining any arbitration or media- 
 tion which directly or indirectly reopens Sir J. Karslake's award," 
 and declaring that the agreement of 1863 had been made void by the 
 Great Northern's evasion of it, and on 20 December the Great Northern 
 retorted with a counter resolution accepting this position so far as the 
 termination of the agreement was concerned. 
 
 Up to this time, despite all Sir Edward Watkin's hustling, the Great 
 Northern had made no reduction in its rate from South Yorkshire 
 beyond the id. which the diversion to Retford had brought about ; but 
 now that the agreement of 1863 was formally at an end, its directors 
 felt quite free to alter the rate as they liked. They lost no time, 
 therefore, in making their new freedom known to the South Yorkshire 
 coalowners and to the Sheffield Company, with the view, if possible, of 
 making their peace with these parties. The matter was the more 
 urgent because amongst the deposit of new Bills for the session of 
 187 1 appeared one for a line from the Great Eastern system at 
 Long Stanton— the same point whence, it may be remembered, the 
 line of 1864 had been planned to start— to a junction with the 
 Manchester, Sheffield, and Lincolnshire system near Market Rasen in 
 Lincolnshire, and there could be no doubt that this was the outcome 
 of some sort of agreement between Mr. Baxter, Sir Edward Watkin, 
 
 and the Great Eastern. 
 
 But though the Great Northern was now free to fix what rates 
 from South Yorkshire it liked, nevertheless the crucial point remained 
 as before— what relation was the South Yorkshire rate to bear to 
 the Derbyshire rate— and, as before also, this depended largely upon 
 what share in the through South Yorkshire rate the Sheffield Company 
 intended to exact. Two years before, it will be remembered, prior to 
 the arbitration proceedings, and when the Great Northern had hoped 
 to get a re-adjustment of the rates through the medium of the London 
 Conference, Sir Edward Watkin had agreed that the Sheffield should 
 commute its \d. per mile toll for a proportion equal to thirty miles 
 —nearly double its actual mileage— of whatever through rate the 
 Great Northern might fix. This agreement, accordingly, the latter 
 now proposed to enforce, but with the proviso that, in view of the 
 lowness of the existing rates and the likelihood of further competi- 
 tive reductions on the part of the Midland, the minimum of \od. 
 for which Sir Edward Watkin had stipulated in 1869 should be 
 reduced to %d. If the Sheffield Company will agree to this, said the 
 
 4 
 
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 ;1 I 
 
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252 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 Great Northern to the coalowners, we will undertake to make the 
 differential between the South Yorkshire rate and the Midland rate 
 from Clay Cross Sd. only, instead of the is. ^d. of which you have 
 so much complained. 
 
 These proposals were discussed at meetings held between repre- 
 sentatives of the Great Northern, the Sheffield, and the coalowners 
 at Leeds on 29 and 30 December, 1870. The outcome was that, 
 upon the Sheffield agreeing to accept the ^d. minimum "for a trial 
 period of three months," the Great Northern from the beginning of 
 the new year reduced the South Yorkshire rate so as to bring the 
 differential down to 8^. as agreed. The Midland Company promptly 
 responded on 5 January, 187 1, with a reduction of its Derbyshire 
 rates to bring it back again to is. 4//., and so on 16 January the Great 
 Northern had to take a further ^d. off South Yorkshire, besides, of 
 course, reducing for Derbyshire also. Not to be daunted, the Midland 
 on 2 February took off yet another 8^. off Derbyshire, making a total 
 reduction of 2s. ^d. per ton since the beginning of the " war." 
 
 This was "ruinous competition" indeed, and the Great Northern 
 felt bound to pause before continuing. In the first place, every new 
 reduction meant simply a fresh present to the coalowners and coal- 
 merchants— for, owing to a very exceptional demand for coal at this 
 time, the consumer was obtaining little, if any benefit. In the 
 second place, the effort which the Great Northern had already made 
 on behalf of South Yorkshire had not apparently had the smallest 
 effect in improving the attitude towards it of Mr. Baxter and Sir E. 
 Watkin. Mr. Baxter had gone away hurriedly from the meeting at 
 Leeds, had taken no notice of a letter Mr. Oakley had sent after him 
 asking for his co-operation in the campaign upon which the Great 
 Northern was about to enter, and was apparently as bent as ever on 
 prosecuting his new coal line. Sir Edward Watkin had given a very 
 grudging assent to the Sheffield's minimum being reduced to 8//., and 
 when writing on 30 December, 1870, to give this, he had told 
 Colonel Packe that the Great Northern must give "some guarantee 
 and security for the future freedom" of the South Yorkshire traffic 
 if they wished to " obviate the necessity " of the Sheffield " energeti- 
 cally promoting an independent means of communication." What he 
 meant by this he had revealed explicitly in a second letter (9 January, 
 187 1 ), in which he expressed "no doubt that the directors of the 
 Sheffield Company would recommend their proprietors to be satisfied 
 for the present with full running powers for mineral traffic over the 
 Great Northern lines south of Doncaster and Lincoln," and in a third 
 letter, written three days later, he had asked for "a frank and specific 
 
 187 1 
 
 G.N.R. EXCLUDED FROM DERBYSHIRE 
 
 253 
 
 answer " to this, " yes or no," on the following Friday. If you refuse 
 such obviously needful and just safeguards," he wrote, " we have no 
 alternative left but independent access to our market over another 
 
 railway." 
 
 " Another railway " obviously meant Mr. Baxter's new coal Ime, but 
 the Great Northern directors did not allow themselves to be frightened 
 by the threat. They were conscious that they had done, and were 
 doing, their full duty by the South Yorkshire coalfield ; they remem- 
 bered that they had met and beaten Mr. Baxter's coal line already 
 in 1864; and, as for an alliance between the Sheffield and the Great 
 Eastern, it seemed hardly possible that Parliament could sanction such 
 a proceeding in view of the clause in their own " Fifty Years Agree- 
 ment" with the Sheffield— an agreement Parliament had most formally 
 ratified— by which each of the two companies had bound itself not 
 to do any act to the injury of the traffic of the other. Therefore, not 
 only did they not send back an immediate "yes" to Sir Edward 
 Watkin's modest request for running powers to King's Cross, but they 
 kept him waiting two months for his answer, and then told him on 
 12 March, 1870, that they had "failed to discover any reason" for 
 granting what he had asked. On the same day they decided to make 
 yet one more reduction in their South Yorkshire rate to meet the 
 Midland reduction of 2 February, and so bring the differential again 
 to the 8^., to which they had pledged themselves with the coalowners. 
 Thus the Great Northern was still between the two fires— the 
 Midland on the one side, Mr. Baxter and Sir Edward Watkin on the 
 other, and the Midland now brought a new battery into play. At their 
 next Board meeting on 24 March its directors decided not only to 
 reduce their Derbyshire rates by yet another 8^. to bring back the 
 differential to is. J^d., making the total Clay Cross rate 3J. 2d. per ton 
 only, but to withdraw from the Great Northern the through rates into 
 the Derbyshire field which it had enjoyed since 1863. Accordingly 
 on Friday, 30 March, 187 1, they sent their mineral manager to 
 Doncaster to inform the Great Northern mineral manager that from 
 the following Monday, 2 April, coal forwarded from Derbyshire to 
 London via Nottingham and Grantham would have to pay the higher 
 local rate from the pits to Nottingham, which meant that "for all 
 purposes of healthy trade "—to quote Mr. Oakley— the Great Northern 
 was to be excluded from the Derbyshire field. Nor was this a slight 
 loss which its championship of South Yorkshire had brought upon 
 the Great Northern. It meant the cutting off of a trade which had 
 brought in recently quite ^50,000 a year! 
 
 Having thus re-secured its monopoly in Derbyshire the Midland was 
 
 M 
 
 t 
 

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 it 
 
 < I 
 
 I 
 
 254 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 in a position to raise its rates by degrees ; and, as each raising of the 
 Derbyshire rate was thus made, the Great Northern (after making a 
 final reduction of 8^. on 2 April* to meet the Midland reduction of 
 24 March) followed suit by raising the South Yorkshire rate, being 
 careful, however, that the differential should be kept at 2>d. as it had 
 promised. Meanwhile, the Bill for the new line from Long Stanton 
 to Market Rasen— the Coalowners' Associated (London) Railway Bill 
 Mr. Baxter had called it, for no reason, apparently, except that the 
 initials spelt C. O. A. L.— had been formally introduced into Parlia- 
 ment, and on 26 April, 187 1, it came before a Committee of the 
 House of Commons. 
 
 The contest lasted for nearly a month, and it was chiefly remarkable 
 for the "strange bedfellows" it made. The chief witnesses for the 
 Bill were Mr. Baxter— who had also advanced the deposit money 
 and vouched for half the preliminary expenses— Sir Edward Watkin, 
 the Marquis of Salisbury, and Mr. Samuel Swarbrick (lately Midland 
 accountant, but now Great Eastern general manager), and the chief 
 witnesses against it were Mr. Oakley and Mr. Allport ! The new 
 line proved to be so badly laid out that probably under no 
 circumstances would Parliament have sanctioned it; and when the 
 Great Northern offered to give power to the Sheffield and Great 
 Eastern companies jointly to make a through rate for coal from 
 South Yorkshire to Shoreditch over the existing route vid the Great 
 Northern loop line, it was obvious that the construction of a new 
 route could serve no public interest. But Sir Edward Watkin, 
 as Mr. Denison, q.c, said in his most telling speech for the Great 
 Northern, was "equal to the emergency." He was forced to admit 
 that the Great Northern had fought the Midland on behalf of South 
 Yorkshire, and so brought about its own exclusion from the Derby- 
 shire field; nevertheless, he refused to admit that South Yorkshire 
 interests could be safe so long as they were wholly or partly under 
 Great Northern control. "I cannot trust you. I tell you frankly," 
 he said to Mr. Horace Lloyd, the Great Northern counsel (meaning 
 by "you," of course, the Great Northern Company), and upon this 
 text Mr. Denison based the most destructive part of his speech in 
 reply. " I have not invited this issue," he said, " of the confidence 
 in the Manchester, Sheffield Company, or in Sir Edward Watkin 
 personally; but if Sir Edward Watkin chooses to come here and 
 tell a body of gentlemen such as the Great Northern Board that he 
 cannot trust them, he invites inquiry into his own antecedents. I 
 
 ♦ This final reduction brought the South Yorkshire rate down to 3^. lod. per ton 
 for a distance of 1 72 miles. 
 
 1S7, SIR EDWARD WATKIN'S RAILWAY CHARACTER 255 
 
 am merely dealing with him in his railway character— in any other 
 character I have nothing to say to him — but I should like to know 
 if any company in England has done such things as the Manchester, 
 Sheffield have done — hawked itself about as buyer, as seller, as 
 guarantor and guarantee; bribed to shut up their traffic, bribed to 
 open their traffic. There is not a conceivable bargain to which they 
 have not been parties, and here they come to ask to have justice. 
 I only wish it to be administered to them." 
 
 "And now, sir," continued the Great Northern counsel, "what is 
 it that they want? You know from the best authority, that of Sir 
 Edward Watkin himself, what he wants, namely, power to fix Great 
 Northern rates, or power to run over the Great Northern line, with, 
 as you know, a nuisance to sell. When people come to have bofid fide 
 use of a thing they content themselves with facility clauses, but when 
 they ask for absolute running powers they are very often for the 
 purpose of being sold to the persons over whom they are got, as a 
 nuisance. The next time the Manchester, Sheffield, and Lincolnshire 
 Company goes into the market there will be this excellent property 
 to sell— running powers over the Great Northern, valued at I don't 
 know what. The time may come when it may be worth the while of 
 somebody to guarantee them i\ per cent., not with the view of getting 
 that out of it, but for indirect purposes, and that is why he wants 
 the Bill." In short, apart from Mr. Baxter's almost religious 
 enthusiasm for the South Yorkshire coalfield— an enthusiasm which 
 had not been thoroughly well founded even when enlisted in the 
 promotion of the Great Northern itself, and which in a subsequent 
 chapter we shall see openly discounted as "fanaticism" — the case 
 for the Bill rested solely upon the " political " designs of Sir Edward 
 Watkin. Therefore it is not surprising that the Committee declared 
 "the preamble not proved" (23 May, 187 1). 
 
 Thus the Watkin-cum-Baxter battery was silenced for a time, and the 
 Great Northern was free to turn square to face the fire directed by Mr. 
 Allport. 
 
 I 
 
i*' 
 
 f 
 
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 f 
 
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 1 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 THE INVASION OF THE MIDLANDS— 187 1-2. 
 
 WE have noted that the Great Northern, unlike many British 
 railway companies, had passed unscathed through the financial 
 crisis of 1866. Nevertheless, like other companies, it had felt the 
 effect of the timidity and "tightness" which had characterized the 
 money market during the two following years. Accordingly, prior to 
 the half-yearly meeting in February, 1868, the directors — to quote 
 the language of their report—" had felt it their duty to revise carefully 
 the Company's position with the view to reduce the liability for further 
 capital expenditure." Fortunately the more important of the extensions 
 upon which the Company had embarked during the earlier sixties — 
 extensions which between i860 and 1867, as we noted two chapters 
 ago, had increased its capital from about twelve to about twenty 
 millions— had by this time been completed, but still a further liability 
 of over three millions remained unfulfilled This the directors proposed 
 to reduce by about one-third by obtaining from the Board of Trade, 
 under a Railways Relief Act just passed, power to abandon several 
 authorized extensions not yet begun. 
 
 The more important of these were the Sleaford and Bourn line, 
 and the northern part of the Hornsey and Hertford — the part 
 between Enfield and the junction with the Hertford branch at 
 Hertingfordbury,— but in the case of the Sleaford and Bourn the 
 Board of Trade refused the application on the ground that it was 
 unjust to the locality that the Company should thus abandon powers 
 for which it had twice petitioned Parliament. In the other case, 
 however, a warrant of abandonment was duly obtained. Thus the 
 Hornsey and Hertford was made more than ever at variance with its 
 name by being cut down from a loop line to a short suburban branch 
 ending at Enfield. 
 
 The abandonment of the section between Enfield and Hertingford- 
 bury, however, was sanctioned only upon the condition that the 
 southern part of the scheme should be carried out within the time pre- 
 
 256 
 
 1868-9 
 
 THE CITY AND SUBURBAN TRAFFIC 
 
 257 
 
 scribed by the original Act. Accordingly, early in 1869 the works of 
 this, 4j miles in length, were let to Mr. Joseph Firbank. The 
 new branch was to leave the main trunk at Wood Green, a mile north 
 of Hornsey (there had been a small station at Wood Green since 
 i860), and the contract included also the laying of a duplicate pair of 
 tracks from Wood Green southwards as far as Seven Sisters Road. 
 These, with the duplicate lines already laid south of Seven Sisters 
 Road in connection with the Edgware and Highgate branch, were 
 to make four tracks all the way from Wood Green to the mouth of 
 Copenhagen Tunnel. 
 
 The widening of this tunnel itself, however, was, like the "loop" 
 duplication between Hornsey and Welwyn, postponed for a time, but 
 it had become obvious, despite the now complete withdrawal of the 
 Midland traffic, that not only this, but the Maiden Lane tunnel also, 
 would have sooner or later to be doubled to provide for the rapid 
 increase of "City and suburban" business. Since i March, 1868, the 
 Great Northern's suburban trains had been working over "the 
 widened lines" between King's Cross and Farringdon Street — 
 lines which the Metropolitan Company had constructed specially 
 for the use of the Great Northern, Midland, and London, Chatham, 
 and Dover, and in joint possession of which those three companies had 
 been confirmed upon their guaranteeing a minimum traffic ; and from 
 I June, 1869, the Great Northern began to work its trains beyond 
 Farringdon Street to and from Moorgate Street — a section of which 
 station it rented from that date as a City terminus. Moreover, from 
 about the same time, by arrangement with the London, Chatham, and 
 Dover Company, it began to run to and from a West-end terminus, 
 Victoria, via Farringdon Street and Blackfriars. 
 
 Quite a feature in the internal history of the Company at this time 
 was the sudden rise into importance of the "Seven Sisters Road 
 Station." In February, 1868, the directors decided to add "a foot- 
 bridge and waiting-shed" to the original wooden platforms opened 
 there in 186 1 ; and when they followed this up a year later by pro- 
 posing an expenditure of ;£ii46 on "waiting-room and covering 
 of platform," some of the shareholders began to protest. " That 
 Seven Sisters Road has become an incubus,' Mr. Seneca Hughes 
 declared. "It is like the weird sisters, or like the daughters of 
 the horse-leech crying, * Give, give ! ' " On the other hand, another 
 shareholder — who had stated that he had "some friends at Colney 
 Hatch" (loud laughter) — protested that if they did not supply a 
 "covering at Seven Sisters suitable for human beings to be protected" 
 it was "rather inhuman to have the station at all." "Why all this fuss 
 
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 258 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 about granting ^1146 for keeping in repair and adorning the Seven 
 Sisters ? " a third speaker put in, " 1 have known two sisters cost 
 double the money." In August, 1869, the new public park adjoining 
 this station was opened, whereupon its name was changed from Seven 
 Sisters Road to Finsbury Park. 
 
 In this same year, 1869, an exceptional expenditure had to be 
 incurred at the passenger terminus, King's Cross. The reader may 
 remember that the roof of this structure had been originally con- 
 structed with wooden girders — bundles of planks stretched like the 
 wood of a bow, — and that, when describing this peculiarity, we noted 
 the great strain which it put upon the outside walls, especially on 
 the eastern side, where there was no support from subsidiary buildings, 
 nor room for sufficient flying buttresses. The result was that in 1869 
 it had become obvious that this side of the station was "shaky"; 
 and, the strengthening of the wall being for the reason we have just 
 named a matter of great difficulty, it was decided to adopt the 
 other alternative of renewing the roof by the substitution of iron 
 girders for the wooden ones. The operation, obviously, was not an 
 easy one, seeing that it had to be carried out without interfering with 
 the traffic of the station ; but, by the construction of a large travelling 
 stage which could be moved on wheels along the platforms, the 
 difficulty was successfully got over, and during 1869 and 1870, the 
 whole of the thirty-three "bays" of the roof over the eastern or 
 "arrival" half of the station were one by one reconstructed in the 
 more solid material. In view of the fact that the western wall, being 
 supported by the Company's offices, had shown no signs of shakiness, 
 it was not felt necessary to proceed at once with the renewal of the 
 " departure " side of the roof, but in the belief that this, too, would 
 have to be done sooner or later, the timbers of the stage were carefully 
 numbered and preserved. The cost of the work done in 1869-70 was 
 about ;£^i 3,000, and the whole of it was charged to revenue account. 
 
 Meanwhile the time of rest for capital account, which the state 
 of the money market had enforced, had been brought to an end both 
 by a financial recovery, and by the fact that it was necessary to proceed 
 at once with outstanding extensions, even in those cases where exten- 
 sion of time had been obtained. Accordingly at the beginning of 
 1870 active measures were taken to obtain the land for the Bourn 
 and Sleaford and Finchley and Barnet lines.* About the same time, 
 too, the Cheshire Lines Joint Committee let the contract for the 
 
 * The powers for this, it may be remembered, were taken over with the Edgware 
 and Highgale undertaking. Powers similarly acquired for an Edgware and Watford 
 line the Great Northern succeeded in getting leave to abandon. 
 
 1870 LIABILITIES IN LANCASHIRE AND YORKSHIRE 259 
 
 new direct Manchester and Liverpool line, and commenced to 
 acquire the land for its Liverpool Central Station. We have already 
 noted that up to the end of 1867 the Great Northern, as third owner 
 in the Cheshire lines, had contributed nearly a million to railway under- 
 takings west of Manchester, and in 1870 it had not only not received 
 anything in the shape of interest on this expenditure, but, ever since 
 the opening of the first completed of these undertakings in 1863, had 
 had to pay some thousands every half-year as its share of the " loss on 
 working" them. The last to be completed— the West Cheshire— was 
 not opened until 1870, and so the through traffic to Birkenhead, which, 
 it may be remembered, was one of the main objects of the construction 
 of the lines, could not be commenced in that year. But even when 
 this was accomplished any return of profit still seemed remote ; and so 
 the Joint Committee decided to press on at once with the construction 
 of the Manchester and Liverpool line and of the new Liverpool station, 
 in the hope that the remunerative results of these undertakings might 
 compensate their shareholders for the unprofitableness of those already 
 carried out. 
 
 In this same year, 1870, a new joint liability into which the Great 
 Northern had entered in partnership with the Lancashire and York- 
 shire Company forced itself prominently forward. As long before 
 as 1863 a local company had been set on foot under the leadership of 
 Mr. Edward Akroyd (whom the reader may remember as the chief 
 promoter of the Leeds, Bradford, and Halifax Railway) to make a line 
 northwards from Halifax up the Thornton Valley to Keighley ; but, as 
 the country is a very difficult one for railway construction, the project, 
 as ultimately sanctioned by Parliament in 1864, had amounted to 
 no more than a line 2J miles in length from the Lancashire and York- 
 shire's low-level station at Halifax (into which the Great Northern also 
 was working) to the populous township of Ovenden. To the capital of 
 this the Great Northern and Lancashire and Yorkshire had each 
 promised to subscribe one-third (;^6o,ooo). 
 
 Subsequently some deviations in the original line had been found 
 necessary, and for these a new Act had had to be obtained, which had 
 not passed through Parliament until 1867 ; and then the state of the 
 money market had prevented the commencement of the works. The 
 result was that in 1870 the company had to come before Parliament 
 once more for an "extension of time." For preliminary expenses, 
 however, the Great Northern and Lancashire and Yorkshire had already 
 advanced a sum of ;£^24,ooo, and so, while the Extension of Time Bill 
 was pending, their directors came to the conclusion that if they were to 
 safeguard the money already spent and ensure the carrying out of the 
 
 I! 
 
 I. 
 
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 260 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 undertaking they had better obtain jointly complete control. Accord- 
 ingly, with the consent of Mr. Akroyd and his friends, they had clauses 
 inserted in the Extension of Time Bill to vest the Halifax and Ovenden 
 Railway in the joint ownership of their two companies, and in this form 
 it became law in the session of 1870. Soon afterwards the works of the 
 line were put in under the engineering superintendence of Mr. John 
 Eraser, of Leeds. 
 
 This Mr. Eraser should properly have been mentioned before this in 
 these pages, for he had been associated, either as assistant or as chief 
 engineer, with all the lines which the Great Northern Company had 
 acquired up to this time in the West Riding of Yorkshire. In these 
 various undertakings— the Leeds, Bradford, and Halifax, the West 
 Yorkshire, the West Riding and Grimsby, and this just mentioned 
 Halifax and Ovenden — he had worked in double harness with a 
 solicitor of Leeds, Mr. Henry Nelson, head of the firm of Nelson, 
 Barr, and Nelson, whom we did note in an earlier chapter as helping 
 Messrs. Akroyd and Firth to promote the Leeds, Bradford, and Halifax. 
 Now we have to become acquainted with two further Yorkshire exten- 
 sions which these "jackals" — as their class is sometimes profanely 
 called — provided for the Great Northern "lion." These were the 
 Bradford, Eccleshill, and Idle, and Idle and Shipley railways. 
 
 The former of these lines was to be three and a half miles and the 
 latter two and a half miles in length ; the Acts for them had been 
 obtained in 1866 and 1867 respectively; and, as they were both laid 
 out to act as " feeders " to the Great Northern system by bringing it 
 into direct connection with busy manufacturing townships in the 
 neighbourhood of Bradford, the Great Northern Board had consented 
 to the insertion of clauses in those Acts empowering it to subscribe to 
 their capital. At the same time it had undertaken to work them when 
 made. However, as in the case of the Halifax and Ovenden, the state 
 of the money market had delayed operations, and now, in 1870, in the 
 flush of revived national prosperity, the Great Northern directors were 
 persuaded to take over the undertakings in totOy subject to the sanction 
 of Parliament in the following session. At the same time, also on the 
 advice of Messrs. Nelson and Eraser, they decided to promote other 
 tributary branches from their existing system to Dewsbury, Pudsey, and 
 Crofton — all in the West Riding of Yorkshire. 
 
 Nor does this exhaust the list of extensions in the West Riding 
 to which the Great Northern Company became committed during the 
 years 1 870-1. Yet another undertaking, called the Bradford and 
 Thornton, has yet to be mentioned. This line was first projected, 
 like the Halifax and Ovenden, as part of a through route through the 
 
 187 1 
 
 REVENUE V, CAPITAL ACCOUNT 
 
 261 
 
 Thornton Valley to Keighley ; but it was subsequently modified, owing 
 to the costly engineering features which Mr. Eraser's plans for the 
 through line had presented, into a branch from Bradford to Queens- 
 bury and Thornton only. Eor this Mr. Nelson deposited a Bill for the 
 session of 187 1 in the name of an independent company of which the 
 Messrs. Foster, of Queensbury, were the chief supporters. During its 
 progress through Parliament, however, the Great Northern directors 
 were induced to make an agreement to take it over — for, if they did 
 not do so, it seemed quite likely that the Midland would, — and so a 
 bargain was struck, the local promoters, on their part, agreeing to 
 subscribe half the capital and to receive for it 80 per cent, of Great 
 Northern original stock. In this same session of 1871 the Bill for the 
 transfer of the Bradford, Eccleshill, and Idle, and Idle and Shipley 
 undertakings to the Company, and for the construction of the Dewsbury, 
 Pudsey, and Crofton branches, passed into law. 
 
 By this time the Wood Green and Enfield line had been completed 
 and opened (April, 1871) and the Bourn and Sleaford and Finchley 
 and Barnet lines were approaching completion, so that these new 
 liabilities in Yorkshire did not raise the Company's prospective capital 
 expenditure on new lines to more than a million sterling. On the 
 other hand, there were not wanting indications that in the future 
 the construction or acquirement of new lines was not to be the only 
 serious charge which capital account was to be called upon to bear. 
 At the time of the financial panic in 1866, when the accounts of 
 railway companies had come to be much more closely scrutinized than 
 before, no charge of overloading the capital account had been brought 
 home to the Great Northern directorate; indeed, in distributing 
 expenses between revenue and capital it had been and continued to 
 be the policy of the Board to err, if anything, on the side of over- 
 burdening revenue. Thus the whole cost of renewing the line with 
 84-lb. instead of 72-lb. rails had been charged to revenue, and the 
 greater part, too, of the cost of replacing the timber bridges at Bardney, 
 Bawtry, and a number of other places with more solid structures of iron 
 and brickwork — an operation which had become necessary throughout 
 the system within fifteen years of its first opening. More recently too 
 we have seen an example of the same practice in the charging to 
 revenue of the whole cost of the renewal of the King's Cross roof. It 
 is true that, when in 1867 the advisability of gradually replacing iron 
 rails by steel and 6-ton or 7-ton waggons by 9-ton had brought the 
 question of capital v. revenue account definitely into notice, the share- 
 holders had decided on the advice of the Board that a proportion of 
 the expense thus incurred should in the future be regularly charged to 
 
 li 
 
 i 
 
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 1 
 
 262 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 capital, to prevent injustice being done to holders of deferred or " A " 
 stock; but in 1870 this resolution had again, on the advice of the 
 directors, been rescinded, and it had been resolved that revenue should 
 again bear the whole cost of rail and waggon renewals, these having 
 in the meantime, it is fair to add, become less burdensome than before. 
 In spite of all this, however, the fact remains that now, from 187 1, the 
 demands on capital account for works connected with the existing 
 undertaking — as distinguished from works of extension — threatened to 
 become much larger than they had formerly been. 
 
 This seeming contradiction is explained by the fact that the lines, 
 stations, and general equipment with which the Company had provided 
 itself from the outset first began about 1871 to show themselves 
 seriously inadequate for the requirements of the increased traffic. 
 Reaction from an abnormal depression of trade made the increase of 
 railway business very rapid from 1870 onward, and during the period 
 of depression the Company had opened a number of new lines which 
 now for the first time began to pour a full tribute of traffic into the 
 main channel. The result of these two influences was that demands 
 for increased siding accommodation, for enlargement of stations and 
 warehouses, and for a larger supply of rolling-stock rose up from all parts 
 of the system. On the lines themselves, too, the working of the trains 
 became much more difficult, and as a remedy for this it became 
 necessary largely to extend the block system and the interlocking of 
 signals and switches, involving the erection of costly signal boxes 
 quite separate from the station buildings. All these were " additions 
 to estate" which had to be paid for out of capital, and in 187 1 — the 
 first year in which the demands for them became clamorous — the 
 shareholders had to be asked to sanction ;^ 102,309 at their February 
 meeting, and ;£79,742 in August for expenditure on capital account 
 apart from the current outlay on new lines. Nor were these to prove 
 exceptional charges. In February, 1872, the directors reported that 
 " the increase of traffic and efficient working of the railway " 
 necessitated the expenditure of a further sum of ^£^208,997, and in 
 August, 1872, an additional ^170,487 had to be sanctioned under 
 the same head. 
 
 Thus, what with liabilities in Lancashire, liabilities in Yorkshire, and 
 liabilities for equipment generally, the Great Northern directors had a 
 good deal on hand in 187 1. Nevertheless, they found themselves 
 constrained in that year to initiate new movements involving other 
 liabilities compared with which those which we have just enumerated 
 were small affairs. In so doing they were impelled to some extent by 
 a general feeling in favour of new enterprises — a feeling which pervaded 
 
 THE DERBYSHIRE EXTENSION PROJECT 263 
 
 every railway Board-room at this time, ,and was the natural reaction 
 from the extreme timidity of the preceding three years. In short, they 
 fell victims to a periodic wave of railway mania ; but, even if no such 
 general feeling had existed, they would still have been obliged to have 
 embarked on one, at least, of the new undertakings now to be men- 
 tioned. Not to have done so would have been to have allowed the 
 Midland Company to deprive them permanently of one of the most 
 valuable branches of their trade. 
 
 From I April, 187 1, as recorded in our last chapter, the Great 
 Northern had been excluded from the Derbyshire coalfield " for all 
 purposes of healthy trade " by the action of the Midland Company in 
 withdrawing from the agreement it had made in 1863 to give through 
 rates from the pits to the Great Northern via Nottingham. Now, since 
 1863 the Derbyshire field had definitely superseded the South York- 
 shire as the principal source whence the rail-borne coal supply of 
 London was drawn. Therefore, it was quite impossible for the Great 
 Northern to acquiesce in being thus excluded, and to return to the 
 position of depending principally upon South Yorkshire for its coal 
 traffic. Under the new state of things which the development of the 
 Derbyshire field had brought about, the Great Northern had either to 
 secure re-admission to that district on equal terms with the Midland, or 
 else to lose irrevocably, not supremacy in the London coal traffic — 
 that it had lost already — but status of any valuable kind as a London 
 coal carrier. Under these circumstances the very least which the 
 Board at King's Cross could do was to revive its Codnor Park line 
 of 1863. 
 
 As it happened, however, the " Derbyshire extension " railways, which 
 the Great Northern directors promoted for the session of 1872, were a 
 good deal more than a mere revival of the Codnor Park project. For 
 this there were various justifications. The starting-point chosen was the 
 same as before — Colwick, three miles east of Nottingham, the terminus 
 of the original Ambergate line— but instead of branching off to the 
 south-west as the Codnor Park line had done, the line which the Great 
 Northern engineer, Mr. Johnson, was instructed to lay out took a 
 northerly direction for a few miles. The purpose of this was to tap 
 some 4000 acres of coa^ producing land belonging to the Duke of St. 
 Albans' Bestwood estate, which had not yet been worked for lack of 
 railway communication. Thence turning westward through Bulwell and 
 crossing (on a viaduct over 100 yards long) the Leen Valley and the 
 Midland's Mansfield line, the new railway was planned to run to 
 Kimberley, a course which had the double justification that the inhabi- 
 tants of this place, about 4000 in number, had petitioned the Great 
 
 t^ ' 
 
 ^ 
 
-I 
 
 264 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 Northern to come to them, and that Kimberley lay on the direct route 
 from the Bestwood estate to the mouth of the Erewash Valley. For to 
 reach the Erewash Valley, the heart of the coal-producing district, was 
 in 187 1, as in 1862, the Great Northern's prime object. 
 
 Up the Erewash Valley, then past Codnor Park to Pinxton, Mr. 
 Johnson carried his line, and so far it was a reproduction of the 
 Codnor Park scheme, with the addition of the detour to tap the Best- 
 wood estate ; but a terminus at Pinxton was not the end of the scheme. 
 Instead of forming the main project, as in 1862, the line up the 
 Erewash Valley was made this time a branch only of a larger under- 
 taking, an undertaking which had two other objects— to reach Derby 
 and to connect with the system of the North Staffordshire Company. 
 South-west from Kimberley is Ilkeston, the inhabitants of which, 
 numbering about 10,000 in 187 1, were just adding the uncongenial 
 trade of iron blasting to their original industry in hosiery and lace ; and 
 here the Great Northern was warmly welcomed, for the Midland's 
 *' Ilkeston Station" was \\ miles out of the parish, and the accommo- 
 dation it gave was so poor that people said they preferred to walk 
 wherever possible rather than to use it. Moreover, the Great Northern 
 proposed to go on in a direct line, nine miles only in length, to Derby, 
 whereas the Midland's route to Derby was not only much longer than 
 this, but involved a "change," and often much delay, at Trent 
 Junction. 
 
 At Derby the Great Northern scheme recommended itself by pro- 
 posing a station nearer the centre of the town than the Midland, and 
 by offering the benefits of competition in a place which since King 
 Hudson's first amalgamation of railways in 1844 had been almost 
 monopolized by the Midland Company. Nor was it proposed that the 
 new route should come to a " dead-end " in Derby. Still continuing in 
 a north-westerly direction through Mickleover and Etwall, it found its 
 final goal at last in a double junction with the North Staffordshire 
 system at Egginton, near Burton-on-Trent, into which important town 
 the latter company undertook to give the Great Northern running 
 powers. The Erewash Valley - Derby— Burton — here was an invasion 
 of the Midlands indeed ! 
 
 To sum up this Derbyshire and Staffordshire Extensions Bill, 
 the Great Northern proposed under it to construct new railways 
 4o| miles in length at an estimated total cost of ;^i,o97,467 — a 
 pretty considerable new liability to add to those to which it was already 
 committed. Nevertheless, its new projects for the session of 1872 
 could not be allowed to end even there. For, imperative as was 
 the necessity to enforce re-admission into the Derbyshire coalfield, 
 
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 G.N. SYSTEM WEST OF NOTTINGHAM 
 
 265 
 
 
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 266 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 there was another demand upon the Company hardly less imperative — 
 the demand to relieve the congestion of traffic in the neighbourhood 
 of King's Cross. This was, as we know, a necessity which had been 
 recognized as long before as 1866, when powers had been obtained 
 to double the Copenhagen tunnel, and so provide a separate channel 
 for goods traffic between Hollo way and the terminus ; but depression 
 of trade and the withdrawal of the Midland's London traffic had com- 
 bined, as we have seen, to postpone the execution of this work ; and 
 now, in 187 1, the directors decided to seek the same object by 
 another road. They proposed to construct a link line from Finsbury 
 Park to the North London sj^tem at Canonbury. 
 
 The Bill embodying this proposal was what is known as a " Various 
 Powers Bill," and it covered also the transfer to the Great Northern 
 of the already authorized Bradford and Thornton undertaking, and 
 the making of a new short line at Dewsbury to connect the authorized 
 branches from Batley and from Ossett. The estimate of capital to 
 be expended under it was ;£^7o6,7i5. 
 
 Meantime, while Mr. Leech and Mr. Johnson, the Great Northern 
 official solicitor and engineer, were putting these important and 
 onerous projects into shape, another solicitor and engineer — Messrs. 
 Nelson and Fraser— no less keen to protect Great Northern interests 
 and to extend its powers because their connection with the Company 
 was unofficial — had yet another ambitious extension of its system 
 in hand. Readers, perhaps, remember Mr. William Firth, of Leeds, 
 comrade with Mr. Akroyd in promoting the Leeds, Bradford, and 
 Halifax line, and chief promoter also of the West Yorkshire Company, 
 and they should have been informed before this that, after those two 
 undertakings had been amalgamated with the Great Northern, a seat 
 had been found for Mr. Firth on the Great Northern Board. Thus 
 seated, he had become by force of character a leader in the Company's 
 counsels. He had just taken a principal part, for example, in the "coal 
 war," and now in another direction his active mind was to influence the 
 policy of the Company. 
 
 As chairman of the West Yorkshire Iron and Coal Company, Mr. 
 Firth's attention had just been drawn to the fact that there were 
 fields of ironstone undeveloped in Leicestershire. When he had 
 mentioned this to some friends of his in the West Riding — Mr. 
 Clayton of Bradford, Mr. Illingworth of Leeds, and others — he 
 found that they, too, were interested in Leicestershire, because, as 
 woollen manufacturers, they did a large trade with that county, 
 first obtaining some of their wool in its raw state from thence, and 
 then, after turning it into yarn in their Yorkshire works, sending it back 
 
 187 1 
 
 MR. FIRTH'S IRONSTONE 
 
 267 
 
 again to Leicester to be made up into hosiery. As things were, this 
 traffic, together with a not inconsiderable traffic in leather and shoes 
 in connection with the newly-established shoe trade of Leicester, and 
 in machinery from the Yorkshire shops, was carried almost entirely by 
 the Midland Company. A competitive Great Northern route seemed, 
 
 therefore, very desirable. 
 
 Prominent director of the Great Northern though Mr. Firth was, 
 he and his friends did not think it politic to propose point blank to 
 the Board at King's Cross that it should seek powers to make a new 
 connection between Yorkshire and Leicestershire. They preferred to 
 adopt again the course taken in regard to the Leeds, Bradford, and 
 HaHfax, West Yorkshire, West Riding and Grimsby, and other under- 
 takings—to initiate them under the auspices of a new company; and, 
 naturally enough, they put the work in the same hands as before— the 
 very capable hands of Messrs. Nelson and Fraser. The latter surveyed 
 the country, and laid out a line to leave the Great Northern main 
 line at Newark, to cross the Grantham and Nottingham branch near 
 Bottesford, pass through Melton Mowbray, and thence, after continuing 
 due southwards to a place called Tilton, to turn round at right angles, 
 and run due westwards into Leicester. This " quadrangular elbow " 
 at Tilton— as a Parliamentary counsel afterwards called it— was 
 dictated partly by the physical conformation of the country between 
 Melton and Leicester— which, as hunting-men well know, consists 
 of a series of hills and deep valleys— but it had the additional 
 advantage that it passed through a district which gave indication of 
 being rich in ironstone. In this district Mr. Firth, developing 
 apparently a sudden desire to become a gentleman farmer, was just 
 negotiating for the purchase of a large farm. 
 
 To form, provisionally, " a Newark and Leicester Railway Com- 
 pany" was an easy task in Mr. Nelson's skilful hands— the support 
 of Messrs. Firth, Clayton, and Illingworth was sufficient of itself to 
 float the thing,— but what seemed Ukely to be not so easy, seeing 
 that the line was to run through a country famous for its hunting, 
 was to conciliate the landowners. By far the greatest of these is the 
 Duke of Rutland, and it was well known to have been the then Duke's 
 opposition which had more than once before stood in the way of the 
 district getting long before this the north and south communication 
 which it admittedly wanted. It was, therefore, with some misgiving 
 that Messrs. Nelson and Fraser approached the Duke's agent, Mr. 
 Green, on the subject of their line, and with much delight that they 
 received towards the end of October, 187 1, a cordial invitation to 
 come to Cheadley to interview his Grace himself on the subject. 
 
> 
 
 f 
 
 > 
 
 268 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 The fact was that the Duke of Rutland's attitude towards railways 
 had, during the previous year, undergone a complete change. He 
 had not gone so far, perhaps, as his neighbour, the Marquis of 
 Exeter, who had confessed himself *' a damned fool " for keeping 
 railways out of Stamford ; but, in the light of a discovery of iron- 
 stone on his estate near Waltham, he had gone the length of 
 writing through Mr. Green to the Great Northern Company to say 
 that his "scruples" as to the making of a branch from Grantham 
 to Melton (which had several times been suggested) had been 
 "removed by a consideration that it would be beneficial to the 
 district." The Great Northern not having responded to this invita- 
 tion, Mr. Green had applied next to the Midland, and after some 
 delay Mr. Allport had actually shown the agent plans for a line 
 from Nottingham to Saxby (the next station east of Melton on the 
 Syston and Peterborough line) with a branch from Melton to 
 Waltham. This, however, the Duke had characterized as "not the 
 kind of accommodation that the district required." 
 
 This unsatisfactory proposal had come from the Midland a few 
 weeks only before Messrs. Eraser and Nelson arrived to put their 
 plans before the Duke. Consequently he was the more disposed 
 to give those gentlemen a favourable hearing. At the interview 
 itself they got no conclusive answer, but a few days later, on 
 2 November, 187 1, Mr. Nelson received a telegram from Mr. 
 Green : " The Duke gives his consent conditionally, viz., to be pro- 
 ceeded with this session, the Great Northern taking up the line and 
 making it." 
 
 Perhaps on the same day — certainly within the same week — as 
 Messrs. Nelson and Eraser were explaining their plans to the Duke of 
 Rutland at Cheadley, an interview as to the construction of a very 
 similar line to theirs through the same district was taking place in 
 London. The parties to it were Mr. Blenkinsopp, solicitor to the 
 London and North Western Company, and Sir Edward Watkin. Sir 
 Edward was still eager to "liberate the South Yorkshire coalfield," 
 and the design he had now formed for the purpose was to make a new 
 route, not on the eastern side of the Great Northern— that had failed 
 too recently to be repeated — but on its western side through Notting- 
 ham and Leicestershire. This route, he had persuaded himself, the 
 London and North Western authorities had had in mind twenty years 
 before, when he had been Captain Huish's trusty henchman at Euston 
 Square. Accordingly, having had the necessary connecting line sur- 
 veyed—from Doncaster through Worksop to join the North Western 
 at Market Harborough — he had gone in his dashing way to Mr. 
 
 ,87, SIR E. WATKIN'S "WONDERFUL SCHEME" 269 
 
 Blenkinsopp and asked him if he thought his Company would be 
 disposed to go into it with the Sheffield as a joint scheme. 
 
 The London and North Western, however, had "other fish to fry." 
 It had just concluded an agreement of amalgamation, subject, of course, 
 to the sanction of Parliament, with the Lancashire and Yorkshire ; and 
 with this in view it had little to gain and much, in the light of past 
 experience, to risk by entering into a new alliance with the Sheffield. 
 Nor does Mr. Blenkinsopp appear to have thought Sir Edward Watkin 
 really serious in his proposition. In a private letter written to Mr. 
 Oakley a day or two after the interview— a letter which turned up 
 rather awkwardly afterwards for the Sheffield chairman— he charac- 
 terized the proposed Doncaster to Market Harborough line as "a 
 wonderful scheme ! ! " However, he reported the matter to his Board, 
 and at the end of October they curtly declined the offered partnership. 
 But, "wonderful scheme ! !" or not, the Doncaster and Market Har- 
 borough line was put into a Bill, which in this busy autumn of 187 1 
 the Sheffield Company deposited, and in this form Sir Edward Watkin 
 was able, with characteristic adroitness, to turn it to considerable 
 account. The Midland, as we have already incidentally noted, had 
 also been laying plans for new lines in Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire, 
 and Leicestershire, and these, as now put into Bills, had taken the 
 form of a line from Shireoaks (near Worksop) to Doncaster ; another— 
 the one which Mr. Allport had shown to Mr. Green— from Nottingham 
 to Saxby ; and another, to continue the same route southwards, from 
 Manton to Rushton. Thus the Midland, too, was proposing to occupy 
 the district which the Duke of Rutland's influence had so long kept 
 
 closed. * 
 
 One day, late in November, after the publication of the Bill deposits, 
 Sir Edward Watkin had occasion to meet the Midland chairman, 
 Mr. Price, on other matters. After these had been disposed of he 
 took a pencil and a map and sketched in the Midland projects 
 together with his own " wonderful scheme " and the lines which the 
 Great Northern and its " jackals " were promoting. He then boldly 
 suggested that the three companies might mutually agree to abandon 
 their projects pending the issue of the London and North Western and 
 Lancashire and Yorkshire Amalgamation Bill. The Midland chairman 
 at once expressed his willingness to give up all his company's lines 
 except the Nottingham and Saxby ; but the Great Northern directors, 
 on being applied to, rejected the proposal entirely. Nevertheless Sir 
 Edward Watkin succeeded in holding Mr. Price to his part of the 
 bargain, and so, in return for the Sheffield's sacrifice of its " wonderful 
 
 • This district is shown on map at p. 209. 
 
 I4i 
 
 t 
 

 270 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 scheme," which without the North Western's support had not a chance 
 of passing, the Midland's Shireoaks and Doncaster and Manton and 
 Rushton projects were withdrawn from Parliament. 
 
 Meantime, in accordance with the Duke of Rutland's stipulation, 
 Mr. Nelson— without feeling the smallest reluctance, one may imagine 
 —had deposited a Bill for the Newark and Leicester line in such a 
 shape that it could at any time during its progress be taken over by 
 the Great Northern, and he succeeded on 2 December, 187 1, in 
 bringing the matter before the Board at King's Cross. The Great 
 Northern directors had to consider the question from two points of 
 view— commercially, in relation to the traffic the new route might be 
 expected to obtain, and "politically," in view of what Mr. Oakley called 
 " the disturbed state of the district in a railway sense "—and from both 
 points of view they found, after careful inquiry, that the undertaking 
 had much to recommend it. It does not appear that they considered 
 it so carefully from a third point of view— the view as to whether they 
 were justified in adding a new liability to the onerous ones to which 
 they were already committed. Whether they did so or not, however, 
 the fact remains that in February, 1872, they decided to take over the 
 Bill as a Great Northern undertaking. The Erewash Valley— Derby- 
 Burton— Leicester— Mr. Allport's fire was being returned with interest ! 
 Meanwhile the twin questions of the toll to be paid by the Great 
 Northern to the Sheffield on South Yorkshire coal to London, and of 
 the differential to be maintained between South Yorkshire and Derby- 
 shire were once more causing trouble between the parties. The 
 Sheffield, it will be remembered, had agreed in December, 1870, to 
 commute its fixed is. 4^/. toll for a proportion of the through rate equal 
 to thirty miles, subject to a minimum which was to be 10^. normally, 
 but 8^. while the fierce competition with the Midland lasted ; and in 
 accordance with this agreement it had received 8^/. only from January, 
 1871, to the following July. Then, however, a raising of their total 
 rates on the part of both Midland and Great Northern had brought the 
 thirty miles proportion up to 10^., and in November a further raising 
 increased it again to 11^^.; but still the Sheffield Company were 
 dissatisfied, the more so in view of the fact that the demand for coal 
 in London and the price paid for it there had more than kept pace 
 with the raising of the rates. The result was that in January, 1872, 
 Mr. Underdown, the Sheffield manager, wrote to inform Mr. Oakley 
 that " from and after i February next the proportion accruing to " his 
 Company, " temporarily arranged during the severe competition," would 
 have to be "increased to is 2d. per ton." 
 
 In replying to this letter Mr. Oakley expressed extreme surprise that 
 
 1872 
 
 WILL THE DERBYSHIRE BILL PASS? 
 
 271 
 
 the arrangement as to the thirty miles proportion should be called a 
 temporary one. The only part of it which the Great Northern had 
 regarded as temporary, said he, was the 8^. minimum. Except on the 
 faith of a permanent reduction on the part of the Sheffield, the Great 
 Northern would not have bound itself to the coalowners to keep the 
 differential so low as Zd. " The rates now in force," he added, " are 
 \s. id, less than those charged prior to this arrangement, and it is 
 manifestly absurd for your Company to expect us to bear the loss of 
 \s. sd. out of that amount." 
 
 We certainly had no intention, retorted Mr. Underdown in effect, of 
 giving up permanently our right to charge the toll you agreed to when 
 you withdrew your opposition to our taking over the South Yorkshire 
 in 1 864. We must, therefore, insist upon our share being now brought 
 back more nearly to that— its normal amount. Very well, then, the 
 differential must be increased, replied Mr. Oakley. So on i February 
 he sent a circular to the coalowners stating that as the Sheffield 
 had failed to fulfil their part of the bargain, and now insisted on 
 having 3^. more than its thirty miles proportion, the total rate must be 
 increased by 3^., and the differential as against Derbyshire from Sd. to 
 I id. Mr. Baxter, naturally enough, at once wrote to protest, on behalf 
 of the coalowners, against the Great Northern having departed from its 
 agreement to keep the differential at 8^. Mr. Oakley, however, sent 
 him copies of the whole correspondence with the Sheffield, and received 
 no further complaint. 
 
 In the light of these events the Great Northern directors had the 
 more reason to congratulate themselves that, if their Bill now before 
 Parliament passed, they would be able to make Derbyshire and not 
 South Yorkshire the principal source of their future coal traffic, and 
 when at the half-yearly meeting on 20 February, 1872, the Bill was 
 submitted to the shareholders for their approval, it was obvious that 
 they, too, were of the same opinion. " The thing is forced upon us 
 inevitably," said one speaker, Mr. Wilkinson of Nottingham. "It 
 would have been well for us if we had spent our money in this way 
 earlier ; but it is never too late to do right. I agree that it is very 
 undesirable to increase our capital except under urgent circumstances ; 
 but there are circumstances in which, if you do not take off your coat, 
 someone will rob you of your coat and waistcoat by cutting them off 
 your back." " I believe, and I sincerely believe," said another speaker 
 —Mr. Shirley of Doncaster—" that it is for the benefit of the Great 
 Northern proprietary that you should make these lines." 
 
 But, of course, the question still had to be answered — would 
 Parliament sanction a new line into Derbyshire? and the answer was 
 
 <v.^ 
 
 f 
 
 'i 
 

 
 272 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 doubtful enough to make Mr. Leech and Mr. Oakley extremely 
 anxious to present a strong case for public interest. As to this, of 
 course, a great deal depended upon the attitude which the Derbyshire 
 coalowners themselves might take up, and it soon became clear to the 
 Great Northern authorities that the fact that their Company had been 
 hitherto regarded as the champion of the South Yorkshire field against 
 the Midland's championship of Derbyshire was being skilfully used by 
 the agents of the latter company to prejudice local opinion against the 
 new line. The Great Northern is coming here not to help Derbyshire, 
 but to " bully " it in the interest of South Yorkshire, was the doctrine 
 which Mr. Allport and his assistants sedulously circulated. Mr. 
 Oakley found it extremely difficult to argue down this damaging 
 impression. 
 
 Under these circumstances he decided to put his reply in a form 
 which would speak for itself. With the approval of his directors he 
 went to Euston Square and arranged to give the London and North 
 Western running powers over the new line from Burton-on-Trent to the 
 coalfield. This done, he called a meeting of the Erewash Valley 
 coalowners, and by demonstrating to them that he proposed to bring 
 not only the Great Northern trains to their service, but those of the 
 London and North Western also, which company certainly had no 
 South Yorkshire bias, he turned their hitherto lukewarm attitude into 
 one of hearty support. 
 
 The Great Northern's two invading schemes — the Derbyshire and 
 Staffordshire and the Newark and Leicester — together with the 
 Midland's Nottingham and Saxby project, and its proposed branch 
 from Melton to the Duke of Rutland's ironstone, were referred to 
 a single Committee of the House of Commons, over which Mr. Myles 
 William O'Reilly, a noted chairman of that day, presided. The 
 Derbyshire and Staffordshire, or Great Northern (No. 2) Bill — as it 
 was officially called to distinguish it from the Various Powers Bill 
 already mentioned — was taken on first on 2 May, 1872; and 
 Mr. Denison, who, of course, " led " for the Great Northern, devoted 
 the greater part of his opening speech to a characteristically "breezy" 
 history of the events which had led up to the promotion of the line. 
 " We did not propose to upset the agreement," he said, when he came 
 to the crucial point — the conduct of the various parties after Sir John 
 Karslake's award — "but we came to this conclusion, that inasmuch as 
 the Midland had suggested to the arbitrator to take a highly technical 
 view of it, we would see whether we could not find a technical view. 
 We began to look at the agreement and see whether we could drive 
 our coach and six through it ; we found a hole, and that was Retford.'' 
 
 1872 
 
 THE G.N. "COACH AND SIX" 
 
 275 
 
 " You may take it," he repeated a few minutes later, in answer to a 
 question from the chairman, "that the sending by Retford was the 
 beginning of the war." 
 
 This looked like a rash admission, and naturally enough the Midland 
 caught it up and made play with it till the phrase "coach and six" 
 became a by-word. But Mr. Denison had carefully weighed his words 
 beforehand, and with the instinct of a great advocate he had foreseen 
 which way they would tell. He had admitted at the outset the worst 
 charge which could be brought against his clients. Mr. Venables, 
 the Midland's counsel, was, of course, fully primed to expose the 
 Retford " circumvention," and nothing would have pleased him better 
 than to have been able to bring it out at a critical period of the case 
 with all the force of a revelation. But, after Mr. Denison's coach 
 and six had passed, in what style could he take the road? As it 
 was, he declaimed against the " deliberate violation of an agreement " 
 and the " repudiation of an honourable debt " ; but to this Mr. Denison 
 replied with a scorn which recalled his father's ridicule of " moral slip- 
 slop" in the first South Yorkshire transactions. "This is a case in 
 which there is really a great deal of morals," said he, " but the Midland 
 Company are the last people who ought to come here to use the 
 language they have used. On the contrary, they ought to be ashamed 
 of themselves, to shrink into their shell, to say the least that can be said 
 about faith, arbitrations, agreements, or anything of the kind, and to 
 leave the Bill as, I will not say, an unopposed Bill, but as a Bill which 
 ought to have been fought on any grounds than those on which they 
 have fought it." At the conclusion of this speech on 3 June, 1872, 
 Mr. O'Reilly gave the Committee's decision in favour of the new line 
 in its entirety. It was a signal triumph for the Great Northern — a 
 signal humiliation for the Midland. 
 
 Three days later— 6 June, 1872 — the hearing of the competing 
 Leicestershire Bills was commenced, and as the Great Northern was 
 not opposing the Nottingham and Saxby, whereas the Midland was 
 opposing the Newark and Leicester, the case for the latter was taken 
 first. Here there was no question of morals or agreements ; the 
 matters to be decided were simply whether the traffic of the towns 
 of Leicester and Melton and the ironstone deposits at Tilton and 
 Waltham were of sufficient value to justify the construction of a 
 new line. The Great Northern brought representative and expert 
 evidence to prove the affirmative ; the Midland negative rested almost 
 entirely on the evidence of Mr. Allport. " Just remember," said Mr. 
 Denison in reply, " the number of people that must be wrong and who 
 must be almost idiots in this case if Mr. Allport is right. Mr. Oakley 
 T 
 
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 •4 
 
 1 
 
 a74 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 cannot measure traffic; Mr. Green knows nothing of the country 
 between Grantham and Melton; Professor Ansted knows nothing 
 about geology ; people at Leicester know nothing about their own 
 complaints ; and, finally, when somebody from Leicester gives you a 
 matter of fact and not an opinion, all Mr. AUport says is, it is not 
 true When Mr. AUport comes in contact with mankind at large, 
 
 mankind at large is generally wrong-all kinds of mankind, geological 
 professors, tradesmen of every description, ironstonemen and every- 
 thing else-there is one man and one man only that knows everything, 
 and that is Mr. AUport." Unfortunately for Mr. AUport, however, Mr. 
 
 Bkidge over Friar Gate, Derby. 
 
 O'Reilly and his Committee proved as wrongheaded as the rest of 
 mankind, for on 14 June, 1872, they approved the Great Northern 
 Bill and threw out the Midland branch to Waltham. The latter's 
 Nottingham and Saxby line passed unopposed. 
 
 But the campaign of 1 87 2 was not yet over. " Thank God," said the 
 Midland Company, " there 's a House of Lords," and at the begm- 
 ning of July they renewed their opposition to the two Great Northern 
 Bills before a Committee presided over by Viscount Hardinge. 
 The Derbyshire and Staffordshire got through unscathed, despite 
 some rather strong residential opposition from Derby ; but the Newark 
 and Leicester was not so fortunate, chiefly because the Great Northern 
 authorities, confident in the favour of the Duke of Rutland, underrated 
 the strength of the opposition of other landowners. " I could almost 
 
 
 1872 
 
 HORSEFLESH STRONGER THAN IRON 
 
 ^75 
 
 fancy that I was on my first Bill," said Mr. Denison, " that I was fighting 
 the old battle of the London and York, to hear these old topics of 
 traffic tables and alternative lines, the difficulties of gradients, that 
 minerals cannot pay, that local traffic is worth nothing. . . . There is 
 no kind of public case against this line, and as for the two landowners' 
 cases I am afraid I must offend them again by laughing at them. I can 
 only call them ridiculous." The laugh, however, was destined to be on 
 the other side. The opposition of the sporting landowners— one of 
 whom was Mr. Hartopp, a well-known master of foxhounds— though 
 ridiculous in the eyes of the railway people, apparently had weight with 
 the noble lords who formed the Committee. At any rate, they sanc- 
 tioned the line from Newark as far as Melton Mowbray only and threw 
 out the portion between Melton and Leicester. 
 
 Thus at last the invasion of the Midlands received a check. The 
 coalfield, Derby, and Burton had been carried triumphantly ; but the 
 attack on Leicester was brought to a stand at Melton, and the West 
 Riding men who had fostered this scheme found that all they had got 
 so far was powers to make a line which would be practically useless 
 except for the carriage of Melton pies to the north. Nevertheless, in 
 view of the rival schemes— dropped for the year, it was true, but far 
 from being dead— for carrying a new north and south line through 
 Leicestershire, the Great Northern had done well, as we shall see, to 
 secure a footing in that county, though so far as Melton only. 
 
I 
 
 I 
 
 tn 
 
 I 
 
 II 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 THE CAMPAIGN OF 1873, INCLUDING A PARLIAMENTARY FIGHT 
 
 OF THIRTY DAYS- 1872- 1873. 
 
 AS we have already noted, the Great Northern " won its spurs " as 
 a passenger line in 1851, when despite the handicap of an incom- 
 plete equipment and with a route to the North no shorter as yet than 
 the established one, it more than held its dWn in the Exhibition traffic. 
 As we afterwards saw, however, it was the services put on after the 
 opening of the towns line in 1852 which definitely stamped the Great 
 Northern as " the premier line for speed." 
 
 To cover the 191 miles from King's Cross viA Knottingley to York 
 in four hours fifty minutes— practically forty miles an hour— was a 
 performance unequalled in the fifties, not even on the exceptionally 
 flat road of the Great Western ; but this was not the best the Great 
 Northern did in that decade. In 1857, as we have seen, the "Man- 
 chester fliers " were put on, and although the forty-four miles an hour 
 between King's Cross and Sheffield, which we have already noted as 
 the first performance of these trains as far as the Great Northern was 
 concerned, was a tour deforce, modified when the original fierceness of 
 the competition abated, yet the timing as subsequently fixed— three 
 hours fifteen minutes for the 138 miles between King's Cross and 
 Retford (the Manchester, Sheffield, and Lincolnshire engine now came 
 on at Retford instead of Sheffield as at first), meant a "journey-speed" 
 of forty-two miles an hour ; quite the best thing done in Great Britain 
 up to the date we have now reached, albeit with a light train. The 
 next best run of this epoch, furthermore, the Great Northern also 
 furnished— London to Leeds in four hours twenty-seven minutes, a 
 journey-speed of 41I miles an hour. The London and North Western 
 and Midland's best rates in 187 1 were barely over forty miles an hour. 
 
 Moreover, if we take a more general view (accepting the standard of 
 an express train to be not less than thirty-six miles an hour), we find 
 that the Great Northern in 1871 ran an average of 13*2 daily express 
 journeys over each mile of its line, while the average of such journeys 
 
 276 
 
 1872 
 
 LEADING THE WORLD IN SPEED 
 
 ^77 
 
 on the London and North Western was io'9 per mile, and on the Mid- 
 land io'2 — the rest being nowhere. Thus under the management of 
 Mr. Oakley, Mr. Cockshott, and Mr. Patrick Stirling, as under that of 
 Mr. Seymour Clarke, Mr. Leith, and Mr. Sturrock, the Great Northern 
 was still " leading the world " in railway speed.* 
 
 As every schoolboy should know, it was the general custom on British 
 railways prior to 1872 to confine the advantages of high speed to first- 
 class and second-class passengers. Nevertheless it is a mistake to 
 suppose that the " third-class by all trains " reform which the Midland 
 Company introduced in April of this year was altogether an abrupt 
 innovation. Not only had competition — first of the Great Northern 
 
 I , 
 
 "No. 266." 
 
 ONE OF THE LAST GREAT NORTHERN LOCOMOTIVES DESIGNED BY MR. STURROCK. 
 
 From a fhotograpk kindly lent for refrodfcfion by the builders of tht engine, 
 Messrs. yohn Fowler <&• Co., of Lee is. 
 
 against the London and North Western and then of the Midland against 
 both — already led to the abolition on the northern lines of the special 
 "express fares" which had been charged generally during the forties 
 and earlier fifties, so that 3^. per mile had become the limit charge 
 for first-class travelling and 2d. for second ; it had also produced a 
 marked improvement already in the accommodation given to third- 
 class, penny-a-mile, passengers. Throughout the fifties and earlier 
 sixties, except on excursion trains — freely run, as we have seen, on 
 special occasions — the accommodation given to the third class had 
 gone little beyond the one "Parliamentary train," stopping at every 
 station, which since 1844 every company had been compelled to run 
 
 • For a general survey of railway speeds in 1871, see "The Proceedings of the 
 Statistical Society, April, 1884," for an able and very industrious paper on the subject 
 by Lieut. Willock, R.E., to which I am much indebted. 
 
I 
 
 178 History of great northern railway 
 
 each way every day throughout its system. But when from October, 
 1868, the Midland had got its own London line at work for 
 passenger traffic, it had initiated the practice of extending the Par- 
 liamentary penny-a-mile fare to some of its second-best fast trains, 
 and in this innovation it had been liberally followed, under stress of 
 competition, by the Great Northern. Thus from 1869 the latter had 
 begun to carry third-class passengers at penny-a-mile fares by such trains 
 as the 9 a.m., the 12 noon, and the 9.15 p.m. from King's Cross, thus 
 enabling that class to travel from London to Nottingham in three 
 hours ten minutes, from London to Leeds in four hours fifty minutes, 
 from London to York in five hours, and from London to Edinburgh 
 (by night) in eleven hours — as good a service, in short, to most impor- 
 tant towns, and a better in some cases, than the service which had been 
 hailed as so wonderful an improvement when introduced for the higher 
 classes in 1852. Nevertheless there was a big gap between this service 
 even and the admission of third-class, penny-a-mile, passengers to all 
 trains, the announcement of which "on and after i April, 1872," was 
 made by the Midland directors with startling suddenness at the end of 
 
 March. 
 
 The Great Northern, on its part, immediately followed suit by 
 throwing open all its expresses, with one exception, to third-class 
 passengers; and that exception — the 10 a.m. Scotchman— was rather a 
 nominal than a real one, because it was accompanied by the putting 
 on of a new train— 10.10 a.m. from King's Cross— open to all three 
 classes, which was timed to do the journey to Edinburgh in as short a 
 time as the ten o'clock train had taken hitherto, viz., ten and a half 
 hours. But " to maintain the special character of the express service 
 by the East Coast route to Scotland" — to quote the Great Northern 
 directors' report of August, 1872— the 10 a.m. train itself was accele- 
 rated to reach Edinburgh in nine and a half hours. 
 
 In 1869, as the reader may remember, the night train then put on to 
 leave King's Cross at 8 p.m. had been timed to cover the whole 
 distance to Edinburgh in ten hours, and subsequently this had been 
 accelerated to nine hours forty-five minutes — the North Eastern's new 
 direct line from York to Doncaster having in the meantime been 
 opened (January, 187 1). Nevertheless, the nine and a half hours 
 day service now put on was a great improvement, so far as the Great 
 Northern was concerned, upon anything of the same kind attempted 
 up to this date. For out of the time of the day train, it must be 
 remembered, twenty-five minutes had to be allowed for luncheon at 
 York ; moreover, the difficulties of the North British line from Berwick 
 to Edinburgh and certain other things prevented the acceleration 
 
 1 
 
 ii 
 
 1872 
 
 STIRLING'S "8-FOOT SINGLES" 
 
 279 
 
 being equally distributed through- 
 out the whole journey. Conse- 
 quently to make this new " Flying 
 Scotchman" possible, it fell to 
 the Great Northern to cover its 
 distance from King's Cross to 
 York — 188 miles by the new 
 route via Selby — in four hours 
 fifteen minutes — that is to say, 
 to make a journey - speed of 
 forty-four miles an hour. This, 
 however, proved quite within the 
 capacity of the new type of 
 locomotive with outside cylinders 
 and 8-ft. driving-wheels, which 
 Mr. Patrick Stirling had recently 
 turned out from the Doncaster 
 works. 
 
 This year, 1872, was a very 
 exceptional one for railway busi- 
 ness in Great Britain. Thanks 
 to great national prosperity, traffic 
 receipts increased — as Colonel 
 Packe put it — "almost hourly," 
 but at the same time the cost of 
 almost everything used on a rail- 
 way increased also — iron, wood, 
 grease, and especially coals ; and 
 the cost of labour, too, rose 
 much higher than ever before. 
 In response to memorials received 
 from their workmen, the Great 
 Northern directors were obliged, 
 for fear of a strike, to introduce 
 from the beginning of the year 
 a nine hours' day in their loco- 
 motive workshops and also, as 
 far as possible, amongst the men 
 employed on the permanent way; 
 and at the same time similar 
 memorials had to be dealt with 
 from guards, shunters, porters, 
 
 -v-t/ fe 5 
 
 
 — >^ 
 
 < 
 
 
 I 
 
 
 
 )': 
 
28o HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 and others engaged in the traffic. The result was that the rate 
 of pay had to be increased, and the hours of labour reduced, 
 generally throughout the whole staff, involving an addition to working 
 expenses of about ;£2o,ooo in the year. Considerable difficulty 
 and greater expense also were incurred in providing labour for the 
 necessary relaying of the line. Nevertheless, thanks to an increase 
 of about ;£'i 80,000 in traffic receipts during the year— an increase 
 which, though the largest on the Company's records, would probably 
 have been a good deal larger but for its exclusion from the Derbyshire 
 coalfield — the rate of dividend paid again reached its high-water mark 
 — ;£"7 2S. 6d. per cent, per annum. 
 
 This was the more satisfactory because a considerable amount of 
 new capital had already been sunk, as yet unproductively, on some of 
 the numerous new works to which, as we have seen, the Company had 
 committed itself since the revival of railway enterprise in 1870. True, 
 the Bourn and Sleaford and Finchley and Barnet lines were now 
 carrying traffic, the former having been opened on 2 January, and the 
 latter on i April, 1872 ; but in Yorkshire the works of the Eccleshill 
 and Idle, Idle and Shipley, and Dewsbury branch railways were all 
 absorbing considerable sums without return, whilst the two new joint 
 undertakings under construction, the Manchester and Liverpool, and 
 the Halifax and Ovenden, were also responsible for serious drafts upon 
 capital account. Moreover, in view of the fact that the Alexandra 
 Palace on Muswell Hill, after having stood incomplete for ten years, 
 was at last to be finished and opened, the directors found it necessary 
 in the autumn of 1872 to put under construction the branch from 
 Highgate to Muswell Hill, for which the Edgware and Highgate 
 Company, it may be remembered, had obtained powers in 1865. 
 Besides all this, there was, as already noted, an exceptionally heavy 
 current expenditure of capital for station enlargements, new sidings, 
 new rolling-stock, extension of the block system, and interlocking 
 
 apparatus. 
 
 With such liabilities as these on hand, and a very large additional 
 outlay in immediate prospect, the Great Northern directors had good 
 reasons for abstaining from further aggressive enterprises. But un- 
 fortunately, in the existing state of inter-railway politics, to abstain 
 from aggression meant practically to abstain from self-defence. The 
 fact that two schemes for completing a new north and south route 
 through Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire had been deposited for 
 the session of 1872 — the one by the Sheffield Company, and the other 
 by a mysterious "jackal," a solicitor of Bury, in Lancashire, named 
 Harper — left little doubt that in the following session, now approaching. 
 
 W 
 
 1872 
 
 INTER-RAILWAY POLITICS 
 
 281 
 
 a renewed attempt would be made by other companies to fill this 
 district ; and it was in this light, quite as much as in that of the 
 commercial advantages to be derived from occupying the locality 
 
 D 
 
 a 
 m 
 
 U 
 
 Q 
 
 w 
 o 
 
 Q 
 PQ 
 
 Bi 
 
 u 
 
 Q 
 < 
 
 M 
 
 m 
 
 themselves, that the Great Northern directors had to consider what 
 course they should take with regard to their mutilated Newark and 
 Leicester undertaking. The Great Northern wanted to get to Leicester 
 and the people of Leicester wanted the Great Northern— they had held 
 an "indignation meeting" after the Lords' mutilation of the Bill— 
 
 !' 
 
I 
 
 
 282 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 moreover, Mr. Firth, Mr. Clayton, and the other Yorkshiremen who 
 had originally promoted the scheme were naturally anxious to make it 
 complete; but, as we have just said, the prime considerations with 
 regard to the matter were not commercial but " political." 
 
 Before the Commons Committee in the session just passed a 
 suggestive dialogue had taken place between Mr. Bidder, one of the 
 Midland counsel— son of the George Parker Bidder we have already 
 heard of— and Mr. John Fowler, consulting engineer to the Great 
 Northern. It related to the "rectangular elbow," which, as we have 
 said, the Newark and Leicester line had been planned to form near 
 Tilton. Mr. Fowler had explained that the object of this was to 
 avoid engineering difficulties and to serve Mr. Firth's ironstone field, 
 but Mr. Bidder had suspected a deeper design. " Is there not another 
 point of view," he had asked, "in which that elbow would be advan- 
 tageous—if you want to come in a future session for a line to Market 
 Harborough?" "Well," said Mr. Fowler, turning round to look at 
 the map, the idea apparently striking him for the first time, " I think 
 that is a very good suggestion. Now that you call attention to it, 
 it really would enable a very good line to be made." 
 
 Thus out of the mouth of an opposing counsel the Great Northern 
 authorities took an idea which bore fruit now that, with the possibility 
 of a revival of Sir Edward Watkin's " wonderful scheme " before them, 
 they had to lay their plans for the session of 1873. They decided 
 not only to re-introduce the rejected Melton to Leicester line, but to 
 promote also a second fork to go due southwards from Tilton to 
 Market Harborough. But whilst thus enlarging the original Newark 
 and Leicester project, they did not greatly enlarge the outlay of capital 
 involved. For, before definitely deciding upon the extension to Market 
 Harborough, they succeeded in persuading the London and North 
 Western Company to become equal partners with them in what now 
 came to be the main part of the scheme — the through line from 
 Market Harborough to Newark, leaving the fork from Tilton to 
 Leicester only to be made by the Great Northern Company alone. 
 
 Of course, this formed a scheme which promised, if authorized, 
 effectually to block the way to any anti-Great Northern route through 
 the same country, and, therefore, its advantages in the eyes of the 
 King's Cross Board were obvious. Nevertheless, the price which they 
 agreed to pay for the London and North Western's co-operation in it 
 was undoubtedly high. It amounted to placing that company in the 
 Derbyshire and South Yorkshire coalfields on terms of practical 
 equality with themselves and the Midland. For South Yorkshire 
 traffic the North Western was to be given running powers between 
 
 ^>i 
 
 1872 A SHEFFIELD-MIDLAND COMBINATION 283 
 
 Newark and Doncaster, and to Derbyshire it was to be given access 
 via Nottingham-a much better access than that which it had already 
 been given via Burton, under the Derbyshire Extensions Act of 1872. 
 For the purposes of this new North Western route into Derbyshire, 
 and also, of course, for such purposes as the Great Northern could put 
 it to, a junction line was to be made between the new jomt Ime and 
 the Grantham and Nottingham branch, a line to leave the former at 
 Stathern and to join the latter near Bingham. This, of course, was 
 to have the further eff-ect of placing the North Western advantageously 
 in the town of Nottingham. 
 
 In return for such important concessions as these, the advantages 
 which the Great Northern on its part obtained, beyond the North 
 Western's initial consent to the partnership, were, it must be confessed, 
 somewhat meagre. They amounted to two sets of running powers— 
 from Market Harborough southward to Northampton, and from the 
 same neighbourhood eastward to Peterborough. For the purposes of 
 the latter run the London and North Western undertook to construct 
 a missing link between Seaton and Wansford, while the Great Northern, 
 on its part, agreed to fill up a second much shorter gap between its own 
 and the North Western station at Peterborough. 
 
 Thus per 5^— commercially— this partnership with Euston Square— 
 an event, by the way, which showed how fast things had moved since 
 the days of the " confederacy "—was not a very good bargain for the 
 Great Northern ; but that the grounds of policy upon which it was 
 based were solid ones was shown by an event which took place in this 
 same autumn of 1872. This was nothing else than an alliance between 
 the Midland and Sheffield companies to carry out Sir Edward Watkin's 
 "wonderful scheme." It was initiated by Mr. Price, the Midland 
 chairman, who on 10 October, 1872, wrote to Sir Edward Watkin to 
 suggest that, as the time for new deposits was approaching, it might be 
 well for them too to try again, as in the previous year, to " harmonize " 
 the projects of their companies. Sir Edward, of course, readily 
 responded ; and the result was that the joint Bill of the Great Northern 
 and London and North Western, when deposited in November, 1872, 
 found a counterpart in a joint Bill of the Midland and Sheffield— a 
 Bill for a new through line from Rushton (a place on the Midland's 
 main line, a few miles south of Market Harborough) via Tilton and 
 Melton (where a junction was to be made with the newly-authorized 
 Midland line from Nottingham), to a junction with the Sheffield main 
 line at Worksop, and thence to join the North Eastern at Askern, and 
 the South Yorkshire at Hexthorp and Conisborough. Obviously this 
 was a project which threatened Great Northern interests in all sorts of 
 
 ft 
 
 'I 
 
 I! 
 
 i 
 
284 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 ways, and obviously, also, the fact that they had a counter scheme 
 ready for occupying the same route greatly improved the Great 
 Northern's chance of averting the danger.* 
 
 On 29 October, 1872 — about three weeks after his letter to Sir 
 Edward Watkin, just referred to — Mr. Price, the Midland chairman, 
 wrote another letter, which was also destined to have an important 
 bearing upon the interests of the Great Northern. The addressee this 
 time was Mr. John Crossley, of Halifax, and its subject a projected new 
 through line from Huddersfield through Halifax to Keighley— a project 
 for which Mr. Crossley and other leading men of Huddersfield and 
 Halifax had been working ever since 1863. In 1864 a Commons 
 Committee had rejected their line — the same Committee which had 
 passed the smaller Halifax and Ovenden undertaking, — but the fact that 
 a part of the route had thus been occupied had not prevented another 
 Committee in 1867 from sanctioning the Huddersfield, Halifax, and 
 Keighley line as well. Then, however, the Midland directors, over- 
 burdened just then with liabilities, had brought the enterprise to a 
 standstill by withdrawing in the Lords the support they had given in 
 the Commons. 
 
 So nothing more had been done until the date we have now reached 
 — 1872— when Mr. Crossley and his friends had "warmed up again" 
 — to quote a phrase of Mr. Denison's — and were preparing to go to 
 Parliament once more. Great was their chagrin, therefore, to learn 
 from Mr. Price on the date mentioned above that the Midland was 
 again too occupied with other matters — its joint line with the Sheffield 
 being the chief of these— to take up their project. 
 
 " I have made this announcement at the earliest possible moment,*' 
 wrote Mr. Price — as a matter of fact Mr. Crossley had been waiting 
 some weeks for his answer — " so as to set you and your friends free 
 to prosecute your own scheme if you think fit"; and, despite the 
 lateness of the season, the promoters of the Huddersfield, Halifax, 
 and Keighley line acted upon this suggestion in a way which caused 
 Mr. Price subsequently to regret that he had made it. For not only 
 did they give the Parliamentary notices for their line, but, tired of 
 waiting upon the Midland, they put themselves into communication 
 with the Great Northern. The Board at King's Cross, however, 
 though prepared to fill up the district between Halifax and Keighley 
 — for that, as we have already noted, had been the full object 
 originally of both the Halifax and Ovenden and Bradford and 
 Thornton undertakings — were not prepared to go southwards from 
 Halifax to Huddersfield, much less were they prepared to adopt the 
 
 • For Map see p. 209, 
 
 v\ 
 
 
 1S72 
 
 JACKALS AND LION 
 
 285 
 
 further suggestion which some of the local promoters now made to 
 carry the new line beyond Huddersfield to Manchester. The result 
 was that the Huddersfield, Halifax, and Keighley line was after all 
 dropped as far as the session of 1873 was concerned. 
 
 Before it was dropped, however, the Great Northern was led 
 definitely to pledge itself at a meeting at Leeds to an important 
 forward movement in the district, namely, to join the Halifax and 
 Ovenden and Bradford and Thornton lines, and to continue them in 
 one route northwards to Keighley — provided that people in the 
 district would find half the capital in the same way as was already 
 being done for the Bradford and Thornton. This had the effect of 
 arousing Colonel Akroyd, the Messrs. Foster, of Queensbury, and 
 other former advocates of a through line up the Thornton valley, to 
 immediate activity. The month of November being already well 
 advanced, it would under ordinary circumstances have been im- 
 possible to have given notices and deposited plans for the session of 
 1873; but, fortunately, in Messrs. Nelson and Eraser, a solicitor and 
 engineer were available who, in connection with the promotion both of 
 the Halifax and Ovenden and the Bradford and Thornton, had already 
 made preparations for the through scheme now talked of. Mr. Eraser, 
 too, happened to be well acquainted with the plans prepared for the 
 Huddersfield, Halifax, and Keighley project. Under these circum- 
 stances it was found possible to deposit a Thornton and Keighley Bill 
 just in time for the next session, and this was done in the name of a 
 " provisional committee," of which the Messrs. Foster, Colonel Akroyd, 
 and Mr. John Crossley (who, now that the connection with Hudders- 
 field seemed unattainable, had thrown himself into the new movement) 
 
 were the leading members. 
 
 Meantime Mr. Nelson, in his familiar character of "jackal," had 
 placed this new " feeder "—snatched, as it were, from the jaws of the 
 Midland-before the " lions " at King's Cross, and both its taste and its 
 savour— its commercial advantages and its "political" value— had given 
 satisfaction at the Great Northern Board. Besides this, they were 
 already committed to fill up the district, provided that the local people 
 found half the capital; and so, when at a meeting at Leeds on 
 23 December, 1872, the provisional committee gave an undertaking 
 to do this on the same terms as for the Bradford and Thornton, 
 viz., to be exchanged for 80 per cent, of Great Northern original 
 stock, the deputation from King's Cross at once gave an undertaking 
 in return that the Great Northern would on those terms take over the 
 Bill and make the line, if authorized. Thus the Company became 
 committed to a further capital expenditure of ;^640,ooo. 
 
 tfl 
 
 .j'i. '' 
 
 ■1 ! 
 
 
 
 I 
 
 ¥ 
 
286 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 Meanwhile the burning question of the hour, in railway board- 
 rooms, in factories, and at every hearth, was the extraordinary state 
 of the coal trade. Whether from greatly increased demand or from 
 artificially restricted supply, or, as seems most probable, from a com- 
 bination of both causes, there was a veritable coal famine in the land, 
 especially in London, where the price — 45^. a ton or thereabouts — was 
 higher even than in the pre-railway days. Besieged with orders from 
 all directions, the coalowners were masters of the situation, and the 
 railway companies, while suffering severely as coal consumers, were 
 unable to recoup themselves to any appreciable extent as carriers, 
 because, even at normal rates, they were unable to obtain a 
 sufficient supply for the markets on their lines. Especially was 
 the Great Northern in bad case, being dependent almost entirely 
 upon one field — the South Yorkshire. The coalowners of that 
 district had never been, as we know, really zealous for the London 
 trade ; and now they were literally starving it in order to feed more 
 profitable provincial markets. Moreover, from October, 1872, the 
 Sheffield Company insisted once more upon having its full is. 4//. per 
 ton out of the through rate. Consequently, to keep the differential as 
 compared with Derbyshire at lod. — to have allowed it to be higher than 
 this would have been fatal to what South Yorkshire trade was still left — 
 the Great Northern had to be content with a rate of 4^. per ton per mile, 
 the lowest rate charged at this time by any company for coal. 
 
 Even at this rate, however, the Great Northern could not get a 
 sufficient supply of coal for its London market ; and so, on 8 November, 
 1872, Mr. Oakley sent out a circular calling "the serious and earnest 
 attention of the South Yorkshire colliery owners to the subject." 
 "Clearly," said he, "the decrease in the South Yorkshire trade to 
 London cannot be attributed to this Company's charge for carriage, 
 our rate for 156 miles being actually 6d. per ton less than that paid 
 from the nearer Clay Cross pits " — about 1 24 miles. " It is not the 
 province of this Company to interfere between the coalowners and 
 their customers on the question of price ; but if, as alleged, the 
 decrease in the South Yorkshire trade has been caused by the high 
 prices demanded by the coalowners, it is our duty, in the interest of 
 our proprietors, to direct attention to the permanent loss of trade 
 which will probably ensue." This circular, however, produced no good 
 result, and at the end of the year the Great Northern directors 
 seriously considered whether they ought not to adopt the extreme 
 remedy of forcing their way into the Derbyshire field again, without 
 waiting for the construction of their new line, by putting on an 
 extremely low rate from Nottingham to London — a rate low enough 
 
 1873 
 
 BETWEEN TWO FIRES AGAIN 
 
 287 
 
 j 
 
 \ 
 
 to counterbalance the Midland's high charge between Nottingham and 
 the pits. Eventually, however, they decided to make a second appeal 
 to the South Yorkshire coalowners (7 January, 1873). 
 
 The causa causans of this decision undoubtedly was that the Great 
 Northern was once more between two fires. In view of the attitude 
 of the coalowners and of the Sheffield Company, it had the strongest 
 possible temptation— nay, justification even- to throw up the un- 
 grateful role of devoted servants to the South Yorkshire field ; but, 
 just as in 187 1, so again, its directors felt that, if they did not resist 
 this temptation, they would be playing straight into the hands of Sir 
 Edward Watkin and Mr. Baxter. For it was upon Sir Edward's old 
 plea— we " cannot trust " the Great Northern, therefore we must have 
 a new access to London for our South Yorkshire coal traffic— that the 
 Sheffield Company was making out a case for its new partnership with 
 the Midland, and Mr. Baxter, on his part, would certainly have thrown 
 himself heart and soul into that " wonderful scheme," had the Great 
 Northern at this crisis favoured Derbyshire and so, practically, thrown 
 
 over South Yorkshire. 
 
 As things were, however, Mr. Baxter hesitated. Enthusiast as he 
 had always been, and "fanatic" as he had now become, on the 
 subject of the South Yorkshire trade to London, he had not the 
 slightest difficulty in persuading himself that a new route to London 
 from that coalfield was wanted, notwithstanding the fact that by its 
 existing route the Great Northern had never been able to get a full 
 traffic, not even at the time of keenest "war," when it had reduced 
 the rate to 3J. 2d. — 24^. per mile— per ton. On the other hand, the 
 could not blind himself to the obvious danger arising from the partner- 
 ship in the new route of the Midland Company— the creator and 
 sworn champion of the rival Derbyshire to London trade. True, that 
 under the agreement made between Sir Edward Watkin and Mr. Price, 
 the Sheffield Company was to have running powers into St. Pancras 
 —the running powers into London which had been so long the object 
 of Sir Edward's ambition; but with regard to the coal traffic Mr. 
 Baxter found that these powers were not unrestricted. At the instance 
 of Mr. Allport a very significant proviso had been attached to them 
 —that for the run between Rushton and St. Pancras the Midland 
 was to have the power of insisting on a rate per mile being charged 
 equal to the rate it was charging for Derbyshire coal over the same 
 route. It was obvious to Mr. Baxter that this would have the 
 same effect as the famous agreement of 1863 ; it would revive the 
 obnoxious fixed differential between the rates from the two coalfields. 
 Accordingly Mr. Baxter insisted that, as a condition of the South 
 
 m. 
 
 I 
 
 1 
 
2S8 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 Yorkshire coalowners supporting the new line in Parliament, the proviso 
 as to the rates must be expunged ; and this demand was conveyed by 
 Sir Edward Watkin— not unwillingly, one may imagine— to the Midland 
 Company. But, as may also be readily imagined, Mr. AUport, the 
 champion of the is. 4^. differential, met the demand with the most 
 strenuous opposition ; and the question was still at issue between the 
 parties when, on 21 March, 1873, a Commons Committee, presided 
 over by Sir Hedworth Williamson— the same chairman who had sat on 
 the C. O. A. L. line of 1871 — commenced the hearing of the Great 
 Northern and London and North Western's Joint Bill. Then, however, 
 it was definitely announced in the witness-box by Mr. Oakley that the 
 Great Northern intended to give running powers to the North Western 
 between Newark and Doncaster without restriction as to the rates to be 
 charged for coal. Upon this Mr. Price and Mr. Allport gave way before 
 " the eloquence and importunity " of Sir Edward Watkin. The 
 obnoxious proviso was withdrawn from their joint Bill, and the result 
 was that at a meeting on 19 April the South Yorkshire coalowners, 
 under Mr. Baxter's leadership, decided to support the Rushton line. 
 
 Meanwhile in Parliament the case for the Great Northern and North 
 Western line had closed, and that for the Sheffield and Midland had 
 commenced before the same committee. The latter lasted from 3 April 
 to 7 May, 1873, and then there was landowners' opposition to be heard, 
 so that it was not until 13 May — the twenty-seventh day of the whole 
 hearing— that Mr. Venables, the leader for the Rushton Bill, could 
 begin his reply on the whole case. As far as the Midland Company 
 was concerned, he maintained that it had made out " an overwhelming 
 case " for the new line on the double ground of improving its connection 
 with the North Eastern, and of relieving its existing main line. As for 
 the Sheffield, it had for years wanted a new route for South Yorkshire 
 coal to London ; it meant to keep its Fifty Years Agreement with the 
 Great Northern so far as Lancashire traffic was concerned, but it was 
 perfectly at liberty to send the South Yorkshire coal by whatever route 
 it liked, seeing that it had acquired the South Yorkshire Railway since 
 the making of the Fifty Years Agreement. As for the question of 
 South Yorkshire versus Derbyshire, Mr. Allport, it was true, said 
 counsel, " holds, and still holds, and will hold to the end of his days, 
 that IS. 4d. is exactly the differential that ought to exist between the 
 two coalfields," but he had been obliged to "put his convictions in 
 his pocket." The Midland Company, as it "confessed with great 
 shame, but for this particular purpose of argument with some satisfac- 
 tion," had been "completely beaten in the conflict with the Great 
 Northern about South Yorkshire coal." The South Yorkshire would 
 
 1873 
 
 THE UNDAUNTED G.N.R. 
 
 289 
 
 • 'I 
 
 " always compete at a very great advantage in respect to rates with the 
 
 Derbyshire." 
 
 A case which needed to be supported by such very double-edged 
 arguments as these did not need much refutation, but what was wanted 
 Mr. Denison administered next day. The Midland wanted a relief 
 line ! said he. Why only a year ago, in reply to the Great Northern's 
 Derbyshire Bill, they had said they could carry any amount of addi- 
 tional traffic. The Sheffield had always wanted a new outlet to London 
 for South Yorkshire coal ! No, it was not Sir Edward Watkin but Mr. 
 Baxter who had originated the C. O. A. L. line of 187 1, and the Sheffield 
 was not dond fide promoting the present line for coal traffic, but for the 
 purpose of "getting its claws into the Midland" with the view to a 
 dividend guarantee. The Sheffield had been the worst enemy of the 
 South Yorkshire coal. 
 
 " They said— We have that bit of line ; we will neither let other 
 people run over it at a reasonable rate, nor carry ourselves at a 
 reasonable rate; and the Great Northern has to suffer for it- 
 unhappy Great Northern, whatever anybody else does, it has always 
 to raise or lower its rates to make things square. . . . The Great 
 Northern are to do everything anyone wants and always to be abused 
 for breaking agreements and oppressing the public if they do not do 
 it. But we can live under it. We have not been frightened hitherto. 
 Whenever we have gone to Parliament we have succeeded, and 
 we are not afraid of not succeeding still." 
 
 At half-past three on the following day, 15 May, 1873, amid a 
 scene of great excitement, the Committee gave its decisions. They 
 proved to be entirely satisfactory to neither party. The joint arrange- 
 ments between the Great Northern and London and North Western 
 were rejected altogether. The line from Melton, via Tilton, to 
 Leicester was given to the Great Northern alone, thus completing 
 its original Newark to Leicester project, as far as Parliamentary powers 
 went ; and lines from Conisborough, on the South Yorkshire Railway, 
 to Shireoaks, near Worksop, and from Melton to Rushton, were 
 given to the Midland and Sheffield jointly. At once Sir Edward 
 Watkin persuaded the Midland to alter the agreement between the 
 two companies so as to give the Sheffield running powers from Shire- 
 oaks to Melton via Nottingham, and this alteration he attempted 
 to get embodied in their Bill when the Committee met again next 
 day. Mr. Denison, however, frustrated this design, and the new 
 running powers were left dependent upon private agreement merely. 
 But the Committee refused assent to a further petition of the 
 Great Northern's counsel that they should strike out the Sheffield 
 u 
 
 i 
 
290 
 
 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 from partnership between Melton and Rushton and give that line 
 to the Midland alone. 
 
 Meanwhile, during the progress of this "thirty days' fight"— 
 the longest the House of Commons Committee-rooms had seen 
 since the seventy days' fight over the London and York— another 
 contest had been waged before another Committee, presided over 
 by Major O'Reilly. This was over the Bradford, Thornton, and 
 Keighley Bill. This Bill had been petitioned against by a number 
 of interests— by the Midland, by the Lancashire and Yorkshire, 
 by a small company called the Keighley and Worth Valley, whose 
 directors were disappointed that Mr. Fraser had not been able to 
 join his new line with theirs, and by the Corporation of Bradford, 
 which was anxious for the safety of its reservoirs at Doe Park and 
 Manywells. It had been supported, on the other hand, by many 
 petitions from the locality, and with tpgard to one of the most 
 important of these a rather curious train of events had occurred. 
 
 The petition was from the Halifax Chamber of Commerce, signed 
 by Mr. William Morris, its president, and it had happened at the end 
 of March, more than a month before the Bill had come on for hearing, 
 that this Mr. Morris had fallen in with Mr. AUport— quite accidentally 
 in the lobby of the House of Commons. Owing to a curious mistake 
 made by Sir Edward Baines, who had introduced Mr. Allport to Mr. 
 Morris as " the manager of the Great Northern," the conversation had 
 turned upon the Thornton and Keighley Bill, but it had not gone on 
 long when the misunderstanding had, with much laughter, been put 
 right. Then Mr. Morris had confessed that the Halifax Chamber of 
 Commerce, though it had petitioned in favour of the Great Northern 
 Bill, would greatly have preferred the Huddersfield, Halifax, and 
 Keighley scheme, which it had been hoped the Midland would have 
 taken up; whereupon Mr. Allport on his part had avowed that the 
 Midland, though it had petitioned against the Great Northern Bill 
 on the ground that the district was already sufficiently accommodated, 
 was in reality anxious to come to Parliament in a future session with 
 a scheme of its own. Full of this information, Mr. Morris returned 
 to Halifax, with the Easter holidays to work in. He consulted with 
 other leading men there upon the new aspect which Mr. AUport's 
 avowal had given to affairs, and eventually opened formal negotiation 
 with the Midland through the medium of Mr. Matthew William 
 Thompson, a Midland director, who happened to be Mayor of Bradford 
 for the year. The result was that on 23 April, 1873— still l)efore the 
 Bill had reached Committee stage — the Midland Board sent a reso- 
 lution to Halifax pledging themselves, if the Thornton and Keighley 
 
 1873 
 
 HALIFAX'S DILEMMA 
 
 291 
 
 Bill were rejected, to apply in the session of 1874 for the larger 
 Huddersfield, Halifax, and Keighley scheme. 
 
 The next step of Mr. Morris and his associates was to issue large 
 posters throughout the neighbourhood calling a public meeting in the 
 Town Hall on the next market day— Saturday, 3 May, 1873. This 
 proved one of the largest and most exciting ever held in Halifax. 
 There could be no doubt but that a line in the hands of the Midland 
 to start from Huddersfield (to which place that Company already had 
 running powers) to pass through Halifax and to join the Midland 
 main system again at Keighley would be the best possible line for 
 the town, but, on the other hand, there were many who, as Mr. 
 Crossley expressed it, were "tired of being bandied from pillar to 
 post" by the Midland, and who suspected that its latest move was 
 simply "a ruse" to block the Great Northern Bill. So when the 
 meeting "divided" (as it did literally, the two parties going to 
 opposite sides of the hall) the numbers on each side were almost 
 equal; however, the resolution in favour of waiting to the following 
 session was declared carried. In the following week, accordingly, the 
 Mayor of Halifax gave evidence before the Commons Committee 
 against the Great Northern Bill, though his "proof" had actually been 
 prepared in its favour. Nevertheless, the Bill passed the Commons on 
 12 May, 1873, three days before the decision, already recorded, on the 
 Leicestershire and South Yorkshire projects. 
 
 But in neither case was the battle over. The House of Lords 
 had yet to be reckoned with; and with regard to the Leicestershire 
 Bill, it looked as if the thirty days' fight might have to be fought all 
 over again. True that the " wonderful scheme "— " this great through 
 scheme from everywhere to everywhere" Mr. Denison had termed 
 
 it had come out of the Commons as a head and tail without a 
 
 body; but it was still quite alive, thanks to Sir Edward Watkin's 
 prompt surgery ; and with the addition of the new agreement as to 
 running powers it was to be put before the Lords as much a through 
 scheme as before. Moreover there was a danger that, now the rival 
 joint line from Market Harborough to Tilton had been rejected, the 
 landowners of that district, who had in the Commons strongly opposed 
 the Midland and Sheffield, might now turn round and support that 
 line as a pis aller ; and so Messrs. Nelson and Fraser took care to 
 be present at a landowners' meeting which was held at East Norton 
 on 4 June, 1873. It was then arranged that, on condition that the 
 North Western and Great Northern pledged themselves to revive their 
 line in the following session, the landowners would renew their 
 opposition to the Rushton and Melton line in the Lords. 
 
 'i 
 
 It] 
 
 1 1 
 
292 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 A month later— 7 July, 1873— the opposing Bills in their mutilated 
 shapes came before a Committee presided over by Lord Camoys. 
 The Great Northern had no landowners' opposition this time to its 
 Melton and Leicester line ; it had satisfied Mr. Hartopp, the master 
 of foxhounds, by a deviation, and so, in Mr. Denison's phrase, it 
 did not "encounter his pack this year." But the Midland and Sheffield, 
 as we have just said, had a strong combination of landowners against 
 them; and whilst cutting short the case on other points, the noble 
 Lords gave the landed interest full weight. The result was that the 
 Great Northern Bill passed as it was, while the rival Bill was still 
 further mutilated by the excision of the portion between Rushton 
 and Melton. The "wonderful scheme from everywhere to every- 
 where" was thus reduced to a local coal line from Shireoaks to 
 Conisborough. It was not surprising that under these circumstances 
 its promoters decided to withdraw it altogether. 
 
 This decision was given on 11 July, 1873, and so Mr. Denison 
 was set free to take his place as Great Northern "leader" in the 
 Bradford and Thornton Bill when that reached Committee stage in 
 the Lords on 14 July. The Midland again appeared in opposition, 
 and its advisers went the length of placing a map on the wall showing 
 the line it intended to promote in the following session. But this 
 Mr. Denison immediately attacked as " a totally imaginary line which 
 had no earthly business to be there, being in no sense before the 
 Committee"; and at the conclusion of his speech the Committee 
 not only ruled out the map, but refused the Midland a locus standi 
 to oppose on the ground that its sole objection to the new line was 
 the competition it threatened. After this the only opposition which 
 remained, that of the little Keighley and Worth Valley Company, was 
 soon disposed of, and on 15 July, 1873, the Great Northern Bill 
 
 passed the Lords. 
 
 Thus as the net result of its prolonged Parliamentary campaign 
 of 1873, the Great Northern got powers of access to Leicester and to 
 Keighley, and by obtaining powers to connect the Bradford and 
 Thornton and Halifax and Ovenden lines secured a route of its own 
 all the way between Bradford and Halifax. 
 
 M 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 
 THE ZENITH OF PROSPERITY-THE SUBURBAN INCREMENT— 
 THE ABBOTTS RIPTON ACCIDENT— 1873-1876. 
 
 OF the new lines which we noted as under construction by the 
 Great Northern Company in 1872, one had by this time been 
 opened for traffic. This was the branch from Highgate to Muswell 
 Hill to serve the Alexandra Palace. As the portion of this line within 
 the Palace grounds was constructed at the expense of the Palace 
 Company, all the Great Northern had to make was a connecting link 
 between this and Highgate, one mile eleven chains in length ; but as 
 this involved a considerable viaduct over the valley between Highgate 
 and Muswell Hills it was a heavy work, costing a sum of over 
 ^£50,000. Yet, though not put in hand until the autumn of 1872, the 
 line was completed in good time for the opening of the Palace to the 
 public, which took place on 24 May, 1873. 
 
 The day proved a beautifully fine one, and the rush of passengers to 
 the Palace is still remembered at the booking-offices at King's Cross 
 as one of the greatest ever experienced there. " Even the first-class 
 carriages," says the Times report, " were crammed to the windows with 
 rough and eager holiday makers." 
 
 The new Palace was a great success. On Whit-Monday, 2 June, 
 1873, it was visited by about 60,000 people, and even as early as noon 
 on the following Monday, 9 June, a goodly number of people had 
 congregated. Then, all on a sudden a cry of " Fire ! " was raised. 
 Those visitors who were in the Palace itself rushed out of it as soon as 
 the alarm reached them ; and then, turning, they saw that the dome 
 was in flames. Travelling downwards from the roof the fire attacked 
 the main body of the building, gaining in fury as it reached more 
 combustible materials, and in less than an hour the whole structure 
 was on fire, sending up dense volumes of black smoke interspersed 
 with lurid flames into the clear summer sky, and creating the greatest 
 excitement for many miles around. 
 
 In answer to an urgent telegram, Mr. Oakley sent down from King's 
 
 293 
 
 I 
 
 ftl:.'( 
 
294 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 Cross to Wood Green the two fire-engines kept at the Great Northern 
 terminus, and they arrived just after the local engine had been got out 
 and before any of the six engines despatched by the Metropolitan Fire 
 Brigade arrived by road. But already the destruction of the Palace 
 was almost complete; and, even if the engines had arrived earlier, 
 they would have been of little service, because the Palace Company 
 had neglected to make any arrangements for obtaining water in any 
 quantity, though there were reservoirs at the foot of the hill, near 
 Wood Green. The result was that the carelessness of some workmen, 
 who had gone to their dinner, leaving a lighted brazier in the dome, 
 had the effect of depriving the Great Northern Company within 
 a couple of hours of a most promising source of new income, for 
 during the sixteen days of the Palace's brief career about 99,000 
 passengers had been conveyed to it over the Great Northern line. 
 By opening a suburban station, however, just outside the grounds at 
 Muswell Hill, the Company was able to earn some small return on its 
 expenditure on the new line pending the rebuilding of the Palace, 
 which was immediately taken in hand. 
 
 The only other "openings" in 1873 in which the Great Northern 
 participated were the extension to Skegness, from 28 July, 1873, of the 
 Wainfleet and Firsby Company's* line (worked by the Great Northern), 
 and the partial opening of Sir Edward Watkin's new Manchester and 
 Liverpool line in the autumn of the year. This latter, the reader will 
 remember, had been granted by Parliament in 1865 to the Sheffield 
 Company alone ; but it had afterwards been vested with the Cheshire 
 lines in the tripartite ownership of the Sheffield, Great Northern, and 
 Midland, and to the works of it and of the Central Station in Liverpool 
 the Great Northern had by this time contributed as its third share 
 about half a million of money, in addition to the million or thereabouts 
 which it had previously contributed to the Cheshire lines proper. As 
 we have seen, moreover, it was to this new direct line that the Cheshire 
 Lines Committee had for some time been looking to stop the dead 
 loss of some thousands a year to each of the partners, which had up 
 to this time resulted from the working of their other lines. Pending 
 the completion of the Liverpool Central Station little use could be 
 made of the new line for passenger traffic ; but, notwithstanding this, 
 Colonel Packe was able to point out to the Great Northern share- 
 holders, at their half-yearly meeting in February, 1874, that, for the 
 first time on record, the item in the net revenue account for working 
 the Cheshire lines was on the side of profit instead of loss. 
 
 Nevertheless, a profit of ;^2,2o6 for the half-year on an expenditure 
 • Incorporated 1869. Line opened from Firsby to Wainfleet, November, 1871. 
 
 1873 
 
 "THESE HUNGRY CHESHIRE LINES" 
 
 295 
 
 of a million and a half was a small figure—" I think I may say it is a 
 miserable figure," said Colonel Packe frankly ;-and a still more gloomy 
 feature of the situation was that, notwithstanding the completion of 
 the direct line, there seemed little prospect of " these hungry Cheshire 
 lines," as a Great Northern shareholder called them, being satisfied in 
 the near future with much less than the ;£ 100,000 per half-year which 
 had for some time past been a standing charge on their account to 
 Great Northern capital expenditure. True, the Liverpool Central 
 Station was nearing completion— it was partially opened in March, 
 1874,— but in 1872 the Joint Committee had thought it necessary to 
 go to Parliament for powers to construct a Central Station in Man- 
 chester also, and the works of this had yet to be taken in hand. 
 Moreover, even now that they had a direct through route entirely 
 in their own hands both from Manchester to Liverpool, and from the 
 Sheffield system to Liverpool without going through Manchester, 
 the Great Northern and Midland authorities found that they could 
 ndt compete on equal terms with the London and North Western for 
 the very important shipping traffic of Liverpool, because the Cheshire 
 lines goods station at Brunswick Dock was disadvantageously situated 
 at the southern extremity of the port. Accordingly the Joint Com- 
 mittee now decided to promote a Bill in the session of 1874 for a 
 new line, eight miles in length, to Huskisson Dock at the north end 
 of Liverpool, and this involved the Great Northern in a further capital 
 liability of ;£2 66,000. 
 
 Meantime the new branches in Yorkshire— the Bradford, Eccleshill, 
 and Idle, the Idle and Shipley, and the Ossett and Dewsbury— had all, 
 since their commencement in 1872, been absorbing considerable sums 
 of capital each half-year without return, and early in 1873 a yet more 
 serious drain upon capital account had been begun by the letting 
 of the contracts for the section of the Derbyshire extension from 
 Colwick to Pinxton and for the North Ix)ndon junction line from 
 Finsbury Park to Canonbury The former, about eighteen miles in 
 length, was let to Messrs. Benton and Woodiwiss, and the latter, one 
 mile thirty-one chains, to Mr. Joseph Firbank, and they both involved 
 heavy works. But, as we have already said, the objects they were 
 to serve were so urgent that, notwithstanding the continued high prices 
 of all materials and of labour, it seemed essential that they should be 
 prosecuted at the highest possible speed. 
 
 One of the main objects of the line from Finsbury to Canonbury 
 was to divert goods traffic from the existing junction with the North 
 London at Maiden Lane, and so relieve congestion in the King's Cross 
 goods station, and between it and Holloway ; but, since this measure 
 
 ■,1 
 
 '"1 
 
 UH 
 
 I 
 
 i 
 
296 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 had been decided upon in 187 1, the increase of the Company's London 
 trafific had been so large that now, in 1873, it became absolutely 
 necessary to devise some additional and more thorough plan of relief. 
 For this two alternatives presented themselves : an enlargement of the 
 existing goods terminus at King's Cross, or the construction of an 
 entirely new goods station nearer the heart of London. Already, since 
 about i860, as the reader may remember, the Company had had a City 
 goods station at Royal Mint Street ; but the site of this not being 
 central and the railway route to it via Bow being circuitous, the greater 
 part of the freight which the Great Northern carried to and from the 
 City had, nevertheless, to be carted to and from King's Cross. This 
 necessitated a large stock of road vans and horses ; for, unlike 
 the London and North Western and other companies (who employed 
 Messrs. Pickford and other pre-railway carriers as their agents), the 
 Great Northern had from the first been its own street carrier in 
 London. In Yorkshire too, after employing an agent up to 1869, it 
 had since that date acquired its own carting stock. The result was that, 
 at the date we have now reached, its carts numbered over 900, and its 
 draught horses about 1,500. 
 
 To maintain and renew these was, of course, an important branch 
 of current expenditure, and at this time of high prices it had become 
 specially onerous. Indeed, the scarcity and consequent great costliness 
 of horses was almost as much a matter of public complaint in 1873 as 
 the scarcity and high price of coal. Consequently to diminish street 
 cartage was an important object with the Company. This, then, 
 was one reason why it seemed better to make the new provision for 
 goods terminals in the City instead of at King's Cross. 
 
 There were other reasons equally cogent. The London and North 
 Western at Broad Street and the Great Western at Smithfield had 
 central City depots already, and had so obtained important advantages 
 in competition; and most conclusive argument of all— the "widened 
 lines" of the Metropolitan Company offered a channel from King's 
 Cross to the City which could very well accommodate a good deal 
 more traffic than was at present put upon it. Lastly, the Metropolitan 
 Company had a piece of most suitable land about four acres in extent 
 to let adjoining its station at Farringdon Street. So the Great Northern 
 directors decided in 1873 to lease this land and construct a new goods 
 terminus upon it. 
 
 We have just said that the "widened lines" of the Metropolitan 
 from King's Cross to Farringdon Street could readily accommodate 
 additional traffic, but this was not the case with the Great Northern's 
 own tunnel beneath the Regent's Canal. This tunnel had been con- 
 
 1873 
 
 THE BLOCK SYSTEM 
 
 297 
 
 ^ 
 
 structed originally, the reader will remember, simply to give access to 
 and from the passenger terminus; but since the opening of the 
 connection with the Metropolitan, " City and suburban " trains, through 
 goods and coal trains to and from the south of the Thames, and other 
 new traffic had been using it ; and now, if Farringdon Street was to be 
 made a principal terminus for London goods, the use of it would be far 
 larger than ever. Under these circumstances the directors decided to 
 apply to Parliament in 1874 for powers to double this "Maiden Lane 
 tunnel." At the same time they decided that they must spend a sum 
 of ;i^5o,ooo in erecting new departure platforms and sidings at the 
 passenger terminus. King's Cross. Besides all this, it was very evident 
 that the long-contemplated doubling of the Copenhagen tunnel could 
 not be much longer postponed. 
 
 Meanwhile, at other principal stations on the main system— Peter- 
 borough, Grantham, Retford, Doncaster, Lincoln, Leeds, Bradford, 
 &c.— heavy demands on capital account had to be met for station 
 enlargements, new warehouses, sidings, &c. On the main Imes 
 generally, too, the outlay for facilitating traffic working, which we 
 noticed as first becoming serious about 1870, had since that date 
 increased in every half-year. When in August, 187 1, the directors 
 had reported that by the close of that year the block system would be 
 completely installed between London and Yorkshire, they had probably 
 thought that that would be the end of serious outlay for signalling 
 apparatus ; but, with the block stations in many cases three or even 
 four miles apart, it had since been found that the new system of space 
 intervals between trains not only did not increase the capacity of the 
 main line, but actually diminished it. So it had become necessary to 
 set to work at once to shorten the block sections, while at the same 
 time an auxiliary remedy had had to be sought in the provision of 
 " passing places," />., duplicate lengths of line between block stations 
 on to which slow trains could be shunted while the faster ones went 
 by. By the end of 1873 about half a dozen of these had been provided 
 alongside the main lines in various parts, and by the same date the 
 original instalment of the block system had been largely extended. 
 The result was that on its 162 miles of main line between London and 
 Askern the Great Northern had by this time 109 block stations. 
 Indeed, this part of its system was probably better equipped in this 
 respect than any other British railway company at the same date. 
 
 This meant, of course, not only a considerable ouday of capital but 
 a serious increase of working expenses for wages of signalmen, &:c., 
 and in this year, 1873, also, as in the previous year, the cost of labour 
 and the price of coal, iron, and other railway requisites continued 
 
i 
 
 298 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 abnormally high, so that the ratio of working expenses to receipts 
 reached the highest figure on record — 53 per cent. Moreover, a heavy 
 sum had to be paid in compensation for an accident at Retford, which 
 occurred on the very same day as the shareholders' meeting, 23 August, 
 1873. On the other hand, 1873, like 1872, was a year of very 
 great expansion of gross receipts, the total increase over the previous 
 year being about ;^2oo,ooo, though 1872 itself, as we saw, had 
 achieved a "record" increase of ;^ 180,000 over 187 1. The result was 
 that the dividend paid on the original stock was 2s. 6d. higher than 
 ever before — jQ'j 5J. per cent, for the year. 
 
 This was not only the highest dividend that the Great Northern 
 Company had paid up to that time, but is higher than any it has paid 
 since ; in a word, it marks the zenith of the Company's prosperity, and 
 there was a peculiar appropriateness in this being reached at this date. 
 It coincided most opportunely with the closing of the lives of three 
 men who had been linked with the undertaking since its inception — 
 Edmund Denison, Colonel Packe, and Major Amsinck, the last-named 
 of whom died in 1873, and the two former in 1874. Colonel Packe 
 was succeeded in the chairmanship by Colonel the Honourable 
 Octavius Duncombe, but he, though also an original director of the 
 Company, had retired from the Board in 1850, and had not been 
 re-elected until 1857. The "old order " was changing, "yielding place 
 to new." Mr. John Harvey Astell, director, Mr. Joseph Leech, the 
 Company's solicitor, and Mr. E. B. Denison, Q.c, who, under the title 
 of Sir Edmund Beckett, now succeeded to a baronetcy which his father 
 had held for a few months only, were now the sole survivors of those 
 who from the first and throughout had fought the Great Northern's 
 battles. 
 
 Compared with the session of 187 1, 1872, and 1873, the Parlia- 
 mentary session of 1874 was a quiet one for the Great Northern; 
 nevertheless, it produced some important results. The Cheshire Lines 
 Committee's Bill for its new Liverpool line was passed, and also a 
 "Great Northern Further Powers" Bill for the new Maiden Lane 
 tunnel and other works ; but again the chief interest centred round 
 projects for new lines in the Midlands. In fulfilment of their pledge to 
 the landowners, the Great Northern and London and North Western 
 re-introduced their Bill for extending the Newark and I^icester line 
 from Tilton to Market Harborough, and for vesting the part of it 
 between Bottesford and Tilton (the London and North Western did 
 not seek again to share in the portion between Bottesford and Newark) 
 in their joint ownership ; but the Midland and Sheffield joint project 
 for occupying the same ground was not revived, the Midland preferring 
 
 
 i 
 
 1874 
 
 A PARLIAMENTARY PRACTICAL JOKE 
 
 299 
 
 to promote again the line from Mantoti to Rushton, which Sir Edward 
 Watkin, it may be remembered, had persuaded Mr. Price to withdraw 
 in the autumn of 187 1. In further evidence that the Sheffield's 
 "flirtation" with the Midland— as Sir Mordaunt Wells, q.c, had 
 described the alliance of 1872-3 — was completely "off," these two 
 companies had antagonistic schemes on foot in Yorkshire this session, 
 the Midland joining with the North Eastern Company in promoting 
 a line from Swinton to Knottingley, while the Sheffield had a scheme of 
 its own to cover practically the same ground. It being, of course, 
 undesirable in Great Northern interests that the Midland and North 
 Eastern should come into closer relationship, the Great Northern 
 supported the Sheffield scheme. 
 
 Notwithstanding Midland opposition, the Tilton and Market 
 Harborough Bill got through both Houses successfully. So at the 
 price of admitting the London and North Western to Nottingham 
 and to Doncaster, the Great Northern relieved itself of half its 
 liability for making the already authorized line from Bottesford to 
 Tilton, and got powers of access, at half liability also, to Market 
 Harborough with running powers to Northampton. But the Midland, 
 nevertheless, got its Manton to Rushton line. On the other hand, 
 both the Swinton and Knottingley, and the Leeds, Pontefract, and 
 Sheffield Junction — as the Sheffield Company's project was called — 
 were thrown out in the Commons; but, this decision being regarded 
 with some reason as a practical joke on the part of the Committee, 
 the North Eastern and Midland companies subsequently obtained 
 leave for their Bill to be re-committed, buying off Sheffield and Great 
 Northern opposition to this by undertaking to give those companies 
 running powers over the new line when made. In this form the 
 Swinton and Knottingley Bill eventually passed into law. 
 
 In this same summer of 1874 Mr. F>aser got the Great Northern's 
 new branch, 6^ miles in length, from Laister Dyke, near Bradford, to 
 Eccleshill, Idle, and Shipley, the connecting line from Ossett via 
 Dewsbury to Batley, four miles, and the Halifax and Ovenden, 
 2\ miles, open for goods and mineral traffic. Meanwhile Mr. Johnson 
 reported that the North London Junction line would be ready before 
 the end of the year, and that every exertion was being made to get 
 the first twenty miles of the Derbyshire extension open for traffic by 
 the following April. The fact that owing to the continued high price 
 of coal and to strikes in South Yorkshire and Durham the coal traffic 
 of the Company had fallen off in the half-year to 30 June, 1874, by 
 ;£'29,ooo, made this latter work even more urgent than before. A new 
 work which Mr. Johnson had to take in hand in 1874 was the 
 
 r 
 
 ! 
 
I 
 
 I 
 
 f 
 
 I- 
 
 300 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 extension of the block system to the loop line and branches, and 
 in this same year, too, all the principal stations were resignalled, 
 interlocking apparatus extended to every junction of any importance, 
 and lock-bars attached to all facing switches. Thus the Great 
 Northern set an example to other companies in the prompt adoption 
 of the most approved safety appliances. 
 
 On 7 October, 1874, the Midland directors announced that on and 
 after i January, 1875, they intended to abolish second-class carriages 
 throughout their system, to reduce their first-class fares to the existing 
 second-class level (i^d. per mile), and to cease to give a reduction on 
 return fares. This produced in the railway world a sensation 
 greater even than that caused by the " third-class by all trains " edict of 
 March, 1872 ; and as the new change was not, like the other, to be put 
 into force simultaneously with its announcement, there arose, naturally 
 enough, a strenuous agitation to induce Mr. Allport and his Board to 
 reconsider their decision. The Great Northern directors joined with 
 the Boards of all the other leading northern railways in an appeal 
 to the Midland at least to postpone so far-reaching an alteration until a 
 general conference had discussed the whole subject ; but Mr. Ellis (who 
 had succeeded Mr. Price in the Midland chairmanship upon the latter's 
 appointment as one of the Railway Commissioners created under the 
 Traffic Act of 1873) boldly upheld both the wisdom of the change and 
 his company's right to independent action. Consequently the Great 
 Northern, London and North Western, and other companies who com- 
 peted with the Midland had, very reluctantly, to take in hand a revision 
 of their fares also. Particularly were they loath to reduce their charges 
 to first-class passengers — who, said Colonel Duncombe, had "never 
 made any complaints," and, as things were, could ** travel from London 
 to York or to Edinburgh at a fare which in the old posting days they 
 would almost have had to pay for turnpikes " ; — but, to quote Colonel 
 Duncombe again, they were in " the somewhat humiliating position of 
 not being their own masters." Accordingly, at the end of the year, Mr. 
 Oakley issued a notice to the effect that, while second-class carriages 
 would still be retained on the Great Northern, in no case would its fares 
 be higher than by any other route. 
 
 A chief reason, no doubt, why the (ireat Northern directors decided 
 not to follow the Midland's example of abolishing " second-class " was 
 the rapidly growing importance of the suburban traffic on their line — a 
 kind of traffic which more than any other demands a threefold classifica- 
 tion. Throughout the sixties building operations had been carried on 
 in the neighbourhood of Holloway and Finsbury Park with the utmost 
 vigour, so that it was not until after the latter station was passed that the 
 
 1874 THE "NECK OF THE BOTTLE" PROBLEM 301 
 
 % 
 
 Times reporter, on his way to the opening of the Alexandra Palace in May, 
 1873, found that "bricks and mortar began to give way to fields and 
 hedges." Moreover, the Company's suburban collecting-ground had 
 been largely extended by the opening of the branches to Edgware, 
 Barnet, and Enfield. The result was that whereas for the half-year 
 ended June, 1867— before the openmg of the first of these suburban 
 branches — the number of holders of season-tickets on the Great 
 Northern was 2,457, for the half-year ended December, 1874 — the 
 date our history has now reached — it was 6,480. 
 
 Under these circumstances it is not surprising that in this winter of 
 1874-5 what we may call "the problem of the neck of the bottle" — 
 the problem that, whilst separated to a great extent elsewhere, all classes 
 of London traffic on the Great Northern had to use a single " up " and 
 a single "down" track through the Copenhapen tunnel — clamoured 
 once more, and this time very literally, for solution. As we have said, 
 the congestion thus occasioned was intensified by the fact that the " up " 
 goods traffic after passing through the tunnel had to cross the down 
 line on the level to reach the goods terminus. True that, by the opening 
 of the new depot at Farringdon Street which took place on 2 Novem- 
 ber, 1874 — exactly a year after the commencement of the works — this 
 evil was to some extent lessened, because some of the goods trains 
 could now be sent straight on through the Maiden Lane tunnel into the 
 City without entering the King's Cross depot at all. Nevertheless, on 
 the whole, the new state of things produced by the opening of the 
 City goods terminus was worse than the old, seeing that the congestion 
 was now extended into the Maiden Lane tunnel also. The result was 
 that suburban passengers were often delayed half an hour or more in 
 traversing the one and a half miles of railway between Holloway and 
 the Metropolitan Junction. 
 
 To relieve this state of things, as we have said, powers for the new 
 junction line from Finsbury Park to Canonbury had been obtained in 
 1872, and, though the works of this were very heavy, including a 
 tunnel three-quarters of a mile long near Canonbury, the carrying 
 of the "down" track of the junction line beneath the four tracks 
 of the main line by a subway "on the skew," and the entire recon- 
 struction, with four platforms, of Finsbury Park Station, it was opened 
 for goods traffic on 14 December, 1874. By this means traffic 
 between Finsbury Park and the Docks and the Royal Mint Street 
 Depot was diverted from the "congested area" near King's Cross; 
 nevertheless, the relief to the suburban passengers was so unappre- 
 ciable that early in January, 1875, under the additional provocation 
 of some changes in the season-ticket rates introduced in connection 
 
 '.' 
 
I 
 
 302 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 with the general revision of passenger fares, a number of them went 
 the length of assembling at an " indignation meeting " at the City 
 Terminus Hotel. The chairman of this meeting was Mr. Waddy, 
 Q.c, M.P., and another speaker was Mr. Littler, also subsequently a 
 Queen's Counsel — in which capacity, indeed, we shall meet him in a 
 later chapter — and now Chairman of the Middlesex County Council. 
 The upshot of the meeting was the appointment of a deputation to 
 wait upon the directors at King's Cross. 
 
 There could be no doubt that this movement on the part of the 
 suburban season-ticket holders was to a large extent justifiable, for 
 the Great Northern directors were not by any means blameless in the 
 matter. As long ago as 1866, as the reader may remember, they 
 had gone to Parliament for powers to double the Copenhagen tunnel, 
 and though the financial crisis of 1867, and the withdrawal of the 
 Midland traffic in 1868, had no doubt justified the postponement of 
 that work, it ought certainly to have been one of the first operations 
 taken in hand at the time of recovery in 1870. Of course, the excuse 
 of the Board was that they had then taken up the alternative North 
 London Junction scheme. Unfortunately, their subsequent action in 
 opening a new central City goods depot to be reached, not by the 
 North London, but by the Metropolitan, had to a large extent deprived 
 the Canonbury line, even before it was opened, of usefulness as a 
 channel for goods traffic. Under these circumstances it was imperative 
 that they should now realize without delay the second object for which 
 as we saw at the time they had planned the North London Junction — 
 the object of obtaining an alternative route for passenger traffic from 
 Finsbury Park to the City via the North London's Broad Street 
 extension. 
 
 The Act of 1872 authorized the Great Northern "to enter into 
 agreements for the use of and access to Broad Street Station," and 
 ever since its passing negotiations with this object had been on foot ; 
 but the difficulty was that not the North London Company only, but 
 the London and North Western also, had to be brought to terms. 
 Both in the original North London line and that " happy afterthought," 
 the branch from it to the City, the North Western had taken a large 
 financial interest ; moreover, in the agreement under which the Broad 
 Street terminus had been constructed it was expressly provided that 
 no other company should be admitted to it without consent from 
 Euston Square. The result was that the Great Northern's utmost 
 endeavours to secure running powers from Canonbury to Broad Street 
 proved futile, and so under pressure of the season-ticket holders' 
 agitation the King's Cross Board had to agree to an alternative 
 
 1875 "DAYLIGHT ROUTE" TO THE CITY OPENED 303 
 
 arrangement. This was that the North London Company should 
 send its trains to the Great Northern's suburban stations— not, however, 
 under running powers, but under special terms: viz., the running 
 company to be paid, in addition to its mileage proportion of all 
 through fares, a fixed sum per train -mile for haulage over the Great 
 Northern, for the use of its rolling stock, and for the services of its 
 train staffs. For goods traffic, however, to the Docks and Bow (for 
 Royal Mint Street) the Great Northern had running powers already, 
 and these it now began to exercise in lieu of the arrangements under 
 which up to this time the North London had taken forward the Great 
 Northern waggons with its own engines. For passenger terminal 
 accommodation the Great Northern agreed to rent a section of Broad 
 Street Station. 
 
 These new arrangements with the North London Company were 
 brought into force from i February, 1875. Since that date, accord- 
 ingly, passengers to and from Finsbury Park, and all the suburban 
 stations on the Great Northern north of that junction, have had the 
 advantage of an alternative City service to and from Broad Street, about 
 seven minutes shorter than the Moorgate Street service via the Metro- 
 politan. Moreover, the North London's has the additional attraction 
 of being a " daylight route," whereas the other is largely underground. 
 Thus the complaints of the Great Northern's suburban passengers 
 were completely silenced for a while, and for a time also the Company's 
 capital account was relieved from the somewhat heavy demands which 
 had been made upon it during the previous few years for new carriages 
 for the suburban service. On the other hand, the new arrangements 
 meant that what may be called "the suburban increment "—the new 
 revenue from residential traffic which had formed no small part of 
 the very large expansion of the Company's passenger traffic since 1870 
 —had in the future to be divided with the North London as well as 
 with the Metropolitan. 
 
 Of course, now that this suburban increment had come and seemed 
 certain to go on coming, it was easy to lament that the Great Northern 
 was not in a position to cater for it without " foreign " help, and to see 
 how profitable a City extension of its own might now have become ; and, 
 indeed, without blaming the Board for not having exercised a foresight 
 almost more than human, a candid historian can hardly avoid making 
 the criticism that in this matter of London accommodation it seems at 
 a critical time to have pursued no very definite policy. Thus it now 
 came about that after spending nearly half a million of money to make 
 a new connection with the North London, much of the benefit of which 
 had to be surrendered to that Company, the Great Northern had still 
 
 Ml 
 
 li 
 
 i^ 
 
304 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 not solved, nor even postponed for a time, its " neck of the bottle " 
 problem. On the contrary, owing largely to its inconsistency in making 
 the Metropolitan and not the North London its principal route for 
 City goods traffic, it was now obliged to spend almost as much money 
 in widening its approach to King's Cross and to the Metropolitan 
 as if its new North London Junction had not been made. In the 
 summer of 1875 the directors found — in the language of their August 
 report — that it was " imperative that the doubling of the Maiden Lane 
 and Copenhagen tunnels should now be proceeded with," and forthwith 
 they let the contract for the new Copenhagen tunnel to Mr. Firbank, 
 who by the time of the August meeting had the works "fairly 
 commenced." The location of the new tunnel was on the west 
 or " down " side of the original one, and it was to be devoted to goods 
 traffic only, forming indeed a separate channel from Holloway into the 
 King's Cross goods station. A bridge or '* flying junction " was to be 
 constructed at its north end to carry the "up" track over the main 
 lines, and so the old level crossing at the south end of the existing 
 tunnel was to be done away with and that tunnel left free for traffic to 
 and from the passenger terminus and the Metropolitan. 
 
 Meanwhile the works had also been put in hand of a Hnk line, four 
 miles in length, from Sedgebrook on the Grantham and Nottingham 
 branch to Barkstone — a line for which the Company had obtained 
 powers in 1873 to form a through route for Derbyshire coal to Lincoln- 
 shire ; in Yorkshire Mr. Fraser had made a start with the Bradford and 
 Thornton, and Halifax, Thornton, and Keighley undertakings, and 
 in Derbyshire Mr. Firbank had been called in to reinforce Messrs. 
 Benton and Woodiwiss in getting the Erewash Valley line open for coal. 
 Bad weather and other hindrances, however, prevented Mr. Johnson 
 from enforcing the same punctuality in this case as on the Canon bury 
 line and the F'arringdon Street works, and even when the rest of the 
 line between the coalfield and Colwick was ready, the great cutting 
 at Kimberley— 2| miles long through hard magnesian limestone — was 
 far from being complete. Mr. Johnson, however, had a temporary line 
 run up at the side of the cutting on a gradient of i in 35, and so 
 the Company at the end of August (1875) was put once more into 
 communication with the Derbyshire coalfield for London traffic after an 
 exclusion of 4J years. This had the immediate effect of increasing its 
 mineral traffic receipts by ^32,000 in the half-year. 
 
 During this same summer of 1875 the Alexandra Palace was reopened, 
 and this event and the general reduction of fares enforced by the coup 
 d^etat of the Midland combined to produce an increase of nearly four 
 millions — about seventy per cent — in the number of passengers carried 
 
 1875 
 
 COSTLY EXPANSION 
 
 305 
 
 over the system. The increase in receipts, however, was by no means 
 proportionate, and the directors estimated that on account of the 
 reduction of fares the passenger revenue for the year was about ;^5o,ooo 
 less than it would otherwise have been. Moreover, the period of great 
 national prosperity was now at an end. Consequently, the general 
 increase of goods traffic was small compared with what it had been in 
 the preceding years of great expansion. Further, the grain and potato 
 harvests both proved deficient. 
 
 Since the beginning of the period of expansion in 1870, however, the 
 merchandise tonnage carried by the Company had increased by thirty- 
 five per cent., the mineral tonnage by eighteen per cent., and the 
 
 kimberley cutting when in course of construction, showing both 
 Temporary and Permanent Lines. 
 
 number of passengers by about 100 per cent. It was not surprising, 
 therefore, that large outlay had been, and continued to be, necessary 
 for enlarging the capacity of the main system. The most important 
 operations to this end were the improvement of the signalling apparatus, 
 the laying down of " passing places " at favourable lengths of line, and 
 the extension of station buildings, and it was estimated that from the 
 beginning of 1870 to the end of the year 1875 the Company spent 
 ;^ 203,000 on the extension of the block system and interlocking, 
 ;^ 200,000 on passing places, ;£"3i 0,000 on improvement and enlarge- 
 ment of stations, and ;£"2 2i,ooo on new sidings and goods sheds, 
 making a total capital outlay in five years, if the cost of the Farringdon 
 Depot and other works in London was also included, of ;£"i, 2 70,000 for 
 facilitating and safeguarding the traffic on the main system. Moreover, 
 
 Ir 
 
 
 Hi 
 
3o6 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 the block system involved a heavy additional charge to revenue for 
 maintenance and for the wages of signalmen, for it was estimated that 
 when in 1876 the system was extended throughout the whole of the 
 Company's lines, the number of additional signalmen required had 
 reached 462. Altogether, it was estimated that with interest on 
 outlay, maintenance and wages, the cost of the block system had 
 become equal to one per cent, dividend on the Company's open 
 stock. 
 
 Naturally enough, these years of abnormal expansion of traffic had 
 produced some of the worst railway accidents known to British railway 
 history ; but, as a reward for the enlightened outlay just specified, the 
 Great Northern still enjoyed the reputation, which we saw it acquired 
 early in its career, of being a very safe as well as a very fast line to 
 travel upon. True that in 1870 there had been two very grave disasters 
 on its main line— the one on 21 June, near Newark, in which no less 
 than sixteen excursionists returning to Yorkshire from a day in London 
 had met at midnight a shockingly sudden death, and the other on the 
 day after Christmas at Hatfield. 
 
 The cause of the first of these, however, had been the breaking 
 of an axle belonging to a Midland, Sheffield, and Lincolnshire waggon 
 (which had thrown part of an " up " goods train across the path of 
 the " down " passenger), and of the second the breaking of a carriage 
 tyre ; and as for neither of these occurrences could the Great Northern 
 be held blameworthy, it did not suffer seriously from them either 
 in prestige or in pocket. Since the Welwyn Tunnel accident in 
 1 866 the only serious blot on the Company's record for safety had been 
 the accident at Retford already incidentally mentioned, and in this 
 case the shareholders had had to suffer from one of those failures of 
 human agency against which no complete safeguards can be provided. 
 In direct defiance of signals a "goods" driver had driven his train 
 through Retford Station into collision with an excursion train on its 
 way from Manchester to Grimsby. 
 
 But, while with this exception the Great Northern's record as a safe 
 line had remained unblemished, it had nevertheless suffered, not only in 
 the case of the Retford accident, but in many other instances, from the 
 stringency of the law as regards a railway company's liability for damage 
 to the passengers and goods it carries. In 1867 a Royal Commission 
 had recommended the limitation of this liability to a fixed amount in 
 cases of personal injury to passengers, and in the sessions of 1868 and 
 1869 a movement in Parliament to carry this into effect had been 
 headed by Mr. Christopher Denison, who, in so doing, had laid much 
 stress upon a most remarkable case of hardship to the Great Northern 
 
 1876 
 
 DANGERS OF A FARMING DISTRICT 
 
 307 
 
 — the case of Miss Warren at Spalding Station. This lady, a dancing 
 mistress, had tripped over a hole in the carpet of the station waiting- 
 room, sustaining thereby an injury to her spine, and although the 
 Company brought evidence to show that there had been no hole in the 
 carpet in the early morning, but that it had been probably kicked open 
 on the same day by "some gentleman with thick boots" — "it is a 
 farming district," explained Mr. Oakley — she had obtained compen- 
 sation to the amount of ^^1500. The recital of this case by Mr. 
 Denison made a considerable impression on the House of Commons, 
 and as the result a Select Committee was appointed to investigate the 
 subject of compensation. Nevertheless no amendment of the law had 
 resulted. 
 
 However, despite such cases as Miss Warren's and such human 
 fallibility as that exhibited at Retford, the Great Northern had up to 
 this time undoubtedly profited by it^ outlay on safety appliances, and 
 now that the block system and interlocking had been so largely 
 extended and the whole line resignalled, the directors had every right 
 to entertain the expectation that such profit would display itself in a 
 marked degree. This expectation, alas ! as we shall now see, was 
 destined to bitter disappointment. 
 
 At a few minutes before six on the evening of Friday, 21 January, 
 1876, a coal train, consisting of thirty-three waggons, drawn by a 
 powerful six-wheel-coupled engine, left the New England coal sidings, 
 just north of Peterborough, en route for London. The day had been 
 one of a pouring rain with the wind in the south-east, but about dusk 
 it had suddenly veered to the north, and brought on, without warning, 
 an unusually heavy fall of snow. Through this storm the coal train, 
 which had been late in starting from Peterborough, ran without 
 incident about seven miles to Holme ; but here the signalman, 
 knowing that the Scotch express, timed to leave Peterborough at 
 6.28, was due, pulled over his lever to set the signal to danger in 
 order to direct the coal train to shunt into a siding. Frozen snow, 
 however, as it was discovered afterwards, clogged the signal connec- 
 tions ; consequently the semaphore arm remained in the " safety " 
 position, and the signalman was astonished to see the coal train 
 pursue its journey. 
 
 The next signal-box was at Abbotts Ripton, and with this the Holme 
 man at once communicated by telegraph. The result was that when 
 the coal train arrived there it was stopped by the waving of a hand- 
 lamp from the box. The Scotch express being by this time a good 
 deal overdue, the coal driver was immediately directed to shunt into 
 the station siding to allow it to pass, and the signalman at the same 
 
 
3o8 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 I 
 
 time, of course, pulled over his lever to set the northwards signal to 
 *' danger " during the operation. But again, owing to the frozen snow, 
 the semaphore did not rise. The result was that while the last four 
 trucks of the coal train yet remained foul of the main track, the Scotch 
 express dashed into them at full speed. 
 
 The engine fell across the down line, dragging after it its tender, the 
 guard's van, and several North Eastern carriages, and the contents of 
 its fire-box were strewn over the ground. But its driver, Cattley by 
 name, very soon picked himself up, and, despite the fact that one of 
 his hands was crushed and a finger completely torn from it, most 
 pluckily exerted himself to prevent a general conflagration. Mean- 
 while Lord Colville of Culross, deputy - chairman of the Company, 
 who with another director, Mr. Robert Tennant, had been returning in 
 the " Scotchman " from a railway meeting at Doncaster, had after the 
 crash of the collision found himself standing unhurt in the snow ; and, 
 being joined by other passengers and by some platelayers who had 
 hurried to the spot from their cottages near by, he made his way to 
 the signal-box.* 
 
 The signalman, in answer to eager inquiries, declared that he had 
 already set his signals to "danger," and telegraphed warning of the 
 disaster to the signal-boxes on either side of his own ; but as he 
 appeared to be in a mazed state, a "relief clerk," who happened 
 to be among the uninjured passengers, mounted the engine of the 
 coal train, and started off southwards to give warning and fetch 
 assistance, while, as an additional precaution, platelayers with fog- 
 signals were sent in both directions along the line. Then, in the 
 glare of the flames from the scattered contents of the fire-box, the 
 work was commenced of rescuing the injured and imprisoned 
 passengers, whose moans and cries for help had by this time become 
 very piteous. 
 
 A young girl had just been taken out from the t/edn's, and two 
 women were being extricated, when a loud whistling was heard, 
 followed by the "bang! bang!" of fog-signals and the roar of a train 
 approaching from the south. The rescuing party had barely time to 
 rush aside on to the slope of the cutting before the powerful engine 
 of a passenger train cut its way through the tender of the Scotch 
 express, and then, glancing off and dragging its tender after it, fell 
 over on its side on the very slope where they were standing, while the 
 guard's van and leading coaches, breaking off on the other side 
 towards the " up " line, mounted upon the already shattered carriages 
 of the " Scotchman." No wonder that this second horror piled upon 
 * There was no station at this date at Abbotts Ripton. 
 
 1876 
 
 THREE DIRECTORS IN A COLLISION 
 
 309 
 
 the first deprived even those who were unhurt of the use of their 
 senses for a while. "Do we change here?" one passenger was heard 
 to shout 
 
 The new train, it appeared, was the 5.30 from King's Cross bound 
 for Leeds. It had passed the preceding signal-cabin just at the very 
 moment when the signalman there was receiving the " line blocked " 
 signal from Abbotts Ripton, and had met the coal engine about 800 
 yards from the scene of the accident, from the whistle of which it had 
 received its first warning that anything was wrong. But as it was 
 equipped with hand-brakes only, and was coming down a bank of 
 I in 200 on rails rendered greasy by the snow, it had been impossible 
 for the driver of its engine (one of Mr. Stirling's "eight-foot singles," 
 which had been exhibited at the " Railway Jubilee " in the previous 
 year) to slacken speed to any appreciable extent. Consequently, it 
 had been running at a rate of at least thirty miles an hour when it 
 had caused the second collision. 
 
 Meanwhile, however, the coal engine had hurried on to Huntingdon, 
 and the telegraph there had been set to work, with the result that 
 not only were other following trains stopped, but a large force, headed 
 by Mr. Oakley, Mr. Johnson, and Mr. Cockshott was soon brought 
 upon the scene. Fires were lighted, ambulances and cranes brought 
 up, and all through the bitter winter's night the work of clearance was 
 carried on. 
 
 Meantime reports of the accident became circulated in London, 
 and before midnight King's Cross was visited by many anxious 
 inquirers — some of them persons of note — who had relatives in one 
 or other of the trains. But particulars of identification came slowly, 
 and the task of pacifying the anxious ones and restraining their eager- 
 ness to be conveyed at once to the scene of the accident, proved an 
 extremely painful one for Mr. Forbes, the secretary, and other officials 
 in charge at headquarters. Among those who were killed, or who 
 afterwards died of their injuries, were the eldest son of Mr. Dion 
 Boucicault, the actor and dramatist, the only surviving son of Mr. 
 Matthew Noble, the sculptor, the brother and two nieces of Dr. 
 Burdon Sanderson, the scientist, and another gentleman, also named 
 Sanderson, who was agent to the Marquis of Exeter. Amongst 
 passengers who escaped injury were Count Schouvaloff, the Russian 
 Ambassador, and no less than three railway directors — Lord Colville, 
 Mr. Tennant, and Mr. Cleghorn of the North Eastern. Two youths 
 travelling in the same compartment as Lord Colville were killed. The 
 total number of killed was thirteen, and no less than fifty-three others 
 were wounded. 
 
 |! 
 
 jijl 
 
 i. 
 

 II 
 
 310 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 It was under the shadow of this awful disaster that the Great 
 Northern shareholders met for their fifty-ninth half-yearly meeting on 
 19 February, 1876. Nor were the prospects of the Company in other 
 respects very cheerful. Owing to a comparatively small increase of 
 gross receipts, and a large unproductive outlay of new capital, the 
 dividend for the year had sunk to ^^6 10s. per cent.; and, after the 
 raising of a million of new capital in the year just passed, the creation 
 of a further amount of ^£"2, 5 00, 000 had to be faced — so the directors 
 reported — in the near future. It was evident that the period of ex- 
 ceptional prosperity was over, and that hard times for the Company 
 had begun. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 HARD TIMES-THE ARLESEY SIDING ACCIDENT— THE CHESHIRE 
 
 LINES "LANE"— THE "GREAT EASTERN" QUESTION 
 
 SETTLED AT LAST— 1876- 1878. 
 
 i| 
 
 I 
 
 BY the end of 1867 — which date we noted as marking the close 
 of the Great Northern Company's first period of extension— we 
 found that its mileage had increased from the original 283 to 487 
 miles, and its capital cost (including fixed charges) from about twelve 
 millions to about twenty millions. At 487 the mileage remained 
 stationary until 1871, when, as we have seen, the Wood Green and 
 Enfield branch was brought into use. In 1872 the Bourn and 
 Sleaford and Finchley and Barnet lines were opened, in 1873 the 
 Alexandra Park, in 1874 the Ossett and Dewsbury, and in 1875 
 the Finsbury Park and Canonbury, the Bradford, Idle, and Shipley, 
 and the Sedgebrook and Barkstone. In the autumn of 1875, also, the 
 reader will remember, the Erewash Valley line was opened for coal 
 traffic; but the full opening of the first section of the Derbyshire 
 extension — twenty miles in length — did not take place till i August, 
 1876. However, if we include this twenty miles— as we are justified 
 in doing, seeing that coal was the main object of the line — we find 
 that by the date we have now reached — February, 1876 — the mileage 
 of the system had reached 540 — an increase of fifty-three miles since 
 1867. In the same period its capital cost had been increased by 
 no less than seven and a half millions, the total raised by shares, 
 or represented by fixed charges, being now twenty -seven and a half 
 
 millions. 
 
 These facts clearly reveal why it was that less prosperous times 
 had now set in for the Company's shareholders. "The increase 
 of capital — the disastrous increase — for a quarter of a century I have 
 harped upon this same string," cried Mr. Seneca Hughes; and 
 shareholders who had been impatient at his harping in 1872 and 
 1873 now applauded it. Nevertheless, the theory of a closed capital 
 account remained as great a fallacy as ever. That it was not 
 
 3" 
 
 t 
 
 I?' 
 
 'i 
 
I 
 
 I 
 
 312 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 addition to capital merely that was depressing the Company's dividend, 
 was proved by the fact that the highest rate of capital increase 
 had been, not in the years just passed, but in the period from i860 
 to 1867, and that then it had been accompanied and followed (except 
 in the years of universal trade depression) by most satisfactory 
 dividend returns. The difference was that, whereas in the first period 
 of extension capital and mileage had been increased concurrently, 
 in this second period, as the figures just quoted show, a rate of 
 new outlay almost as great as before had been accompanied so far 
 by a much smaller relative addition to mileage. In short, it was 
 not increase to capital per se which — in the exaggerated language 
 of Mr. Seneca Hughes — was threatening "ultimately to prostrate" 
 the shareholders ; it was increase of capital unaccompanied by a 
 proportionate increase of earning power. 
 
 To a certain extent, it is true, the seven and a half millions of new 
 capital spent since 1867 had increased earning power out of pro- 
 portion to the addition to mileage to be shown for it. Thus nothing, 
 of course, had been added to mileage by the more than a million 
 which, as we have seen, had been spent on improvements of the main 
 system ; yet this outlay had not only increased the capacity of that 
 system, but had been absolutely demanded if traffic was not to be 
 turned away. Further, the figure of 540 miles given above does not 
 include the Great Northern's share in the two new joint undertakings, 
 the Manchester and Liverpool and the Halifax and Ovenden; yet 
 these lines (which had absorbed about one and a half millions between 
 them since 1870) were already remunerative to some extent. Thirdly, 
 the opening of the Erewash Valley line was really a more important 
 addition to earning power than was denoted by its mileage per se, 
 because it meant the recommencement over the whole system of the 
 most important traffic in Derbyshire coal. These facts have to be 
 taken in qualification of the bare statement than an outlay of seven 
 and a half millions had given fifty-three new miles only. 
 
 But, while in these quarters development of new revenue was to 
 be immediately expected, in others, unfortunately, a continued process 
 of unproductive outlay had still for some years to be faced. The 
 second and third contracts on the Derbyshire and Staffordshire 
 extension, from Kimberley to Derby, and from Derby to Egginton, 
 had only quite recently been let ; of the Leicestershire lines one 
 section only — from Market Harborough to Bottesford — had so far 
 been put in hand ; and on the heavy works of the Yorkshire extensions 
 — the Bradford and Thornton, and the Halifax, Thornton, and 
 Keighley— so little had been done that it was necessary to go to 
 
 1876 
 
 HEAVY IMPENDING LIABILITIES 
 
 .^13 
 
 Parliament in this year, 1876, for an "extension of time." The 
 Manchester Central Station, too, was still a long way off completion, 
 and the line to the north end of Liverpool still further: whilst in 
 London the new Copenhagen tunnel was not far advanced, and the 
 
 
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 contract for the new Maiden Lane tunnel not yet let. Finally, to 
 provide for the increased traffic and for the working of the new lines, 
 the directors had felt it to be necessary in August, 1875, to recom- 
 mend the construction of seventy-two new engines and {a large 
 number of new carriages and waggons at a capital cost of over a 
 quarter of a million. To sum up, there was a further addition 
 
 
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 I 
 
 314 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 to capital of at least three millions to be faced without prospect 
 of its producing any immediate increase of earning power. 
 
 On the top of all this had come the Abbotts Ripton accident, 
 disagreeable enough as entailing a drain on revenue for compensation, 
 but still more disagreeable in the "moral" which it enforced. For 
 the coroner's jury appended to its verdict of " Accidental death " 
 a rider censuring the directors for "endeavouring to conduct so 
 heavy a mineral traffic without providing a special line of rails for 
 its transit"; and without attaching much weight to this crude and 
 hasty expression of opinion, the directors themselves could not but 
 share in the view which, as the result of their own and other similar 
 disasters, had now become generally accepted — the view that the 
 time had come for passenger and goods traffic to be separated on 
 all main lines. If the block system had not "broken down," as 
 the newspaper writers of this date were fond of saying it had, it 
 had certainly failed to avert a series of very terrible accidents. 
 Moreover, the mechanical appliances by which it had to be put 
 into effect were, the Abbotts Ripton disaster showed, liable to failure 
 under stress of weather; and that accident had also shown that in 
 the absence of better brake-power a fast and heavy passenger train 
 might run past a danger signal with terrible results. The Great 
 Northern, it was true, had already adopted experimentally a continuous 
 brake known as " Smith's vacuum," with fairly good results, and a 
 Royal Commission had recently held trials of this and others. The 
 mechanism of signalling, too, was obviously open to improvement 
 to avert the special dangers which the Abbotts Ripton accident 
 had disclosed.* Nevertheless, while consoling themselves that by 
 improvements such as these an immediate repetition of such a terrible 
 diaster might be averted, the Great Northern directors were still forced 
 to the conclusion that in the near future it would be necessary to pro- 
 vide a complete system of relief lines, so as to separate the goods 
 traffic almost entirely from the passenger. 
 
 Nor was it increase of gross traffic merely that threatened to 
 necessitate this drastic measure. There were a number of auxiliary 
 influences at work, all springing directly or indirectly from the new 
 competition of the Midland Company. We have already seen how 
 that company had signalized its independent establishment in London 
 
 ♦ Two improvements introduced on the Great Northern as results of the accident 
 were a new type of semaphore arm which works clear of the post, and so is unlikely 
 to get clogged with snow, and the alteration of the normal position of the arm from 
 •'safety " to "danger." Either of them probably, but certainly the latter, would, if 
 adopted earlier, have prevented the accident altogether. 
 
 
 1876 
 
 EFFECTS OF MIDLAND COMPETITION 
 
 315 
 
 by two important innovations involving a general reduction of pas- 
 senger fares. The result of this was that more passengers had now 
 to be carried to earn the same revenue, which meant heavier and more 
 frequent trains. Indirectly also, as we have seen, owing to the desire 
 of the Great Northern and other companies still to give extra benefits 
 to the two higher classes, a general acceleration of speed had resulted. 
 Further, since 1874 the Midland had introduced "Pullman cars" on 
 its principal passenger services, and this had compelled the Great 
 Northern and North Western to provide improved, and therefore 
 heavier, first-class carriages and to give sleeping accommodation on 
 their night " Scotchmen." 
 
 Similarly, as regards goods traffic, the new competition had caused 
 the work to be done at higher pressure than before. For instance, 
 it had become the rule for goods consigned from Yorkshire, Lanca- 
 shire, or the Midlands to London or vice versa to be delivered within 
 twelve hours. This, of course, meant a much faster rate of running 
 for goods trains than in former easier-going days. Moreover, with the 
 opening of the Settle and Carlisle line, which was fixed for i May of 
 this year, 1876, the new competition was to be extended more fully 
 to the Scotch traffic. So it was out of the question for the Great 
 Northern to look for relief, as it might under other circumstances 
 have done, in a reduction of speed, frequency, or weight of trains. 
 On the contrary, it had to prepare for additions in these respects in 
 order to maintain its position as the "premier line" to the North. 
 
 Such was the somewhat critical condition of Great Northern affairs, 
 when, in April, 1876, information reached King's Cross that the Great 
 Eastern directors desired to reopen negotiations with a view to a 
 new exchange of traffic facilities between the two companies. Since 
 June, 1868, as the reader was informed incidentally in a previous 
 chapter, there had been in force an agreement, made at that date 
 between Colonel Packe and Lord Salisbury, under which the Great 
 Eastern had obtained powers to have its own agents in the principal 
 northern towns to be reached via its connections with the Great 
 Northern and Sheffield systems, and to book through traffic between 
 those towns and all places (including London) on its own system at 
 rates to be mutually agreed and divided by mileage. But, as we have 
 already noted, this arrangement had been accepted by Lord Salisbury 
 and his colleagues merely as a pis aller. To have a line of its own 
 into Yorkshire had been, as we know, the goal of " Eastern Counties " 
 policy in King Hudson's time. As soon as " Eastern Counties " had 
 been superseded by " Great Eastern," this policy, the reader remem- 
 bers, had been revived by Mr. George Parker Bidder. It had been 
 
 I 
 
 \ 
 
 ! 
 
 w 
 
 II 
 
I 
 
 I 
 
 316 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 again revived, as we also saw, in connection with the C. O. A. L. of 
 1871. 
 
 Nor was it because of Great Northern obstruction that the traffic 
 arrangement just mentioned had been all that the Great Eastern had 
 so far been able to obtain. Ever since 1865 the King's Cross Board 
 had been willing, as we have seen, to place the Great Eastern in 
 Yorksire on rails of its own by admitting it to half-ownership of its 
 loop line from March to Doncaster. No less than three times in the 
 sixties, the reader may remember, an arrangement of this character 
 had been on the verge of completion, when it had been upset by the 
 poverty of the Great Eastern Company and consequent want of 
 stability in its directorate ; and again so recently as 1873 this poor 
 Cinderella among railways might have emerged from her seclusion 
 by means of running powers to Doncaster. Unfortunately, the utmost 
 guarantee of traffic which her guardians could see their way to offer, 
 had been less by ;;^5,ooo than that which the Great Northern had 
 been willing to accept. 
 
 It was obvious, however, that so small a difference as this ought not 
 to form a permanent obstacle to a new agreement. So after some 
 preliminary overtures between Mr. Oakley and Mr. Swarbrick in the 
 autumn of 1875, the matter came up again, as we have just said, in 
 April, 1876. At the beginning of May the Great Eastern directors 
 sent a written statement of the terms they now proposed, but the 
 Great Northern found "the pith in the matter" — the phrase was Mr. 
 Oakley's — not in the detailed suggestions thus made (which were to 
 a large extent a repetition of what had been so nearly arranged so 
 many times before), but in the final clause of the statement. This 
 referred to the desirability of some "more intimate relations" being 
 established between the two companies. 
 
 Obviously this pointed to a willingness on the part of the Great 
 Eastern to consider proposals for a complete amalgamation, and in 
 their anxiety for relief lines the Great Northern directors caught rather 
 eagerly at the suggestion. Amalgamation with the Great Eastern, 
 thought they, might mean obtaining on easy terms that duplicate route 
 from the North to London which their traffic appeared imperatively 
 to demand. Certainly it would mean the acquirement of another 
 long-felt Great Northern want — a genuine City terminus, — seeing that 
 the Great Eastern had recently completed its splendid new London 
 station at Liverpool Street. Accordingly, Colonel Duncombe and 
 Lord Colville were appointed as a delegation from the Great Northern 
 Board to carry on negotiations on this new basis. 
 
 Meantime, from i May, 1876, the Midland's Settle and Carlisle line 
 
 1876 LONDON TO EDINBURGH IN NINE HOURS 317 
 
 was opened for passenger traffic. This meant that the central route 
 between London and Scotland was at last full-grown, and so it became 
 necessary, as we have already foreseen it would, for the companies 
 owning the two rival coast routes to exert themselves to meet the new 
 competition. The Great Northern and North Eastern companies 
 decided upon a general acceleration of their joint service. Accord- 
 ingly from I June, 1876, the time taken by the 10 a.m. Edinburgh 
 (first and second-class only) train from King's Cross to Edinburgh was 
 reduced from 9^ hours to 9 hours, that of the following third-class 
 train from io|^ hours to 10, and of the night express from 9 J hours 
 to 9^. This meant that by the first-named of these trains the Great 
 Northern had to cover the 188 miles between London and York in 
 four hours — a journey-speed of exactly forty-seven miles an hour ; and 
 this made it necessary for Mr. Stirling to provide some of his " eight- 
 footers" with improved and larger tenders, so that they might cover 
 the first 1 05 J miles from London to Grantham without a stop — quite 
 the longest continuous run at this date. The general result was that 
 for Edinburgh the East Coast service (with the advantage of a few 
 miles shorter route) remained as far ahead as ever of the two others. 
 Even for Glasgow it remained quicker than the Midland's, though it 
 was beaten, thanks to a very decided advantage in mileage, by the 
 West Coast. 
 
 Though it did not join in promoting these accelerations of the East 
 Coast service, the North British Company, notwithstanding the large 
 interest it now had in the central route, did not interpose any obstacle to 
 their being carried out. The same compliance, however, was not shown 
 by the Caledonian Company when it was pressed to extend the benefit 
 of them to Perth and Aberdeen. On the contrary, it appealed to 
 the Railway Commission against the requirements which the Great 
 Northern and North Eastern sought to enforce under their " facility 
 clauses." The Commissioners, however, gave a judgment favourable 
 to the East Coast companies on all the more important points of the 
 case (July 1876). Consequently the Caledonian was compelled inter 
 alia to carry on passengers who left King's Cross by the night express 
 — 8.30 p.m. — so that they reached Perth at 8.40 a.m., and Aberdeen 
 at 12.40. This made practically a "dead heat" with the West Coast 
 night service, the "Special Scotch Mail" — 8.40 from Euston — being 
 "booked" to reach Aberdeen at the same time, i.e.^ 12.40 p.m., and 
 Perth at 9 a.m. Prior to this the West Coast had enjoyed a superiority 
 of nearly four hours as regards the northern parts of Scotland. 
 
 There was, however, one unsatisfactory feature in the business. This 
 was that the harder work entailed by these accelerations had to be 
 
 { -,'t 
 
 <; < 
 
 il' 
 
t 
 
 318 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 done for less money than before, seeing that the Midland was now 
 able to enforce the extension of its reduction of fares over the whole 
 of the Anglo-Scotch passenger traffic. Thus the first-class fare between 
 London and Edinburgh— to give a single example-had to be reduced 
 from £z 105. od. to £2 I'js. 6d. The Midland authorities, it is true, 
 insisted that, as far as their Company was concerned, the general effect 
 of their reclassification and revision of fares had been profitable ; but 
 the Great Northern and London and North Western held quite a 
 contrary opinion, and at the half-yearly meeting of the former in 
 August, 1876, Colonel Buncombe supported this view by the statement 
 that during the half-year the Company had carried 681,017 more 
 passengers, and yet the increase in its receipts was ^4859 only, i.e., 
 little more than i\d. per additional passenger. 
 
 By this time nearly half of the 593 yards of new Copenhagen tunnel 
 had been mined by the contractor, Mr. Firbank, and he had also 
 got the new Maiden Lane tunnel well in hand. At Doncaster, too, an 
 important enlargement of the existing accommodation was in progress, 
 including a reconstruction of the passenger station and a new engine 
 shed on the Carr to accommodate one hundred engines. At the same 
 time the new Great Northern and London and North Western joint 
 line from Market Harborough to Bottesford was in course of forma- 
 tion, and the contract was about to be let for the section from 
 Bottesford to Newark, to be made by the Great Northern alone. 
 On I August, 1876, as already noted, the first section of the Derby- 
 shire extension, from Colwick to Pinxton, was opened fully; but 
 it took time for any considerable amount of passenger traffic to 
 be developed upon it. Of coals, however, 115,000 tons had passed 
 over it during the half-year to 30 June, 1876. This, however, was 
 rather less than was needed to balance the falling-off" from South 
 Yorkshire, where strikes had cut oflf a good part of what was left of 
 
 the London trade. 
 
 Meanwhile no progress had yet been made with the negotiations 
 with the Great Eastern. Yet another "revolution" seemed imminent 
 in the directorate of that unfortunate company. Mr. M. T. Bass 
 had put himself at the head of a movement to place Sir Edward 
 Watkin at the head of its affairs, notwithstanding the fact that that 
 gentleman had already the South Eastern and Metropolitan besides 
 the Sheffield to manage, not to speak of a number of minor concerns ; 
 and it looked as if the negotiations between the Great Northern and 
 Mr. Parkes and his colleagues would prove as futile as so many similar 
 negotiations had been in the past. Again, however, as in 1868, when 
 Lord Salisbury had been preferred to him, Sir E. Watkin failed to 
 
 1875 PROPOSED G.N. AND G.E. AMALGAMATION 319 
 
 secure the Great Eastern chair, and on 29 October, 1876, Colonel 
 Duncombe was able to report at the Great Northern Board that he had 
 arranged with Mr. Parkes that Mr. Oakley and Mr. Swarbrick should 
 confer together to see whether the principles of an amalgamation 
 could be arrived at. 
 
 The outcome was that early in November each Board made a 
 proposal of terms. Assuming the Great Northern average dividend 
 to be 6 per cent., the Great Eastern proposed that the Great Eastern 
 ordinary stock should be guaranteed 25 per cent, of this {i.e., 
 jQi los. od.) in 1878, and that this proportion should be increased 
 by 5 per cent, (i.e., 6s. every year) until it reached 55 per cent. (/>., 
 £^ 6s. od.) in 1884, in which year permanent fusion was to 
 take place at that ratio. But having regard to the fact that the 
 Great Eastern dividend during the previous seven years had averaged 
 us. gd. only, whereas their own average had been nearer 7 percent, 
 than 6, the Great Northern directors thought this price too high. 
 Accordingly they submitted a counter proposition. This was that 
 the Great Eastern dividend should be £1 5^. od. only to commence 
 with in 1878, should rise by 5^. instead of 6s. stages, and that the 
 ultimate fusion in 1884 should be at 50 per cent, instead of at 55. 
 In other words, they were willing to buy up the Great Eastern at 
 half-price, but at no higher. These terms, however, proved 5 per 
 cent, too low for the Great Eastern directors to accept, and, the Great 
 Northern Board on its part being convinced that it could not in justice 
 offer more, the negotiations fell to the ground. 
 
 But the problem of relief lines still remained, and the Great 
 Northern directors now felt that they must face this without reference 
 to any arrangement with the Great Eastern. They therefore returned 
 to a plan which they seem to have had before in their minds. This 
 was to make a new link line from Shepreth— which, the reader may 
 remember, is the terminus of the Hitchin and Cambridge branch so 
 far as Great Northern ownership is concerned— to March, where Great 
 Northern ownership begins again in the line which we saw opened 
 from Spalding in 1867, to give a direct connection with the Great 
 Eastern system. Thus this new link would have the effect of extending 
 the loop line southwards to Hitchin, and so practically duplicating the 
 main line between Hitchin and Peterborough; and from Hitchin 
 southwards a couple more links — say from Stevenage to Hertford, and 
 from Hertingfordbury to Enfield— would, with the new tunnels under 
 construction near King's Cross, complete the doubling right into 
 London. This was the plan which now commended itself to the 
 
 Board at King's Cross; and, knowing that in the position of their 
 
 «1 
 
Il 
 
 I 
 
 
 320 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 capital account they must take it by piecemeal, they instructed their 
 solicitor, Mr. Leech, to deposit a Bill for the session of 1877 for the 
 Shepreth to March line as the first instalment. 
 
 Mr. Leech was making haste with this work (for November had been 
 well advanced before the rupture of the negotiations), when rumours 
 reached King's Cross that the Great Eastern Company meant to 
 deposit a Bill for a direct line from Spalding, through Sleaford, to 
 Lincoln. Such a line, as we know, had been often projected before, 
 and the Great Northern Board was fully aware that it would be to 
 their Company's interest to make it some day, as an alternative to the 
 existing circuit by Boston. But, if the Great Eastern meant to enter 
 the field again, the matter had become urgent; and so Mr. Leech's 
 instructions were hastily enlarged to include the deposit of a Spalding 
 to Lincoln line also. Post-haste, he despatched one of his staff to 
 Lincoln to give the necessary notices, but the only way to accomplish 
 this in the time was by persuading the publisher of the local paper 
 to issue a special edition, for the sole purpose of the railway 
 advertisement. 
 
 Hardly had these arrangements been completed when two serious 
 calamities befell the Great Northern Company. One of them was the 
 sudden death, on 26 December, 1876, of Mr. Leech, who up to a 
 few days before had been, as we have seen, actively engaged in the 
 Parliamentary affairs of the Company. An able, conscientious, but 
 thoroughly unostentatious man, Mr. Leech's name has, perhaps, not 
 appeared in these pages so often as his great services to the Company 
 warrant ; for he had been connected with the undertaking since its very 
 commencement, and at its sixtieth half-yearly meeting, held in August 
 of this year, he had reminded Colonel Duncombe that he had not 
 missed attendance at a single one of those gatherings since the first 
 one in 1846. Now he had died in harness, and the directors had to 
 look for a new chief legal adviser at a time when most important 
 Parliamentary business was in hand. Fortunately, in Mr. Henry 
 Nelson, of Leeds, a successor to Mr. Leech was available who was 
 already, as we know, devoted to the Company's interests. Indeed, he 
 was now its fully -recognized agent in Yorkshire and the midland 
 counties. Accordingly, the firm of Nelson, Barr, and Nelson was 
 appointed to succeed Johnson, Farquhar, and Leech as Great Northern 
 solicitors-in-chief 
 
 But Mr. Leech's death had been preceded, three days before, by a 
 still more serious calamity— an accident on its main line almost as 
 distressing in its consequences as that which had occurred at Abbotts 
 Ripton only eleven months previously. It was the afternoon before 
 
 
 1876 
 
 A CHRISTMAS CALAMITY 
 
 321 
 
 Christmas Eve, a time when, of course, . traffic was unusually heavy; 
 consequently the Manchester express — the 2.45 from King's Cross — 
 had to be run in duplicate. The first section left punctually under the 
 charge of a most experienced driver, Thomas Pepper by name, with 
 whom Mr. Cockshott exchanged a few words on the platform relative 
 to the special need for caution at the Christmas season ; and it had 
 performed in safety nearly half of its run-without-stop to Peterborough, 
 and was descending at a speed of at least fifty-five miles an hour the 
 long bank of about i in 230, which begins just north of Hitchin, when 
 its driver saw the Arlesey Siding "distant signal" at danger about 150 
 yards ahead. He immediately shut off steam, applied what brake- 
 power he had under his control, and whistled to the guards to do the 
 same. Nevertheless, speed had not slackened to any considerable 
 extent when about 500 yards further on the "home signal," also at 
 danger, came into view. Just beyond it Pepper and his fireman 
 descried to their horror some derailed trucks of a shunting "goods." 
 
 Seeing in a flash that a collision was inevitable, the two men threw 
 themselves from the foot-plate. The driver alighted on his head in the 
 garden of the Arlesey Siding station-master's house,* in full view of the 
 station-master's wife ; and next moment, with a terrific crash, his engine 
 collided with the goods trucks, cut its way through them, and became 
 embedded in the ballast beyond. The tender was torn from the 
 engine, and became entangled with the trucks. The six front carriages 
 were completely smashed, the framework of one of them coming to 
 rest upon the top of a truck with its wheels inverted. 
 
 With most commendable promptitude — probably with the recollection 
 of what had happened at Abbotts Ripton in his mind — a policeman in 
 the Company's service named Monk, having escaped unhurt from the 
 wreck, made his way to the signal-box, and assisted the terrified 
 signalman to send warning to all following and approaching trafific. 
 The result was that for many miles in both directions a long stationary 
 procession of trains collected. Meanwhile, by the same telegraphic 
 agency, breakdown gangs were brought to the scene, and the work of 
 clearance was commenced. Almost miraculously — as now appeared — 
 several passengers who had been travelling in the carriages totally 
 wrecked had escaped with slight or no injuries, and to the surprise of 
 all it was found that in addition to the driver and fireman, both of 
 whom had been killed on the spot, three others only had sustained 
 fatal hurt. Thirty passengers, however, were injured, some of them 
 very seriously. 
 
 This accident revealed very clearly the weaknesses of the then 
 * The station has since been rechristened " Three Counties." 
 
 i 1I 
 
 ;i 
 
 'Hi 
 
 
 h: 
 
322 
 
 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 I 
 
 I 
 
 available appliances for safeguarding traffic and the great danger of 
 continuing with such appliances to intermingle a very fast passenger 
 traffic with a heavy business in goods and coal. The beginning of 
 the disaster had been the derailment of four trucks of an " up " goods 
 train as it was being shunted across the "down" track into the siding; 
 but this was the occasion only of the accident; its cause was the 
 inadequacy of the appliances put into use for stopping the express. Of 
 course it is possible that it was not the appliances, but the man, that 
 failed— that Pepper and his fireman both neglected to notice the 
 advance signal ; and in the absence of any but circumstantial evidence 
 —for both driver and fireman were dead— this, indeed, was the view 
 which the coroner's jury was led to take. But by experts their verdict 
 was severely criticized. Having regard to Pepper's long experience, the 
 special caution he had received from Mr. Cockshott, and some other 
 facts too minute to be here mentioned, it is much more probable— 
 almost certain, in fact— that, as the narrative just given assumes, he 
 tried his best to obey the distant signal, but that against the 
 combination of high speed, a falling gradient, and greasy rails, the 
 hand-brake power proved as ineffective as in the case of the second 
 collision at Abbotts Ripton. Nor is this, indeed, in the least surprising. 
 At the official inquiry into the accident Mr. Stirling stated that at the 
 brake-trials held at Newark before the Royal Commission about 
 eighteen months before a train of about the same weight as this 
 M^anchester express, and similarly equipped with non-continuous 
 brakes, had run on after steam had been shut off, and the brake-power 
 applied, no less a distance than 1200 yards along a level track! 
 
 Seeing, therefore, that the distant signal at Arlesey Siding was 898 
 yards only ahead of the scene of the derailment, and the gradient there 
 a falling one, the disaster was one which, given the combination of 
 circumstances, had been bound to happen under the then conditions 
 of working. Nevertheless it is not easy to see what safeguard against 
 such a contingency had been available to the Great Northern autho- 
 rities, short of restricting very considerably the speed of all the 
 express trains on their system. A continuous brake, it is true, would 
 almost certainly have pulled up the express in time; but the blame 
 in this respect rested not with the railway company, but with the 
 Royal Commission on Railway Accidents. For this body, though it 
 had held its brake -trials as long before as June, 1875, had not yet 
 published its report ; and pending this (which was reasonably expected 
 to settle decisively the question as to whether or not continuous 
 brakes were trustworthy, and perhaps to recommend a type of brake 
 for universal adoption) the railway companies were practically powerless 
 
 1876 BLOCK SYSTEM WITHOUT BRAKE POWER 
 
 323 
 
 to act vigorously in the matter, except at the risk of involving them- 
 selves in a large premature outlay. As for the other precaution which, 
 obviously enough, might have prevented this accident— the working of 
 the block system with greater stringency, so that not one, but two 
 sections, should be kept between trains on the same rails, — that was a 
 remedy which, unless carried out quite regardless of exi)ense in the 
 matter of signal-boxes and men, would have hampered the traffic to 
 such a degree as to have necessitated its discontinuance after a week's 
 trial. It is noteworthy, however, that the Great Northern engineer, 
 Mr. Johnson, had foreseen that, without better brake-power, the block 
 system did not properly provide against the very contingency which 
 occurred at Arlesey Siding, viz., the breakdown of a train just beyond 
 a block station. It is on record, indeed, that he raised the point at a 
 discussion at the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1874, to be answered 
 by Mr. Allport that the distance signal ought to be sufficient protection 
 in such a case. 
 
 The above analysis reveals the fact that in the absence of continuous 
 brakes the Great Northern authorities at this date were practically 
 compelled to work their traffic under conditions which made the 
 occurrence of such an accident as the one at Arlesey Siding quite 
 calculable beforehand. This being so, it is not at all surprising that 
 in their report to the shareholders in February, 1877, the directors 
 stated that "with the experience of this lamentable accident before 
 them" it was "impossible to resist the conviction that the greatest 
 measure of safe and efficient working " could " not be secured without 
 further accommodation for the traffic." Accordingly they strongly 
 urged the approval of the plan of relief lines which, as we have seen, 
 they had already adopted " with the view of providing a second direct 
 and serviceable line from the North to London." 
 
 Needless to say, this was an unpleasant announcement for the 
 shareholders, the more so as the report at the same time stated 
 that a revision of the original estimates for the new lines already in 
 hand, in the light of what had already been spent upon them, had 
 swollen their existing capital liability to 4J millions. What seemed 
 the inevitable conclusion, however, was voiced by a speaker at the 
 meeting — Mr. Robert White— when he said: "We are absolutely 
 bound by circumstances to provide some other means of transit for 
 our goods traffic ; we must have relief lines." So, in spite of the 
 customary opposition of Mr. Seneca Hughes, the sanction of the 
 meeting was given to the Shepreth and March and Spalding and 
 Lincoln Bill, and also to a Further Powers Bill, the chief object of 
 which was to raise new capital for the works already in hand. 
 
 i|i 
 
 
 [ 
 
 \ 
 
324 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 In the case of the former Bill, however, what Mr. Hughes' 
 opposition had not achieved, was soon afterwards accomplished 
 by the House of Commons Committee on Standing Orders. For 
 upon being informed by the Great Eastern counsel that every 
 copy of the Lincoln newspaper containing the notices of the proposed 
 line from Spalding had been purchased by Mr. Leech's enterpnsmg 
 emissary, this tribunal summarily threw out the Bill. At the ^me 
 time however, the Great Northern Board received a semi-official 
 invitation to deposit a new Bill ; but when it was deliberating as to 
 whether it would accept this -on the very day, i March, 1877, 
 indeed, when the directors were sitting to decide this point-Lord 
 Claud Hamilton, the deputy-chairman of the Great Eastern, arrived 
 at King's Cross with new proposals for amalgamation from that 
 Company. This at once decided the Great Northern Board not 
 to proceed with their relief lines that session. At the same tmie 
 they sent back a favourable answer to the Great Eastern's proposition, 
 which was that a modification of the terms previously offered should 
 
 be discussed. . , • *u - *■ 
 
 Actuated, however, by some revelations contained in the just 
 published report of the Railway Accidents Commission, the Great 
 Northern appended a proviso to their answer. This was that their 
 engineers should be allowed first to make a more detailed examination 
 of the Great Eastern's plant and permanent way. The request was 
 acceded to, and so it was not until 17 May, 1877, that a formal 
 meeting between delegations of the two Boards took place. It was 
 then decided to fix the terms of amalgamation, if possible, first, and 
 to make the question of what renewals were to be carried out prior to 
 fusion a secondary consideration ; accordingly, the proposals previously 
 made on both sides were reviewed. The result was that the Great 
 Eastern agreed to accept the Great Northern's former terms subject 
 to the alteration that the fusion at 50 per cent was to take place a 
 year earlier than therein proposed, /..., in 1883. Subsequently, upon 
 the subject of renewals, a good deal of difference of opmion was 
 displayed, and nothing could be agreed except a reference the terms 
 of which were but vaguely defined, to Mr. T. E. Harrison, the engineer 
 of the North Eastern. But, on the whole, the meeting proceeded and 
 broke up so amicably that Colonel Duncombe, for one, thought the 
 amalgamation as good as settled. , ,. t. r 
 
 A new development, however, was a proposal, which came from 
 the Great Eastern before the end of May, that the amount to be 
 expended by the Great Eastern for renewals should be fixed, prior 
 to the reference to Mr. Harrison, "at some moderate outside sum"; 
 
 1877 
 
 GREAT EASTERN ALL BUT ABSORBED 
 
 325 
 
 and when the Great Northern Board sent back a curt refusal of 
 this, together with a rather peremptory demand that " a definite answer " 
 as to the terms already arrived at should be received by them "on 
 or before Tuesday next, the 5th of June," relations became once 
 more strained. Determined not to be "hustled," the Great Eastern 
 Board delayed its answer till 7 June. Then it sent a resolution to the 
 effect that it would recommend its shareholders to accept the terms 
 already agreed upon, provided that the 6 per cent, which had been 
 assumed from the first as the average Great Northern dividend should 
 be absolutely guaranteed for ten years as the minimum which the Great 
 Eastern proportion of stock was to receive. 
 
 The Great Eastern authorities can hardly have expected this 
 new proviso to be accepted, but, as a retort, it was decidedly telling, 
 for since the 6 per cent, assumption had been adopted, the Great 
 Northern dividend had actually sunk i per cent, below that figure. 
 Nevertheless, for the Great Northern directors to have assented to the 
 proviso would have been, as they subsequently pointed out to their 
 constituents, to have guaranteed a preferential dividend to the Great 
 Eastern ordinary shareholders for ten years after the date of fusion, 
 and this was an entirely different thing from simply taking over the 
 latter's stock at 50 per cent. Accordingly they "unhesitatingly 
 declined" the new proposals. The result was an abrupt rupture of 
 the negotiations. 
 
 Meanwhile continuous and rapid progress had been made on all 
 the various new works to which the Great Northern Company was 
 already committed. Indeed the amount expended on capital account 
 during the six months to 30 June, 1877, exceeded a million pounds 
 — a " record " outlay for a single half-year. Fortunately, however, some 
 portion of the extensions, albeit only small ones, could now be brought 
 into remunerative working. Thus the first section of the Bradford 
 and Thornton line from Bradford to Great Horton and Clayton, 
 nearly four miles, was brought into use for merchandise and coal 
 this summer, and so also was the branch, two and a half miles, from 
 Stanningley, near Leeds, to Pudsey Greenside. In August, too, the 
 new Copenhagen tunnel was opened, thus completing the separation 
 of the goods from the passenger traffic from the King's Cross 
 terminus as far north as Wood Green. From the beginning of this 
 same year the Company took over the working (at 50 per cent, of the 
 gross receipts) of the just opened Louth and Lincoln Railway, 20 miles 
 in length, to construct which a separate company had been incorporated 
 so long before as 1866. 
 
 Perhaps the most important opening in 1877, however, was that 
 
 I 
 
 1 
 
d 
 
 I 
 
 326 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 of the Manchester Central Station, which took place on 2 July. This 
 meant that the direct " Cheshire line " from Manchester to Liverpool 
 could at last be utilized to the full for passenger traffic ; and at once, 
 thanks to the enthusiasm of Sir Edward Watkin, a service was put on 
 between these two towns greatly superior to that in operation on the 
 two existing direct lines— an express train being run each way every 
 hour to cover the distance, thirty-five miles, in forty-five minutes with 
 one intermediate stop only, at Warrington. As a result the Cheshire 
 receipts went up pg 10,000 in six weeks, and Lord Colville, acting as 
 deputy to Colonel Buncombe at the Great Northern meeting in August, 
 1877, declared that they had got "pretty nearly to the end of the 
 Cheshire Lines lane." He forgot, probably, that Colonel Duncombe 
 had made precisely the same prediction when the direct line had first 
 been opened four years before 
 
 These openings, of course, relieved to a very welcome extent the 
 amount of capital sunk unproductively. On the other hand, a new 
 outlay of nearly ;£45,ooo for station enlargement had now to be 
 sanctioned; a further sum of ;£2o,ooo for the block system and 
 interlocking ; and about ;^i 2,000— an instalment of an important new 
 item— for continuous brakes. Moreover, with the view of developing 
 an export coal traffic from Derbyshire to the east coast after the model 
 of the Sheffield Company's traffic from South Yorkshire to Great 
 Grimsby, the directors decided, with the shareholders' approval, to 
 subscribe ;^20,ooo to the construction of a new port at Sutton Bridge, 
 for which a local company, headed by the Messrs. English, of Wisbeach, 
 had obtained powers in the sessions of 1875 and 1876. 
 
 Meanwhile, the Great Eastern Company, after breaking off the 
 negotiations for an amalgamation, had sent on 3 July, 1877, a new 
 proposal for a traffic arrangement on the old basis of joint ownership 
 and running powers, and at the same time they had invited the Great 
 Northern Board to say in return what Great Eastern lines they were 
 disposed to take joint ownership in for the purpose of utilizing them as 
 a relief route. Accordingly, on 19 July a proposal was sent from 
 King's Cross to Liverpool Street that the whole of the existing lines 
 belonging to the two companies between Shepreth and Doncaster 
 via Cambridge, Ely, March, Spalding, Boston, Lincoln, and Gains- 
 borough should be converted into joint property, so that the two 
 companies could at once begin to work traffic over it in both 
 directions, and that at the same time powers should be obtained for 
 shorter routes between Shepreth and March and Spalding and Lincoln, 
 to be made so soon as they should mutually be thought desirable. 
 Further, in return for thus placing the Great Eastern at Doncaster 
 
 
 1877 
 
 A DECLARATION OF WAR 
 
 3^7 
 
 -the key to the whole of the North, -the Great Northern asked 
 for running powers from Huntingdon to Cambridge and Newmarket, 
 and from Ely to Norwich and Yarmouth. This proposal, however, 
 the Great Eastern indignantly declined, on the ground that .t was an 
 attempt "to obtain a complete control of the Great Eastern system 
 without securing to the latter company the advantages of amalga- 
 mation," and at the same time (31 July, i877) they announced their 
 intention of having a line of their own from Spaldmg to Lincoln 
 
 immediately surveyed. 
 
 This meant, of course, that the Great Northern must deposit a 
 Spalding to Lincoln Bill again also, and that a fight in Parlian.ent must 
 decide between them. In short, it was a declaration of war, and the 
 King's Cross Board made arrangements accordingly. Meanwhile, 
 however, a new and equally important crux of policy forced itself upon 
 their immediate attention. This was nothing less than a proposa 
 which seems to have originated with their own chairman, Co onel 
 Duncombe, that the Great Northern and Midland jointly should lease 
 the Manchester, Sheffield, and Lincolnshire. ^, ^ , , , 
 
 The reader knows very well already that a lease of the Sheffield to 
 one or more of the three first-class north-and-south powers had for 
 years been " within the range of practical politics." Nor is it difficult to 
 see why the Great Northern chairman brought forward the suggestion 
 again at this particular time. To put the matter briefly : a " turning 
 in "the Cheshire Lines lane" had actually been reached, as Lord 
 Colville had predicted ; but round the corner such an unsatisfactory 
 prospect had come into view that Colonel Duncombe had decided that 
 buying out the Sheffield was the only hope of better things. For now 
 that the worst of the huge capital outlay seemed to be at an end- 
 though this was by no means certain, seeing that the line to the north 
 end of Liverpool was still in hand, and that the two " central stations, 
 though opened, were neither of them completed-Sir Edward Watkin, 
 as we have partially seen already, had begun to increase working 
 expenses at a rate which left small hope of much of the new revenue of 
 the direct line remaining over as profit Not content with an hourly 
 service of expresses between Manchester and Liverpool, he was urging 
 the Great Northern and Midland to allow him to run them half-hourly, 
 and complaining to the Sheffield shareholders that he was not allowed 
 to work the joint system with sufficient " steam " and " go." To recall 
 Sir Edmund Beckett's phrase, the Sheffield had fairly " got its claws 
 into" both the Great Northern and Midland, and, if the two latter 
 companies wanted freedom, they had got to pay for it. 
 
 Accordingly, in consultation with Mr. Ellis, the chairman of the 
 
 
 11' 
 
 \ 
 
 "'1 
 
 'A 
 
I 
 
 328 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 Midland, Colonel Duncombe drew up a proposal for a joint lease of 
 the Sheffield, the pith of which was an ultimate guarantee of a 4 per 
 cent, dividend to the latter; and on 16 October, 1877, at a meeting 
 at Sandy, he submitted this to Sir Edward Watkin. Seeing that the 
 dividend actually paid by the Sheffield during the previous ten years 
 had averaged £,2 35. dd. only, the offer was an extremely liberal one, 
 and even Sir Edward could not on the spur of the moment find any 
 objection of importance to make to it. So four days later — 20 October, 
 1877 — it was authoritatively announced in the newspapers, to the 
 intense surprise of the Stock Exchange and of shareholders, that 
 negotiations were fairly in train. No terms were as yet announced ; 
 but it did not need a prophet's vision to foresee that Sir Edward Watkin 
 would make a good bargain for his company. Accordingly, the 
 Sheffield stock rose rapidly in the market. 
 
 But on this and other occasions it was the fate of Sir Edward Watkin 
 that he could not let a good thing alone— that he must be trying to 
 better it. Thus it was that on this same day, 20 October, he wrote 
 to the Great Northern chairman to say that his company must have " a 
 dry four per cent." under a guarantee which had "the full nature of a 
 rent-charge," or else — poor Spenlow ! — he could " not carry the lease 
 •with his colleagues." Colonel Duncombe replied that his Board 
 wished to give the best security that Parliament would allow, but that 
 its precise nature was "for the lawyers to settle"; whereupon Sir 
 Edward answered that if a full rent-charge could not be given the 
 ultimate dividend for the Sheffield stock must be 4J per cent., and 
 that his shareholders also must be given the full benefit of their 
 "prudent nest-eggs of reserves." After this several amended state- 
 ments of terms passed between the parties ; but Sir Edward Watkin 
 would not budge from either of his alternatives, namely, 4 per cent, on 
 " gilt-edged " security to take precedence even of debenture interest, or 
 4J per cent, if the guarantee was to be an ordinary one. So after a 
 final meeting in the Board -room at King's Cross in November the 
 negotiations " went off." According to a circular thereupon issued by 
 their chairman to the Sheffield proprietors, this failure of his efforts 
 caused him extreme regret. 
 
 By this time the deposit of the new Bills for the session of 1878 
 had been made, and the Great Northern had learnt the full scope of 
 the hostile intentions of the Great Eastern Company. These, they 
 found, amounted to nothing less than a revival of Mr. Bidder's Northern 
 Extension scheme of 1864. Moreover, the promotion of the Bill was 
 in the same hands as before— the all too capable hands of Mr. Robert 
 Baxter ; while the engineer whom the Great Eastern had employed was 
 
 1877-8 
 
 "THE FASCINATING FARTHING" 
 
 329 
 
 < 
 
 I 
 
 Sir John Hawkshaw — also, as the reader may remember, one of the 
 combination which had fathered "Bidder's line." The result was a 
 second " Great Eastern Northern Extension " scheme, which not only 
 reproduced the name and many of the engineering features of the 
 former project, but revived another old acquaintance of ours, "the 
 fascinating farthing " — the \d. per ton rate for coal carried from South 
 Yorkshire to London in 400 ton loads. Moreover, a very peculiar 
 " Baxterian " rider was subsequently added to this farthing-a-ton clause 
 — a rider intended to secure to the coalowners that the reduction on 
 the existing through charge should be 9^. per ton at least. 
 
 And, as if not enough in themselves to arouse the most strenuous 
 opposition from the Great Northern and Midland companies, these 
 old heresies of Mr. Baxter's were supplemented by a new and original 
 one invented by Mr. Parkes. The object of this was to win the support 
 of the Chambers of Commerce and other commercial bodies in the 
 West Riding of Yorkshire, and it amounted to an undertaking that the 
 rates for certain articles of staple traffic between that district and London 
 should be reduced by as much as 5^. per ton — or rather, as Mr. Parkes 
 preferred to put it, that they should be put on the same scale as the 
 rates which severer competition had secured for traffic between London 
 and Lancashire. Thus the Great Eastern deliberately challenged a 
 fight with all the established north and south powers. 
 
 The Great Northern directors on their part had deposited a Spalding 
 and Lincoln Bill— in the depressed state of its finances they dared not 
 revive the Shepreth and March line also; but, before accepting a 
 Parliamentary contest as inevitable, they made, in February, 1878, a 
 final effort to bring about a peaceful settlement. To this end they 
 modified the proposal at which the Great Eastern had taken such 
 umbrage in the previous July to the extent of withdrawing their demand 
 for running powers to Norwich and Yarmouth, and of suggesting that 
 Huntingdon instead of Shepreth should be the southern commencement 
 of a joint system — provided that the Great Eastern would at once double 
 its existing single line between Huntingdon and St. Ives. However, the 
 utmost concession which this modified proposal evoked from the Great 
 Eastern Board was that, if their Bill was allowed to pass unopposed, 
 they would be prepared to meet the Great Northern to see how 
 the new through line thus authorized could "be made available to 
 afford the utmost accommodation to both companies"; and, it being 
 impossible for the Great Northern to go that length in its desire for 
 peace, there was " no alternative," as Colonel Duncombe told his share- 
 holders at their February meeting, " but to submit the whole thing to 
 the consideration of Parliament." 
 
 I 
 
 w 
 
il 
 
 if 
 
 I 
 
 330 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 Accordingly, on 7 March, 1878, the hearing of the competing Bills 
 began before a Commons Committee. The Chairman once again was 
 Major O'Reilly, and many old friends and enemies met to engage in 
 what for some of them was to prove their last great Parliamentary 
 battle. Except in the case of Mr. Baxter, however, whose enthusiasm 
 for a new line for South Yorkshire coal to London now amounted 
 to sheer fanaticism, there was an obvious lack of sincerity about the 
 proceedings. Both sides knew at heart that the matter must end in 
 a compromise on the lines of those so nearly concluded many times 
 before. Mr. Parkes and Mr. Swarbrick, when cross-examined by Sir 
 Edmund Beckett, could give no substantial reasons why the Great 
 Eastern had refused the Great Northern's last proposal. So the directors 
 of the latter, on their counsel's advice, renewed this offer in a more 
 precise form on 19 March, and on 4 April, when Mr. Oakley went 
 into the box, he stated that he should " not only have no objection, 
 but should be very glad," to have a clause inserted in his Company's 
 Bill, binding it to carry out the scheme of joint ownership therein 
 suggested. 
 
 After this Sir Edmund Beckett had an easy task when, on the 
 following day, he rose to reply on the whole case. "What will this 
 new independent line to the North do ? " he asked. " Will it break up 
 any existing monopoly ? Not a bit of it. It is not pretended that the 
 Great Northern has not competition already for every pound— every 
 ounce of the traffic which it carries. If the Great Eastern had been 
 advised by anybody except a fanatic, they would have said, not all this 
 about their farthing a ton, but that, instead of their 5500 square miles 
 remaining a close monopoly, they would give running powers, they 
 would give through rates— they would give anything. But is that what 
 they say ? No, not a bit of it— not even Newmarket. So this line, as 
 I say, makes all these mistakes, accomplishes none of the usual objects, 
 serves nobody, breaks up no monopoly, introduces no new competition 
 which could not be had without it. And what does it do? It 
 • pretends to reduce some rates. So in order to gratify that person, 
 whoever he is, who has put up this scheme for the benefit of the South 
 Yorkshire coalfield, the Great Eastern ask a Committee of Parliament 
 arbitrarily to reduce all the rates in England. They do not care what 
 they do, evidently. They have got into this scrape and they do not see 
 their way out of it. Rather than pay their share for lines which were 
 made in comparatively cheap times, they want to make a new railway, 
 130 miles long, in the dearest times that were ever known. They say 
 that unless you let them do that they cannot carry for a farthing a ton. 
 What they mean I do not know, except in the curious whim I have 
 
 1878 
 
 LOGIC AND FANATICISM 
 
 331 
 
 adverted to already, that unless you let them ruin themselves a little 
 more they will not ruin themselves at all. They will ruin themselves 
 a great deal by leaving themselves no profit, or hardly any, by carrying 
 coal at a farthing a ton ; but they will condescend to do that only if 
 you will let them muddle away three millions of money, or four 
 millions, or whatever it may be. That is their logic ; I cannot help it ; 
 that is what they say. Why? Because they have an ambitious and 
 reckless adviser. But it is perfectly plain that Mr. Parkes is not that 
 gentleman. There is somebody else behind. The people who are now 
 advising the Great Eastern seem to be quite satisfied if they can pull 
 down other people's houses with their own. The Great Eastern share- 
 holders will suffer if you do not protect them." And then finally— not 
 as a peroration, for this great advocate never made perorations — came 
 the renewed offer in detail of joint ownership with the Great Northern, 
 the "proper solution of the question" which was to save the Great 
 Eastern from itself and " avoid sacrificing all the railway shareholders 
 in England " to " the mere reckless wilfulness " of a " fanatic." 
 
 In reply for the Great Eastern, Mr. Cripps made an exceedingly 
 adroit speech. But he must have felt before he began it that the battle 
 was already lost, for the compromise which Sir Edmund Beckett had 
 just offered had been actually proposed by the Great Eastern itself 
 barely a year before, and no advocate probably ever essayed a more 
 hopeless task than that of persuading a Committee of Englishmen, 
 sitting in that product and factory of compromise, the British House 
 of Parliament, to deliberately turn aside from a via media in favour of 
 an extreme and revolutionary course. Therefore, Mr. Cripps' speech 
 amounted to no more than a display of dialectics ; and at its conclusion 
 on the afternoon of 8 April, 1878, the Committee was able to declare 
 almost at once the substance of its decision. " We are not prepared," 
 said Major O'Reilly, " to pass the line of the Great Eastern Company. 
 At the same time we are of opinion that the Great Eastern Company 
 ought to have free access to the North. This, we are of opinion, can 
 be done on the basis of giving them joint ownership of the lines from 
 March to the junction south of Doncaster — Rossington or Black 
 Carr Junction— with completely free access to the other companies 
 north and south of Doncaster. . . . We are prepared with this view to 
 pass the Great Northern Bill with clauses to ensure its being made 
 suitable for a through line for the purpose of the Great Eastern 
 Company, to enable the Great Eastern Company to obtain a free 
 access to the North." 
 
 In order that all the expense incurred in the long hearing might not 
 be thrown away. Major O'Reilly was anxious to settle the matter at 
 
 t 
 
 'Hi! 
 
 1' 
 
 \ 
 
it 
 
 332 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 once by amending the Great Northern Bill, but after much discussion 
 this was found impossible. Accordingly, that Bill was passed for the 
 construction of the Spalding and Lincoln line, and the Great Eastern 
 Bill as a money Bill, with clauses binding the two companies to 
 carry out the terms of the compromise in the following year; and 
 in the session of 1879 — to anticipate a little in order to complete 
 the matter — a joint Bill was brought in and passed. This authorized 
 the vesting in the two companies, under joint ownership, of the whole 
 of the system of railways from Huntingdon by St. Ives, March, Spal- 
 ding, Sleaford, Lincoln, and Gainsborough to Black Carr Junction near 
 Doncaster. It enacted that the new joint line from Spalding to Lincoln 
 should be constructed with gradients not exceeding one in 400, and 
 that improved junctions should be put in at Huntingdon and St. Ives, 
 the former to facilitate Great Eastern and the latter Great Northern 
 through traffic. It also provided for the management of the joint 
 undertaking by a Joint Committee consisting of five directors of each 
 company. Thus, after thirty years of constant controversy, the " Great 
 Eastern question " was settled at last. 
 
 : 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 GOING SLOW— THE FIFTY YEARS AGREEMENT AGAIN— THE 
 
 SUBURBAN INCUBUS— 1878-1881. 
 
 THUS once more, thanks to the brilliant advocacy of Sir Edmund 
 Beckett, Mr. Oakley's great talent as a witness, and above all, to 
 the straightforward honesty of its policy, the Great Northern had gained 
 a notable victory in Parliament. Such successes, however, prove often 
 of doubtful advantage, and certainly the shareholders by this time had 
 reasons for wishing that the Company's many applications to Parliament 
 in the earlier seventies had not been quite so favourably received. For 
 it was no longer possible to disguise the fact that in the flush of excep- 
 tional prosperity and under the pressure from outside of many powerful 
 influences, some "political," others local, the Company had then 
 committed itself to a greater number of extensions than it could 
 possibly carry out simultaneously without decline of dividend. Even 
 if they had been its only liabilities, and could have been carried out 
 under continuously favourable conditions, these extensions must have 
 involved some loss of profit. Accompanied as they had been by other 
 unforeseen, but very large, liabilities for the maintenance and improve- 
 ment of the existing system, and needing to be completed, as they now 
 did, at a time of depressed trade, they had become a burden which was 
 grievous to be borne. 
 
 Fortunately, however, the victory over the Great Eastern, accom- 
 panied though it was by a new joint liability for the direct Spalding 
 to Lincoln line, did not involve much additional burden to capital 
 account, having regard to the greater extent of existing mileage which 
 was to be thrown into the joint ownership by the Great Northern. 
 Moreover, in the same month as this Parliamentary success — April, 
 i8y8— works hitherto entirely or largely unproductive were more fully 
 opened in four different parts of the Company's system. The Derby- 
 shire and Staffordshire extension was opened throughout via Derby to 
 Egginton for all kinds of traffic; the section of the Newark and 
 Leicester line between Bottesford and Newark (providing a shortened 
 
 333 
 
 'i 
 
 i 
 
 \ 
 
K 
 
 334 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 route between Derbyshire and Nottingham and the northern part of the 
 system) was opened for goods and coal ; the Pudsey branch in Yorkshire 
 was fully opened, and the new Maiden Lane tunnel, King's Cross, was 
 brought into use. Moreover, Mr. Eraser had by this time nearly 
 completed the great tunnel, 2500 yards long, at Queensbury, albeit no 
 less than eight shafts had had to be sunk for it, the deepest 413 feet, 
 and considerable trouble had been encountered owing to water-bearing 
 strata. Thus there was good prospect of the portion of the Bradford 
 and Thornton line already opened being very soon linked with the 
 Halifax and Ovenden joint line, thus completing the new route between 
 Bradford and Halifax. 
 
 On the other hand, in the joint line from Market Harborough to 
 Bottesford, in the " Cheshire line " to the north end of Liverpool, in 
 the extension of the Ossett and Dewsbury line to Batley and other 
 minor works, the Company had sunk unproductively at the end of 
 the half-year a capital sum of nearly two millions, which was certain 
 to absorb quite a million more before it became remunerative ; and the 
 Tilton and Leicester, and Thornton and Keighley lines, involving 
 another million at least, had not yet been begun. Thus the pros- 
 pect of being able to give rest to the capital account was an extremely 
 remote one ; and as, under the depressed conditions of trade generally, 
 there was little prospect of another such expansion of revenue as 
 had occurred in 1872 and 1873, it was well nigh impossible that the 
 rate of dividend could improve within the next few years. On the 
 contrary, there was a likelihood that it might decline further, and 
 already it had dropped from the high-water point of £^1 ^s. per 
 cent, per annum for 1873 to ^^5 51. per cent, for 1877. Under these 
 circumstances it was not surprising that in the summer of 1878 the 
 administration of the Board was subjected to severe scrutiny and some 
 bitter criticism. 
 
 Of course the very large increase of capital in recent years, the con- 
 sequent decline of dividend, and the heavy future liabilities, were the 
 points to which critics specially drew attention ; but one of them, at 
 least, did not confine himself to such obvious instruments of attack. 
 This gentleman, Mr. J. P. Lythgoe, appears to have been to some 
 extent a professional assailant of railway administrations. Some ten 
 years before he had headed an attack upon the North British direct- 
 orate, and, more recently, he had assisted Mr. Bass in his endeavour to 
 place Sir Edward VVatkin in the Great Eastern chair vice Mr. Parkes. 
 Whether his aim now was to enthrone Sir Edward at King's Cross, or 
 whether he wished simply to " bear " Great Northern stock, cannot be 
 stated with certainty. It is certain only that, on 19 June, 1878, he 
 
 1878 
 
 AN ATTACK ON THE BOARD 
 
 335 
 
 issued a pamphlet which accused the Great Northern Board, inter alia, 
 of having charged a million pounds too much to capital account for 
 expenditure on rolling stock— of having, in short, paid dividends during 
 the last two or three years which, reduced though they were, had not 
 been fairly earned. Against a Board like the Great Northern's, whose 
 policy had always been, as we have seen, to err, if at all, on the side of 
 burdening revenue unduly, this charge was so misdirected that it seemed 
 
 Strikes Cutting and Queensbury Tunnel, Ovenden, near Halifax, 
 
 WHEN in course OF CONSTRUCTION. 
 
 to some neither necessary nor dignified for the directors to reply to it, 
 especially as Mr. Lythgoe was not himself a shareholder. But, upon 
 facts coming to their knowledge which pointed to hasty sacrifices of 
 stock by ignorant and therefore panic-stricken shareholders, Colonel 
 Duncombe and Lord Colville thought it best to issue, on 28 June, a 
 circular emphatically contradicting the accusation. Moreover, the 
 Board immediately commissioned Mr. Ramsbottom, ex-locomotive 
 engineer of the London and North Western, and Messrs. Fletcher 
 and Company, public accountants, to make an independent investiga- 
 tion for the satisfaction of the shareholders. 
 
 I ' 
 
 *\ 
 
 
336 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 This action proved very wise and well-timed. The reports from 
 the independent experts refuted completely the pamphleteer's allega- 
 tions ; and the gist of them, being embodied in the directors' half-yearly 
 report together with a fuller statement than usual of the financial 
 position of the Company, relieved to a large extent the anxiety of 
 the shareholders. The result was that the half-yearly meeting held on 
 23 August, 1878, instead of being a stormy one, was characterized by 
 a feeling of the utmost confidence in the directors — "a feeling," said 
 Colonel Buncombe very gratefully, "which has been unexampled as far 
 as I can recollect in the annals of the Company." " It will be an 
 inducement to us," he added, " not to rest upon our oars, but to do the 
 utmost we possibly can to improve the splendid property which exists 
 in the Great Northern Railway, and which it will take even now a great 
 many years to develop." 
 
 Nevertheless, it was obviously necessary to "go slow" as regards 
 capital expenditure. So, notwithstanding much local grumbling, the 
 letting of the contract for the Tilton and Leicester line was again 
 postponed, whilst, in the case of the Thornton and Keighley, the 
 directors contented themselves with making arrangements for the 
 " headings " of the four tunnels, so that delay might be avoided when 
 the rest of the works were put in hand. Meanwhile, however, earning- 
 power was receiving some very welcome reinforcements. From i July, 
 1878, the Newark and Bottesford line was brought into use for 
 passengers in addition to goods, and on 14 October the opening of 
 the Bradford and Thornton was extended from Clayton to Queensbury 
 (though, unfortunately, owing to the non-completion of the big " Strines 
 cutting," 1033 yards long and fifty-nine feet deep, between that place 
 and Ovenden, the new route between Bradford and Halifax could not 
 yet be opened). Moreover, the development (thanks to the Wainfleet 
 and Firsby Company's line, which, as already noted, the Great Northern 
 had worked since its opening in 1873) o( a new watering-place at 
 Skegness on the Lincolnshire coast was now producing a considerable 
 revenue from excursion traffic, about 220,000 such passengers being 
 conveyed thither from Nottingham, Yorkshire, and London in 1878. 
 Further, since October, 1877, the Company had been working the 
 Louth and East Coast Company's line, twelve miles in length, from 
 Louth to another new watering-place, Mablethorpe. 
 
 The opening too, from i June, 1878, of the bridge across the Tay 
 in Scotland, and the consequent improvement of the North British 
 route northwards via Fifeshire, was of some benefit to the Great 
 Northern; and it promised to be of much more benefit when Sir 
 Thomas Bouch had completed his similar, but of course much longer, 
 
 1878-9 THE FIRST FORTH BRIDGE COMPANY 
 
 337 
 
 bridge over the Forth, the foundation stone of which was laid with 
 much ceremony on 30 September, 1878. The Forth Bridge Company, 
 incorporated in 1873, had been promoted jointly by the North British, 
 the Midland, the North Eastern, and Great Northern ; but their liability 
 in the matter was limited to a guarantee of a minimum revenue, and 
 in this the Great Northern was responsible to the extent of one-sixth 
 only. 
 
 The next year, 1879, was the culmination of a period of trade 
 
 Strjnes Cutting, Ovenden, near Halifax, when in course of construction. 
 
 depression, and, of course, the railway companies suffered greatly 
 therefrom. Nevertheless, in the first half of the year, thanks mainly 
 to its new Derbyshire coal traffic, the development of which received a 
 very opportune stimulus from strikes at the north of England collieries, 
 the Great Northern was able to report an increase in gross receipts of 
 over;^66,ooo. One-third of this, however, was absorbed in increased 
 working expenses owing to the opening of new lines, &c. In the 
 second half of the year minerals again showed a satisfactory increase, 
 proving beyond doubt that the ih million of capital spent upon the 
 Derbyshire extension had been well laid out; but the passenger traffic 
 
 IK 
 
 U ' 
 
338 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 in the later summer and autumn was spoiled by most miserable weather, 
 and from the same cause the grain and potato crops failed almost com- 
 pletely in Lincolnshire and the south-east of Yorkshire, producing a 
 diminution of about 80,000 tons in agricultural produce alone. The 
 result was that the net increase of revenue was not sufficient to meet 
 the new capital outlay, and the rate of dividend for the year fell from 
 
 A contributory cause of this decline, no doubt, was that, also owing 
 to the bad weather, it was not until quite the end of the year that any 
 considerable extent of new line could be brought into use. From 
 30 June, 1879, it is true, a portion of the joint line through Leicester- 
 shire was opened ; but the opening southwards was as far as Melton 
 Mowbray only, and it was not until 15 December that the remaining 
 portion between Melton and Market Harborough could be brought into 
 use. This, however, completed the through route between Newark and 
 Market Harborough and enabled the Great Northern to commence its 
 running powers to Northampton. On the other hand, it enabled the 
 London and North Western to become a much more formidable com- 
 petitor than before in the Derbyshire coalfield and in the town of 
 Nottingham. On i December, 1879, the link between Queensbury 
 and Ovenden was at last completed, and the new Great Northern route 
 opened between Bradford and Halifax. 
 
 The sixty-seventh half-yearly meeting of the Company, held on 
 20 February, 1880, was a gloomy occasion. Shadows were cast over 
 it not only by the decline of dividend, but by the deaths, within 
 the preceding three months, of two men, the loss of whom was felt 
 greatly — Colonel Duncombe and the highly -respected secretary of 
 the Company, Mr. Alexander Forbes. Colonel Duncombe died on 
 3 December, 1879, and by his decease the Company lost a chair- 
 man of the highest character ; " as conscientious, straightforward, and 
 honourable a man as ever lived," to quote the eulogy pronounced by 
 his successor. Mr. John Harvey Astell was now the sole survivor of 
 the original directors of the Company ; Lord Colville of Culross, k.t., 
 who succeeded to the chairmanship, had been a director since 1863 
 only. 
 
 At the beginning of 1880 the contract for the Tilton and Leicester 
 line was at last let, to the great satisfaction of the people of Leicester, 
 who had begun to think they were not going to get their new line after 
 all ; and about the same time the Great Northern and Great Eastern 
 Joint Committee let the contract for the first section of their Spalding 
 and Lincoln line from Spalding to Sleaford. On the other hand, the 
 outlay on the so-called Cheshire lines seemed at last to be nearly 
 
 
 1880 
 
 A HARDY ANNUAL 
 
 339 
 
 approaching an end, for the line to the north end of Liverpool, termi- 
 nating in a new goods station at Huskisson Docks, was reported to be 
 far advanced towards completion. The Great Northern had by this 
 time expended just about three millions as its third-share to the 
 Cheshire lines joint system, and the return it was getting from this 
 expenditure was utterly inadequate, even when full allowance was made 
 for the extent to which the lines acted as " feeders " to the main system. 
 However, the opening of the new Liverpool extension placing the Great 
 Northern at the most important docks in Liverpool, was now looked 
 forward to by the more sanguine as " the turning in the lane." 
 
 With the exception of the joint Bill, already referred to, for confirming 
 its arrangements with the Great Eastern Company and an unimportant 
 "Omnibus Bill," the Great Northern directors had wisely abstained from 
 new promotions in the session of 1879, ^"<^ the only other measure in 
 the passing of which they had then participated had been a Bill pro- 
 moted by the Stafford and Uttoxeter Company (incorporated 1862), 
 which had given the Great Northern running powers from Egginton 
 Junction to Stafford. From Yorkshire the Board had been much 
 pressed to apply for powers for a new line up the Spen Valley from 
 Batley to Heckmondwike, Liversedge, and Cleckheaton — indeed, a 
 deputation from this district had been, in Mr. Oakley's phrase, "an 
 annual festival at King's Cross since 1876. But in 1879, and again 
 when making their deposits for 1880, the Great Northern directors 
 turned a deaf ear to these petitions, having decided that this project, 
 though a good one, must be postponed till easier times. On the other 
 hand, the claims of another valley — the Leen Valley in Derbyshire — 
 appeared too strong to be resisted. This district was now rivalling the 
 valley of the Erewash in coal production, and yet as things were, it was 
 practically a monopoly of the Midland Company, though the new Great 
 Northern line passed by its very mouth. Accordingly in the session of 
 1880 the King's Cross Board promoted and passed a Bill for a branch, 
 eight miles in length, from their existing line at Bulwell, up the Leen 
 Valley to Newstead, to make connection en route with the Bestwood 
 and other important collieries. 
 
 Besides this, in this session of 1880, the Great Northern committed 
 itself to lend on mortgage, in addition to its ;^2 0,000 it had already 
 contributed, a sum not exceeding ;^3 5,000 to the Sutton Bridge 
 Dock Company, to rescue that concern from great financial straits. 
 In this same session, too, an event happened in yet another 
 Parliamentary committee-room which was fraught with somewhat 
 momentous consequences for the Great Northern Company. Some 
 influential Huddersfield people were promoting a Bill, with Messrs. 
 
/ > 
 
 3+0 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 Fraser and Fowler as their engineers, for a line from their town to 
 a junction with the West Riding and Grimsby Railway at Nostell, with 
 the object of providing a connection between Huddersfield and the 
 Great Northern more direct than the existing Lancashire and Yorkshire 
 and Manchester, Sheffield, and Lincolnshire route via Penistone and 
 Retford ; and having failed to persuade the King's Cross Board to 
 support their scheme, they were asking for compulsory running powers 
 from Nostell to Doncaster. This demand the Great Northern, as joint 
 owner of the West Riding and Grimsby line, felt obliged actively to 
 oppose ; but its partner in that line — the Sheffield Company — though 
 it also petitioned against the Bill, did not think it necessary to instruct 
 counsel to appear against it. The Sheffield authorities thought— so 
 they explained afterwards — that, with not only the Great Northern 
 but the London and North Western and Lancashire and Yorkshire as 
 its opponents, the Bill could not possibly pass. 
 
 The Great Northern, however, though strongly opposing the com- 
 pulsory running powers, had, as may be readily imagined, no objection 
 to the main object of the Bill. Accordingly Sir Edmund Beckett's 
 cross-examination of the promoters was directed, not against their case 
 in itself, but rather to ascertaining whether a compromise with them 
 could not be effected. The result was a proposal which proved accept- 
 able to both parties. This was that, in return for withdrawing its 
 opposition to the running powers to Doncaster, the Great Northern 
 should be given running powers over the new line into Huddersfield ; 
 and in the temporary absence of Mr. Oakley in the country, Mr. 
 Fowler was put into the witness-box, that through him in his double 
 capacity of co-engineer for the Bill and consulting engineer to the Great 
 Northern, the terms of an agreement to this effect might be conveyed 
 to the Committee. At the conclusion of Mr. Fowler's evidence Sir 
 Edmund Beckett announced that the Great Northern's opposition was 
 withdrawn. 
 
 It chanced, however, that while Mr. Fowler was under examination, 
 Mr. Underdown, the Sheffield manager, came in casually from another 
 room just to see how the proceedings were going on. When he heard 
 questions being asked as to "an agreement of reciprocity" with the 
 Great Northern, he was astounded. It was as great a surprise, he said 
 afterwards, as any incident he ever met with in his railway experience. 
 Happening to be standing just behind Mr. Nelson, he asked that 
 gentleman to let him see a rough copy of the agreement which he was 
 holding in his hand. Having seen it and realized what it meant, he 
 went straight off to his company's solicitor — the matter was so pressing, 
 he said, that there was not time even to consult Sir Edward Watkin — 
 
 1880 THE SHEFFIELD MANAGER ASTOUNDED 
 
 3+1 
 
 and begged him to lose no time in instructing counsel to appear for 
 them. The result was that on the following morning Mr. Underdown 
 was able himself to go into the box and, in examination by Mr. Littler, 
 Q.C., to protest most strongly on behalf of the Sheffield against the 
 agreement between the promoters and the Great Northern being 
 embodied, as was proposed, in the Bill. 
 
 In one of the lines of objection which he thus took Mr. Underdown 
 was on firm ground, viz., in maintaining that running powers must not 
 be given over a line of which his company was joint owner without its 
 being at least consulted in the matter. But when he went further than 
 this and declared that for the Great Northern to encourage in any way 
 a new route between Huddersfield and London was to commit a 
 breach of its Fifty Years Agreement with the Sheffield, he took up 
 a very vulnerable position. For though on the face of it Clause 14 of 
 that agreement — the clause forbidding injury on the part of the one 
 company to the traffic of the other — seemed to cover a case which 
 might involve the diversion of an important branch of their joint 
 traffic to a new route, yet, in giving evidence in favour of the 
 C. O. A. L. line in 187 1, and again in supporting the Rushton line in 
 1873, Sir Edward Watkin had expressly denied this comprehensive 
 interpretation of the clause, declaring that "the traffic of the other 
 company" which each of the parties had bound itself not to 
 injure in any way without the other's consent, meant only the 
 traffic to promote which the agreement had originally been formed. 
 Nevertheless, Mr. Underdown insisted that in his opinion the Great 
 Northern was bound under the agreement not to divert any traffic, and 
 after his evidence to this effect and a speech from Mr. Littler, the 
 Huddersfield Bill, "reciprocity clauses" and all, was rejected by the 
 Committee (15 June, 1880). 
 
 This rejection, as we shall see presently, entailed grave consequences 
 to the Great Northern ; but in its immediate result, probably, it was a 
 matter rather of relief than regret at King's Cross. For had the local 
 company obtained its powers, there can be no doubt that the Great 
 Northern would have had to take them over as it had taken over so 
 many of Mr. Eraser's lines before, and, excellent "feeder" though it 
 might have proved when developed, the Great Northern was, as we 
 have seen, not at all in a position to supply any more such feeders with 
 the expensive preliminary nourishment which in most cases they had 
 been found to require. Upon the Tilton and Leicester, the Bradford 
 and Thornton, the Spalding and Lincoln, its latest enterprise in the 
 Leen Valley, and other minor works, it had a further capital expendi- 
 ture still in prospect of quite two million pounds. Nor was this by 
 
 
 f 
 
 !•;' 
 
 
 m 
 
342 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 any means the sum of its pressing liability for capital outlay. The 
 accommodation for goods terminal at King's Cross, supplemented 
 though it had been by the City depot at Farringdon and by about 
 forty acres of siding ground acquired at various times between 
 Holloway and Finsbury Park, was once more showing signs of 
 inadequacy, and in August of this year 1880 the directors had to 
 recommend the purchase of twenty- one more acres for sidings between 
 Finsbury Park and Hornsey at a cost of ;^2 1,000. The suburban 
 traffic, too, was increasing at such a rate as to demand the recom- 
 mendation at the same time of two new stations, now known as Stroud 
 Green and Bowes Park ; and there could be no doubt that in the near 
 future a further much heavier expenditure would be involved on its 
 account. 
 
 Nor were revenue prospects encouraging. The general trade of the 
 country had improved, it was true, and the harvest promised to be 
 better than the deplorable one of 1879 ; but, meanwhile, the distressed 
 agriculturists of Lincolnshire and other counties were tiding over by 
 cutting down expenditure wherever possible. The result was that they 
 travelled very little, used about 40,000 tons of coal less than usual in 
 the half-year to 30 June, 1880, and imported about 10,000 tons less of 
 general merchandise. Nor, after all, did the harvest prove better than 
 in 1879, for in the latter part of the summer most abnormal rains set 
 in. Then, on the top of all, the drainage arrangements — always a great 
 problem in the flat districts of eastern England— broke down. The 
 rivers Trent, Don, Welland, Nene, and Witham all became unmanage- 
 able, and the Glen completely burst its banks near Bourn, and flooded 
 no less than 8000 acres of arable land. 
 
 The result was most deplorable. During the later autumn and 
 winter Lincolnshire, in which the Great Northern had 104 stations, 
 was little better than a waste of waters, and the line between Spalding 
 and Bourn, being flooded for a length of two miles to the depth of four 
 or five feet, had to be wholly closed for traffic from 9 October, 1880, 
 to I February, 1881. It made matters worse that this, as the reader 
 may remember, was not a Great Northern line proper, but formed part 
 of the Midland and Eastern leased system which the Great Northern 
 and Midland worked jointly under the agreement of 1866. Con- 
 sequently these two companies had to pay the minimum rent of 
 ;^i 5,000 to which they had pledged themselves, notwithstanding the 
 complete stoppage of the through traffic. Nevertheless, rather to the 
 disconcertion of the Stock Exchanges, the Great Northern directors 
 were able to avert a further decline of dividend. 
 
 This satisfactory result was mainly due to a substantial increase in 
 
 1880 
 
 THE FIRST DINING-CAR 
 
 343 
 
 
 , 
 
 the passenger and goods traffic between London and Yorkshire ; and 
 this, while attributable primarily to a revival of trade, was very credit- 
 ably stimulated by the extraordinary exertions which the Great 
 Northern authorities made in 1880 to develop their London and West 
 Riding service. During the seventies, as we have seen, the place 
 which the Great Northern had won for itself originally of "pioneer 
 line" had been usurped by the Midland Company by virtue of its 
 startling series of innovations — third-class by all trains, revision of 
 classes and fares, and introduction of Pullman cars. But at the very 
 end of the decade— November, 1879— the experimental running of 
 a dining-car between London and Leeds— the first car of the kind seen 
 in England — reasserted the enterprise of King's Cross, and from 
 February, 1880, this novelty was placed regularly on the London and 
 Leeds service. Under the arrangements then made the car made 
 
 Great Northern Four-wheel-coufled Passenger Locomotive. 
 
 two journeys daily, viz., Leeds 10 a.m.. King's Cross 2 p.m., and 
 King's Cross 5.30 p.m., Leeds 10.10 p.m. Compared with the four 
 hours twenty-seven minutes service which, as we noted in an earlier 
 chapter, the Company gave London to Leeds passengers as early as 
 187 1, this was not very fast running. Moreover, the Company's best 
 West Riding train at this date— the 10.10 a.m. from King's Cross, 
 Leeds 2.30 p.m. — showed a seven minutes advance only on the 187 1 
 performance. But when on i June, 1880, Mr. John Noble, Mr. 
 Allport's successor in the Midland general managership, inaugurated a 
 new series of expresses from St. Pancras to the West Riding via 
 Nottingham, Mr. Oakley, Mr. Cockshott, and Mr. Stirling made a 
 sensational answer. On 4 June, 1880, a circular was put out from 
 King's Cross that from Monday the 14th instant three new trains would 
 be put on to cover the 186 miles between the Metropolis and the 
 capital of the West Riding in three and three-quarter hours, and from 
 I July to the end of September the same timing was given to two 
 other trains— the trains to which was attached the heavy dining-car. 
 This meant a journey-speed of forty-nine and a half miles per hour — 
 
 
 
 
344 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 a long way the best thing yet done on a regular service. Moreover, on 
 31 August, 1880, the Company brought the Lord Mayor and his suite 
 from York to King's Cross in three hours thirty-seven minutes, with a 
 ten minutes stop at Grantham — a journey-speed of fifty-two miles an 
 hour. 
 
 Meanwhile the Huddersfield promoters had been meditating upon, 
 and discussing in their Chamber of Commerce and elsewhere, the 
 rejection of their junction line, and they had come to the conclusion 
 that they were the victims of an unholy conspiracy between the Great 
 Northern and Sheffield companies. "If there is such an agreement 
 as Mr. Underdown suggests," their counsel, Mr. Venables, had said — 
 " and I do not believe he would invent an agreement, though he may 
 have put an exaggerated interpretation upon one — could the power of 
 Parliament be better exercised than in disregarding it ? " And, though 
 Parliament, presumably, had not so exercised its power, nevertheless 
 the Huddersfield people conceived hopes of upsetting the supposed 
 conspiracy in another way. For, most fortunately for their designs, it 
 happened that in this very year, 1880, the Fifty Years Treaty between 
 the Great Northern and Sheffield came up for decennial revision before 
 the Railway Commissioners. Accordingly the Huddersfield promoters 
 seized the opportunity to appear by counsel before the Commission, 
 in the names of their Corporation and Chamber of Commerce, to 
 demand that the obnoxious Clause 14 should be expunged from the 
 agreement. 
 
 The two railway companies — the Sheffield taking the lead — en- 
 deavoured to evade this attack on the plea that the Commissioners 
 had not jurisdiction to do what was asked. On 2 December, 1880, 
 however, this point was decided against them ; nor were they any more 
 successful in an appeal which they made, in April, 1881, to the High 
 Court. Consequently the case was to come up again before the Com- 
 mission in the following July. 
 
 In addition to this Huddersfield case the Great Northern authorities 
 had some not unimportant Parliamentary business in hand in 1881. 
 This took the shape of a " Various Powers Bill," the most important 
 enterprise included in it being the purchase of the undertaking of the 
 Stafford and Uttoxeter Company, a line about twelve miles in length, 
 extending from a junction with the North Staffordshire Railway near 
 Uttoxeter to a junction with the London and North Western near 
 Stafford. Running powers over this line via the North Staffordshire, 
 the Great Northern had acquired, as already mentioned, in the session 
 of 1879 ; t)ut the directors had subsequently found that the permanent 
 way was in very bad repair, and, as the financial position of the 
 
 1881 
 
 DOCKS WHICH WOULD NOT WORK 
 
 345 
 
 I 
 
 Company owning it precluded hope of remedy for this otherwise, they 
 entered into negotiations to purchase it outright. After a good deal 
 of haggling they made an agreement to give ;^ 100,000 — considerably 
 less than the vendors had already spent — for the complete owner- 
 ship of the undertaking and its right of access to the London and 
 North Western station at Stafford; and thus they expected to get 
 a good share of the traffic of the Potteries district, and, particularly, 
 to be able to open a profitable market there for Derbyshire coal. On 
 the other hand, to put the new acquisition into proper repair, a capital 
 outlay of about ;£'4o,ooo had to be provided for. Nor was this the 
 only new liability which the Great Northern incurred this session. 
 Their Various Powers Bill included also the construction, at an 
 estimated cost of ;;^ 125,000, of two short lines (in all five miles in 
 length) between Beeston and Batley in the West Riding of Yorkshire, 
 the enlargement of Nottingham station, and other minor works. On the 
 other hand, it reduced the liability on the Thornton and Keighley line 
 by empowering the Company to utilize a small portion of the existing 
 Worth Valley line, and to make arrangements with the Midland for a 
 joint station at Keighley. 
 
 Meantime, under the sanction of the Sutton Bridge Dock Company's 
 Act of the previous session, the further sum of ^£35,000 had been lent 
 to that undertaking, making the Great Northern's interest in it 
 ;^5 5,000 in all, and this had enabled the contractors to push on 
 rapidly with the works. The result was that by the middle of May, 
 1 88 1, the docks were ready for opening. In addition to the Great 
 Northern's contributions, about ;£"i 80,000 had been spent upon the 
 works. About thirteen acres of water had been enclosed, and extensive 
 warehouses with the most approved hydraulic machinery provided ; and 
 the opening was looked forward to with great anticipations. It was 
 *' confidently believed," in the language of a contemporary newspaper, 
 " that the development of a populous seaport had been inaugurated at 
 the mouth of the River Nene." On the eventful day — 14 May, 1881 — 
 the first ship, T/ie Garland^ owned by the Messrs. English, of Wisbeach, 
 entered the docks with a cargo of 1,150 tons of pitchpine from Norway, 
 and this she at once proceeded to unload, preparatory to taking on 
 board a return cargo of Derbyshire coal which the Great Northern had 
 brought to the dock-side via the Midland and Eastern system. In a 
 word, the first day of the working career of the new port passed off 
 with much eclat. 
 
 On the second day, however, it became evident that something was 
 wrong. While the tide was coming in, there was too much water in the 
 docks ; while it was going out, there was not enough. In short, it was 
 
I 
 
 346 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 clear that the lock at the entrance was not watertight. So business 
 operations had to be suspended, and an examination taken in hand by 
 the engineers. But the precise cause of the leakage could not be 
 discovered, much less a speedy remedy for it, so it was decided to take 
 further and more eminent engineering advice. Meanwhile, instead of 
 getting a large new traffic, as they had expected, in coal from Derby- 
 shire to Sutton Bridge, and in merchandise from Sutton Bridge all 
 over the kingdom, the Great Northern directors found themselves in 
 the position of having sunk ;^5 5,000 in docks which refused to work. 
 
 By this time the Great Northern's access to another dock — the 
 Huskisson Dock, Liverpool — had been at last secured by the com- 
 pletion of the " Cheshire Line " to the north end of that city ; but the 
 results so far had not been satisfactory. With characteristic thought 
 for the future rather than for the present, the Cheshire Lines Committee 
 had provided a very large goods station at Huskisson, and this, while 
 the traffic was in its infancy, was proving extremely costly to work; 
 moreover, a disagreement had arisen between the three partners as to 
 what traffic should be handled there. On the top of this came a heavy 
 compensation bill for injuries to passengers caused by a train being 
 driven too fast into Manchester station. The result was that the Great 
 Northern's share of the profit on the Cheshire lines working fell to 
 ;£i 6,000 for the half-year to 30 June, i88i. Nevertheless the Joint 
 Committee, with " the turning in the lane " always in view, committed 
 itself in the session of 1881 to work a new line from Liverpool to 
 Southport, powers to construct which were obtained by a local 
 company. 
 
 In July, 1 88 1, the application of the Huddersfield people for a 
 modification of the Fifty Years Agreement between the Great Northern 
 and Sheffield companies duly came on before the Railway Commission. 
 The Great Northern was represented by Mr. Pope, Q.c, and the 
 Sheffield by Mr. Littler, Q.c, and both counsel strongly urged the 
 importance to their clients of the maintenance of the agreement as it 
 stood. It had "worked splendidly well for the public," Mr. Littler 
 said, and it ought not to be abrogated " simply because the Corporation 
 of Huddersfield thought something had been decided by a committee 
 of the House of Commons on an issue wholly different from that upon 
 which it was quite certain the committee did decide." However, the 
 judgment given by the Chief Commissioner, Sir F. Peel, was practically 
 against the companies. He said that " in the uncertainty that a route 
 convenient at one time would always continue to be so, it seemed 
 inexpedient that a railway company if occasion should arise should not 
 be free to accommodate the use of its line to what might be advan- 
 
 1881 
 
 THE EXCISION OF CLAUSE 14 
 
 347 
 
 
 tageous to the public"; and upon this ground the Commission refused 
 sanction to the continuance of the agreement, unless the companies 
 would assent either to the omission of Clause 14, or the addition to it 
 of a proviso to exempt from its operation any route opened since 
 October, i860, the date of its original ratification. During the hear- 
 ing both companies threatened that if Clause 14 were expunged 
 they would drop the agreement altogether ; but now they decided to 
 accept it without that clause, in preference to being burdened by the 
 Commission's comprehensive proviso. Accordingly the treaty was 
 sanctioned for another decennial period from i November, 1881, and 
 under its provisions, which still included an obligation on both com- 
 
 Bridge near Newstead Abbey, Derbyshire. 
 
 panics to send all through traffic, not otherwise consigned, by the route 
 of the other, a bonus mileage in favour of the Sheffield, and the remedy 
 of " arbitration running powers " in case of breach, the joint working 
 between London and Lancashire vid Retford went on as before. 
 
 Meantime the Great Northern's outlay of new capital had again 
 become very large. In addition to pushing on more vigorously than 
 before with the Bradford and Thornton and Tilton and Leicester lines, 
 and contributing their half-share to the Spalding and Lincoln, the 
 directors had put the works of the Leen Valley branch in hand. For- 
 tunately, however, this last-named undertaking began very soon to 
 make a return. As early as July, 1881, coal trains began to run over it 
 from the Bestwood Colliery, and from 18 October the mineral traffic 
 of the branch was commenced in earnest. The result was an increase 
 for the half-year to 31 December, 1 881, of over a quarter of a million 
 tons of coal carried over the system, making the tonnage carried from 
 
 I ^ 
 
 I 
 
i 
 
 348 HISTORY OF GRPAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 the Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire fields more than a million in the 
 year. The directors had now more than ever cause for congratulation 
 that they had carried out their extension into that district. 
 
 In this summer of 1881 the "Spen Valley annual festival" (to recall 
 Mr. Oakley's phrase) recurred three times over. In other words, the 
 inhabitants of Cleckheaton, Liversedge, and Heckmondwike came in 
 three separate deputations to urge the claims of their district ; and the 
 Great Northern Board, seeing that they were now at last in sight of the 
 end of their long-standing liabilities in other localities, and seeing also 
 that, except in Lincolnshire, trade and traffic had much improved, did 
 not feel justified in repeating their former non possumus. Accordingly 
 they instructed Mr. Eraser to go over the ground and report. Then they 
 themselves went down to the district, and finding it, in Mr. Oakley's 
 words, "full of chimneys and smoke and people, the most cheerful 
 sights a railway manager can see," they at last decided to promote the 
 long-wished-for extension. So for the session of 1882 they deposited 
 a Bill for a line from a junction with their Batley and Dewsbury line 
 up the Spen Valley to Cleckheaton. In the preparations for this, unfor- 
 tunately, Mr. Nelson missed the co-operation of his old ally, Mr. 
 Fraser, who died before completing the surveys, and the Company 
 thus lost the services of a most able and successful engineer. But an 
 efficient substitute was available in the person of Mr. Eraser's son-in- 
 law, Mr. William Beswick (now Mr. W. B. Myers-Beswick). 
 
 All this time no proper effect had been given to the joint arrange- 
 ments with the Great Eastern — for it had been agreed that the 
 completion of the direct Spalding and Lincoln line should be awaited 
 before the other lines were placed under the joint control — and yet, 
 albeit that with better times traffic was once more increasing at a rapid 
 rate, the problem of relief to the Great Northern's main system had 
 ceased to demand attention. The fact was that the problem had been 
 solved by the successful adoption of continuous brakes. In accordance 
 with the unanimous recommendation of the locomotive engineers of the 
 twelve largest railways in England, the Great Northern had continued 
 to favour the simple vacuum brake in preference to the Westinghouse 
 automatic, and as early as January, 1878, the type which Mr. Stirling 
 had adopted — "Smith's Vacuum" — showed its efficacy in a collision 
 at Hatfield between the night " Scotchman " and a broken-down goods 
 train. The circumstances were very similar to those at Arlesey Siding, 
 yet, thanks to the promptness with which the speed of the express was 
 checked, no passenger was seriously injured. This, of course, encouraged 
 the directors to a generous expenditure on brake-power, and at the half- 
 yearly meeting in February, 1881, Lord Colville was able to report that 
 
 ] 
 
 1881 
 
 NEW TOWNS SPRINGING UP 
 
 349 
 
 continuous brakes had been fitted to 90 per cent, of the Company's 
 passenger engines, 88 per cent, of its tenders, and 85 per cent, of its 
 carriages— a better record in this respect probably than any other 
 company could show at this date. It is significant that at the same 
 meeting Lord Colville reported the lowest half-yearly payment on 
 record for compensation for personal injuries, £^^^\ albeit m that 
 half-year, as we have seen, the exceptionally fast running was done 
 between London and Leeds. 
 
 But whilst continuous brakes, combined with a further shortening 
 of the block sections, had removed the urgent necessity for relief lines, 
 the "neck of the bottle" problem had become more pressing than 
 ever. In this the prime factor was the continued rapid growth of the 
 suburban traffic. In 1873 the Times reporter, going to the opening 
 of the first Alexandra Palace, had found the aspect north of Fmsbury 
 Park " thoroughly rural " ; but now, in Lord Colville's words (January, 
 1882), "towns" were "springing up within two or three miles of 
 King's Cross as fast as people " could " build them." The number of 
 season-ticket holders (most of whom on the Great Northern are daily 
 City and suburban travellers) had increased from 11,350 in 1879 to 
 14,420 in 1881, and notwithstanding the arrangements with the North 
 London and the duplicate tunnels at King's Cross, the suburban 
 residents on the line had begun to complain of delays almost as loudly 
 as before. Having regard, therefore, to the rate at which London was 
 spreading northwards, and also to the great expansion of general traffic 
 which had now set in, the directors considered that they must lose no 
 more time in making a thorough-going provision for the future. 
 
 Had Mr. Denison's Hornsey and Hertford scheme of 1865 not been 
 abandoned such provision would already to a large extent have been 
 made. As things were, the alternative lay between reviving that 
 scheme and making an actual duplication of the main line throughout 
 the eight miles between Wood Green and Potters Bar, despite the 
 existence of five tunnels within that area. After mature consideration 
 the Board decided that they must seek powers not only to double 
 all these tunnels and the lengths of line between them (where this 
 latter had not already been done), but also to treble the Copenhagen 
 and Maiden Lane tunnels and carry out other additional widenings 
 between King's Cross and Finsbury Park. Accordingly for this they 
 made their Bill for the session of 1882 a "Various Powers Bill," 
 covering these important suburban improvements as well as the Spen 
 Valley undertaking, already mentioned. 
 
 Hardly had this decision been come to when an event occurred 
 which forcibly illustrated the arguments in its favour. On a snowy 
 
 I 
 
 i 
 
 I 
 
 ' 
 
I 
 
 
 
 I 
 
 fi 
 
 350 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 morning- 
 
 10 December, 18S1 — the 8.25 train from High Barnet, 
 bound for Broad Street, after leaving Finsbury Park about 8.25, was 
 stopped by signals at the south end of the Canonbury tunnel, which, 
 as the reader may remember, forms part of the Great Northern link 
 line from Finsbury Park to North London. After standing there about 
 six minutes the train was knocked ahead about a yard and a half by 
 a blow in the rear ; whereupon some dozen of the passengers alighted 
 on to the ballast— to find that another train had run into theirs. They 
 were immediately ordered to get in again by their engine-driver, who 
 had just been signalled forward by a green flag from the North London 
 junction signal-box, and the train arrived at Canonbury Station about 
 9.15 without damage. 
 
 Meanwhile the second train— the 8.58 from Finsbury Park to Broad 
 Street, crowded like the first with suburban passengers, remained in 
 the tunnel at the place where the slight collision had occurred. The 
 driver went to the outside of the tunnel, but could hear nothing, 
 and so decided to draw slowly ahead after the first train towards 
 Canonbury. Just then a ''down" train passed, and hardly had the 
 noise of it subsided when a third " up " train ran into the rear of the 
 second, which was now moving slowly forward out of the tunnel. 
 
 Just before this new collision the rear-guard of the second train, 
 
 Henry Catherall, had alighted from his van with a red lamp in his 
 
 hand with the intention of following the down train out of the tunnel. 
 
 He heard the crash, but continued to go back till he collided in the 
 
 darkness with an open door of the third train, which the collision had 
 
 of course brought to a standstill. Being in complete darkness the 
 
 numerous passengers in this— the 8.43 from Enfield, v.hich had left 
 
 Finsbury Park at 9.6— were greatly frightened, and seeing Catherall's 
 
 lamp some of them cried to him for help. He told them to get out of 
 
 the carriages, to go beyond the "down" line, and to stand as close as 
 
 they could against the wall of the tunnel in case a second "down" 
 
 train might be coming. Many of them obeyed his order, huddling 
 
 together against the cold wall of the tunnel in terror and darkness. 
 
 Catherall continued to go back, and had got about three carriage lengths 
 
 past the brake van of the third train, when he became aware that yet 
 
 a fourth " up " train had entered the tunnel— indeed, he saw its wheels 
 
 approaching through the smoke. His hand was already in his pocket 
 
 to take out a fog-signal, and he immediately placed this on one of the 
 
 " up " rails ; but directly he had done so he caught his foot in a sleeper 
 
 and fell at length in the "four-foot" in front of the approaching 
 
 locomotive. With wonderful presence of mind he rolled himself over 
 
 on to a "six-foot"— the space between the two tracks— to hear in quick 
 
 1881 
 
 SENDING TRAINS TO DESTRUCTION 
 
 35> 
 
 succession the explosion of the fog-signal and the crash of a third 
 
 collision. 
 
 The fourth train, which had left Finsbury Park at 9.13, was running 
 at about twenty miles an hour when the collision occurred. So great, 
 therefore, was its impetus that its engine rose on to the rear van 
 of the third train and seemed to the horrified crowd of passengers 
 hugging the tunnel wall to stand for a moment poised in mid-air, as if 
 hesitating whether it should fall and crush them. To their intense 
 relief it heeled over away from them and fell with a new crash against 
 the other wall of the tunnel ; but the groans and screams that now 
 arose, chiefly from their own train, told them that those who had 
 remained in the carriages had not been so fortunate as themselves. 
 Meanwhile the guard Catherall had picked himself up, and, though 
 his lamp was now out, had groped his way to the north end of the 
 tunnel, nearly 500 yards beyond which was the Great Northern No. i 
 signal-box. Immediately on emerging into the open he threw up 
 his arms to attract the signalman's attention, still keeping on running as 
 he did so (for he could hear another train approaching from Finsbury 
 Park), and as he drew nearer he saw to bis horror that both the 
 "home" and "distant" signals were "clear." On the signalman 
 coming to the cabin window, Catherall shouted wildly to him to 
 stop the coming train ; but it was not till the guard was close under the 
 box that the signalman, William Hovey, understood, and pulled over 
 his lever. The result was that the fifth train from Finsbury Park 
 —which but for Catherall's prompt and plucky action might have added 
 yet another to the awful series of collisions— pulled up under Hovey's 
 window almost at the same moment as the breathless guard arrived there 
 from the other direction. 
 
 This man, William Hovey, who had thus been calmly employed for 
 twenty minutes in sending train after train into the tunnel to their de- 
 struction, had been eleven years a signalman in the Great Northern 
 service, had received many half-yearly bonuses for good conduct, 
 and held a certificate that he was competent to take charge of 
 any signal-box in the London district. He was neither ill, nor the 
 worse for drink, nor had he been on duty for many hours. He 
 had simply put a wrong interpretation upon a telegraphic signal which 
 he received from the North London box at the Canonbury junction. 
 The signalman there, having (as he declared, but Hovey denied) sent 
 the ordinary " block " signal, " six beats " in answer to Hovey's signal 
 for leave to send on the train which had made the first collision, had 
 supplemented it by "seven beats," which, according to the North 
 London code, was also a " block " signal, the extra beat indicating that 
 
 m 
 
I 
 
 I 1 
 
 I ) 
 
 I 
 
 
 \ 
 
 352 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 the block would not be for long. But the " seven beats " signal, not 
 being in the Great Northern code, was a strange signal to Hovey, and, 
 looking it up hastily in the North London rules posted in his box, he 
 found it described as " permissive block." Now *' permissive block " 
 in the Great Northern code meant that a train might be sent forward, 
 but with caution ; and accordingly Hovey (though he knew that under 
 his Company's rules "permissive block" working was not allowed 
 at all for passenger traffic) sent on the train, displaying a green 
 " caution " flag (which does not appear to have been observed) at his 
 window at the same time. Each time after this, when he asked permis- 
 sion to send on the following trains, the signal "seven beats" was 
 repeated from Canonbury, and each time he followed the same course 
 as at first. So the three successive collisions occurred, killing five 
 passengers and a guard, seriously injuring ten others, bruising and 
 shaking 1 1 7 more, and giving fifty-four others the opportunity to put in 
 claims for very slight damage or for lost hats, umbrellas, and other 
 property. 
 
 CHAPTER XXL 
 GENERAL PROGRESS— 1882-1885. 
 
 ON the evening of 25 January, 1882— about six weeks, that is to 
 say, after the accident in the Canonbury tunnel — a dense bank of 
 fog arose, it is impossible to say where, and approached London from 
 the north. Until about 5.10 that evening the atmosphere at Hornsey 
 Station was perfectly clear, but then all on a sudden the fog-bank 
 arrived there, with the result that people on the "down " platform could 
 not see the lamps on the " up " side, though a moment before they had 
 been shining brightly enough. Travelling slowly southwards along the 
 course of the Great Northern line, the fog encountered about 5.20, not 
 far beyond Hornsey Station, the 4.23 train from Victoria (London) to 
 Enfield, the passengers in which were thereupon astonished to find the 
 perfectly clear atmosphere in which up to this point they had performed 
 their journey become changed to the thickest blackness. Owing to the 
 breakdown of a "goods" at Wood Green, their train, as luck would 
 have it, was detained in Hornsey Station by signal. Meanwhile the 
 following train— the 4.59 from Moorgate Street also bound for Enfield 
 —left Finsbury Park, and pursued its journey in absolutely clear weather, 
 up to and past the Finsbury Park No. 5 signal-box. 
 
 The signalman in charge there had, of course, not yet received "line 
 clear " from Hornsey, so he was holding his signal at danger against 
 the following train. But this signal being some distance north 
 of his box, he was not at all surprised to see the train go past him, 
 nor did it occur to him, though he was looking out of the window, 
 to shout to the driver that there was danger ahead. Hardly, how- 
 ever, had the train passed, when he found his signal-box completely 
 enveloped in fog. Looking ahead now he could not see his signal, 
 nor could he tell for certain whether the train had stopped under it as 
 he had expected ; so, with a presentiment that it had not, he at once 
 sent his boy to the spot to see. The boy (|uickly returned with 
 the news that there was no train there, and the horrified signalman 
 rushed to the conversing telegraph to send the alarm to Hornsey. 
 
 2 A 353 
 
 « 
 
 I 
 
li 
 
 354 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 But the wire was already engaged in the transmission of a long message 
 between more distant points, and, do what he could, he was unable to 
 obtain command of it for several minutes. 
 
 Meanwhile the train from Moorgate Street had passed the danger- 
 signal just a moment after it had been completely obscured by the fog ; 
 and the driver, never dreaming of danger inasmuch as the signalman 
 had seen him go by without comment, had pursued his course towards 
 Hornsey. Despite the dense fog which now enveloped him, he very 
 foolishly did not slacken speed, and, worse than this, he miscalculated 
 the distance in the darkness. The result was that he was still driving 
 at a rate of at least twenty miles an hour when at the same moment the 
 pale glimmer of the Hornsey platform lights and the redder glare 
 of the rear lamp of the train still standing there forced themselves 
 upon his vision through the now thinning darkness. The next moment 
 his engine was ploughing its way through the shattered rear coaches of 
 the other train. 
 
 The first man to run to give help was a fog-signalman, who at the 
 time of the collision had been making his way down the platform 
 to take up his post under the very signal which had been disregarded ; 
 and other assistance, of course, was soon forthcoming. Moreover, 
 inasmuch as the Finsbury Park signalman was already alive to what 
 had happened, there was no danger of a further catastrophe. As it 
 was, however, two passengers were killed and twenty others injured. 
 Naturally enough, such another catastrophe to suburban trains occurring 
 so soon after the one at Canonbury caused the utmost alarm throughout 
 the whole district. As for the Great Northern shareholders, a combina- 
 tion of pure accident with what at worst was failure of judgment only 
 on the part of experienced servants, had involved them for a second 
 time within two months in a heavy bill for compensation. 
 
 At an extraordinary meeting of the Company held on 6 January, 
 1882, Lord Colville had already warned the shareholders that "ere 
 long " they would be asked to sanction " a very large additional capital 
 expenditure near London," and, albeit the Times newspaper had called 
 him sharply to account for "almost boasting" as to the enlargement 
 of the capital account, at the ordinary meeting on 10 February he 
 justified and maintained his tone. "The matter," he said, "can 
 be delayed no longer. We are now carrying a traffic which produces 
 ^£3,400,000 a year on the same rails near London as twenty years 
 ago, when there was a traffic producing ;£i, 300,000 only; besides 
 which we are influenced by the enormous suburban traffic which is 
 now coming upon our line, and by a desire to obtain additional 
 security in working that traffic. To show you what that traffic has 
 
 I 
 
 1882 
 
 EXPENSIVE SUBURBAN WIDENINGS 
 
 355 
 
 become between the years 1867 and 1881, I may mention that the 
 money receipts have increased from ^39,000 a year to ;£"i 95,000 
 a year, or 395 per cent., and the passengers have increased from 
 1,700,000 to 12,900,000. The expense of the widening work must 
 necessarily be heavy, and I tell you fairly that I think it will cost 
 
 
 I 
 
 
 'S 
 
 Lord Colville of Culross, K.T. 
 
 in one way and another a million of money. But it is not intended 
 that the whole outlay shall be made at once. We ask for power to 
 carry out the project as necessity arises." 
 
 In face of these facts the shareholders could not do other than 
 approve the Bill placed before them so far as it was concerned with 
 suburban widenings, and that part of it subsequently passed through 
 
356 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 Parliament without difficulty. But upon the portion dealing with 
 the Spen Valley line a contest had to be fought with the Lancashire 
 and Yorkshire Company. It commenced before a House of Commons 
 Committee on 2nd May, 1882, the Great Northern being represented 
 by Mr. Bidder— for Sir Edmund Beckett, to the great loss of the 
 Company, had retired from the Bar in the previous year— and the 
 Lancashire and Yorkshire by Mr. Littler. 
 
 The Lancashire and Yorkshire directors objected to the Bill not 
 only for what it actually proposed to do, but because they feared, 
 not without reason, that if the Great Northern was allowed to make 
 a line to Cleckheaton, it would not stop there, but would go on 
 at some future time by this route to Halifax in direct competition 
 with their own main line. They soon realized, however, that to 
 conduct their case in Committee on these uncompromising lines would 
 be to court defeat. They could not deny that, as things were, the 
 population of the Spen Valley was very badly off for getting to 
 London. It could not get a through train to the south without going 
 eastwards to Wakefield or northwards to Bradford, and that part of 
 the journey, owing to the numerous " changes " involved, often took 
 half as long as the whole of the rest. "But," said Mr. Littler, 
 "this is not a population that travels for travel's sake. These hard- 
 working, industrious, hard-headed Yorkshire manufacturers know a 
 good deal too well what to do with their time to go 'gadding about,' 
 to use one of their own expressions, to London, whenever they have 
 the chance. When they travel it is for the pocket's sake, and if 
 the pocket's sake is not worth a quarter of an hour's deviation, you 
 may depend upon it they will not go, and not a single human being 
 will go by reason of your shortening the route by making this new 
 line. One gentleman said, 'You know I live three miles away, and 
 I drive to Batley.' I would not mind making a little investment 
 that he would do the same when this alteration is made— put his 
 portmanteau into his dogcart and drive to Batley. And yet this 
 new line would have been made at ^70,000 a mile. If the com- 
 munication with Wakefield is so bad, it is very easy to remedy ; the 
 Great Northern have only just to ask to put through carriages on 
 our trains. They have not asked us for through carriages, still less 
 for running powers on our line Surely it would be better to put 
 on a few extra trains than to make a new railway, which, as they admit, 
 would be for more than a third of its distance within half a mile of 
 existing and most costly railways." 
 
 This argument persuaded the Committee to throw out the Great 
 Northern Bill, but it also virtually pledged the Lancashire and York- 
 
 1882 
 
 FORTH BRIDGE SCHEME REVIVED 
 
 357 
 
 shire to give the Great Northern increased facilities for serving the 
 Spen Valley district. Therefore, immediately after the conclusion of 
 the Parliamentary contest, Mr. Oakley opened negotiations with Mr. 
 Thorley, the Lancashire and Yorkshire manager, which speedily 
 resulted in an agreement between the two companies. Under this 
 the Great Northern acquired running powers over the Lancashire and 
 Yorkshire Calder Valley line between Wakefield and Halifax and over 
 its Cleckheaton and Heckmondwike branch; while the Lancashire 
 and Yorkshire received in return what they had long hankered after, 
 namely, running powers over the Great Northern and Manchester, 
 Sheffield, and Lincoln joint line from Wakefield to Doncaster. More- 
 over, in order to carry out this arrangement effectually, it was agreed 
 to make several new junctions between the two systems, a joint Bill 
 for which was accordingly deposited for the session of 1883. 
 
 Seeing that the cost of these junctions was estimated at ;^i 50,000, 
 whereas the new line would have cost at least ;^5oo,ooo, this arrange- 
 ment was quite as welcome to the Great Northern as the approval of 
 its own line would have been. 
 
 In this same session of 1882, the Great Northern Company became 
 definitely committed to join in an undertaking which both from an 
 engineering point of view and financially has proved, so far, one of 
 the most notable successes of British railway enterprises— the Forth 
 Bridge. We have already noticed incidentally in these pages the rise 
 of two projects for bridging the Firth of Forth. We have seen how 
 the first of these, fathered by "the Scotch Hudson"— Mr. Hodgson, 
 chairman of the North British — went down in the financial storm 
 of 1866, before the physical storms had been allowed to try the 
 strength even of an experimental pier; and how after twelve years' 
 interval the foundation stone of a newly-designed structure was actually 
 laid. Fifteen months after this, however— in December, 1879— the 
 similarly designed Tay Bridge fell, bringing down with it a train and 
 its living freight, and so once more a force majeure stopped the 
 bridging of the Forth. Indeed, so hopeless had the task seemed, in 
 face of the Tay Bridge disaster, that in the session of 1881 the Forth 
 Bridge Company had promoted a Bill to abandon their existing works, 
 without proposing any substitute for Sir Thomas Bouch's now dis- 
 credited design. 
 
 The Great Northern and North Eastern companies had, as we 
 know, the fullest facilities for their through traffic to and from the 
 northern parts of Scotland over the established route via Larbert 
 Junction, and so the fall of the Tay Bridge and the proposed abandon- 
 ment of the F'orth Bridge undertaking did not cause them any very 
 
 ^li^ 
 
fl^ 
 
 358 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 grave concern. But the other " East Coast " partner, the North British, 
 was affected much more seriously, because without the bridges the 
 part of its system in Fifeshire was isolated from the rest. Moreover, 
 in conjunction with the Midland, the North British wanted the new 
 route to the north of Scotland, because the " central-route " traffic had 
 no special facilities over the Caledonian lines. The Tay Bridge it was 
 strong enough to revive by itself, but the larger undertaking was quite 
 beyond its unaided strength. So, at the eleventh hour— after the 
 deposit of the Abandonment Bill- -its directors opened negotiations 
 for the reconstitution of the Forth Bridge Company. Three eminent 
 engineers, Mr. T. E. Harrison, Mr. Fowler, and Mr. Barlow gave their 
 opinion that, the Tay Bridge disaster notwithstanding, a durable 
 structure could be built, whereupon the withdrawal of the Abandon- 
 ment Bill was agreed upon Then a design for a new bridge on 
 the cantilever principle was prepared by Mr. Fowler, and approved 
 by Messrs. Harrison and Barlow. The next step was to form a new 
 Forth Bridge Company to carry the new design into effect, and to this 
 the same four railway companies as before undertook to guarantee a 
 dividend at the rate of 4 per cent. The guarantee was in the pro- 
 portion of 30 per cent, by the North British (which also undertook 
 some other obligations), 32J per cent, by the Midland, and 37J per 
 cent, by the Great Northern and North Eastern jointly and equally. 
 These arrangements were embodied in a new Bill which successfully 
 passed through Parliament in the session of 1882. The North British 
 had carried its new Tay Bridge Bill in the previous session. 
 
 In the session of 1882, also, the Great Northern obtained powers for 
 the purchase of the undertaking of the Louth and Lincoln Company, a 
 line about twenty miles long, extending from Bardney to Louth, which, 
 as already noted, the Great Northern had been working since December, 
 1876. The price paid was ^^200, 000, but as much as ;^38o,ooo had 
 already been spent upon the line. This session, too, the (ireat Northern 
 directors acquiesced in the passing of a Bill to authorize the Sutton 
 Bridge Dock Company to raise ;^i 60,000 of extra capital for the pur- 
 pose of reconstructing their unfortunate works ; but the view taken of 
 the practicability of this by the eminent engineers consulted — Sir John 
 Coode and Mr. Fowler — had not been very encouraging; indeed, 
 there was by this time more than a suspicion that their location on a 
 sandy, shifting soil had been a fatal mistake. Under these circum- 
 stances, Mr. Christopher Denison, who represented the Great Northern 
 on the Dock Company's Board, was not able to advise his colleagues 
 at King's Cross to increase their Company's already too large interest 
 in the misadventure. Nor could the Great Northern directors persuade 
 
 t 
 
 1882 "NOT THROUGH STRENGTH OF BEER 
 
 it 
 
 359 
 
 themselves that after this unhappy experience they were justified in 
 recommending a contribution to the construction of docks at Boston 
 on the same coast, for which purpose a company had been incorporated 
 in the session of 1881. 
 
 The August Bank holiday in this year, 1882, was remarkable for the 
 rush of excursion traffic to the newly-developed watering-places on 
 the Lincolnshire coast— Skegness and Mablethorpe. To Skegness 
 alone the Great Northern carried 20,000 people on that day, and it 
 would have carried more had not Mr. Cockshott been obliged to 
 refuse two applications for special trains owing to lack of rolling stock. 
 
 " We were overtaken by the traffic upon that day," admitted Lord 
 Colville at the half-yearly meeting in the same month, " and, though 
 we got the people to Skegness all right, we could not get them away 
 like clock-work. It is single line part of the way. But I am happy to 
 say that that enormous traffic was conducted without any accident. 
 Some people, no doubt, were rather later in getting to bed than usual ; 
 but it was a beautiful day, and no doubt they all enjoyed themselves 
 
 very much." 
 
 This was in answer to a shareholder, who had complained that some 
 of the return excursion trains had been six or seven hours late, and 
 that—" not through the strength of the beer, but from irregularity and 
 combination of arrangements on the railway"— a man he knew who 
 had wanted to return to Leeds had found himself at about three in 
 the morning at Nottingham. 
 
 • Meanwhile, from 6 March, 1882, more than half of the new 
 Spalding and Lincoln line — from Spalding to Ruskington, nearly 
 twenty-four miles— had been opened for traffic, and from i August 
 the remainder— from Ruskington to Pyewipe Junction, near Lincoln, 
 nineteen miles— was brought into use. More important still, from this 
 latter date the pre-existing Great Northern lines between March and 
 Spalding and between Pyewipe and Black Carr Junction, Doncaster, 
 fifty -one miles in all, and the Great Eastern line from March to 
 Huntingdon, twenty-three miles, were placed, together with the new 
 Spalding to Lincoln line, under the control of a Joint Committee of 
 the two companies' Boards as the joint and equal property of both. 
 This diminished Great Northern mileage proper by twenty-eight miles, 
 and it also diminished the Company's capital outlay by the sum of 
 ;^4i5,ooo, that being the amount which the Great Eastern Company 
 paid as the difference in value between the sections of pre-existing 
 lines now vested in joint ownership. The Great Northern's half-share 
 of the cost of the new Spalding to Lincoln, however, was quite 
 ;^ 1 00,000 more than this. 
 
 1' 
 
J 
 
 * 
 
 360 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 But the essence of the arrangement was, as we know, that the Great 
 Eastern Company had now at last realized its long-thwarted ambition 
 and had become a main trunk line— the fourth trunk line— between 
 London and all the northern parts of England. For many years, as 
 we have seen, it had done a certain amount of long-distance north-and- 
 south traffic by way of its junctions with the Great Northern at Peter- 
 borough, March, and Huntingdon, and since 1868 it had been allowed 
 to have its own canvassing agents at Great Northern and Manchester, 
 Sheffield, and Lincolnshire stations in Yorkshire and Lancashire. Now 
 it was actually at Doncaster on its own rails, with full facilities to 
 make direct contact there with the Lancashire and Yorkshire and 
 North Eastern companies. 
 
 Of course, if it had achieved this by a line entirely its own, as we 
 have seen it more than once had tried to do, it would have been in 
 a position to inflict a more serious loss upon the Great Northern 
 than the scheme of joint ownership permitted; but, as things were, 
 the injury which the Great Northern suffered was considerable. 
 Firstly, the pre-existent stream of through Great Eastern traffic was 
 diverted from the old channels via Peterborough, March, and Hunting- 
 don to the new joint line, and this meant that the Great Northern got 
 very much less mileage out of it than before. In the second place, the 
 Great Eastern became an almost equal competitor in Lincoln, Gains- 
 borough, and Doncaster— places which up to this time had been 
 practically Great Northern preserves so far as traffic with London was 
 concerned. In the third place, it was stimulated to canvass much 
 more vigorously in Yorkshire and Lancashire. The result was that 
 the Great Northern not only did not get any immediate increase of 
 revenue in return for its ;£i 00,000 net increase in capital outlay 
 and the addition to working expenses which the new Spalding to 
 Lincoln involved, but, on the contrary, lost about ;^5o,ooo within the 
 first five months of the new arrangements. All the consolation which 
 Lord Colville could offer to his shareholders was, that it was better 
 to have half the receipts of a joint line than to have another through 
 competing line entirely against them. The same remark applied 
 to the joint arrangements with the London and North \Vestern in 
 
 Leicestershire. 
 
 On 2 October, 1882, just about a year after its opening for coal, the 
 Leen Valley line was opened for passengers. The Tilton and Leicester 
 and Thornton and Keighley undertakings, however, were still a good 
 way off completion, though on the former some goods traffic had been 
 running since May. With a foresight which may yet prove to have 
 been enlightened, the directors, under Mr. Fraser's advice, had acquired 
 
 
 
 1883 
 
 G.N. OPENING AT LEICESTER 
 
 361 
 
 no less than thirty-six acres of station ground at Leicester, and upon 
 this the commodious buildings which the deceased engineer had planned 
 had yet to be erected under the superintendence of his successors, 
 Mr. Beswick and Mr. Henry John Fraser. However, now that the Ime, 
 with this exception, was practically finished, the directors decided to 
 postpone its opening for passengers no longer than was necessary to 
 allow its numerous cuttings and embankments proper time to con- 
 solidate. Accordingly, temporary terminal arrangements were made at 
 Leicester, and on i January, 1883, the passenger opening took place. 
 
 Leicester Station, G. N. R. 
 
 On the Thornton and Keighley line, on the other hand, there was 
 still, as it proved, another year's work to be done before any traffic 
 at all could be set running. We have already noted that this line 
 contains four tunnels within its nine miles, and the longest of these, 
 the Lees Moor tunnel, is no less than 1534 yards. A still greater 
 work is the Hewenden Viaduct, which is 376 yards long, and 123 
 feet in greatest height. Its foundations, moreover, had to be sunk 
 exceptionally deep, the greatest depth being no less than 62 J feet. 
 It contains 17 arches of 50 feet span, and these are constructed of 
 brick, the rest of the material being stone. Besides this there is 
 another great viaduct, 150 yards long and 45 ^eet in greatest height, 
 at Cullingworth. At Denholme, moreover, on account of the heavy 
 slips in the cuttings, inverted arching with very strong side walls 
 
 < 
 
 I m 
 
 I 
 
I 
 
 i 
 
 1: 
 
 362 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 had to be constructed. From Denholme to Keighley, a distance of 
 over five miles, the line falls continuously at gradients averaging one 
 in fifty. 
 
 The reader remembers that the five hours service between London 
 and Manchester put on by the Great Northern and Shetfield companies 
 jointly in 1857 was, as far at least as the part of it worked by Great 
 Northern engines was concerned, the best piece of locomotive work at 
 that date, involving, as was pointed out, a speed of forty-four miles an 
 hour all the way between London and Sheffield ; and that, even when 
 the best time for the whole journey was extended to five hours and ten 
 minutes, the Great Northern's forty-two miles an hour throughout 
 between London and Retford remained the best performance in 
 England up to 1871. Subsequently, owing to the competition of the 
 
 ExPREiw Passenger Engine. 
 7 feet 6 inches " Single " Driving-Wheel. 
 
 new Midland route, the Great Northern and Manchester, Sheffield, and 
 Lincolnshire time had been accelerated to four hours fifty-five minutes, 
 which had brought the Great Northern's King's Cross and Retford 
 speed to forty-four miles an hour again. Still, thanks to its fifteen 
 miles shorter route and its easier gradients as compared with the 
 Sheffield's line, the London and North Western had retained a ten 
 minutes' advantage, on paper at least ; and the Midland, too, with a 
 route only three miles longer than the North Western's (though its 
 gradients are much harder) had shown the same time — four hours 
 forty- five minutes — as its booked running. Now, in 1883, however, 
 by a magnificent spurt, the Great Northern and Sheffield got ahead of 
 both their rivals by reducing their time to four and a half hours. To 
 accomplish this without putting too heavy a burden upon its gradient- 
 handicapped partner, the Great Northern had to cover its 105 J miles 
 between London and Grantham (to save a stop the change of engines 
 was now made there instead of at Retford) in 125 minutes — a journey- 
 speed of 503 miles per hour. 
 
 1883 
 
 PREMIER LINE FOR SPEED 
 
 363 
 
 Thus the Great Northern once more, in 1883, beat its own, and 
 a fortiori all other, records for high speed on a regular daily service. 
 In the previous year, moreover, it had established another remark- 
 
 
 
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 able record for speed on special trips. On 24 June, 1882, it had 
 brought the Prince of Wales from Bradford to London in three hours 
 forty-eight minutes, including a five minutes' stop at Grantham, a 
 
 i< 
 
1 
 
 364 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 journey-speed of fifty and a half miles an hour. This performance, 
 it is true, does not equal on paper the fifty-lwo miles an hour journey- 
 speed of the York and London run of 3 1 August, 1 880 ; but having 
 regard to the fact that the route from Bradford to Doncaster is hilly, 
 whereas that from York to Doncaster is almost flat, the 1882 perform- 
 ance was in actual locomotive work quite as good, if not better, than 
 the other. Moreover, on 21 December, 1883, the Lord Mayor's run of 
 1880 was almost exactly repeated with a heavier train, the Prince of 
 Wales being brought from York to King's Cross in three hours thirty- 
 seven minutes in a " special " of seven vehicles. 
 
 To sum up for the second time the Great Northern's position in the 
 matter of speed: it was running on the average in 1883 twenty-three 
 express journeys daily over each mile of its system, as compared with 
 seventeen run in the case of the London and North Western and 
 twelve in the case of the Midland. Moreover, it showed the largest 
 increase of express mileage in the period from 187 1 to 1883 — an 
 increase of no less than 92 per cent., notwithstanding a simultaneous 
 increase in the weight of trains of at least 50 per cent. To put the 
 matter in another way, its sixty- seven daily expresses ran 6,780 miles 
 (500 of which were on very stiff gradients north of Wakefield) at a 
 running average* of forty-six and a half miles per hour. It was 
 computed that this was a greater amount of express running than the 
 whole of the rest of the world outside England could show at this date. 
 
 On I January, 1 884, the section of the Thornton and Keighley line 
 from Thornton to Denholme was opened for both goods and pas- 
 sengers ; and as the opening throughout to Keighley, for goods at 
 least, was expected to take place on i April, Lord Colville was justified 
 in announcing at the half-yearly meeting in February, 1884, that the 
 Company had at last arrived at the end of its great extensions — 
 "liabilities undertaken in the days of prosperity and having to be 
 paid for in the days of adversity." " No enterprising or speculative 
 engineers," he added, *' need pay any visits now to our general 
 manager, for Mr. Oakley is always ' not at home ' to such visitors. 
 What capital we shall expend henceforth will be in the improvement 
 of our existing property." 
 
 As a matter of fact, the Keighley line was not fully opened until 
 
 • Readers familiar with the literature of express trains will know that ** running- 
 average " (in the phraseology invented by Mr. Foxwell) differs from ** journey- 
 speed " in being exclusive of time consumed by stops. For nearly all the figures 
 given as to this part of my subject, I must again express my great indebtedness to 
 the writings of Mr. Foxwell and Lieutenant VVillock (vide Proceedings of Statistical 
 Society for 1883 and 1884, and Express Trains^ English and Foreign ^ by Fox WELL 
 and Farrer.) 
 
 1884 
 
 END OF GREAT EXTENSIONS 
 
 365 
 
 I November, 1884, but it will be convenient and not unjust nevertheless 
 to accept this statement of Lord Colville literally, and to treat the 
 beginning of the year 1884 as the end of the second period of 
 extension in the Company's history-a period which may be said to 
 have commenced in 1870. 1867, it will be remembered, we treated 
 
 The Prince of Wales' Saloon. 
 
 as the close of the Company's first period of extension, during which 
 its original 283 miles were increased to 487, and its capital cost from 
 about twelve millions to about twenty ; and we have also noted already 
 how by the beginning of 1876— about midway in the second period of 
 extension— mileage had reached 540 and capital about twenty-seven 
 and a half millions. Neither of these mileage totals, however, included 
 
 ' 
 
• i 
 
 366 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 the Great Northern's share in joint undertakings, these not being 
 then reckoned in the official returns. Inclusive of these, the 1867 
 total becomes 537 miles, and the total at the beginning of 1876 
 603 miles. ' 
 
 Between the beginning of 1876 and the date we have now reached 
 Great Northern mileage proper had been increased, as we have seen, to 
 a considerable extent both by the construction of new lines and by the 
 purchase of existing ones. But still more rapid had been the growth 
 of joint undertakings, and in the case of the arrangements with the 
 Great Eastern, as we have seen, this latter process had been at the 
 expense of the former. Thus, inclusive of the Thornton and Keighley 
 and the Hatfield and St. Albans lines (the latter of which had been 
 purchased by Act of Parliament in 1883), the Company's total mileage 
 m 1884 was 784 miles-an increase of 181 miles upon its total in 1876 • 
 and of this increase about half was represented by the Company's shares 
 in new joint undertakings. Its total joint line mileage in 1884 (/>., one- 
 half of the West Riding and Grimsby, the Halifax and Ovenden, the 
 Great Northern and Great Eastern Joint, the Great Northern and 
 London and North Western Joint, and the Bourn and Lynn leased 
 lines, and one-third of the Cheshire lines and the Methley) amounted 
 to no less than 157 miles. 
 
 Meanwhile the capital of the Company, raised by shares or repre- 
 sented by fixed charges, had risen to just upon thirty-seven millions. 
 Ihis meant that in its second period of great extension from 1870 
 to 1884 It had added about seventeen millions to its capital outlay 
 while adding 247 miles to its system, /..., that it had raised its 
 outlay per mile from about ^40,000 to nearly ;^5o,ooo-a very 
 heavy average for a system a good part of which is through agri- 
 cultural country. Under these circumstances a watering down of 
 profits was naturally to be expected, especially as the Leicester and 
 Keighley lines were as yet undeveloped Nevertheless, the decline 
 m dividend which had actually taken place-a drop from a safe 
 7 per cent, to an uncertain 5 per cent. — was too large to be 
 accounted for simply, or even mainly, by the increased capital- 
 ization. ^ 
 
 Moreover, such part of the loss in profit as was due to the new 
 capital expenditure seems attributable rather to misdirection of outlay 
 than to excess. The Company had spent capital fast, but not faster 
 than It might have done with comparative impunity, had the objects of 
 its outlay been more happily chosen. The extension into Derbyshire 
 and the numerous short branches in the West Riding of Yorkshire had 
 already proved very provident enterprises; but if, say, two out of the 
 
 1884 
 
 DEFECTS OF G.N. POLICY 
 
 367 
 
 three millions squandered under Sheffield influence upon the Cheshire 
 lines had been spent upon a Cireat Northern extension into central 
 London, it is impossible to doubt but that a much better result would 
 have been achieved. And not only in the case of the Cheshire lines, 
 but in Leicestershire and Lincolnshire also, the policy of joint lines 
 was turning out an unfortunate one. The Leicestershire joint system 
 had established the London and North Western, and the Lincolnshire 
 the Great Eastern, as formidable competitors in Great Northern 
 districts, and to have paid half the cost of introducing new com- 
 petition was a considerable qualification of the advantage derived from 
 having prevented that competition from being entirely hostile. The 
 Great Northern would probably have done better to have kept its 
 money for the improvement of its own main system and to have let 
 the promoters of competing north-and-south lines do the worst, if 
 direct opposition to them had not been successful. 
 
 The fact is that the Great Northern's attitude towards competitors 
 seems to have been, from the year 1858 onwards, a good deal too 
 pacific. Up to 1858 it had been, as we saw, essentially a fighting line ; 
 but when in that year its position as a first-class railway power had 
 become established, its policy had changed. The explanation seems 
 to be that its directors had become so imbued with the futility of the 
 obstructive tactics of George Hudson and of Captain Huish that they 
 went to the other extreme of neglecting a proper assertion of their 
 vested interests. That the Midland and Great Eastern should become 
 first-class railway powers also had been, it is true, inevitable sooner or 
 later. But clearly to postpone the inevitable, not to hasten it, should 
 have been the object of Great Northern policy. Yet it was with the 
 help of the Great Northern that the Midland had first reached London 
 in 1858, and it was with the help of the Great Northern that the Great 
 Eastern had just reached Yorkshire. 
 
 Thus we have arrived at the main clue to the decline in Great 
 Northern prosperity between 1873 and 1883 — competition. It was 
 in that decade that the Midland had taken its great revenge for the 
 loss which it had itself suffered upon the first opening of the Great 
 Northern from London. Already, in the sixties, it had cut the Great 
 Northern out as a coal carrier, but this was small damage compared 
 with the injury which, in the seventies, the latter's passenger business 
 received at the hands of Mr. Allport. Between 1850 and 1872 the 
 Great Northern, thanks to the directness of its line and the enter- 
 prise of its management, had developed a passenger business as 
 profitable probably as any railway traffic the world has seen. It was a 
 long-distance traffic, a high-class traffic, and a regular traffic. It was 
 
t'l 
 
 II 
 
 It " 
 
 368 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 exactly the traffic, in short, to which a comparatively high scale of 
 fares was suited. It was not of a class quickly to make up in quantity 
 what it lost in quality. Yet, by the action of the Midland Company, 
 this sacrifice of quality — profitable, on the whole, under the wider 
 Midland conditions— had been forced willy-nilly upon the Great 
 Northern. The Great Northern had got more passengers, no doubt, 
 owing to the reduction of fares, but the net result had been to increase 
 working expenses quite out of proportion to any increase of revenue. 
 These seem to have been the main reasons why the Company had 
 fallen, in 1884, into comparative adversity. 
 
 With regard to the future, however, a very hopeful tone prevailed at 
 the seventy-fifth half-yearly meeting, held on 15 February, 1884. A 
 large shareholder— Mr. Green— spoke of the directors' report as " one 
 of the most satisfactory reports we have listened to for a great many 
 half-years." and Mr. Robert White prophesied that with the rest to the 
 capital account— a sort of rest which, he said, the Company required 
 as much as an overworked man needs physical and mental rest — 
 profits, and consequently dividends, would increase. Lord Colville 
 replied that he quite concurred, and that the directors had every 
 intention of giving the undertaking the rest of which Mr. White had 
 spoken. 
 
 Nevertheless, the outlay for the completion of the Keighley line and 
 the Leicester terminus had to be continued throughout 18S4; and a 
 start had to be made, too, with the suburban widenings. With regard 
 to the latter. Lord Colville had said in August, 1883, "For the 
 present we have given that up ; we cannot afford to do it, and we must 
 get on as best we can without doing it " ; but the continued increase 
 of the suburban traffic absolutely forbade a long postponement, and 
 in April, 1884, the contract was let to Mr. Lovatt for the triplicate 
 Copenhagen tunnel. This was regarded as the most pressing of the 
 widening works, because the second Copenhagen tunnel, as we know, 
 had been appropriated entirely to goods traffic to and from the 
 King's Cross terminal yards. Consequently the whole of the London 
 passenger traffic and the goods to and from Farringdon Street and the 
 south of the Thames had to use the single pair of tracks in the original 
 tunnel. But, having to be carried under some very heavy buildings, 
 the new eastern tunnel threatened to be more difficult and costly to 
 construct than any other one of the four similar works already carried 
 out between King's Cross and Holloway. About the same time the 
 erection of two new suburban stations was taken in hand- -at Haringay 
 (between Finsbury Park and Hornsey) and at Hadley Wood (between 
 Barnet and Potters Bar). 
 
 1884 
 
 THE RAILWAY RATES QUESTION 
 
 369 
 
 The Various Powers Act obtained by the Company in 1884 was an 
 unimportant measure, providing only for minor works and for an 
 extension of time for the Beeston and Batley link line. But it had to 
 oppose at some expense a Lincoln and Skegness Railway Bill, which 
 after passing the Commons was withdrawn from the Lords. Moreover, 
 its interests, in common with those of other companies, were seriously 
 threatened by a Bill for the Further Regulation of Railways, which 
 Mr. Chamberlain, the President of the Board of Trade, introduced 
 this session as a Government measure. Ostensibly framed to carry 
 out the recommendations of a Select Committee of the House of 
 Commons which had sat during 1881 and 1882, this Railways Regu- 
 
 pi 
 
 Copenhagen Tunnels, King's Cross (North End). 
 
 lation Bill was very objectionable to the companies on account of the 
 greatly enlarged powers which it proposed to confer upon the Railway 
 Commissioners. Accordingly a Railway Companies' Association was 
 formed to oppose it, Mr. Oakley accepting the position of honorary 
 secretary. However, Parliament could not find time to discuss the 
 subject in the session of 1884. The result was that Mr. Chamberlain's 
 Bill came to nothing; and for the session of 1885 the larger com- 
 panies, acting in concert, deposited Bills of their own for the purpose 
 of consolidating and simplifying their charging powers in accordance 
 with the report of the Select Committee. 
 
 On 30 October, 1884, the Company suffered a severe loss by the 
 sudden and premature death of its deputy chairman, Mr. Christopher 
 Denison, after twenty years' very able service on the Board. Thus, 
 
 2 B 
 
 'n 
 

 
 370 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 after forty years' unbroken association with the undertaking, the name 
 of Denison ceased to appear amongst the list of its directorate. Of the 
 original members of the Board, however, Mr. John Harvey Astell still 
 survived, and of the executive officers, Mr. Oakley, Mr. Johnson, and 
 Mr. William Grinling had been in the service almost from the first. 
 But amongst the younger members of the staff death had been 
 lamentably busy. The decease of Mr. Alexander Forbes had been 
 followed by that of the goods manager, Mr. John Ashley, and of his 
 successor, Mr. R. Dymant, both verj' able officers from whom much 
 had been expected in the future. 
 
 The publication of the Rates Bills deposited by the railway com- 
 panies produced a great public outcry, it being alleged that their object 
 was to increase merchandise rates generally and to legalize preferential 
 rates for foreign produce; and as both these charges were based 
 on complete misconceptions, the Railway Companies' Association in- 
 structed Mr. Oakley to address a letter to the Times in reply. " The 
 companies disclaim emphatically," wrote Mr. Oakley, "any intention 
 of acting adversely to the general interests of trade and agriculture. 
 They recognize that their own well-being is dependent upon the 
 national prosperity, and they claim from Parliament and from their 
 opponents a counter-recognition of the public advantage of settling on 
 a fair and equitable basis the conditions upon which the railway service 
 of the country may best be conducted." 
 
 This letter, which appeared in the Times of 31 January, 1885, 
 checked the public clamour to throw out the railway companies* 
 bills summarily on second reading. But they suffered the same fate 
 as Mr. Chamberlain's measure; Parliament was not able to find time 
 to discuss them. 
 
 In this session of 1885 the Company obtained an Act empowering it 
 to extend its Woolsthorpe ironstone branch in Leicestershire (which 
 had been opened since July, 1883) to reach another field of ironstone 
 at Harston, to extend its Pudsey branch so as to form a junction with 
 the Gildersome branch near Bradford, and to construct a new colliery 
 branch to Heanor in Derbyshire. The total length of new line thus 
 authorized was about nine miles, and the new capital liability about 
 
 ;£^200,000. 
 
 In this same session, too, the Cheshire Lines Committee obtained 
 Parliamentary confirmation of its agreement to work the line, thirteen 
 miles in length, of the Southport and Cheshire Lines Extension 
 Company. This line had been partially opened from i September, 
 1884, and was fully opened on i June, 1885. It gave the Great 
 Northern and its partners access to an important Lancashire seaside 
 
 1885 
 
 SECOND CLASS PARTIALLY ABOLISHED 
 
 371 
 
 resort ; but the increase of revenue thus produced was at first more 
 than swallowed up by increased working expenses. 
 
 From I May, 1885, the Great Northern followed the Midland's lead of 
 ten years before to the extent of discontinuing the use of second-class 
 carriages in the Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, and Derbyshire districts. 
 Notwithstanding the admission of third-class passengers to all trains in 
 1872 and the reduction of first-class fares in 1875, the Great Northern 
 receipts from second-class had continued for some years to show a 
 satisfactory gross increase, and this was still the case as regards sub- 
 urban traffic. But proportionately the use of the intermediate class had 
 declined on the system as a whole from 25 per cent, in 1872 to 6^ per 
 cent, in 1884. Moreover, the proportion of first-class passengers had 
 declined in the same period from 7 per cent, to 3^ per cent. Under 
 these circumstances it was pretty evidently a waste of locomotive power 
 to haul two superior classes of carriages except in the neighbourhood of 
 London and other large towns, but the directors decided to try the 
 effect of abolishing the intermediate class on the confines of their 
 system before making the change on the main line. The result of the 
 first two months' working was that of 15,842 passengers, who, it was 
 estimated, would have used the second-class had it been retained, 4,386 
 went into the first-class and the rest into the third. For some years 
 already, it should be added, the Great Northern had furnished its 
 third-class carriages with stuffed seats and backs. In fact, the accom- 
 modation now provided at \d. a mile was practically as good as the 
 first-class accommodation of the fifties, for which between 2d, and 3</. a 
 mile had been charged. 
 
 During the second half of 1884 and the first half of 1885 the traffic 
 of the Company was seriously diminished by depression of trade, which 
 was particularly severe in the West Riding of Yorkshire. Moreover, in 
 the spring of 1885 a strike occurred in the South Yorkshire coalfield, 
 but for which, thanks to the continued increase of its Derbyshire trade, 
 the Company's mineral traffic would have been very satisfactory. As 
 things were, gross receipts remained practically stationary. 
 
 Under these circumstances "rest," as regards capital outlay, was 
 imperatively called for; and, except the new Copenhagen tunnel, 
 about 65 per cent, of which was completed by the summer of 1885, 
 the suburban widenings had still to be postponed. In the previous 
 year the works at Leicester had been completed, and the new joint 
 station with the Midland at Keighley was finished in the spring of 
 1885 ; so that during the greater part of that year the Beeston and 
 Batley extension was the only new line in hand. But a considerable 
 outlay of capital on enlargements and improvements could not be 
 
 « 
 
 ■■If 
 
 ' I 
 
 » 
 
 P 
 
 (' 
 
I 
 
 
 372 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 avoided. The timber bridge over the River Witham near Boston, for 
 instance, had to be reconstructed in iron ♦ ; a new goods shed and coal 
 sidings had to be provided at Laister Dyke, near Bradford; a large 
 warehouse had to be provided at Holloway for storing and preparing 
 provender for the 1723 horses which the Company now kept for cartage 
 purposes ; a carriage-cleaning shed for the suburban stock had to be 
 erected near Finsbury Park; and a new granary at Burton-on-Trent. 
 To meet such charges as these, and to provide new rolling stock, an 
 addition to capital account of about ^100,000 a half-year had become 
 
 normal. 
 
 * Half the cost of this, however, was charged to revenue. 
 
 fl 
 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 THE SUBURBAN INCUBUS STILL-THE RAILWAY RATES BILLS- 
 THE EASTERN AND MIDLANDS- THE RACE TO EDINBURGH. 
 
 1886- 1888. 
 
 THE position of the Great Northern Railway Company at the 
 beginning of 1886 was more satisfactory and promising than for 
 some time past. Depression of trade, it is true, still hung over the 
 manufacturing districts ; but there was good prospect of a revival in the 
 near future Meanwhile a better harvest in both grain and potatoes, 
 and the removal of the restrictions which had in the previous year 
 been placed on the transport of cattle, had produced improved 
 conditions already in the agricultural parts of the system. Under 
 the stimulus of severe weather the coal trade was unusually brisk, nor 
 were there any signs of such another calamity as the South Yorkshire 
 colliers' strike of 1885. With continued rest to the capital account 
 there was good hope that the dividend, which had sunk to £4 los. per 
 cent, in 1884 and 1885, would at last begin a course of recovery. 
 
 Unfortunately very early in the year this hope sustained a serious 
 setback. About 8.30 on the morning of 10 February, t886, when a 
 dense fog prevailed, an " up" train crowded to the doors with suburban 
 passengers was standing in Finsbury Park Station under the protection 
 of a signal worked from Finsbury Park north box. The signalman in 
 charge there bore an excellent character, having received no less than 
 eighteen bonuses for good conduct, and he had been on duty two hours 
 only. Yet, being unable to see the standing train on account of the 
 fog, he forgot that it was there and let in another upon it. Fortunately 
 the second train was travelling very slowly, and so the immediate results 
 of the collision were not disastrous. But from experience in regard to 
 the Canonbury and Hornsey accidents the Great Northern authorities 
 well knew by this time the high prices which suburban passengers, 
 travelling at exceptionally low fares, can exact not only for broken 
 limbs and shattered nerves, but for battered hats and lost umbrellas. 
 Consequently they could not but anticipate another very serious bill for 
 
 compensation. 
 
 373 
 
 i! 
 
 t 
 
9^ 
 
 II 
 
 374 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 Lord Colville went too far when at the half-yearly meeting in August, 
 1886, he said that this accident had occurred notwithstanding the 
 adoption of " every possible precautionary invention " ; for to meet 
 this very class of contingency Mr. W. R. Sykes had already devised and 
 fitted up to some extent on the London, Chatham, and Dover system 
 his electric " lock and block " apparatus. Nevertheless, the Great 
 Northern chairman was justified in laying special stress upon " the 
 anxiety which must necessarily attend the working of a large and 
 constantly increasing suburban traffic." Moreover, seeing that by such 
 an accident as this at Finsbury Park the profit on that traffic for a long 
 period was liable to be suddenly swallowed up, the directors had good 
 reasons for not making any special exertions to develop it further. 
 Nevertheless, if the whole traffic of the system was not to be paralyzed 
 at its London end, it was absolutely necessary that the programme 
 of suburban widening, authorized in 1882, should be further pro- 
 ceeded with. So, now that the new Copenhagen tunnel was approaching 
 completion, contracts were let for a new single-line tunnel between 
 Wood Green and Southgate on the eastern side of the existing double- 
 line one and for the widening of the line (involving the construction of 
 large retaining walls) between Finsbury Park and Hornsey. Outside 
 the suburban area the construction of duplicate lines at certain points 
 between Potters Bar and Biggleswade, involving the widening of two 
 bridges at Knebworth, had been put in hand in the previous year. 
 
 On 3 April, 1886, a large meeting of the Great Northern share- 
 holders was held at Willis's Rooms, London, to protest against 
 a new Railway and Canal Traffic Bill which Mr. Mundella, Mr. 
 Chamberlain's successor as President of the Board of Trade, had 
 just introduced into Parliament. In answer to a circular sent out only 
 four days before by Mr. Fitch, the secretary of the Company, no less 
 than 6400 shareholders wrote approving of opposition to the Bill, 
 and under the presidency of Lord Colville the meeting proved a very 
 successful one. The chief speaker was Lord Grimthorpe (under which 
 title Sir Edmund Beckett had just been raised to the peerage), and thus 
 this loyal champion of the Company made his reappearance at a Great 
 Northern meeting after an absence extending from the time of the 
 Redpath frauds — the time, as the reader may remember, when he had 
 sat by his father's side and received the nickname of "the young May- 
 moon." Notwithstanding his seventy years he made a long, racy, and 
 yet exceedingly weighty speech, containing an extraordinarily accurate 
 forecast of the subsequent development of the railway rates question. 
 
 For the first time in its history the Company had no Bill of its 
 own in Parliament in 1886, but it was interested in a number of Bills 
 
 1886 
 
 HALIFAX HIGH LEVEL 
 
 375 
 
 promoted by other parties. Thus it obtained powers in this session to 
 work the traffic of the Nottingham Suburban Railway, a line a little 
 over three and a half miles in length, which a local company was 
 authorized to construct between Nottmgham and Daybrook (a station 
 on the Great Northern Derbyshire extension). But a similar arrange- 
 
 I: 
 
 Lord Grimthorpe. 
 
 ment made with the East and West Yorkshire Union Company for 
 working their line, about five miles, between Leeds and Lofthouse was 
 withdrawn in consequence of alterations insisted on by the Commons 
 Committee. Two years before a local company had obtained powers 
 to make a high-level station at Halifax, with a connecting line to 
 join the Great Northern's existing line at Holmfield, and now in 
 1886 it promoted a Bill to enable the Great Northern and Lancashire 
 
I( 
 
 376 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 and Yorkshire companies to work its line, when made, under a 
 guarantee to it of a 3^ per cent, dividend. With the approval of 
 the two larger companies this Halifax High Level Bill passed through 
 some of its stages, but owing to the dissolution of Parliament it had to 
 be hung up for a year. From the same cause Mr. Mundella's Railway 
 and Canal Traffic Bill fell to the ground. 
 
 On 20 June, 1886, the new triplicate Copenhagen tunnel was 
 brought into use. This afforded instant and most welcome relief 
 to the congestion of suburban traffic (which since the passing of the 
 "Cheap Trains" Act of 1883 had been intensified by the large 
 number of London workmen who had come to live in the Great 
 Northern's district) by providing a clear run on the "up" side 
 from Holloway to York Road, King's Cross, separate from the long- 
 distance trains The construction of the tunnel by the contractor, 
 Mr. Lovatt, under Mr. Johnson's superintendence, had proved most 
 successful, very little damage having been done to the heavy buildings 
 overhead, though these had not been underpinned. The subsidence 
 of the surface varied from a maximum of 3^ in. to a minimum of 
 I in. Thus the cost of the work was materially lessened, the amount 
 of compensation exacted by overhead property-owners being very 
 small. About the same time also the first section of the Heanor 
 branch in Derbyshire, from Ilkeston to Nutbrook Colliery, was brought 
 into use. 
 
 During the second half of 18S6 the bright outlook of the beginning 
 of the year became quite obscured. The harvest of 1886 proved in 
 Lincolnshire the worst of a bad series to which that of 1885 had 
 formed a solitary exception. Consequently the Company's grain 
 and potato traffic fell off during the half year by 45,000 tons, while 
 its coal traffic was also slightly reduced by the same cause. Nor 
 could there be much doubt now that, apart from the quality of its 
 harvests, the value of Lincolnshire to the Great Northern had been 
 permanently depreciated, partly by the admission to it of the Great 
 Eastern, but more seriously by the competition of foreign agricultural 
 produce under the stimulus of improved ocean transport.* 
 
 But the most serious of the adverse circumstances against which 
 the Company had to struggle in 1886 was the heavy compensation 
 bill for the Finsbury Park accident, the amount of which exceeded 
 the worst anticipations. No less than 347 claims had to be met, 
 and although not a single bone of any of the claimants had been 
 
 * From this point of view it is curious to remember that the Great Northern's 
 original Act and the Corn Laws Repeal Act received the Royal Assent on the same 
 day. 
 
 I ' 
 
 1886 
 
 RENEWAL OF KING'S CROSS ROOF 
 
 377 
 
 broken, the total sum which the Company had to pay in com- 
 pensation was ;£33,ooo— a sum equal, it was estimated, to the whole 
 profit on the suburban traffic for six months. In this same year, 
 too, a passenger, who had been injured several years before in a 
 slight collision in Doncaster Station, having gone to law and obtained 
 a verdict of ;£8oo, went for a new trial and obtained a second verdict 
 for no less a sum than ;£3,75o. In addition to this the Company had 
 to pay about ;^i,ooo in law costs for this one case. 
 
 Revenue suffered a further exceptional tax in the second half of the 
 
 I < 
 
 Copenhagen Tunnels, King's Cross (South End). 
 
 year from an expenditure of about ;£6,ooo, which Mr. Johnson found 
 it necessary to make after the hard winter of 1885 for extra repairs 
 to tunnels and bridges, and under these circumstances it was decided 
 to postpone until quite late in the year the renewal of the western 
 half of the roof over the King's Cross passenger terminus, though 
 the necessity for this had been announced by Lord Colville at the 
 February meeting. The reader remembers that the eastern or 
 "arrival" half of the original timber roof was renewed in iron 
 during 1869-70, and now, at the end of 1886, the timbers of the 
 huge travelling stage which, as we noted, was used for this purpose, 
 were taken from their place of storage, and the same operation 
 repeated on the "departure" side. It was not until the end of 
 1887 that the work was completed, and the whole cost of it was 
 charged as before to revenue, though with some assistance from 
 a "contingent fund" which the directors had been able to lay by 
 

 
 378 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 for such purposes, notwithstanding their obligations to the **A" 
 shareholders. 
 
 Under its Act of 1882, which authorized its suburban widenings and 
 other works, the Company had taken powers to raise two millions of 
 new capital ; but since then it had not gone to Parliament for capital 
 powers. Consequently, though a portion only of the work near London 
 had been done, it was now in need of authority to raise more money. 
 Accordingly, in a Bill which it was found necessary to deposit for 
 the session of 1887 for a number of deviations and minor works, the 
 authorization of a million additional capital was incorporated. "The 
 more the directors go over the line," said Lord Colville in regard 
 to this, *' the more they are convinced that the expenditure of capital 
 for increasing and bettering the accommodation on the existing system 
 is absolutely necessary. With the exceptions of some short mineral 
 lines and some short lines and junctions in Yorkshire, our expenditure 
 of late has been on this principle. We are widening the main line for 
 the first five or six miles out of London ; a very large outlay is going on 
 in doubling the line near Leeds, including a new station at Holbeck, 
 and also at Laister Dyke, near Bradford ; we are building a new goods 
 warehouse at Bread Street, in the City of London, very large new 
 stables at Clerkenwell, and other important works. The Derbyshire 
 lines have involved the construction of a very large sorting sidings for 
 coal waggons at Colwick, near Nottingham. We have constructed there 
 about twenty miles of sorting sidings, and have already purchased 
 150 acres of land. We have up to this time spent there ;£,'92,ooo, and 
 we have a further estimated liability of ;^ 70,000, for the place is not 
 large enough. It is for the purpose of carrying out such works as 
 these, which are quite indispensable for the safety and the working 
 of the traffic, that we now ask for further capital." 
 
 On 17 January, 1887, Mr. J. H. Astell, the senior director of the 
 Company, and son of its first chairman, Mr. William Astell, died, after 
 no less than forty years of active and valuable service on the Board. 
 He was succeeded by Mr. William Beckett, m.p., third son of Mr. 
 Edmund Denison, who thus restored the connection between the 
 Company and the Beckett-Denison family, which had been temporarily 
 severed, as already noted, by the death of Mr. Christopher Denison in 
 1884. 
 
 During the first half of 1887 the effects of the deficient harvest of 
 the previous year were seen, as usual, in a falling off of the export and 
 import traffic of the agricultural districts. The week of the Queen's 
 Jubilee celebrations also entailed a serious temporary loss, the mer- 
 chandise and coal traffic being diminished thereby by about ;£^ 16,000, 
 
 1887 
 
 A MOMENTOUS MINOR CHANGE 
 
 379 
 
 which was modified to the extent of about ^2000 only by an increase 
 of passenger traffic. During the half-year new duplicate lines for goods 
 traffic were brought into use at three parts of the main line, and the 
 bridge carrying over the North Western line at Batley was reconstructed. 
 The new docks constructed by an independent company at Boston 
 were opened this half-year, too, and a satisfactory increase of 16,000 
 tons to the Great Northern's coal traffic resulted. But in regard to the 
 Sutton Bridge Docks, Mr. W. L. Jackson, the Great Northern director 
 who had taken Mr. Christopher Denison's place on that Dock 
 Company's Board, had to report in August, 1887, that no satisfactory 
 plan had yet been devised for resuscitating their undertaking. 
 
 Widening the Line at Armi.ey, near Leeds. 
 Showing the removing of "spail" earth. 
 
 From I November, 1887, a change of a minor character was made 
 in the working of the East Coast traffic with Scotland, which was 
 destined, as we shall see presently, to lead to momentous results. 
 Third-class passengers were admitted to the two "special nine-hour 
 expresses" leaving King's Cross and Edinburgh respectively at 10 a.m. 
 In 1872, it will be remembered, when the Midland's " third-class by all 
 trains " lead had had to be followed, a special exception had been made 
 in the case of these 10 o'clock trains; but, after adopting a similar 
 course originally, the West Coast companies had for some years past 
 admitted the third-class to their best day trains. The result had been 
 that, while first and second-class passengers between London and 
 Edinburgh continued to gain a full hour by using the East Coast 
 
 Mi 
 
 I 
 
 1/ 
 
1 
 
 |NI 
 
 li • 
 
 
 380 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 route instead of the West Coast, for third-class there was nothing to 
 choose between the two. The admission of third-class to the two 
 nine-hour trains, however, made the East Coast service again an hour 
 better for all three classes. 
 
 On the other hand, the nine-hour service between King's Cross 
 and Edinburgh had ceased to be what it had been when first put 
 on in 1876— the best locomotive performance in which the Great 
 Northern was concerned. Eclipsed temporarily by the forty-nine and 
 a half miles per hour journey-speed of the 3J hours Leeds trains of 
 
 
 
 "Down Scotchman" passing Sandy Station (i August, 1887X 
 
 From a photograph by Cameron Swan. Esq. 
 
 1 880, the forty-seven miles per hour between London and York of the 
 two " Flying Scotchmen " had been permanently surpassed so soon as 
 the At\ hours service between London and Manchester had been put 
 on, its journey-speed between London and Grantham being, as already 
 noted, 50J. Moreover, from i July, 1884, the Manchester service had 
 been further accelerated to 4J hours. The result was that the " Man- 
 chester Fliers" daily covered the 105 J miles between King's Cross and 
 Grantham in 119 minutes — 53^ miles per hour,— whereas the " Flying 
 Scotchman" from King's Cross was allowed 135 minutes for the same 
 distance. But the latter was the heavier train. 
 
 Early in March, 1888, the new single-line tunnel between Wood 
 
 1888 
 
 A WRONG CHOICE OF BRAKES 
 
 381 
 
 Green and Southgate was brought into use for " up " goods traffic, and 
 soon afterwards a new line for down goods was completed between 
 Finsbury Park and Hornsey. In connection with the widening between 
 these two places, the land on the Haringay estate, which we noted as 
 acquired in 1881, was laid out as reception and sorting sidings for 
 goods and coal traffic, and these also were brought into work at the 
 beginning of 1888. The Leeds widenings and improvements, too, 
 were finished about the same time, and the Beeston and Batley line 
 was opened for coal traffic from Batley to Soothill Colliery. Still, 
 
 * 
 
 
 I 
 
 "Up" Express passing Sandy Station (i August, 1887). 
 
 From a photograph by Cameron Swan, Esq. 
 
 however, much of the suburban widening programme remained to be 
 carried out, and already a further instalment of it had been put in 
 hand. This was the widening of the cutting in which stands South- 
 gate Station, the erection of large retaining walls there, and the 
 reconstruction of the station with duplicate lines. 
 
 We have said that by the end of 1880 the Company had fitted 
 nearly the whole of its passenger rolling stock with continuous brake- 
 power, and by the time we have now reached this operation had been 
 long completed. But, unfortunately, the preference which Mr. Stirling 
 and other eminent locomotive engineers had shown for the simple 
 vacuum brake over the automatic vacuum had proved not to have 
 
Ijl 
 
 1 
 
 382 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 been well founded. Several accidents, it had appeared, might have 
 been averted, or greatly minimized in their effects, by automatic 
 action on the part of the brake apparatus; so, at the beginning of 
 1888, the directors decided to convert the whole of the stock. The 
 cost was estimated at ;^48,ooo, and it was decided to charge half to 
 capital and half to revenue, the latter charge to be spread over four 
 years. 
 
 Meantime, since the beginning of 1883, the works on the great 
 Forth Bridge had been making steady progress; but, as almost in- 
 variably happens in the case of great engineering works, both the 
 time and capital originally estimated for the work were proving in- 
 sufficient. Accordingly, in the session of 1888, the Forth Bridge 
 Company promoted a Bill for the raising of an additional half million 
 of money, the four railway companies agreeing to extend thereto their 
 guarantee of interest at 4 per cent. Fortunately, however, thanks to 
 the character of the guarantors, it had been possible to raise all the 
 capital so far expended at a premium, which premium had sufficed 
 to pay interest during construction ; and so the railway companies had 
 not yet had to pay anything directly either out of revenue or capital 
 towards this most costly undertaking. The completion of the bridge 
 was now expected about October, 1889. 
 
 In 1888, as in 1886, the Great Northern had no Bill of its own 
 in Parliament; but, in addition to the Forth Bridge Bill, a number 
 of others in which the Company was interested were before the 
 Legislature. The most important of these was a revival by Lord 
 Stanley of Preston, the President of the Board of Trade in the Con- 
 servative Ministry, of the Railway and Canal Traffic Bill, which his 
 Liberal predecessors, Mr. Mundella and Mr. Chamberlain, had, as we 
 have seen, failed to pass into law in 1884 and in 1886. 
 
 Being fathered this time by a Peer, the Rates Bill was introduced 
 first into the Upper House, and in that assembly the champions of 
 the railway interest succeeded in obtaining a clause providing that the 
 new schedule of rates which the Board of Trade was to be empowered 
 to prepare should be " on the whole equivalent " to the existing powers. 
 This basis of revision, however, was rejected in the House of Commons, 
 and, despite all the efforts of the companies, the Bill ultimately passed 
 into law in a form which left the discretion of the Board of Trade in 
 the matter practically uncontrolled. But the initiative in the process 
 of revision was left to the railway companies, who were given six 
 months' grace under the Act to prepare, and submit to the Board, a 
 new classification of freight and revised schedules of rates. So Lord 
 Colville was able to give the Great Northern shareholders the assurance 
 
 1888 
 
 "THE EASTERN AND MIDLANDS" 
 
 383 
 
 11 1 
 
 at their meeting in August, 1888, that no reduction of their revenue 
 could be enforced for another year at least. 
 
 Another important Parliamentary contest in which the representatives 
 of the Great Northern were called upon to play a part in the session of 
 1888 arose out of a Bill deposited by the Eastern and Midlands Railway 
 Company. This was a company formed in 1882 by an amalgamation 
 of the Midland and Eastern (which 
 itself, as the reader may remember, 
 had been an amalgamation of the 
 Sutton and Lynn, the Spalding and 
 Bourn, and the Spalding and Sut- 
 ton*), the Peterborough, Wisbeach 
 and Sutton, the Lynn and Faken- 
 ham, the Yarmouth and North 
 Norfolk, and the Yarmouth Union 
 — in short, it was a union of all the 
 small companies in the eastern 
 counties which had not entered 
 either the Great Eastern or the Great 
 Northern fold. It had occupied 
 ever since its formation, however, a 
 peculiar and anomalous position. 
 For its system was divided into two 
 sections, and while it worked the 
 " eastern section " quite indepen- 
 dently, the •* western section" was 
 worked for it by other companies 
 — the Peterborough, Wisbeach, and 
 Sutton by the Midland, and the 
 Bourn and Lynn (or Midland and 
 Eastern), as the reader may remem- 
 ber to have been already informed, 
 by the Midland and Great Northern 
 jointly. The Midland had obtained 
 the working of the Peterborough, 
 Wisbeach, and Sutton at 50 percent, 
 of the gross receipts ; but the terms 
 upon which the Bourn and Lynn 
 was worked jointly by it and the 
 Great Northern included, as we have 
 
 • Otherwise called the Norwich and 
 Spalding. 
 
\f ■- 
 
 III 
 
 
 I 
 
 384 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 more than once noticed, a minimum guarantee to the owning company 
 of ;£^i5>ooo a year. Accordingly, the Midland was exposed to the 
 temptation — and according to the Eastern and Midland authorities 
 had succumbed to it — to "starve" the Peterborough, Wisbeach, 
 and Sutton, in order to make up its share of the Bourn and Lynn 
 guarantee. 
 
 This grievance was carried by the Eastern and Midlands Company 
 before the Railway Commission ; but facts then given in evidence 
 went to prove that the through traffic between the Midland system 
 and the eastern counties was travelling neither by the Bourn and 
 Lynn nor by the Peterborough, Wisbeach, and Sutton — that, in short, 
 it was not going by the Eastern and Midlands system at all, but was 
 being exchanged with the Great Eastern at Peterborough. The 
 Midland's explanation of this was twofold— first, that it had a prior 
 agreement with the Great Eastern, and second, that its junctions with the 
 Eastern and Midlands were not efficiently workable for through trains ; 
 and, as the result of this, the Eastern and Midlands Company had 
 become convinced that the only effective way to mend matters was for 
 them to make a really serviceable and direct connection between their 
 system and the Midland. Accordingly they revived for the session 
 of 1888 the project for a direct link line from Bourn to join the 
 Midland's system and Peterborough line at Saxby — a project which, 
 the reader may remember, had been promoted by the Midlands and 
 Eastern as long ago as 1866, to be dropped when the Great Northern 
 had offered running powers — " a pig in a poke " the bargain now 
 appeared to have been for the Midland— e'M Essendine and Stamford. 
 
 But the Bill as presented to Parliament in iii88 was not limited to a 
 revival of this extension project. In addition to this the Eastern and 
 Midlands Board made an arrangement with the Midland that the latter 
 should, in the near future, absorb the whole " western section " of 
 their system, and in connection with this the two companies entered 
 into a very intimate traffic agreement with regard to the " eastern 
 section" also. Of course, if the part of the western section between 
 Bourn and Lynn was absorbed by the Midland, the Great Northern was 
 still to retain its powers as joint lessee. Nevertheless, the change of 
 ownership was pretty certain to be felt adversely at King's Cross. 
 Worse than this, when Mr. Oakley and Mr. Nelson examined the traffic 
 agreement, they found that it meant that the traffic between the eastern 
 section and every important competitive place in the kingdom, except 
 London, was to be "hypothecated" to the Midland route. Under 
 these circumstances the Great Northern authorities had no option but 
 to oppose the Bill, and, though not successful in throwing it out 
 
 1888 
 
 HOW THE RACE BEGAN 
 
 385 
 
 altogether, they succeeded in preventing the obnoxious traffic agree- 
 ment from being scheduled to it. 
 
 Towards the end of May, 1888, the London and North Western and 
 Caledonian companies gave notice that from i June their best day 
 trains by the West Coast route between London and Edinburgh would 
 be accelerated from about ten hours each way to nine hours — the same 
 time as the corresponding East Coast trains. This was obviously a reply 
 to the change which, as already noted, the East Coast companies had 
 made in the previous November, of admitting third-class passengers to 
 their nine-hours day service. But, as will be seen, it amounted to a 
 good deal more than a return, in the matter of the relative positions of 
 the two routes, to the snafus quo prior to November. It not only 
 restored the equality as regards third-class traffic, but it gave the West 
 Coast what it had not had since the ante-Great Northern days, when 
 both semces started from Euston — equality for first and second-class 
 Edinburgh traffic also. 
 
 To support their claim to this all-round equality, notwithstanding the 
 physical superiority of the East Coast route, the West Coast companies 
 could argue from the analogy of the London and Manchester service, 
 in which case, as we have seen, the Great Northern and Manchester 
 and Sheffield companies had by hard running overcome a similar 
 superiority of long standing. And, indeed, the advantage of seven 
 miles in distance, by virtue of which the East Coast companies had 
 maintained their supremacy in the London-Edinburgh traffic, was half 
 only of the mileage advantage which the London and North Western 
 possessed in the case of London -Manchester. As for gradients, 
 if those of the Caledonian handicapped the West Coast, those of the 
 Sheffield line handicapped the joint service to Manchester still more. 
 But to this argument East Coast advocates could reply, that whereas 
 the four and a quarter hours' run between London and Manchester 
 involved, apparently, the highest rate of speed to which the London 
 and North Western could, or cared to, rise, the nine-hour service to 
 Edinburgh, as we have seen, by no means gave the Great Northern the 
 hardest locomotive work of which it had shown itself capable. On the 
 contrary, to knock off a quarter of an hour from its time between 
 London and York was a thing which Mr. Cockshott and Mr. Stirling 
 could arrange without a moment's misgiving. Moreover, the North 
 Eastern authorities, on their part, were equally ready to make the same 
 acceleration between York and Edinburgh, and so there was no 
 difficulty at all in reducing the East Coast time to eight and a half 
 hours. This change was announced in the middle of June, and 
 brought into force from i July, 1888. 
 2 c 
 
 : 
 
 #1 •• 
 
 % 
 
 I 
 
 '} 
 
 ill 
 
386 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 1 1 
 
 ii 
 
 With the East Coast thus ahead again by half an hour the month 
 of July was wearing peacefully to a close, when, quite unexpectedly, 
 on Friday, 27 July, notices were posted at Euston Square that from 
 the following Wednesday, i August, 1888, the West Coast time be- 
 tween London and Edinburgh would be eight and a half hours also. 
 This meant that in the busiest week of the whole railway year, and 
 when the Anglo-Scotch holiday traffic was just about to reach its 
 height, the West Coast companies had deliberately sprung a surprise 
 upon their rivals. Very fortunately, however, it happened that the 
 Great Northern and North Eastern Boards both met on this Friday — 
 the one at King's Cross and the other at York, — and thus they were 
 able at once to open telegraphic communication with one another. 
 Three working days only remained before the West Coast acceleration 
 was to come into force, but those days sufficed for every necessary 
 arrangement for a second East Coast acceleration to be made. 
 Another quarter of an hour was knocked off the "booked time" 
 of each section of the journey — nor did this involve making the Great 
 Northern's time between London and York faster than the Lord 
 Mayor's "special" had run in 1880, and the Prince of Wales's 
 "special" in 1883 — and on the eventful "first" the West Coast's eight 
 and a half hours was capped by eight hours by the East Coast. Both 
 trains arrived at Edinburgh before time. 
 
 The " race to Edinburgh " had now begun in earnest, and the 
 newspapers and the public began to get excited. On 3 August the 
 West Coast companies announced a third acceleration to eight hours, 
 to begin on the following Monday, the 6th, and not only were they as 
 good as their word, but their train ran into the Caledonian Station at 
 Edinburgh on that day at 5.52 p.m., />., eight minutes before time. 
 But it had evidently been "stripped" for the work, for it consisted 
 of four carriages only, and weighed no more than eighty tons. The 
 East Coast, on the other hand, continued to work their ordinary train 
 of seven, eight, or nine coaches — six-wheelers, it is true, as compared 
 with the West Coast's eight-wheelers — but of a weight of 100 tons at 
 least. The engines employed on the Great Northern throughout the 
 "race" all belonged to Mr. Stirling's "8-foot single" class — outside 
 cylinders, 18x28 in. stroke, heating surface 1250 square feet, weight 
 40 tons. 
 
 Having regard to their longer distance and harder gradients, the 
 West Coast trains, notwithstanding their lightness, probably did the 
 best work while eight hours remained the booked time on both routes. 
 But it remained so only just as long a time as the East Coast authorities 
 needed to get the rush of "grouse" tourists out of the way. Then, 
 
 1888 
 
 SHOWING WHAT COULD BE DONE 
 
 387 
 
 on 13 August, they once more accelerated their booked time — to seven 
 hours forty-five minutes. The greater part of the quarter of an hour 
 thus knocked off was obtained by taking out the stop at Berwick and 
 otherwise quickening up between York and Edinburgh ; but the Great 
 Northern's allowance for King's Cross to York, which had been reduced 
 from three hours thirty-five minutes to three hours thirty-two minutes 
 on 6 August, was now again reduced — to three and a half hours 
 exactly, a journey-speed of 53§. The West Coast reply was to run on 
 the very same day in seven hours thirty-eight minutes. To this, on the 
 following day, 14 August, the East Coast responded with seven hours 
 thirty-two minutes. On that day, however, a conference of represen- 
 tatives of the companies was held, and a truce was patched up. Under 
 this the times to be booked, until the end of the month, were fixed at 
 seven and three-quarter hours for the East Coast and eight hours for 
 the West. 
 
 In accordance with this truce the Great Northern authorities loyally 
 kept their booked time from King's Cross to York at three and a half 
 hours, though they felt that their capabilities had not by any means 
 been fully " extended " ; but, with the racing spirit now fairly aroused 
 in the engine-drivers, it was impossible to restrain "running ahead 
 of time." The result was that on every day from 15 to 31 August, 
 except three, the Scotchman arrived at York with some minutes to 
 spare, its best performance being three hours twenty-two minutes, and 
 its worst (the three exceptions just mentioned) exactly booked time. 
 Moreover, on the last day of the month, with the connivance of the 
 authorities, the drivers set deliberately to show what could be done. 
 Unfortunately, a check a little outside Doncaster, a slow-down at 
 Shaftholme junction, and a two minutes stop at Selby for the draw- 
 bridge, made the time to York one minute worse than the previous 
 "record," and north of York, too, there was more than one check. 
 Nevertheless the train entered the Waverley Station, Edinburgh at 
 5. 2 6 J, having thus beat the previous record for the whole journey — 
 the seven hours thirty-two minutes of 14 August — by five and a 
 quarter minutes. Four consecutive miles had been covered at 7 6 6 
 miles per hour. 
 
 Thus with three hours twenty-two minutes for the 188 miles between 
 London and York — a journey-speed of 55 J miles per hour — the 
 Great Northern beat all its previous records for individual runs. 
 Nor had its life-long supremacy for high speed generally yet been 
 overcome, though the Midland and the London and North Western 
 were pressing it in this respect much harder than ever before. The 
 Great Northern's total express mileage in 1888 amounted to 9,544 
 
 
 . 1 
 
it 
 
 1 
 
 i 
 
 388 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 miles daily at a "running average" of forty-seven miles per hour, 
 while the Midland on a system 25 per cent, larger showed at the 
 same date an express mileage of 11,381, with a "running average" 
 of 46J. Having regard to its harder gradients this Midland record 
 was extremely good on paper. Unfortunately, it was greatly marred 
 by unpunctuality in practice, whereas the Great Northern maintained 
 the habit of keeping time, which it had acquired very early in its 
 
 Great Northern Six-wheel-coupled Goods Locomotive. 
 
 career under the rigid discipline of Mr. Denison and Mr. Seymour 
 Clarke. As regards comparison with the lines south of London, the 
 best goods trains on the Great Northern showed journey-speeds of 
 thirty miles an hour and more — a speed which at this date was about 
 the average of the best fast passenger trains of the South of England 
 companies.* In connection with the Great Northern's fast running, it 
 may be mentioned that practically the whole of its system had been by 
 this time laid with steel rails. 
 
 ♦ For the facts and figures as to speed given in this chapter I must again acknow- 
 ledge my indebtedness to Mr. Foxwell's Express Trains ; also to Great Northern 
 Speeds^ by the Rev. W. J. Scott. Mr. Foxwell works out a comparison between the 
 companies in 1888 by dividing their daily express mileage into the lengths of their 
 systems over which the express trains actually ran. The largest "resulting 
 multiplies" are Great Northern, 33; Midland, 16^. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 A GATHERING STORM— TWO BRIDGE-BUILDING ACHIEVEMENTS 
 —THE CONVERSION OF STOCK— 1889-1890. 
 
 i 
 
 FROM 1884 (when we saw the Great Northern second period of 
 great extension closed with the completion of the Thornton and 
 Keighley line) until the date we have now reached — the autumn of 1888 
 — the mileage of the Company had increased no more than from 784 to 
 791. But an arrangement had now to be recorded which had the effect 
 of adding immediately thirteen miles to the system, and which led, as 
 we shall see, to a much larger addition afterwards. This was the 
 acquirement jointly with the Midland Company of the "western 
 section'* of the Eastern and Midlands system. 
 
 "This step was practically forced upon the Great Northern directors 
 by the passing of the Saxby and Bourn Bill in the session of 1888. 
 For although, as already recorded, the clause " hypothecating " Eastern 
 and Midlands traffic to the Midland Company was expunged from that 
 Bill in deference to Great Northern protests, yet the sanctioning of the 
 direct line from Bourn to the Midland system and the powers given 
 to the Midland to absorb the Bourn and Lynn and Peterborough, 
 Wisbeach, and Sutton lines at any time in the future, remained as a 
 serious menace to Great Northern interests. Accordingly when, soon 
 after the passage of the Bill, the Midland and Eastern and Midlands 
 authorities showed a willingness to allow the powers which the Great 
 Northern already possessed as joint lessee of the Bourn and Lynn to be 
 converted into joint ownership not only of that line, but of the Peter- 
 borough, Wisbeach, and Sutton also, the Board at King's Cross was 
 fain to step aside from the course of non-extension to which Lord 
 Colville, as we have seen, had lately pledged it, and to join in 
 prosecuting for the session of 1889 a new Bill to authorize this joint 
 ownership. Half of the thirty-four miles of the Bourn and Lynn the 
 Great Northern was already reckoning as part of its system, so the 
 addition to its mileage was, as already stated, thirteen miles only, i.e.^ 
 half of the Peterborough, Wisbeach, and Sutton. To Wisbeach the 
 
 389 
 
I 
 
 I 
 
 390 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 Company had almost from its origin, as the reader may remember, 
 possessed runnings from Peterborough over the Great Eastern lines vid 
 March, and the abortive attempt it made in 1851 to invade the eastern 
 counties by that route in connection with its temporary lease of the 
 "East Anglican" has been recorded in an earlier chapter. The 
 advantages which the new route now offered lay in its being quite 
 direct from Peterborough to Wisbeach, and in its extending beyond 
 that place to connect with the rest of the Eastern and Midlands system 
 at Sutton Bridge. This gave the Great Northern a good chance of 
 competing with the Great Eastern for the London traffic of the whole 
 of northern Norfolk (including the important seaside resort Cromer), 
 and even to some extent for the London traffic of Norwich and 
 Yarmouth. 
 
 Including the obligations entailed by this new acquisition, the capital 
 of the Great Northern Company, raised by shares or represented by 
 fixed charges, became about 39^ millions in 1889, as against thirty- 
 seven millions in 1884. This meant that the desire of the directors to 
 give "rest" to the capital account had been so far successful that, 
 whereas from 1861 to 1884 the rate of increase had averaged quite a 
 million a year, from 1885 to 1889 it had averaged half that amount 
 only. Moreover, there was good hope that this reduced rate would be 
 the normal one in the future, for as regards liabilities for new lines the 
 Company was exceptionally free. The only works of this kind on hand 
 were the Beeston and Batley link line, the Heanor branch, and the 
 new junctions with the Lancashire and Yorkshire, and the two former 
 of these, as we know, were partially open already. On the suburban 
 widenings, it was true, a further expenditure, estimated at ;£'4oo,ooo, 
 was impending, but this was not a great deal more than had been 
 spent within the previous two or three years upon the same account ; 
 nor did other works for the improvement of the existing system 
 threaten to be heavier than they had been during the past five years. 
 Therefore, when in the first half of 1889 the depression of trade at 
 last definitely lifted, and passenger, goods, and mineral traffic all 
 showed satisfactory increase, the directors and officers had good reason 
 to hope that the ebb-tide of adversity which had brought the Com- 
 pany's dividend down to £^ p. 6d. per cent, in 1886, 1887, and 1888, 
 was at last on the turn. 
 
 On the otherwise clear horizon, however, an ominous cloud had 
 already gathered. It was a cloud no bigger than a man's hand, but the 
 man was Sir Edward Watkin. Although Sir Edward's name has been 
 absent from this history since we noticed his rejection in 1877 of a 
 guarantee dividend for the Sheffield larger than that company has ever 
 
 1889 
 
 RE-ENTER SIR EDWARD WATKIN 
 
 39> 
 
 been able to earn cither before or since, his activity in the railway world 
 in 1889 was as great as ever. He whom we saw emerge from a sub- 
 ordinate position at Euston Square to become in 1853 general manager 
 of the Sheffield was now chairman, not only of that company, but of 
 the Metropolitan, the East London, and the South Eastern. Moreover, 
 for five years or more he had been carrying on a vigorous campaign 
 with military experts and with successive Parliaments with the object of 
 obtaining powers to make a tunnel beneath the English Channel, and 
 it was commonly believed that he had resolved to crown his career by 
 linking this with the other undertakings over which he presided, so as 
 to establish a through route in one hand from Liverpool via London to 
 the coast of France — " a sort of backbone," to quote the cant phrase 
 he himself used later, " to the railway system of the country." 
 
 What made this more than idle talk was that slowly but surely the 
 Metropolitan system was being pushed northwards. Early in the 
 eighties extensions as far as Aylesbury had been authorized, and in 
 this year, 1889, there was a Bill before Parliament, with Sir Edward 
 Watkin as its chief promoter, which, under the misleading title of the 
 "Worcester and Broom Railway Bill," sought to give the Metro- 
 politan running powers more than twenty miles further northwards to 
 Moreton Pinkney, and thence westwards right away to Worcester. The 
 Bill proposed that the Metropolitan Company should be empowered 
 to subscribe ;^i 00,000 to the construction of a link line which was 
 needed between Quainton Road (near Aylesbury) and Moreton Pinkney, 
 and to work a through service between London and Worcester. 
 
 For this same session the Sheffield Company had deposited a Bill 
 for an extension from its existing main line at Beighton, near Sheffield, 
 southwards to Annesley, there to make an " end-on junction " with the 
 Great Northern's Leen Valley line. The obvious and professed object 
 of this was to give the Sheffield Company access to the North Derby- 
 shire coalfield, and coming as it did from the north to meet the Great 
 Northern branch from the south, it was not in this respect at all 
 obnoxious to Great Northern interests. But when looked at in con- 
 nection with the simultaneous desire of the Metropolitan Company to 
 come further northwards in precisely the same longitude, it had a larger 
 significance which did not escape the notice of the authorities at King's 
 Cross. 
 
 In March, 1889, before either the Beighton to Annesley or the so- 
 called Worcester and Broom Bills had reached Committee stage, Mr. 
 Oakley received a letter from Mr. William PoUitt, successor to Mr. 
 Underdo wn in the general managership of the Sheffield Company. 
 This stated that the Sheffield directors were desirous that the new line 
 
 P 
 
 
392 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 they were seeking to make from Beighton to Annesley should be "an 
 open road to give the district the greatest possible increased accommo- 
 dation," and that with this object they proposed an exchange of running 
 powers with the Great Northern, viz., the Sheffield to be allowed to run 
 to Nottingham by way of the Great Northern's Leen Valley line, in 
 return for the Great Northern being allowed to run to Sheffield vici 
 Beighton. " My directors are quite willing," Mr. Pollitt added, " that an 
 agreement should be entered into and scheduled to the Bill that nothing 
 in it shall prejudice the rights of either of our companies under the 
 agreement of i October, i860" (i.e. the Fifty Years Treaty). 
 
 But the Great Northern authorities were not to be misled by talk 
 about "an open road " and "district accommodation." They felt that 
 they must consider the designs of Sir Edward Watkin's companies 
 collectively and fully, and that until this had been done no answer 
 could be given to the Sheffield well-seeming offer. Accordingly a 
 special committee of their Board was appointed to discuss the matter 
 in all its bearings. 
 
 To those of this committee, of course, who had been connected 
 with the Company for any length of time the threatening danger 
 appeared in its main aspect as an old acquaintance. A little more than 
 a year before, at a Sheffield half-yearly meeting. Sir Edward Watkin, 
 in the course of a review of the various efforts, all futile, which he had 
 made to improve that company's undertaking, had referred to the 
 Rushton to Askerne joint scheme of 1873. This, he said, had been 
 suggested to him by the Midland chairman, Mr. Price, and he now 
 described it as "the most masteriy proposition ever made by an 
 enlightened railway chairman." Nor did the Great Northern authorities 
 need this hint to show them that the proposed junction between the 
 Sheffield and the Metropolitan, the first steps towards which were so 
 ill-concealed in the Bills now before Pariiament, was in its main features 
 a revival of the Rushton scheme. 
 
 Nevertheless, in the long interval which had elapsed between the two 
 " conspiracies," the Great Northern had been thrown to some extent 
 off its guard. At its half-yearly meeting in February, 1884, in answer 
 to a shareholder who had brought Sir Edward Watkin's rumoured 
 new ambitions to his notice. Lord Colville had said, speaking without 
 book, that the Great Northern, " having running powers to Manchester^' 
 would not, he thought, suffer very much even if a new trunk route to 
 Sheffield via Aylesbury was eventually constructed. As a matter of • 
 fact, however— and this the committee of the Board now realized as 
 the most serious factor in the situation— the Great Northern had not 
 " running powers to Manchester " in the ordinary acceptation of the 
 
 1889 
 
 OAKLEY V, POLLITT 
 
 393 
 
 words. All it had under the Fifty Years Agreement was " contingent 
 running powers,'* the contingency being its ability to prove to the satis- 
 faction of an arbitrator that the Sheffield Company was not working 
 the joint traffic properly. Worse than this, the terms upon which 
 such running powers would have to be exercised according to the 
 agreement of i860 — 80 per cent, of the gross receipts to the owning 
 company — were such as would make the Great Northern's working 
 quite unprofitable, if the Sheffield were at the same time working a 
 route to London of its own. 
 
 These facts furnish the clue to the reply which on 4 May, 1 889, Mr. 
 Oakley sent to Mr. Pollitt's letter of the previous March. With his 
 usual frankness Mr. Oakley expressed his directors' apprehension that 
 the line from Beighton through Nottingham might eventually "form 
 part of a new competing line from the North to London in connection 
 with existing and projected railways," and he stated that in view of such 
 a possibility his Board anticipated that the Sheffield Company would be 
 " willing and indeed desirous to give the Great Northern Company such 
 reasonable protection as they were fairly entitled to." He therefore 
 proposed that, in addition to providing for the exchange of running 
 powers already suggested, the new agreement proposed should give the 
 Great Northern running powers from Retford to Manchester, and that 
 the Sheffield Company should bind itself therein not to promote or 
 assist any other company or person in promoting "any extension of 
 their railway south of the town of Nottingham." 
 
 In his reply, dated 7 May, 1889, Mr. Pollitt told Mr. Oakley that he 
 " must know " that his suggestions were " neither reasonable nor such 
 as the Sheffield Company could accept." " What you are asking," he 
 wrote, " is, in effect, to re-enact the very clause which was included in 
 'our agreement of i October, i860, but which was struck out by the 
 Railway Commissioners in 1881 at the instigation of the Huddersfield 
 Chamber of Commerce, as in their opinion opposed to the interest of 
 the public. Your company is already entitled to run over our line if 
 the Sheffield Company throw any difficulties in the way of through 
 traffic, and my directors would be willing to amend this clause in the 
 agreement of i860 so as to make it clear that the running powers 
 should come into effect, if it can at any time be shown to the satisfac- 
 tion of the Railway Commissioners that the Sheffield Company are 
 actively diverting from your system by means of the lines to be 
 authorized by this Bill any traffic your company is entitled to under 
 that agreement." He further offered to modify the percentage to be 
 paid under the contingent running powers to the Sheffield as owners 
 from 80 to 663 per cent, of the gross receipts. To this Mr. Oakley 
 
 
 I 
 
 f 
 
 
I 
 
 394 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 * 
 
 curtly replied on the following day that his directors were " unable to 
 accept as satisfactory the proposed slight modification of the agreement 
 of i860"; they therefore declined the exchange of running powers, 
 unless the Sheffield Company would give an obligation that the 
 " proposed line, if granted by Parliament, should not be used for the 
 purposes of extension south of Nottingham." 
 
 The negotiations having thus failed, the Great Northern lodged a 
 petition against the Sheffield Bill, and instructed Messrs. Pope and 
 Balfour Browne to appear for them against it when it came before a 
 Commons Committee a few days later, viz., on 14 May, 1889. 
 
 " We have practically nothing to say against this line as a line to the 
 north," said Mr. Balfour Browne in his speech, " and I do not wish to 
 be supposed to be saying anything against it; but I have a strong 
 interest for the Great Northern in saying, * Do not let this company 
 have the means of getting further south at any rate during the time 
 that their agreement with us lasts.' We say, * We will let you into 
 Nottingham if you will not go south.' Mr. PoUitt says, * I will not 
 agree to that.' Why? Because they are going south. But if they 
 have that intention, then I ask you to say that you have not the whole 
 scheme before you, and that you will wait till you see the whole scheme 
 before you pass it. I think they are getting perilously far south, if 
 you let them have this Bill at all." 
 
 The Sheffield authorities, however, had skilfully repeated the tactics 
 which the Great Northern had employed, it may be remembered, in 
 the case of its extensions into Derbyshire. It had secured the support 
 of the London and North Western by giving running powers — the very 
 running powers which the Great Northern had refused. So the strong 
 local case which Mr. PoUitt and Mr. Findlay, successor to Mr. Cawkwell 
 at Euston Square, were able to make out, carried the Bill through the 
 Commons in spite of the opposition of the Great Northern and the 
 still keener opposition of the Midland. 
 
 The defeated companies decided to renew the fight in the Lords ; 
 but before the Sheffield Bill got there. Sir Edward Watkin's other 
 project — the so-called Worcester and Broom— came before another 
 Commons Committee, presided over by Mr. Woodall. On behalf of 
 this Sir Edward himself went into the box. But though he admitted, 
 under cross-examination, that the proposed railway from Quainton 
 Road to Moreton Pinkney might not pay as " a distinct piece of line," 
 but would need to be worked "in connection with a good through 
 line," the Great Northern was unable to put its case against this 
 further attempt to get a new through line by piecemeal for lack of 
 locus standi before the Committee. But, very characteristically. Sir 
 
 1889 
 
 WATKIN'S "PREDATORY EXCURSIONS" 
 
 395 
 
 Edward Watkin was not limiting his ambition to linking the Metro- 
 politan with the south-eastern part of the Sheffield system. He very 
 evidently had an alternative, or duplicate, project in mind for carrying 
 on his projected London and Worcester route through Wales (where 
 he was busy forming a " Welsh Union ") to a north-western junction 
 with the Sheffield in Lancashire, and against this the London and 
 North Western and the Great Western companies were able to appear. 
 On behalf of the Buckinghamshire landowners, too, Mr. Bidder pro- 
 tested against their district being cut up, not for any public interest, 
 but to favour Sir Edward Watkin's " predatory excursions." The result 
 was that the Bill was thrown out (27 June, 1889). 
 
 Meanwhile the Great Northern had presented a petition to the 
 House of Lords against the Sheffield's Beighton to Annesley Bill pray- 
 ing that, if that line were sanctioned, a proviso might be inserted in 
 the Bill to forbid its being used "as a means or reason for further 
 extensions by the Sheffield Company in breach of the agreement of 
 i860." This petition, accordingly, Mr. Littler, the Sheffield counsel, 
 had to meet when he opened his case for that Bill before Lord 
 Camperdown's Committee on 10 July, 1889. "Your lordships will 
 be rather amused to hear," said he, "that there was a clause in the 
 agreement of i860 which had some such meaning as is put forward in 
 the Great Northern petition ; but on opposition before the Railway 
 Commissioners to the renewal of the agreement that clause was struck 
 out on the ground that it was contrary to public policy, and the 
 assurance they now ask for is an assurance which we venture to think 
 your lordships will not allow us to give as being contrary to public 
 policy. At some future time Parliament might think it necessary that 
 a line should be constructed further south. We have no intention of 
 ' making any such extension, but I submit that Parliament would not 
 allow us to bind ourselves to any such condition as that." 
 
 The outcome, as usual, was that a compromise was effected. The 
 Sheffield authorities wanted the running powers to Nottingham bond 
 fide for local traffic, and so they offered to bind their company not to 
 use those powers as a means of going further south, while still maintain- 
 ing that with regard to the use of the new line they must be left quite 
 free. Seeing that the Bill seemed to be in a fair way to pass in 
 any case, the Great Northern had nothing to lose by accepting this 
 offer, while it gained by so doing running powers over the new line into 
 Sheffield. Accordingly the bargain was signed, the Great Northern 
 opposition was withdrawn, and the Bill passed. 
 
 But if in accepting this compromise the Great Northern allowed 
 themselves to be influenced at all by Mr. Littler's declaration on behalf 
 
 *' 
 
 (, 
 
396 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 1^ 
 
 I 
 
 I 
 I 
 
 I 
 
 l« t, 
 
 of the Sheffield Company that it had " no intention of making any such 
 extension," they soon realized that they had not gauged correcdy 
 the parties they were dealing with. Immediately after the rejection of 
 the Worcester and Broom Bill, Sir Edward Watkin seems to have 
 resolved to throw off all disguises and to go openly for a direct 
 Ime to connect the Sheffield and Metropolitan systems; and, apparently, 
 nothing but the hope that the Great Northern might be willing to share 
 the expense of the enterprise— a sufficiently bold hope even in view of 
 what the Great Northern had already done in the way of joint 
 undertakings— prevented him from immediately preparing a scheme for 
 the session of 1890. 
 
 That there was no repetition of "the race to Edinburgh" in 1889 
 must be attributed solely to the forbearance of the East Coast com- 
 panies. The truce under which, as already stated, the booked times 
 by the two routes had been fixed at seven and three-quarter hours East 
 Coast, and eight hours West Coast, until the end of August, 1888, had 
 been succeeded by an " informal understanding " that after that month 
 the best time should not be less than eight and a half hours. This, 
 while half an hour only better than the East Coast's best time before 
 the " race," was no less than one and a half hours better than the best 
 pre-racing running on the West Coast ; yet the West Coast company 
 took advantage of the " understanding " to make a " dead heat " with 
 their rivals for Edinburgh throughout the summer of 1889. More than 
 this, they quickened up very considerably their best times to Perth and 
 Aberdeen. 
 
 Now since 1876, when the East Coast companies it may be remem- 
 bered had compelled the Caledonian to co-operate with them in accelera- 
 tions, the best times to Perth and Aberdeen had remained the same ♦ by 
 both routes, having been reduced concurrently from twelve hours (Perth) 
 and sixteen hours (Aberdeen) in 1876 to eleven hours and fourteen 
 hours respectively in 1887. Yet now, in 1889, the West Coast accele- 
 ration— " London to Perth in ten hours fifteen minutes, London to 
 Aberdeen in twelve hours fifty minutes "—was replied to by a quickening 
 by fifteen minutes only of the previous times by the rival route, leaving 
 the East Coast half an hour behind to both places. The explanation 
 of this was two-fold. In the first place, unlike the West, the East 
 Coast route to the north of Scotland is through Edinburgh, and so the 
 Great Northern and its allies were reluctant to do anything which 
 might be, or seem to be, a breach of the eight and a half hours truce 
 as regards that place. In the second place, the East Coast companies 
 were waiting for the opening of the Forth Bridge. 
 
 ♦ Not precisely the same to Aberdeen at first, but practically so. 
 
 
 1889 
 
 "RECORD-MAKING" WITH THE SHAH 
 
 397 
 
 Nevertheless, Mr. Stirling's engines had one opportunity to " make a 
 record" in 1889, viz., in the course of a journey which the Shah 
 of Persia took on 26 July from Bradford, via London, to Brighton. 
 His special train left Leeds at 4.55 p.m., and, notwithstanding a fifteen 
 minutes' stop at Grantham, it reached York Road Station, King's 
 Cross, at 8.37. Reducing the Grantham stop to five minutes, which 
 was the utmost required for changing engines (the additional ten 
 minutes being for the purpose of preparing dinner for the Shah), 
 this was equivalent to 185 miles in three hours thirty-two minutes— a 
 journey-speed of over fifty-two miles an hour; and considering the 
 greater weight of the train (which contained a dining-car in addition 
 to the Shah's saloon) it was probably even a better piece of work than 
 the run of the " Prince of Wales's special," Bradford to London in 
 three hours forty-eight minutes, which we have already recorded as 
 taking place in 1882. Moreover, from i November, 1888, the best 
 daily time between London and I^eds was reduced to three hours 
 fifty minutes — very fine running, albeit five minutes worse than the 
 exceptional speed between those points in the summer of 1880. 
 
 During 1889, as already noted, British trade at last completely shook 
 off the depression which had so long hung over it, and the general 
 improvement was fully shared in by the Great Northern, its traffic 
 receipts for the second half of the year showing an increase of over 
 ^133,000. As usually happens, however, in such times of expansion, 
 a great advance in the price of coal and other materials and in the 
 cost of labour absorbed a large share of this additional revenue. 
 Nevertheless, the dividend rose by J per cent. — to £^ lys. 6^., and it 
 might perhaps have got up to 5 per cent., but for an exceptional 
 . charge of ;£ 2 0,000 upon revenue for the year for the reconstruction 
 of the bridge over the Trent Navigation, at Newark. 
 
 The original bridge at this place (opened for traffic in 1852) was, 
 as the reader may remember, of the form known as the " Warren 
 Truss," and was not only unique in this respect, but was the largest 
 span of its kind in the country, it being 257 feet from centre to 
 centre of its bearings. As early as 1879, however, it had shown signs 
 of wear, and it had been found upon examination that the inner links 
 of the diagonals in the centre of the bridge had elongated -^^ of an 
 inch, thereby putting all the stress upon the outer links. Accordingly, 
 under Mr. Johnson's instructions, the method of laying the floor had 
 been altered so that all the members might do the work required of 
 them. In 1888, however, fresh signs of weakness had appeared, and 
 then Mr. Johnson had decided upon an entire reconstruction. The 
 new bridge, as designed by Mr. E. Duncan, one of the Company's 
 
 [' 
 
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 if 
 ji 
 

 Il 
 
 \ I 
 
 398 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 assistant engineers, is of the class of truss known as the "Whipple- 
 Murphy," and is made entirely of steel. The chief difficulty in its 
 construction lay in the fact that it could not, for obvious reasons, be 
 built in situ ; but the fact that the old structures consisted of two 
 separate single-line sections, and that the same plan could be adopted 
 in the case of the new bridge, made the process of transposition a 
 good deal easier than it might otherwise have been. 
 
 The modus operandi was briefly as follows. A building site was 
 chosen alongside the railway embankment on the north side of the 
 river, and here the two sections of the new bridge were put together 
 separately by the contractors, Messrs. Handyside of Derby, the process 
 taking about ten months. Meanwhile, parallel to the bridge itself, a 
 staging was formed on piles upon which two railway tracks were laid 
 side by side. Upon the outer of these each section of the old 
 structure was, in turn, "shunted" on trollies by means of hydraulic 
 jacks, while first one and then the other of the new sections was 
 propelled by similar means, first on to the innermost track upon the 
 staging, and thence into its place over the river. Thus the operation 
 of transposition was completed within fourteen days, and, as single-line 
 working was kept open throughout, the traffic of the line was not at 
 all seriously interrupted. 
 
 This remarkable undertaking was brought to a successful termination 
 on 29 January, 1890; but the fame of it was quite overshadowed by 
 the completion within the same month of the greatest bridge-building 
 achievement the world has yet seen— the great viaduct over the Forth. 
 On 2 1 January, 1 890, two trains were driven upon this bridge side by 
 side from the south end, their total weight upon the bridge being 1800 
 tons, and the engineers had the great satisfaction of finding that, even 
 when placed in the most unfavourable conditions of loading, this huge 
 weight had no effect upon the stability of the structure. The official 
 opening of the bridge took place on 4 March, 1890. 
 
 Meantime, besides the Newark bridge, Mr. Johnson had had 
 important engineering works in hand during 1889 i" connection 
 with the suburban widenings between Barnet and King's Cross. In 
 February of that year the directors had announced that the continuous 
 increase in the London suburban traffic required the immediate com- 
 pletion of the duplicate " up " and " down " lines all the way between 
 those points. Accordingly, contracts were immediately let for three 
 new single-line tunnels, two of them to form a duplication of the 
 original double-line tunnel between Southgate and Barnet, and the 
 other to complete the duplication between Southgate and Wood Green, 
 where, it will be remembered, a new single-line tunnel had already 
 
 1889 
 
 ENGINEERING ACHIEVEMENTS 
 
 399 
 
 been constructed and opened in 1887. These works had to be carried 
 on simultaneously with the widening at Southgate Station which was 
 still far from complete, and with similar widening operations at Wood 
 Green. Moreover, both at Southgate and at Barnet subways for foot 
 
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 passengers— to replace level crossings — were about this same time 
 taken in hand, operations difficult of execution while fast and heavy 
 trains were continually passing overhead. 
 
 The new stations at Wood Green and Southgate and the new western 
 tunnel between those places were all brought into use within the first 
 
V i 
 
 I 
 
 t 
 
 III 
 
 m 
 
 400 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 half of 1890, but now yet another important suburban work had to be 
 taken in hand. This was the provision of a triplicate " Maiden Lane 
 tunnel " to separate the passenger trains starting from the terminus from 
 the passenger and goods trains coming off the Metropolitan in the same 
 complete way as, since the provision of the second Maiden Lane tunnel, 
 the "up" traffic had been separated within the same area. Like its 
 two predecessors, this third or western tunnel had to be carried beneath 
 the Regent's Canal; but this was not the part of the work which 
 threatened to be most difficult. A much more onerous portion of the 
 undertaking was on the north side of the canal, for there the tunnel 
 had to be constructed, at a very small depth below the surface, beneath 
 ground occupied by the Company's goods terminals, consisting of heavy 
 goods sheds, sidings upon which trucks were constantly moving, and 
 roads used by many vans. 
 
 For these suburban works and other purposes the Company obtained 
 powers in the session of 1890 to raise a new million of capital. In 
 the same Bill it obtained authority to purchase the line, four miles in 
 length, of the Spilsby and Firsby Railway Company (which it had been 
 working for about twenty years already), the price agreed being ^^20,000 
 in cash and the taking over from the little company of ^8,333 of 
 debentures. Nor did this one Bill cover the whole of the new powers 
 secured by the Company this session. In a second Bill authority was 
 obtained for the " conversion " of the whole of its ordinary capital. 
 
 This step did not originate with the directors, but was pressed 
 upon them pertinaciously by some of the largest shareholders in the 
 concern. Its main object was to extend over the whole of the ordinary 
 stock the "splitting" process which, the reader may remember, was 
 devised in 1847 to meet the great financial difficulties under which the 
 original undertaking of the Company had to be carried out. The 
 essence of the 1847 plan from the point of view of its originators was, 
 as we have already noted, to accelerate the paying of calls by giving 
 an immediate 6 per cent, upon the "B" or "preferred" halves of the 
 shares if these were immediately paid up in full ; but, as Mr. Denison, 
 it may be remembered, had predicted at the time, the splitting had 
 produced a further and permanent advantage. It had divided the 
 stock into two classes— a 6 per cent, stock, "exceedingly valuable to 
 quiet people in the country," and a speculative stock which might get 
 nothing at all, or might, as it had in the days of great prosperity in the 
 early "seventies," get 8 per cent, or even more, while the other was 
 getting its 6 per cent. only. In short, as Mr. Grinling, the Company's 
 accountant, now put the matter in 1890, "the one half-stock held out 
 peculiar advantages to the investor, and the other held out peculiar 
 
 k 
 4 
 
 1890 
 
 "SPLITTING" AND "WATERING" 
 
 401 
 
 advantages to the speculator," and that these advantages had been 
 appreciated was proved by the fact that the two halves, if taken 
 together, had for a great many years shown a price from 12 to 15 per 
 cent, better than the undivided ordinary stock. 
 
 Under the clauses originally obtained for the purpose in its Act of 
 1848 the Company possessed powers for extending the division to stock 
 subsequently created ; but it was not considered expedient to use them 
 now for two reasons. The first of these was that since 1 85 1 the powers 
 had been allowed to fall into abeyance, and the second, that it was not 
 desirable to carry out the new "splitting" on precisely the same lines as 
 before. To get the full benefit of the measure it was necessary — to 
 quote Mr. Grinling again — " to adapt the old principle to the modern 
 value of money " ; in other words, it was necessary to fix the preferred 
 dividend at a point a good deal lower than 6 per cent. Already, under 
 the authority of Acts obtained during the "eighties," the Company's 
 preference stocks proper had been consolidated and " watered down " 
 from their original 4J or 5 per cent, to a uniform 4 per cent., and this 
 had had the effect of sending up their price as much as 8 or 10 
 per cent. Thus, in proposing as they now did to convert each ;£^ioo 
 of ordinary undivided stock into jCts ^^ 4 P^^ cent, "preferred" and 
 j£$o of " deferred," the directors calculated upon the improvement of 
 its marketable position in two distinct ways : — first by its division into 
 investment stock and speculative stock, and, second, by the special 
 adaptation of the former to the modern value of money. It was an 
 adaptation, too, of course, to the modern dividend of the Company. 
 
 On the other hand — from the point of view, at any rate, of those 
 "quiet people in the country" who form so large a proportion of 
 railway shareholders — the scheme of conversion had one serious draw- 
 back. It threatened to make the constitution of the Company's capital, 
 and the calculation of what dividend some of the classes of stock would 
 actually yield, exceedingly complicated affairs. The dividend being 
 necessarily declared as upon the original undivided stock, the fact that 
 they received quite different rates from this was already a matter of per- 
 plexity to simple-minded holders of " B's" and " A's." But this was as 
 nothing compared with the intricacy which was to be introduced by the 
 combination of " splitting " and " watering " now proposed. To simplify 
 matters as far as possible, the directors insisted that the new " splitting " 
 must not be optional, as the old had been, but compulsory ; but while 
 by this step they provoked opposition from amongst that large class of 
 Englishmen who object on principle to this kind of compulsion, all 
 that they gained by it was the reduction of the future ordinary stocks 
 from a possible five to a possible four — and this by the elimination of 
 
 2 D 
 
 '^1 
 
 • 1 
 
I 
 
 402 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 the only one which would have been quite simple. For, while Parlia- 
 ment could be asked to make compulsory the " conversion " of all 
 stock as yet undivided, it could not justly be asked to compel all 
 holders of the " B's " and " A's " to " re-divide " and " convert," for the 
 reason that the "B's" possessed a right as against the "A's" to a 
 cumulative dividend (in case the profits of any year did not yield their 
 6 per cent.), and this right "conversion" would destroy. The only 
 thing to be done with regard to the "A's" and "B's" was to provide 
 that they should be converted whenever equal amounts of each were 
 voluntarily brought in for the purpose. 
 
 Thus the " conversion " scheme, when placed before the shareholders 
 at two meetings specially held for the purpose on 25 April and 27 June, 
 1890, excited opposition from two classes of persons: persons who, to 
 recall the phrase used by Captain Hall, r.n., in regard to the original 
 splitting, "liked plain sailing, a good water-tight boat, and good ship- 
 room," and the persons of the class already alluded to by whom com- 
 pulsion as regards their private property is always resented. Never- 
 theless the advantages of the proposal were undeniable. So upon a 
 show of hands at the first meeting a large majority declared in its favour, 
 and at the second— the " Wharncliffe meeting "—held according to 
 statute after the Bill had passed the Commons, its further prosecution 
 was formally approved. In the Upper House some modifications were 
 made in the proposals as to the capital and income of the guaranteed 
 and leased lines, but with that exception its provisions were sanctioned. 
 During the following autumn and winter the process of " conversion " 
 was laboriously carried out. 
 
 V 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 THE FIFTH LINE TO LONDON— THE SUBURBAN INCUBUS ONCE 
 
 MORE— THE GREAT NORTHERN AND MIDLAND JOINT 
 
 SYSTEM— THE RACE TO ABERDEEN— 1890-1895. 
 
 AS noted in our last chapter, the official opening of the Forth 
 Bridge took place on 4 March, 1890. It was not until i June, 
 however, that passenger trains began regularly to use the bridge. From 
 the latter date the East Coast through traffic to and from the northern 
 parts of Scotland was diverted on to it, the trains being now carried 
 on throughout beyond Edinburgh by the North British Company's 
 engines — through Fifeshire and down the beautiful Glen Farg to 
 Perth, and across the Tay Bridge, and thence by Dundee and 
 Montrose, hugging the coast, to Aberdeen. Prior to this date, as 
 the reader knows, the East Coast route had become merged in the 
 West Coast at Larbert Junction, and its through coaches had been 
 hauled by the Caledonian Company over the 100 miles and more 
 between there and Aberdeen under stringent " facility clauses." Now, 
 by the completion of the two great bridges, the East Coast companies 
 had a separate route of their own as far north as Kinnaber Junction, 
 thirty-nine miles only from Aberdeen. Between Kinnaber and Aber- 
 deen, moreover, they had obtained running powers over the Caledonian 
 line. 
 
 Thus the Forth Bridge meant two improvements in East Coast 
 conditions — a through run with their own engines all the way both to 
 Perth and to Aberdeen, and the increase of their former small advantage 
 in mileage to nine miles in the case of London-Perth, and i6| between 
 the Metropolis and the " Granite City." The result was that they were 
 able at once to accelerate their best train — the eight p.m. from King's 
 Cross — to reach Perth in nine hours fifty-five minutes instead of in 
 ten hours forty-five minutes, and to reach Aberdeen in twelve hours 
 fifteen minutes instead of in thirteen hours twenty minutes. The 
 whole distance from King's Cross to Aberdeen being now 5 23 J miles, 
 this meant the very creditable journey-speed of just under forty-three 
 
 403 
 
 I 
 
II 
 
 ! 
 
 I 
 
 404 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 miles per hour throughout. But unfortunately the North British 
 "Waverley Station" at Edinburgh proved unequal to the new traffic 
 brought into it, and the result was that the acceleration in " booked " 
 time north of Edinburgh was throughout the summer of 1890 often 
 turned into a " deceleration " in actual practice, while south of 
 Edinburgh the North Eastern and Great Northern refrained from 
 increasing their pace because of the " 8J hours truce " of 1 888. On 
 the other hand, the West Coast companies, having a route to the 
 North which did not touch Edinburgh, were able to exert themselves 
 to meet the new competition of the Forth Bridge without regard to 
 that truce ; and with an accelerated service only a few minutes longer 
 in " booked " time than their rivals, they quite carried off the palm in 
 actual running. 
 
 On 25 July, 1890, the Great Northern directors received from the 
 Board of Trade a draft classification of merchandise traffic, and a 
 schedule of maximum rates and charges applicable thereto, which, 
 in accordance with the provisions of the Railway and Canal Traffic 
 Act of 1888, the Board of Trade proposed to embody in a 
 " Provisional Order " to be submitted to Parliament for sanction 
 in the following session, along with other similar *' Orders " applicable 
 to each of the other railway companies. This was the outcome of a 
 most complicated and tedious process of revision of classifications 
 and schedules in which representatives of the Board and of the 
 companies had been engaged ever since the passing of the new Act. 
 The first step, as already noted, had been for the companies them- 
 selves to submit a uniform classification and new individual schedules ; 
 then, early in 1889, these had been made public by the Board of 
 Trade, and criticisms invited from traders. Needless to say, such 
 criticisms had come in very freely, whereupon it had been decided 
 that the best way to deal with them was to open a public inquiry 
 at which the parties might be represented by counsel and all the 
 pros and cons fully discussed. At this inquiry, which had commenced 
 on 15 October, 1889, and lasted in all over eighty -five sittings, 
 Mr. Oakley, in his double capacity as Great Northern general 
 manager and hon. secretary of the Railway Companies' Association, 
 Mr. Tvvelvetrees, the Company's goods manager, and Mt. Barrs, 
 of its solicitors' department, had been unremitting in their attendance 
 and in their exertions to secure a settlement favourable to the 
 companies. Therefore both they and their directors were the more 
 disappointed now to find that, as far as they could judge, the new 
 schedule which the Board of Trade had adopted was not such as 
 would "afford an adequate or fair return upon the large capital 
 
 v;>^ 
 
 1891 
 
 PREPARING FOR PITCHED BATTLE 
 
 405 
 
 invested in the Great Northern undertaking." It looked as if the 
 battle would have to be fought all over again before Parliament in 
 
 the session of 189 1. 
 
 Nor was this, momentous though it was, the most important Parlia- 
 mentary contest to which the Great Northern authorities had to 
 look forward for that session. It was now evident that a pitched 
 battle with the Manchester, Sheffield, and Lincolnshire would be 
 inevitable— a battle in which the stakes on the Great Northern side 
 would be a joint traffic worth about ^125,000 a year to it alone, and 
 proper access to joint lines, to which it had contributed nearly three 
 and a half millions. For, under Sir Edward Watkin's influence, the 
 Manchester, Sheffield, and Lincolnshire directors had by this time 
 fully convinced themselves that a new access to London was what 
 was wanted to lift their undertaking out of its lifelong impecuniosity ; 
 and a so-called "amicable arrangement" which Sir Edward had 
 suggested to Lord Colville— the construction of a new trunk line 
 jointly— was one which the Great Northern Board could not for 
 one moment entertain. Therefore, when in the autumn of 1890 
 the Sheffield directors deposited a Bill for a line, ninety-two miles 
 in length, to start from the end of its new North Derbyshire branch 
 at Annesley (the branch which, the reader remembers, it had had 
 "no intention of extending" in 1889) and to run via Nottingham 
 and Leicester to join the Metropolitan Extension at Quainton Road, 
 the Great Northern directors, officers, and shareholders realized that 
 they had to face a Parliamentary contest which would rank amongst 
 the greatest in their Company's history. "Gentlemen," said Lord 
 Colville at the half-yearly meeting on 13 February, 1891, "your 
 directors consider it their duty to resist by every means in their 
 power the passing of a measure so subversive of all good faith 
 towards a friendly company, and they trust that in the course they 
 are compelled to take they will meet with the hearty concurrence and 
 support of every shareholder." 
 
 Meantime two small additions had to be made to Great Northern 
 mileage in work. From i August, 1890, the Beeston and Batley 
 link line, a little over four miles in length, the works of which, 
 as we know, had been long in hand, was at last opened fully, and 
 from I January, 1891, the Firsby and Spilsby line, also about 
 four miles, was taken over by purchase. Moreover, from September, 
 1890, the line of the Halifax High Level Company from Holmfield 
 to Halifax was opened, and worked jointly by the Great Northern 
 and the Lancashire and Yorkshire, and thus the Great Northern 
 obtained access to a new terminal station at King's Cross, Halifax, 
 
I 
 
 
 (it 
 
 w 
 
 l! 
 
 406 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 no less than 325 feet above the level of its existing passenger 
 termmus m that town. To understand fully the advantage of this 
 one must be familiar with the extraordinary physical conformation 
 of the district. Nor were the Company's improvements in the West 
 Riding of Yorkshire yet completed. The junction lines between 
 Pudsey and Low Moor, Bradford, which it had agreed with the 
 Lancashire and Yorkshire Company to make as long before as 
 1882, had not been put in hand until ,890, and they contained 
 some heavy works. Moreover, at Laister Dyke, in the same neigh- 
 bourhood, a site for an enlarged station had to be excavated out 
 of solid rock. 
 
 Throughout 1890 Mr Johnson had been making good progress 
 with the London suburban widenings, and in February, 189,: he 
 was able to report that the "up" single-line tunnel north of Southgate 
 had been opened since .3 October, .890, that the "down" tunnel 
 at the same place was well advanced, and that about one-third 
 had been completed of the new double-line tunnel just outside 
 Kings Cross. The engineering difficulties of this latter work had 
 at the suggestion of the contractor, Mr. Lovatt, been ingeniously 
 surmounted by the use of an invention known as "Jennings' patent 
 needles, with the aid of which it had been found possible to "drive" 
 the tunnel all the way from the north side of the Regent's Canal 
 to the north face. Owing to its nearness to the surface this would 
 not have been possible had the ordinary process of roofing with 
 timber been the only one available, and consequently the "cut and 
 cover process would have had to have been adopted, to the great 
 disturbance of work in the goods terminus overhead. But by the use 
 of the patent steel bars in place of timber, and by lowering the section 
 of the tunnel about three feet at the crown, the margin left below the 
 surface was increased by five feet six inches. Thus it was possible to 
 earn, the work beneath the rails, warehouses, and van-roads of the 
 goods station without opening out to the surface at all 
 
 Thus the Company was in a fair way to the speedy completion 
 of duplicate, and in places triplicate, tracks throughout the whole of 
 us suburban area between Barnet and King's Cross. Nevertheless 
 It was no nearer getting rid of the "suburban incubus" than it had 
 been at any time within the previous twenty years. "I have from 
 time to time explained to you," Ix>rd Colville had said to the 
 shareholders m February, ,890, "the enormous difficulties which 
 we have to encounter in getting our suburban traffic into London- 
 and we cannot shut our eyes to the impending certainty that ere' 
 long we shall be compelled to find means of taking that traffic 
 
 1890 
 
 DIFFICULTIES IN LONDON 
 
 407 
 
 more thoroughly into the heart of London than we now do.'* The 
 fact was— though Lord Colville did not put it into so many words— 
 that the extreme limit was fast being reached of the capacity of both 
 the Metropolitan and North London companies to carry Great 
 Northern passengers to and from the City in the busy hours of the 
 day. Mr. John Bell, the Metropolitan manager, would have it, it 
 is true, that the fault lay with the Great Northern time-table arrange- 
 ments, and that there was ample accommodation still available on 
 his company's "widened lines." But in October, 1890, Mr. Oakley 
 had pointed out to him that between 8.28 a.m. and 10 a.m. daily 
 twenty-eight " up " trains in all passed over those lines, and between 
 5.1 p.m. and 7.1 1 p.m. forty-two "down" trains, the average intervals 
 
 A Great Northern Saddletank Locomotive. 
 
 being 3*143 and 3 095 minutes respectively, and that more time than 
 this was really required, seeing that there were three double junctions 
 to be passed, and that the ingress and egress at the Moorgate Street 
 terminus was by single line. It was impossible for any impartial person 
 to dispute the need for new accommodation. 
 
 The great difficulty, of course, was its huge cost. Thus, as long 
 before as 1882, the Great Northern directors had supported the 
 incorporation of the "North Metropolitan Railway and Canal 
 Company," to purchase the Regent's Canal and construct a line 
 along its course from Paddington to King's Cross, and thence, partly 
 on the Canal Company's lands but mainly through houses, to a 
 City station at the Barbican ; indeed, they had gone so far as to 
 offer a guarantee upon a portion of its capital. Yet, notwithstanding 
 this, the scheme, owing to its costliness, had found no favour with 
 investors, and its promoters were now anxious to abandon it as far 
 
 
 K 
 
 \i^r:^ yzifs^ 
 
I. 
 
 406 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 no less than 325 feet above the level of its existing passenger 
 terminus m that town. To understand fully the advantage of this 
 one must be familiar with the extraordinary physical conformation 
 of the district. Nor were the Company's improvements in the West 
 Ridmg of Yorkshire yet completed. The junction lines between 
 Pudsey and Low Moor, Bradford, which it had agreed with the 
 Lancashire and Yorkshire Company to make as long before as 
 1882, had not been put in hand until 1890, and they contained 
 some heavy works. Moreover, at Laister Dyke, in the same neigh- 
 bourhood, a site for an enlarged station had to be excavated out 
 of solid rock. 
 
 Throughout 1890 Mr. Johnson had been making good progress 
 with the London suburban widenings, and in February, 1891 he 
 was able to report that the « up " single-line tunnel north of Southgate 
 had been opened since 15 October, 1890, that the "down" tunnel 
 at the same place was well advanced, and that about one-third 
 had been completed of the new double -line tunnel just outside 
 King's Cross. The engineering difficulties of this latter work had, 
 at the suggestion of the contractor, Mr. Lovatt, been ingeniously 
 surmounted by the use of an invention known as "Jennings' patent 
 needles," with the aid of which it had been found possible to " drive " 
 the tunnel all the way from the north side of the Regent's Canal 
 to the north face. Owing to its nearness to the surface this would 
 not have been possible had the ordinary process of roofing with 
 timber been the only one available, and consequently the "cut and 
 cover " process would have had to have been adopted, to the great 
 disturbance of work in the goods terminus overhead. But by the use 
 of the patent steel bars in place of timber, and by lowering the section 
 of the tunnel about three feet at the crown, the margin left below the 
 surface was increased by five feet six inches. Thus it was possible to 
 carry the work beneath the rails, warehouses, and van-roads of the 
 goods station without opening out to the surface at all. 
 
 Thus the Company was in a fair way to the speedy completion 
 of duplicate, and in places triplicate, tracks throughout the whole of 
 its suburban area between Barnet and King's Cross. Nevertheless, 
 it was no nearer getting rid of the " suburban incubus " than it had 
 been at any time within the previous twenty years. "I have from 
 time to time explained to you," Lord ColviUe had said to the 
 shareholders in February, 1890, "the enormous difficulties which 
 we have to encounter in getting our suburban traffic into London • 
 and we cannot shut our eyes to the impending certainty that ere 
 long we shall be compelled to find means of taking that traffic 
 
 \ 
 
 1890 
 
 DIFFICULTIES IN LONDON 
 
 407 
 
 more thoroughly into the heart of London than we now do.'' The 
 fact was-though Lord ColviUe did not put it into so many words— 
 that the extreme limit was fast being reached of the capacity of both 
 the Metropolitan and North London companies to carry Great 
 Northern passengers to and from the City in the busy hours of the 
 day. Mr. John Bell, the Metropolitan manager, would have it, it 
 is true, that the fault lay with the Great Northern time-table arrange- 
 ments, and that there was ample accommodation still available on 
 his company's "widened lines." But in October, 1890, Mr. Oakley 
 had pointed out to him that between 8.28 a.m. and 10 a.m. daily 
 twenty-eight " up " trains in all passed over those lines, and between 
 5.1 p.m. and 7. 11 p.m. forty-two "down" trains, the average intervals 
 
 A Gkeat Northern Saddletank Locomotive. 
 
 being 3-143 and 3095 minutes respectively, and that more time than 
 this was really required, seeing that there were three double junctions 
 to be passed, and that the ingress and egress at the Moorgate Street 
 terminus was by single line. It was impossible for any impartial person 
 to dispute the need for new accommodation. 
 
 The great difficulty, of course, was its huge cost. Thus, as long 
 before as 1882, the Great Northern directors had supported the 
 incorporation of the "North Metropolitan Railway and Canal 
 Company," to purchase the Regent's Canal and construct a line 
 along its course from Paddington to King's Cross, and thence, partly 
 on the Canal Company's lands but mainly through houses, to a 
 City station at the Barbican; indeed, they had gone so far as to 
 offer a guarantee upon a portion of its capital. Yet, notwithstanding 
 this, the scheme, owing to its costliness, had found no favour with 
 investors, and its promoters were now anxious to abandon it as far 
 

 ^/ 
 
 n 
 
 \¥ 
 
 408 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 as the City line was concerned. London suburban travellers, it 
 seemed, could grumble heartily, but there appeared to be no public 
 spirit amongst them to do what we have seen done repeatedly by 
 Yorkshiremen— to share, as investors, in the risk of improving the 
 railway facilities. 
 
 Nevertheless, if only for the sake of keeping a fair field for their 
 long-distance traffic, the Great Northern authorities could not treat 
 the matter with indifference, and so they had several surveys made 
 for a City extension of their own to leave the main line at Holloway 
 or Fmsbury Park. But they found, in Mr. Oakley's words, that " with 
 a reasonably good station in the City, nothing under three millions," 
 i.e., a million a mile, "would look at it," and that therefore an extension 
 of the ordinary kind was " commercially impossible." However, when 
 in December, 1890, the first of London's deep-soil railways was success- 
 fully opened on the other side of the Metropolis— a kind of line much 
 cheaper in construction than any London had yet seen— hope of a 
 solution of their difficulty revived at King's Cross. 
 
 For the present, however, Mr. Oakley and his colleagues had plenty 
 of Parliamentary work in hand in connection with the Manchester, 
 Sheffield, and Lincolnshire (Extension to London) Bill, and the 
 Provisional Order to confirm the Board of Trade's obnoxious 
 schedule of new rates. The fight over the former came first 
 beginning on 17 April, 1891, before a House of Commons 
 Committee, presided over by Mr. Woodall. Mr. Littler, as usual 
 led for the Sheffield ; Mr. Pope, Mr. Balfour Browne, and Mr. Cripps 
 were for the Great Northern ; Mr. Pope also represented the London 
 and North Western, and Mr. Bidder the Midland. All three of the 
 great north-and-south powers were, it is needless to say, against the 
 Bill. 
 
 Nevertheless the Sheffield authorities professed themselves confident 
 of success, and they had no difficulty in making out a strong case for 
 public interest. They could point to the fact that the Great Northern, 
 Midland, and Great Eastern had each in turn established themselves 
 as trunk lines in the teeth of vested interests, and that, while the trade 
 of the country and its population were continually increasing, the last 
 of the new routes to the North— that of the Great Eastern— was 
 already ten years old. Against the Great Northern particularly, Mr. 
 Littler could direct some telling quotations from Lord ColviUe's 
 speeches as to its urgent need for more accommodation near London, 
 and make effective play with a catch-phrase of Sir Edward Watkin's 
 that there had been too much "poulticing" of the old lines already— 
 that a new line was what the public must have. As to the Fifty Years 
 
 1891 
 
 "ACRES OF RUBBISH" 
 
 409 
 
 Agreement with the Great Northern, the Sheffield counsel said : " We 
 say that, now that Article 14 is gone from it— /.^. the article expunged 
 at the instance of the Huddersfield people— this Bill which we are 
 promoting has nothing to do with that agreement. We shall continue 
 to carry the traffic under that agreement as we have done hitherto. 
 The only difference will be that we shall have a route of our own 
 by which we shall also send it." 
 
 The case for the Bill lasted until the end of May, Mr. Pollitt, not 
 Sir Edward Watkin, being chief witness, and then the landowners' 
 opposition was taken, to be 
 followed by that of the London 
 and North Western and Midland 
 companies. Under the influ- 
 ence, perhaps, of Mr. Bidder's 
 impassioned speech for the latter 
 Company, in which he charac- 
 terized the case for the Sheffield 
 Company as *• acres of rubbish 
 and flummery," the Tiwes of 12 
 June confidently predicted the 
 failure of the Bill, with the result 
 that its editor was threatened in 
 the Committee-room with "com- 
 mittal for contempt " ; but the 
 Sheffield authorities maintained 
 their confidence. On this same 
 day, Friday, 12 June, 1891, "Sir 
 Henry Oakley " was called. 
 
 Having been knighted but a few 
 weeks since, Sir Henry entered 
 
 the box " with all his blushing honours fresh upon him." Under the 
 guidance of Mr. Pope, he plunged at once into the question of the 
 agreement of i860. "The effect of the construction of this line," 
 said he, " must be the absolute disruption of that agreement, because 
 the existence of a competing interest on the pari of the Sheffield 
 Company would be absolutely contrary to its very soul and spirit, which 
 was that the two companies were to unite to do their best in every 
 respect to promote the joint interest." The agreement had been made, 
 he went on to explain, at a time when the Sheffield Company had been 
 in very great difficulties,* so that the Great Northern had had " to put 
 
 ♦ ''We picked the Sheffield up out of the dirt," the reader may remember 
 Mr. Denison, g.c, had said in 1873. 
 
 Sir Henry Oakley. 
 
1 M 
 I 
 
 I" 
 
 410 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 its best leg fomard" to make the new service with Manchester re- 
 munerative. The Great Northern had then taken "the labouring oar" 
 as regards speed, and supplied the rolling stock, until the Sheffield had 
 turned the corner on the road to improvement; and since then the 
 traffic via Retford had been worked to all intents and purposes as 
 a partnership without any discord between the officers or any complaint 
 from one Board to the other, until this "bolt from the blue" had 
 appeared. The intervention of Mr. Underdown in the Huddersfield 
 case had been an error in the Sheffield view, seeing that Mr. PoUitt now 
 said that Huddersfield was not in the agreement, "and it does seem to 
 our limited vision," said Sir Henry, "especially hard that advantage 
 should now be taken of the excision of Clause 14 from the agreement 
 owing to the error of their own manager, to justify the Sheffield in de- 
 parting from what was its original object and intention." 
 
 "It is altogether an illusion," he continued, "to attribute to the 
 possession of arbitrary running powers by the Great Northern any 
 adequate means of repairing the loss that must inevitably ensue from 
 the transfer of the goodwill of the Sheffield Company to another route." 
 Such running powers could be made use over so great a distance 
 only as a last resource to get some traffic, and they were provided for in 
 the agreement as a remedy against slackness of energy on the part of 
 either of the companies, and not with any idea of separation of interests. 
 Even on the improved terms offered by Mr. Pollitt in 1889 there would 
 not be any appreciable recompense for the injury the Great Northern 
 would suffer. " Your argument, I take it," interposed the Chairman, 
 "is that the construction of this new line to London will convert a 
 co-partnership into a fierce competition "; and Sir Henry assented, glad 
 to find that his points were going home in the right quarter. 
 
 Then Mr. Balfour Browne took up the examination, and in answer to 
 him Sir Henry explained the injury which the new line would inflict on 
 the Great Northern in regard to the Cheshire lines and the South York- 
 shire coalfield. " I have utterly failed to persuade myself," he said in 
 answer to another interposition from the Chairman, " that Mr. Pollitt or 
 any other manager with a burden of six millions of new capital on his 
 back, will not send all the traffic he possibly can over the new line on 
 which he has spent the money. But if he does what he has promised, 
 and continues to send by our line for the sake of the bonus, his traffic 
 case for the Bill has largely gone." Then, after a few more questions 
 and answers the hearing was adjourned to the following Monday, and 
 so the Great Northern manager was left an interval before him in which 
 to prepare a few more shafts for the renewal of his evidence on that 
 day. 
 
 1891 
 
 A HOME THRUST 
 
 411 
 
 In his vigorous speech for the Midland company, Mr. Bidder had 
 drawn pointed attention to the financial position of the Sheffield Com- 
 pany. "They have got nearly seven millions of unexecuted capital 
 powers at the present moment," said he, "and I should have thought 
 that with a reasonable appetite in the way of aggression and competition 
 six millions and three-quarters was about enough to deal with at once, 
 without coming for a further six millions to carry out further aggressions." 
 Upon this the Chairman had suggested to the Sheffield counsel that it 
 would be convenient if a statement were furnished showing the extent 
 to which the Company had uncompleted liabilities on hand, and this 
 statement had accordingly been put in just before the commencement 
 of Sir Henry Oakley's evidence on the Friday. Now it occurred to him 
 that he and his assistant, Mr. W. J. Grinling, could not employ the 
 interval till the Monday better than in elaborating this a little for the 
 further enlightenment of the Committee. 
 
 The result was the preparation of a statement that came in as a 
 dramatic finish to the Great Northern manager's examination-in-chief 
 on that day. It showed that the Sheffield Company was already 
 committed to raise capital to the extent of ^5,000,394 for new lines 
 and ^2,109,264 for general purposes, and that during the previous ten 
 years it had raised ;^4,oo2,264 only. " How has that ;^4,oo2,264 
 been raised?" asked Mr. Balfour Browne. "It has been raised by 
 debenture stock, guaranteed stock, and preference stock." " Has any 
 of it been raised by ordinary stock ? " " None." 
 
 That the thrust had gone home was proved by an immediate inter- 
 ruption from Mr. Littler. " It is an extraordinary thing," said he, 
 "that the Great Northern should start such evidence as this now 
 without having based a syllable of cross-examination upon it, and I 
 shall ask to recall Mr. Pollitt." " If there is anything that you want 
 to explain you are entitled to recall Mr. Pollitt," retorted Mr. Pope. 
 But when a few minutes later the Sheffield counsel rose to cross- 
 examine, he could find nothing better to suggest about the figures than 
 that they were " rather the business of the shareholders " ; and in his 
 speech in reply upon the whole case on the following day, his detailed 
 criticism of them, carefully prepared overnight, amounted to little more 
 than that their production had been " a little bit of malice on the Great 
 Northern's part." Mr. Pollitt had not been recalled. 
 
 At the conclusion of Mr. Littler's speech, which lasted well on into 
 the afternoon of this day — 16 June, 1891 — the hearing ended, but the 
 Chairman then announced that the Committee wished to have a little 
 time to deliberate. Accordingly they adjourned until five o'clock. At 
 that hour in a crowded room, and amid much pent-up excitement, 
 
 n 
 
 r 11 
 
( ) 
 
 412 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 Mr. Woodall gave their decision. "It is not necessary," he said, "toassure 
 all those who are interested in the case how careful, how conscientious 
 an amount of attention has been given to all that has been presented to 
 the Committee during this very long hearing, and after deliberating very 
 fully upon all the material points, the Committee find the preamble not 
 proved." The Bill was rejected. 
 
 Meanwhile the hearing of the Provisional Orders to enforce the new 
 Board of Trade classification and schedules of rates had been com- 
 menced before a Joint Committee of the two Houses, presided over by 
 the Duke of Richmond. The London and North Western Company's 
 Order had been taken first ; but, as it had been agreed that its pro- 
 visions, when settled, should be taken as models for the other com- 
 panies, it had been necessary for the Great Northern's counsel and its 
 officers— Sir Henry Oakley, Mr. Twelvetrees, and Mr. Barrs— to be in 
 attendance from the first. They had to continue their exertions until 
 17 July, when, after a hearing which added forty-eight days to the 
 eighty-five days already consumed by the preliminary Board of Trade 
 inquiry, the first batch of Orders passed through Committee. These, 
 which applied to the nine companies having termini in London, were 
 issued on 5 August, 1891, but they were not to come into force until 
 I August, 1892. It was impossible as yet to gauge their effect upon 
 railway revenue. 
 
 Though quite overshadowed by the other business just recorded, the 
 Bill which the Great Northern Company itself promoted in 1891 was of 
 some importance. It sought powers for the extension of the Leen 
 Valley line from Annesley northwards about twelve miles to Langwith, 
 the extension to more than double its existing size of the City goods 
 depot at Farringdon Street— a very costly work— and various widenings 
 and improvements of the main line and branches. As a result of the 
 rejection of the Sheffield Bill the Leen Valley project was withdrawn, 
 but, nevertheless, in its Act as passed the Great Northern took powers to 
 raise a million of new capital. Following upon the new million 
 authorized so recently as the preceding session, this indicated an 
 accelerated rate of capital expenditure— a tendency, in short, to return 
 to the policy so long followed prior to 1884 of adding to capital 
 account at the rate of a million a year. Two elements in this have not 
 yet been alluded to. These were a heavy current expense for new 
 waggons (partly as the result of the Midland's latest coup d'etat, the 
 purchase of the whole stocks of the colliery owners trading on its lines) 
 and the cost of oil-gas works for the lighting of carriages, which were 
 being erected at Holloway, at Doncaster, and at Leeds. An experiment 
 with electric lighting had proved unsuccessful except for trains en bloc, 
 
 
 1891 
 
 G.N. AND SHEFFIELD COMPROMISE 
 
 413 
 
 and so the directors had decided to adopt " Pope's system " of oil-gas 
 lighting in place of the oil lamps used up to this date. 
 
 Meantime, immediately upon the rejection of their Bill, Sir Edward 
 Watkin and his colleagues had announced their determination to revive 
 their extension scheme in the following session, and they had repeated 
 their invitation to the Great Northern to join them in its promotion 
 and construction. " The obvious reply," said Lord Colville at the Great 
 Northern meeting on 10 August, 1891, "is a refusal to join in, and 
 spend our capital upon, a scheme which can only be successful by 
 diverting traffic which comes within the agreement existing between 
 the two companies. But if the Sheffield Company desires to modify 
 the existing agreement, we are quite willing to listen to any fair and 
 reasonable proposition." 
 
 The outcome was that in the autumn of the year negotiations 
 were formally opened between the two companies through Sir Henry 
 Oakley and Mr. Pollitt. Sir Henry had already said in his 
 evidence, that " the price of the new line " to London must be the 
 abolition of the old agreement and the loss of its " bonus mileage " 
 to the Sheffield Company, and this, with full access for the Great 
 Northern to its joint property in Manchester, Liverpool, and Cheshire 
 by running powers over all the Manchester, Sheffield, and Lincoln lines 
 west of Sheffield and north of Nottingham, was the irreducible mini- 
 mum on which he now insisted as the condition of the withdrawal 
 of his Company's opposition to the re-deposited Sheffield Bill. 
 Mr. Pollitt, on his part, asked and obtained for his Company, in 
 return, running powers over all the Great Northern lines north of 
 Doncaster, i.e., in the West Riding. It was further arranged that 
 a "living wage," namely, 33 J per cent, of the gross receipts, should 
 be allowed by the owning to the running company in either case. 
 The Great Northern, moreover, obtained an important advantage by 
 securing a half-share in the " central station " projected by the Sheffield 
 Company in Nottingham. This, together with the running powers over 
 the new line northwards from that town, promised to secure for it what 
 had long been an object of its ambition, a route through Nottingham 
 to Sheffield and Manchester, alternative to the existing route vtd 
 Retford. Nevertheless, the agreement was admittedly a//V a//er so far 
 as the Great Northern was concerned. 
 
 In this same autumn of 1891 a project was set on foot which gave 
 good promise of relieving the Great Northern Company from the 
 worst weight of its "suburban incubus." In October of the year 
 Mr. J. H. Greathead, the pioneer of deep-soil tunnelling, and 
 Mr. Francis Fox submitted a scheme to the directors at King's Cross 
 
X 
 
 f' 
 
 M 
 
 414 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 for a line, similar in construction to the City and South London 
 Railway, to run from Finsbury Park by Drayton Park and Essex Road 
 to a City terminus at Finsbury Pavement, the traffic to be worked by 
 electricity. To this the Great Northern authorities objected that 
 it meant a " break of gauge " at Finsbury Park, whereupon Messrs. 
 Greathead and Fox replied that it would be quite feasible, not only 
 to make the tunnels big enough for the standard gauge, but to haul the 
 ordinary Great Northern carriages through them by electric motors. 
 A week or two later they came again to King's Cross with a positive 
 assurance on this latter point from Mr. Siemens, the electrician. 
 So confident, indeed, were they and their backers of the merits of this 
 amended plan that, to be in time for the session of 1892, they 
 deposited without further delay a Bill under the title of the "Great 
 Northern and City Railway." Thereupon the Great Northern directors 
 declared their intention to support the scheme by every fair and legiti- 
 mate means in their power. 
 
 This, however, aroused the strong opposition of the Metropolitan 
 Company, who contended that it was a breach of the agreement 
 of 1869 under which the Great Northern was running its suburban 
 trains over " the widened lines " between King's Cross and Moorgate 
 Street. So when Sir Henry Oakley appeared to give evidence in 
 favour of the Great Northern and City Bill in June, 1892, he found 
 himself cross-examined on behalf of the Metropolitan by his opponent 
 of the previous year, Mr. Littler, who, of course, attempted to turn 
 the tables in the matter of agreement-keeping. But there could be no 
 doubt about there being "a little bit of malice" this time, for when 
 the case for the opponents began, Sir Edward Watkin, as chairman 
 of the Metropolitan, himself came into the box, and described the 
 action of the Great Northern as "simply a repudiation" of the 
 agreement of 1869. "I know," he said, "that it has been stated 
 in this room that there is no specific clause saying that the * widened 
 lines ' shall be used ; but I have always understood that honesty always 
 interprets these agreements that where two companies have agreed 
 and where one has performed his part of the agreement, the other 
 should do so without any denial of it." Nevertheless, the Committee 
 passed the Great Northern and City Bill. 
 
 The Manchester, Sheffield, and Lincoln Extension to London Bill 
 also passed this session, and, besides getting powers under this to 
 make a junction line in Nottingham to connect with the proposed 
 joint "central station" there, the Great Northern, by an Act of its 
 own, obtained the powers from which it had withdrawn in the previous 
 session, to extend its Leen Valley line to Langwith. It also obtained 
 
 I 
 
 1892 BRIDGE-BUILDING IN THE SMALL HOURS 415 
 
 authority to raise yet another million of capital — the third million in 
 successive years, exclusive of borrowing powers. This suggested that 
 such "rest" as had been given to the capital account between 1884 
 and 1887 had been artificial and was now being paid for. 
 
 Early in June, 1892, the new Maiden Lane tunnel at King's Cross, 
 and at the close of the same month the "down" single-line tunnel 
 between Southgate and Barnet, were opened for traffic — works which 
 completed the duplicate tracks, both " up " and " down," all the way 
 between King's Cross and Barnet. But by this time two new important 
 improvements had been put in hand within the suburban area. These 
 were the construction of a viaduct over the main lines at Haringay, to 
 form a return road for engines bringing trains to the sidings there — 
 a very difficult work, because it had to be built 'on the skew" with 
 spans of unequal length, and, of course, a sharp rise and fall in 
 gradient— and a further widening at Holloway, to provide a separate 
 track for " down " goods traffic. 
 
 This latter work necessitated the placing of a new large plate-girder 
 bridge across the Holloway Road, and great interest was excited in the 
 locality when the news spread that the crucial part of this work— the 
 moving of the girders into position overhead — was to be carried out as 
 one operation in the small hours of the morning of Sunday, 2 October, 
 1892. The two girders, each 1 10 feet long and 10 feet high, were first 
 built up on the south abutment of the bridge on a series of four steel 
 rollers. Then, alongside the abutment, projecting about one foot above 
 its top, two piles were driven some eight feet into the ground. To the 
 bridge itself and to the top of these piles pulley blocks were then 
 fixed, and to these strong steel wire was attached in connection with a 
 powerful steam winch placed in a siding some distance away. On the 
 Thursday, the Stockton Forge Company's engineers built alongside 
 the southern abutment two large trestles, each fitted with twelve wheels 
 capable of running on ordinary rails, and on the Friday morning the 
 bridge was moved forward by means of the wire and the winch, until it 
 overhung the abutments by about twenty feet, and slightly projected 
 over the trestles. Then operations were suspended until the last tram- 
 car should have passed at Saturday midnight. Then, despite the hour, 
 a crowd of many thousand persons collected, and these were with 
 difficulty kept back by policemen, while the tram rails and pavement 
 were taken up and replaced by the rails for the trestles which the 
 engineers had ready to hand in sections laid on a strong timber frame- 
 work. About 3.30 a.m. these preparations were completed, and then, 
 just as the first streaks of dawn were beginning to light up the faces of 
 the undiminished crowd, the steam winch was set to work. Motion 
 
^>s 
 
 1)1 
 
 I 
 
 ni 
 
 II 
 
 11 1 
 
 416 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 was at once imparted to the trestles, and soon the huge mass of the 
 bridge was moving slowly and steadily forward amid the hearty cheers 
 of the onlookers. Every now and then a short stoppage had to be 
 made to ascertain that the tackle had kept in order and that the strains 
 were equally distributed, but with this exception no hitch occurred, and 
 the girders were got into exact position and the roadway replaced in 
 time for the passage underneath of the first Sunday tram. 
 
 Meantime, work of a very different character was engrossing the 
 attention, and entrenching also upon the Sundays, of Mr. Twelve- 
 trees, the goods manager, and a large staff" of regular and supple- 
 
 Briix:e over Holloway Road when in course of duplication. 
 
 mentary clerks at King's Cross. This was the preparation of the 
 new rates in accordance with the Provisional Order of 1891. Already 
 the time originally fixed for these to come into force had gone by, 
 and even the five months' grace — till i January, 1893 — which the 
 companies had subsequently obtained, was proving quite inadequate 
 for the enormous amount of clerical work entailed upon them. For 
 comparing the new "cast-iron" Board of Trade classification with 
 the more elastic "Clearing House" classification under which the 
 companies had worked up to this time, it had been found that of 
 3000 items contained in the latter, 341 had been raised in class, 192 
 had been reduced, and about 900 omitted altogether, and with regard 
 to every one of these separate advices had to be sent to every station. 
 The number of separate rates affected was 13,000,000 on the Great 
 
 1893 
 
 THE RATES OUTCRY 
 
 417 
 
 Northern alone. Moreover, seeing that the Provisional Orders for the 
 non-London companies had not been issued until 20 June, 1892 — 
 nearly a year after the others — the fixing of the through rates — by far 
 the most difficult part of the work — had had to be left to the last. The 
 result was that the officials found it impossible to do more than to 
 insert the ordinary " class-rates " in the rate-books by the date fixed for 
 their publication— 16 December, 1892. The "special rates," under 
 which the bulk of the traffic was nominally carried, were all left to be 
 dealt with afterwards. 
 
 But if by the tactics thus forced upon them the railway authorities 
 thought to "score off"" the traders, they very soon found out their 
 mistake. The charging of the new maximum class rates as the actual 
 rates evoked at once a storm of indignation throughout the country ; 
 the newspapers were flooded with complaints ; meetings were held, and 
 deputations demanding redress waited upon the Board of Trade. Worse 
 than this, traders generally refused to pay the new charges, and the 
 whole system of traffic accounting was in danger of becoming dis- 
 organized. Coming on the top of all the new and strenuous work 
 which had been entailed upon them since the passing of the Act of 
 1888, this agitation drove the goods managers and their clerks well- 
 nigh to despair. The only practical remedy was temporarily to restore 
 the old " Clearing House classification " until the new maxima could 
 be adapted to the new one, and on the Great Northern this latter work 
 was taken so energetically in hand that at the half-yearly meeting 
 on 14 February, 1893, Lord Colville was able to announce that 
 upwards of 100,000 of its rates had already been amended in the 
 new books. "It is somewhat remarkable," he added, "that during 
 the whole of the outcry not a word has been uttered by traders as 
 to the reductions that have been made." 
 
 In the session of 1893 the Great Northern and Midland companies 
 obtained powers to acquire jointly the eastern section of the Eastern 
 and Midlands Company's system— lines, 113 miles in length, extend- 
 ing from Lynn to Cromer, Yarmouth, and Norwich. The considera- 
 tion agreed upon was ;^ 1,200,000 of Midland and Great Northern 
 rent-charge stock, entitled to a fixed dividend of 3 per cent, per 
 annum, but the liability of ;£"36,ooo per annum thus involved was 
 not to fall immediately upon the purchasing companies. The stock 
 was to be divided into ;^ 748,000 of A stock, and ;^^45 2,000 of B 
 stock, and while the former was to receive 3 per cent, after the first 
 year, the latter was to get no dividend until June, 1897, and there- 
 after a progressive dividend not reaching the full 3 per cent, until 
 1901. Thus it will be seen that the two companies acquired these 
 
 2 E 
 
 :1 
 
I 
 
 m 
 
 I 
 
 t 
 
 
 f 
 
 i 
 
 1 
 
 r 
 1 * 
 
 m 
 
 y 
 
 418 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 113 miles of agricultural railway at a decidedly low price, and when the 
 seaside traffic between London and Cromer, Sheringham, etc., is more 
 fully developed, the bargain is likely to prove to have been a very good 
 one for the Great Northern. 
 
 This new acquisition was vested with what had been the western 
 section of the Eastern and Midlands in the Midland and Great 
 Northern Joint Committee from i July, 1893, and it increased the 
 Great Northern's mileage total to 879, of which no less than 228 
 miles represented shares in joint undertakings. From i December, 
 1893, the new junction line, about two miles in length, between 
 Dudley Hill and Low Moor, Bradford, was opened, and in 1894 the 
 Company took over by perpetual lease, under an Act of that year, 
 the twelve miles of the Stamford and Essendine Railway which it had 
 worked ever since its opening in 1856. Under the same Act powers 
 were obtained to enable the Company to purchase jointly with the 
 Lancashire and Yorkshire the Halifax High Level line, three and a 
 quarter miles. These operations raised the Company's mileage, at 30 
 June, 1895, to 894 miles, and its capital to just about ;^46,ooo,ooo— 
 over ;£"5o,ooo per mile. Evidently the cheap price at which the 
 new agricultural lines had been acquired had been more than balanced 
 by the expenditure on existing mileage in London and Yorkshire. It 
 should be added that the Company was working, in addition, forty-four 
 miles of lines owned by other companies, and running trains over 
 121 " foreign '' miles more. 
 
 Meantime, thanks to the "great coal strike," which had lasted over 
 no less than sixteen weeks of the second half of 1893, the Company's 
 dividend had suffered most severely, having sunk for that year so low 
 as 3 per cent. ; and the same and other adverse influences continuing 
 throughout 1894, it rose in that year to ^^3 los. per cent. only. Under 
 these circumstances it could not be surprising that at the half-yearly 
 meeting on 13 February, 1895, shareholders complained rather 
 strongly. However, the Right Hon. W. L. Jackson, m.p.— who was in 
 a few weeks to succeed Lord Colville as chairman of the Company- 
 was felt to strike the right note when he said, " Do not let us decry 
 our own position too much. We have difficulties enough to meet ; but 
 we are going to face them, and we think we shall get through them." 
 Already this prophecy has, to a large extent, been fulfilled.* 
 
 In the summer of 1893 the rivalry between the East Coast, West 
 Coast, and ^lidland-Scotch routes had resulted in the simultaneous 
 putting-on of a new midday service by each of the three, in all of 
 which dining-car accommodation had been given for the first time to 
 
 • September, 1897. 
 
 
 1895 
 
 BEGINNING OF ANOTHER RACE 
 
 419 
 
 third-class, penny-a-mile passengers. But since " the race to Edinburgh " 
 no speed-cutting worthy the name had been attempted, and eight and 
 a half hours still remained the best time alike between King's Cross 
 and Waverley and Euston and Prince's Street. North of Edinburgh, 
 however, the North British, having by this time put its house into 
 better order, had, in 1894, quick- 
 ened the twelve and a quarter 
 hours service from London to 
 Aberdeen, initiated in 1890, to 
 eleven hours thirty-five minutes, 
 and had thus beaten the West 
 Coast's best time by fifteen 
 minutes. This was the state of 
 things at the beginning of the 
 summer season of 1895. 
 
 Late in June of that year 
 the West Coast companies an- 
 nounced t'/i/er alia that, to make 
 sure of a connection with the 
 Great North of Scotland, their 
 best train, the 8 p.m. from 
 Euston, would be accelerated 
 from I July to reach Aberdeen 
 at 7.40 a.m., five minutes only 
 behind the East Coast. The 
 East Coast replied ititer alia by 
 accelerating their best, the 8 p.m. 
 
 from King's Cross, to arrive at 7.20. This latter was a very important 
 step, because it meant that for the first time since August, 1888, a 
 train was to be booked to run between London and Edinburgh in 
 less than eight and a half hours, the precise time now allowed for 
 the East Coast night express being eight hours thirteen minutes. 
 
 Of course the West Coast remonstrated, whereupon the East Coast 
 authorities replied that "the informal understanding" of 1888 had 
 never been meant to apply to the night trains. And indeed, whether 
 it was meant so to apply or not, it did not seem reasonable to attempt 
 to tie the shorter route down indefinitely to a time which was quite 
 easy going for the day train, even with its twenty minutes stop for 
 luncheon at York. On the other hand, the West Coast could not be 
 expected to submit to take second place not only for Edinburgh, but 
 for Perth and Aberdeen — places which had long been regarded as its 
 strongholds. Needless to say, the authorities of the North Western and 
 
 The Right Hon. W. L. Jackson, M.P. 
 
7 
 
 420 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 Caledonian companies had no such intention, and to prove conclusively 
 that they had not, they announced on 15 July, 1895, by huge blue 
 posters on the portals of Euston and elsewhere, that from that very 
 evening their time from London to Aberdeen would be eleven hours, 
 i.e. twenty minutes better than their rivals'. The same night they did 
 this feat with fourteen minutes to spare, and on the morning of the 
 17th their train ran into Aberdeen at 6.21, no less than thirty-nine 
 minutes before time. 
 
 An East Coast Third-Class Dining Car. 
 
 The East Coast reply did not come until 22 July, and then it was 
 not very effective in light of the actual times which the West Coast 
 was making. All it did was to cap the latter's booked time by fifteen 
 minutes by making its own booked time ten hours forty-five minutes. 
 To do this the Great Northern booked London to York in three hours 
 thirty-five minutes, the same time as its first "racing" allowance in 
 1888. The West Coast put out no answering advertisement, but 
 simply settled down quietly to do its sixteen miles longer journey in 
 five minutes less than its rival, i.e. ten hours thirty-five minutes. As 
 in 1888 the East Coast ran the heavier trains, but the loads by both 
 were larger than in 1888. A more important difference was that on the 
 
 1895 
 
 A TOUGH STRUGGLE 
 
 421 
 
 East Coast booked times of departure were punctiliously observed at 
 every stopping station, the train being often kept back thereby, while 
 the West Coast observed no booked times at all. The result was that, 
 though by spurting north of Arbroath the East Coast drivers managed 
 
 < 
 
 K 
 
 H 
 
 < 
 
 u 
 
 I 
 
 o 
 z 
 
 H 
 
 < 
 
 O 
 
 O 
 
 H 
 
 < 
 
 z 
 
 < 
 
 all through the week to be in at Aberdeen five minutes (once seven 
 minutes) before time, every morning they found the West Coast 
 "racer" already there. 
 
 Though perplexed by the silence of the other side, who still made 
 no announcement of an earlier arrival than 7 a.m., the East Coast 
 
!'♦ 
 
 If:' 
 
 422 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 proclaimed a further quickening of twenty minutes for the following 
 Monday, 29 July. To this the Great Northern contributed seven 
 minutes, making its time to York two minutes better than the best 
 booked time in 1888, though five minutes under its actual best per- 
 formance then. The train on the Monday consisted of eleven vehicles 
 weighing 179 tons, and the engine employed to Grantham was not, for 
 once in a way, one of the " 8 ft. singles," but a " 7 ft. 7 in.," with inside 
 cylinders (18x26) and no bogie. Nevertheless it drew the heavy 
 load over the first 105 miles in the remarkable time of one hour fifty- 
 three minutes. Then an " 8 ft. single " came on, and York was reached 
 in three hours twenty-four minutes — just two minutes behind the 
 "record" of 1888, but with nearly double the load. However, when 
 Aberdeen was reached at 6.20, the West Coast with a load of about 
 160 tons had been there fifteen minutes already. Moreover on the 
 following morning, 31 July, the West Coast train arrived at 5.59, 
 one minute within ten hours. Yet at Euston Square and on every 
 North Western parcels cart the blue posters still read : " Aberdeen 
 arr. 7.0 a.m." 
 
 Throughout the " grouse " fortnight the West Coast continued to be 
 in invariably first at Aberdeen, the East Coast runs being usually 
 spoiled by signal stops or by undue delays at stations caused by the 
 greater number of its passengers. But on the morning of Thursday, 
 the 15th, there was almost a tie at Kinnaber Junction, the West Coast 
 getting the road (which thence to Aberdeen, it will be remembered, is 
 the same by both routes) by about a minute only. On the following 
 Monday morning, 19 August, the "be-ready" bells, it is said, rang 
 together in the junction signal-box, and the Caledonian signalman 
 magnanimously gave the road to the " foreign " train. However this 
 may be, on that morning the East Coast train for the first time in the 
 "race " ran in ahead at 6.17. 
 
 Meantime Mr. Cockshott and his colleagues had put out a new 
 notice, dated 16 August, and this time it was an effective reply. It 
 announced that from the following Monday, 19 August, the East Coast 
 time would be 9 hours 40 minutes— nineteen minutes better than the 
 best run of its rivals up to date. As far as the Great Northern was 
 concerned, this meant that London to York was to be booked in 
 3 hours 18 minutes — four minutes better than its "record" of 1888. 
 The train on the eventful Monday night consisted of an eight- 
 wheeled sleeping car and five six-wheeled coaches, weighing in all 
 105 tons. The engine was Mr. Stirling's No. 668, an "8 ft. single" 
 of the older class. Grantham, 105 miles, was reached in the quite 
 unprecedented time of 105 minutes 52 seconds; and thence, with 
 
 1895 
 
 ENOUGH FOR HONOUR 
 
 423 
 
 
 another "8 ft. single," No. 775, the phenomenal run of 82I miles in 
 79 minutes 9 seconds was accomplished, making the arrival time at 
 York 1 1.9, and bearing the 1888 "record" by thirteen minutes, with a 
 train of about the same weight. Despite several signal checks Edin- 
 burgh was reached in 6| hours, but the North British authoriries would 
 not allow a " before time " departure, either there or at Dundee, and so 
 the race was lost. For though Aberdeen was reached at 5.31 — nine 
 minutes before time — the unconquerable West Coast, with as heavy 
 a load, had been there fifteen minutes already, having done its 540 
 miles in 555 minutes. 
 
 On the following night, 20-21 August, there was another superb 
 race. The Great Northern arrived at York at 11.7, two minutes better 
 than the night before, and as the North Eastern got a clear road this 
 time, and the North Bridsh threw aside puncriliousness, victory seemed 
 assured. But as the racer passed Montrose, and the enthusiasts on 
 board, stiff with excitement, glued their eyes on the west, the steam 
 of the rival train came clearly into view; and fairly and squarely, 
 though by less than a minute, the West Coast got the " line clear " at 
 Kinnaber, bringing their train into Aberdeen at 4.58, while the East 
 Coast, checked at the junction and beyond, did not arrive rill 5. 11. 
 
 On Wednesday, 21 August, the East Coast authorities made a final, 
 and what they thought must be a conclusive effort. With a load of 
 10 1 tons behind it, "No. 668" — the same engine as on the Monday 
 and Tuesday nights— passed Peterborough, 76 J miles, in 72 minutes, 
 and in loi minutes Grantham, 105!, was reached— 63*3 miles per 
 hour throughout so far. But with the better gradients, there came 
 even a better rate than this. Between Grantham and York, 82 J miles 
 — with "No. 775 "again on, as on the two previous nights, a speed 
 of 65*5 miles per hour was maintained throughout, and the train drew 
 up at York platform at ii.i, 188 miles in 181 minutes inclusive, or 
 179 minutes "running rime." At the rime of "the race to Edinburgh" 
 Mr. Stirling had said that London to York in three hours was quite 
 possible, and now it had been done. A "record" to Edinburgh of 
 6 hours 19 minutes followed, and Aberdeen was reached at 4.40, 
 14^ minutes ahead of the rival train, though it too had done its best 
 time up to date. The East Coast run had been at 60 miles an hour 
 throughout, with 3J minutes to spare. 
 
 After this there was no more racing, for the East Coast companies 
 thought they had done enough for honour; but on the following 
 night, 22-23 August, the West Coast, with the field to itself, gave an 
 "exhibirion run," which beat all records. The whole journey was 
 done in 8 hours 32 minutes, a speed of 63 J miles per hour throughout. 
 
 » 
 
rl 
 
 ! \ 
 
 f 
 
 \ 
 
 u 
 
 424 HISTORY OF GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY 
 
 The East Coast had to be content with gaining an advantage of thirty- 
 five minutes in booked time under the truce thereafter patched up.* 
 
 Fifty years before, in 1845, when the Great Northern had been a 
 *' monster infant" not yet christened, the best daily time between 
 London and York had been 7 hours 40 minutes, and the "racing" 
 time exclusive of stojjs, as performed in that "feat unparalleled in the 
 annals of railway travelling in the kingdom," Hudson's "special" to 
 Gateshead on 18 June, 1844, 5 hours 38 minutes. Now, in 1895, the 
 racing time was 2 hours 59 minutes, and the best daily time as fixed 
 after the race to Aberdeen, 3 hours 28 minutes. With this concrete 
 example of what it had done in the first fifty years of its career, we 
 will leave for the i)resent the history of the Company which was first 
 known to the world as "the London and York." 
 
 * For facts cited in llie above account of the " race to the north," I must acknow- 
 ledge my indebtedness to Rev. W. J. Scott's pamphlet Amnader, Mr. Rous-Marten's 
 articles in TAe Engineer, Mr. Acworth's articles in The Times, and Mr. Norman 
 Macdonald's articles in The Scotsman. 
 
 I 
 
 tii 
 
 \\ 
 
 
 Great NonTHErs Express Passenger Locomotive. "8-feet Single." 
 
 u 
 
 INDEX 
 
 M 
 
 Aberdeen, first- G. N. bookings to, 
 
 146. 
 time to in 1876, 317. 
 
 ,, in 1889, 396. 
 
 „ in 1890, 403. 
 Race to, 419, 
 
 Accidents on G. N., 136, 228, 298, 
 306, 321,349, 350, 353, 373. 
 
 Act, cost of passing original G. N., 
 62. 
 Card well, 141, 151, 183. 
 
 Agreement, Fifty Years, with M. S. 
 .S: L., 161, 191, 253, 288, 341, 
 344, 347, 393, 395» 409, 4i3- 
 Alexandra Palace, 232, 280, 293, 
 
 294, 304- 
 Alliance of existing companies against 
 G. N. project, 19. 
 with M. S. <!v: L. Company, 161. 
 Triple, 182. 
 
 policy of Triple reversed, 191. 
 East Coast, 221. 
 
 between G.N. and L. c\: N.W., 283. 
 between Midland and M. S. & L., 283. 
 
 Allport, James, 8, 93, 95, 142, 155, 
 157, 165, 184, 192, 241, 246-255, 
 272, 274, 288, 290. 
 
 Amalgamation proposed with Eastern 
 Counties, 49. 
 with Direct Northern, 52. 
 proposed, of South Yorkshire, 116. 
 proposed, of Ambergate, 116. 
 proposed, with Midland, 122. 
 Attitude of Parliament to, 133, 141. 
 of Ambergate, 145. 
 various from i860 to 1866, 235. 
 proposed, of Great Eastern, 319, 
 
 325. 
 proposed, of M. S. & L. jointly 
 with L. & N. W.,327. 
 
 Ambergate line (Grantham to Not- 
 tingham), 117, 121, 145. 
 
 Amsinck, Major, 10, 25, 26, 298. 
 
 Arbitration, re pooling of passenger 
 traftic, 99, 105, 155, 160. 
 re coal traffic rates, 241, 244, 245. 
 
 Astell, William, 15, 16, 23, 36, 54, 
 64. 
 
 Astell, J. H., 15, 16, 298, 378. 
 
 B 
 
 Ballard, Stephen, 80. 
 
 Barriers to G. N, Service, 93, 95, 96, 
 
 134, 145, 151, 152. 
 Battle of the Railways, 157. 
 
 Baxter, Robert, 2, 26, 32, 62, 70, 72, 
 101, 116, 119, 129, 164, 207, 211, 
 240, 249-255, 287, 328-331. 
 
 Beckett, Sir E., see Denison, E. B. 
 
 Bills, G. N., original, passed, 55. 
 Deviation, rejected, 67, 77. 
 for Church, 147. 
 G. N. and M. S. & L, arrangement, 
 
 164. 
 to legalize fraudulent Stock, 172. 
 Three Companies', 182. 
 Midland extension to London, 196. 
 Derbyshire extensions, 264. 
 Newark and Leicester, 266, 270. 
 Melton and Leicester, 292. 
 Bradford and Thornton, 292. 
 Cheshire Lines, 298. 
 G. N. further powers, 298. 
 Spalding and Lincoln, 332. 
 Various powers, 345. 
 M. S. &. L. extension to London, 
 
 408-412. 
 G. N. and City, 414. 
 
 Block System of Signalling, 140, 193, 
 230, 231, 262, 297, 306, 314, 323, 
 357, 374. 
 
 Board of Trade, adverse report on 
 original G. N. scheme, 30, 35. 
 inquiry into Railway Rates, 404. 
 
 Brake-power, 322, 348, 381. 
 
 Brassey, Thomas, 63, 80, 90. 
 
 Bridges, G. N., 79, 113, 115, 281, 
 
 336, 347, 357, 397, 398, 415. 
 Bruce, Henry, 42, 45. 
 Bury, Edward, 72, 88. 
 
 ! 
 
 4«$ 
 
«i 
 
 t'«MM 
 
 "^Tiii'niTnfi 
 
 426 
 
 INDEX 
 
 n 
 If r' 
 
 ( 
 
 ;t 
 
 » 
 
 V 
 
 p 
 
 Calls upon original G. N. Shareholders, 
 
 65. 67, 68, 71. 
 Card well Act, 141, 151, 183. 
 
 Carriages, passenger, G. N., 72, 
 
 163, 343. 365. 420. 
 Cawkwell, William, 185. 
 
 Chairmen, G. N. Board- 
 William Astell, 54. 
 Edmund Denison, 64. 
 Colonel Packe, 212. 
 Hon. O. Duncombe, 298. 
 Lord Colville of Culross, 338. 
 Rt. Hon. W. L. Jackson, 418. 
 
 Chaplin, Charles, 11, 16, 36. 
 
 Church, at Doncaster, for employees, 
 138, 147, 149. 
 
 Clarke, Seymour, 88, 98, 153, 155, 
 161, 194, 239, 245. 
 
 Coal Traffic, defects of, in Lincoln- 
 shire, u. 
 case for G. N. Bill, 36, 37. 
 early importance of to G. N., loi. 
 opening of, to London, 103. 
 difificulties of S. Yorks, 115. 
 trains stopped in South Yorkshire, 
 
 131- 
 
 increase of, 143. 
 
 complaints about, 144. 
 effect of Ambergate line on, 145. 
 stunted development of, 187. 
 agreement with Midland as to, 196. 
 fighting with Great Eastern for, 207. 
 outcome of Midland agreement as to, 
 
 236. 
 arbitration on, 244. 
 rate war, 250. 
 
 Mr. Baxter's new line for, 254. 
 G. N. position as to Derbyshire, 
 
 263. 
 effect of "coal famine" on, 286, 
 
 299. 
 re-opening of, from Derbyshire, 304. 
 effect of a "great coal strike" on, 
 
 418. 
 Cockshott, Francis P., 231, 277, 
 
 309. 321, 343. 385, 422. 
 Colville of Culross, Lord, 338, 355, 
 
 418. 
 Committee of Inquiry, 176. 
 
 Competition, great, for passenger 
 
 traffic in 1851, 103. 
 in 1856, 157. 
 result of, 159. 
 in 1857, 164. 
 in 1862, 193. 
 
 for coal traffic, in 1870-f, 252. 
 effect of Midland on G. N., 314. 
 cause of decline in G. N. prosperity, 
 
 357. 
 
 Confederacy, Euston Square, 93, 98 
 
 »43, »5i. 159. 
 Courtenay, Lord, 34, 40, 46. 
 
 Cubitt, William, 23, 25, 28, 37, 114. 
 Cubitt, Joseph, 71, 80, 84, 140. 
 Cubitt, Benjamin, 72. 
 Cubitt, Lewis, 114. 
 
 D 
 
 Denison, Edmund— frontispiece, 2, 12, 
 16, 20, 30, 36, 54, 64, 78, 81, 82, 
 99, 100, 102, 107, 108, no, 120, 
 122, 129, 131, 138, 144, 148, 153, 
 158, 166-178, 185-190, 197, 211, 
 298. 
 
 Denison, E. B. (afterwards Sir 
 Edmund Beckett and Lord 
 Grimthorpe), 35, 130, 148, 175, 
 186, 219, 254-5, 272, 289, 292, 
 298, 330. 356. 374, 375- 
 
 Denison, Christopher, 212, 358, 369. 
 
 Derbyshire coalfield, 117, 145, 187, 
 195, 205, 236-255, 263, 273, 287, 
 304, 3^2, 347, 360. 
 
 Direct Northern Scheme, 10, 15, 
 
 24, 26, 30, 33, 50, 52. 
 
 Dividends, G. N., 106, 115, 127, 147, 
 172, 212, 235, 280, 298, 310, 366, 
 397, 418. 
 
 Doncaster, 32, 86, 137, 138, 148, 
 149. 
 
 Duncombe, Hon. O., 15, 16, 298, 
 336, 338. 
 
 Eastern Counties Railway Com- 
 pany, 4, 9, 13. 19, 47, 49, 51, 
 69, 97, 108-9, 145, 205. 
 
 East Coast Route, 6, 74, 220-223, 
 
 243, 317, 358, 385-8, 396, 419- 
 424. 
 
 Edinburgh, first through service to, 
 by G. N., 96. 
 first service beyond, 145. 
 race to, 379, 385-8. 
 
 (See also East Coast Route ) 
 
 Engineers, G. N., Cubitt, William, 23. 
 Cubitt, Joseph, 71. 
 Eraser, John, 260. 
 Johnson, Richard, 263. 
 Fowler, John, 340. 
 Beswick, William, 348 
 
 Engines, see Locomotives. 
 
 English and Scotch Alliance, 154, 
 183, 192, 223, 242, 244. 
 
 Euston Square Confederacy, 93, 98, 
 no, 142-3, 151, 159, 165. 
 
 INDEX 
 
 427 
 
 Extensions, G. N., from i860 to 
 1866, 234. 
 in the West Riding, 260. 
 in Derbyshire, 263. 
 in Leicestershire, 266. 
 from 1 87 1 to 1876, 311. 
 from 1876 to 1884, 366. 
 from 1884 to 1888, 389. 
 from 1888 to 1895, 418. 
 
 Fens or " towns," 20. 
 laying G. N. line over, 80. 
 
 Fifty Years Agreement with M. 
 S. and L., 161, 191, 253, 288, 
 341, 344, 347, 393, 395, 409, 4I3- 
 
 Finsbury Park Station, 203, 257, 
 373, 376. 
 
 Firth, William, iii, 266-7. 
 
 Fowler, Sir John, 73, 77, 202, 208, 
 211, 282, 340, 358. 
 
 Eraser, John, 260, 267-8, 285, 299, 
 
 304, 348. 
 Frauds, Redpath, 166-178. 
 
 G 
 
 Gibbs, Joseph, 3, 5, 13, 16. 
 
 Gladstone, W. E., 20, 36. 
 
 arbitration by, 99, 100, 105, 106, 
 150, 165, 244. 
 
 Goods Traffic, 17, 87, 97, 135, 295-6, 
 301-2, 304, 314-5, 329, 388. 
 
 Great Northern Railway Company — 
 
 first Bill rejected, 4. 
 
 scheme revived, 13. 
 
 united with London and York, 16. 
 
 Act obtained, 55. 
 
 first general meeting, 56. 
 
 first contracts let, 63, 
 
 first alliance with M. S. & L., 77. 
 
 opening of, to London, 90. 
 
 begins coal traffic to London, 103. 
 
 fierce competition with, 103. 
 
 original cost of, 127. 
 
 locomotive liead-<juarters, 137. 
 
 Fifty Years Agreement with M. S. & 
 
 L., 161. 
 huge frauds on, 178. 
 position established, 179. 
 coal traffic agreement with Midland, 
 
 196. 
 position of, in the West Riding, 198. 
 attitude to City extension, 201. 
 difficulties with Great Eastern, 204 
 
 e/ seq. 
 position with regard to East Coast 
 
 Route, 220. 
 battle with Midland re ooal rates, 
 
 244-255. 
 
 G. N. Railway Co. — continued. 
 extensions in the West Riding, 260. 
 scheme for tapping Derbyshire coal- 
 fields, 263. 
 extensions in Leicestershire, 266. 
 speed on in 1871, 277. 
 alliance with L. & N. W. , 283. 
 review of financial condition of, 311. 
 negotiations and fight with Great 
 
 Eastern, 315-332. 
 position of, in 1878, 336. 
 speed on, in 1883, 364. 
 position of, in 1884, 356. 
 „ „ in 1886, 373. 
 speed on, in 1888, 387. 
 fight with M. S. & L., 408. 
 position of, in 1893, 418. 
 
 Great Eastern Railway Company, 
 205-211, 216, 219, 224-7, 233, 
 242, 251, 254-5, 315-6, 318-320, 
 324, 326, 328-332 (see also Eastern 
 Counties Railway Company). 
 
 Grimthorpe, Lord, see Denison, E. B. 
 
 Grinling, W., 168, 370, 400-1. 
 
 Grinling, James, 237. 
 
 Grinling, W. J., 411. 
 
 II 
 
 Hudson, George, 2, 8, 9, 17, 27, 29, 
 
 38, 47, 49, 58, 60, 82, 91. 
 
 Huish, Capt, 92, 94, 142, 151, 1 55, 
 160, 165. 
 
 Johnson, Richard, 229, 230-1, 263-4, 
 266, 304, 309, 370, 398. 
 
 K 
 
 Karslake, Sir John, 244-5. 
 
 King's Cross, description of original 
 passenger terminus, 114. 
 
 opening of, 124. 
 
 opening of connection with Metro- 
 politan at, 202. 
 
 congestion of traffic near, 233. 
 
 alteration of roof of, 258, 377. 
 
 congestion in goods station, 295. 
 
 Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway 
 Company, 76, 81 , 93, 95-6, 1 1 1-2, 
 146, 184, 199, 214 6, 219, 259, 
 269, 356-7. 
 
 Land, cost of, for G. N. , 70. 
 
 Laws, Captain, 11, 21, 60, 81, 125. 
 
 Leech, Joseph, 130, 320. 
 
 Leith, Walter, 196, 277. 
 
 Locke, Joseph, 16, 21, 22. 
 
 ^w' 
 
>■ <IW »>■ 
 
 428 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Locomotives, G. N., 72-3, 87, 89, 
 104, 136, 137, 277, 279, 343, 362, 
 380-1, 388, 407, 424. 
 
 London and York Railway, see Great 
 Northern. 
 
 London and North Western Rail- 
 way Company, 58, 75, 92-5, 98, 
 no, 133, 142-3, 151, 159, 165, 
 179, 182, 190, 269, 283, 289, 298, 
 
 3^2,338,385,419. 
 Loop-line, G. N., 25, 69, 77, 79, 207, 
 233- 
 
 M 
 
 Managers, General, Ci. N. — 
 Captain Laws, 60. 
 Seymour Clarke, 88. 
 Henry Oakley, 245, 
 
 Manchester, opening of G. N. route 
 to. 163. 
 speed to, 176, 362, 380. 
 Central Station at, 327. 
 
 Manchester, Sheffield, and Lincoln- 
 shire Railway Company, 56, 72, 
 77,94, 112, 142, 161-3, 191, 253, 
 288, 341, 344, 347, 393, 395, 409, 
 
 413- 
 Maps, G, N. system in Lincolnshire, 
 
 &c., 209. 
 G. N. system in Yorkshire, 215. 
 Cheshire Lines system, 218. 
 G. N. system near London, 232. 
 G. N. system west of Nottingham, 
 
 265. 
 G. N. & Midland Joint system, 383. 
 
 Meetings, G. N. Half-yearly, 62, 68, 
 70,81,83, 100, 115,127, 129, 138, 
 147, 166, 172, 174, 294, 310, 336, 
 338, 348, 359, 364. 368, 392, 405, 
 417. 
 
 Metropolitan Railway Company, 
 126, 201-2, 257, 296,391,407, 414. 
 
 Midland Railway Company, 9, 17, 
 
 29, 59. 93. "7, 121, 133, i45> 15 ». 
 159, 165, 180-4, 188, 194-7, 217, 
 223, 231, 239, 241-255, 263-275, 
 
 277, 282-292, 299, 300, 317, 329, 
 
 343, 357, 383, 409, 417. 
 
 N 
 
 Nelson, Henry, 320. 
 Newark, 32, 306. 
 
 North British Railway Company, 
 »8, 59, 74, 95. 96, 221-2, 224, 
 
 278, 3»7, 357, 404, 4»9. 
 
 North Eastern Railway Company, 
 141, 221-2, 224, 278, 317, 357, 
 386-8, 422-4. 
 
 Nottingham 
 413- 
 
 ,117, 121!, 134, 
 
 145. 37S» 
 
 Oakley, Sir Henry, 168, 245, 247- 
 254, 286, 307, 309, 316, 330, 339, 
 
 340, 357, .393, 409-411, 413, 414. 
 Octuple Agreement, 99, 150, 153. 
 
 Opening of G. N. lines Louth to New 
 Holland, 72. 
 Peterboro' to Lincoln, 79. 
 Lincoln to Gainsboro', 83. 
 Retford to Doncaster, 86. 
 London to Peterboro', 90. 
 Royston to Hitch in, 86. 
 Peterboro' to Retford towns line, 
 
 120. 
 
 Doncaster to Wakefield, 227. 
 March to Spalding, 233. 
 Honington to Lincoln, 233. 
 Gainsl)oro' to Doncaster, 233. 
 Finsbury Park to Edgware, 234. 
 Bourn to Sleaford, 2S0. 
 Finchley to Barnet, 280. 
 Highgate to Muswell Hill, 293. 
 extension to Skegness, 294. 
 Laister Dyke to Shipley, 299. 
 Ossett to Batley, 299. 
 Halifax to Ovenden, 299. 
 Derbyshire extension to Pinxton, 
 
 311- 
 Bradford to Thornton, 325. 
 
 Stanningley to Pudsey, 325. 
 
 duplicate Copenhagen Tunnel, 325, 
 
 Manchester Central Station, 326. 
 
 Newark to Bottesford, 333. 
 
 extension to Derby and Egginton, 
 
 333- 
 duplicate Maiden Lane tunnel, 334. 
 Bottesford to Melton and ^Iarket 
 
 Harborough, 338. 
 Queensbury to Ovenden, 338. 
 Spalding to Lincoln, 359. 
 Tilton to Leicester, 361. 
 Thornton to Denholme, 364. 
 triplicate Copenhagen tunnel, 376. 
 Beeston to Batley, 381. 
 triplicate Maiden Lane tunnel, 415. 
 
 Packe, Col., 12, 16, 36, 212, 298. 
 
 Parliamentary charges ford. N., 72. 
 
 Pearson, Charles, scheme of, for 
 Central London Station, 125. 
 
 Pease, Joseph, on prospects of G. N. 
 coal traffic, 36. 
 
 Plimsoll, Samuel, 144. 
 
 ** Pooling" of traffic, 92, 98, 99, 103, 
 151, 244. 
 
 INDEX 
 
 429 
 
 Race to Edinburgh, 386. 
 to Aberdeen, 419. 
 
 ** Railway Times " newspaper, 6, 13. 
 
 15, »9, 31- 
 Redpath, Leopold, frauds committed 
 
 on G. N. by, 166-178. 
 
 Running powers granted to Ci. N , 
 69, 77, 82, 95, 134, 140, 283, 299, 
 
 357, 395, 4>3- 
 Running powers granted by G. N , 
 181, 224, 357, 413. 
 
 Running powers, threat to withdraw, 
 112. 
 
 Schools, G. N., at Doncaster, 138, 
 148. 
 
 Signalling, Block system of, 140, 193, 
 
 . 230, 231, 262, 297, 306, 314, 323, 
 357, 374. 
 Solicitors to G. N.— 
 
 Baxter, Rose, and Norton, 70. 
 
 Johnson, Farquhar, and Leech, 130. 
 
 Nelson, Barr, and Nelson, 320. 
 
 William Barrs, 404. 
 
 Speed on G. N. , 276, 364, 380, 387, 424. 
 
 Stirling, Patrick, 277, 279, 322, 343, 
 348, 381, 385, 422. 
 
 Stock, G. N.— 
 
 splitting of, 77-8. 
 conversion of, 400. 
 
 Stock, rolling, G. N., see locomotives 
 or carriages. 
 
 Sturrock, Archibald, 88, 137, 163, 
 202, 277. 
 
 Telegraphic communication on G. 
 N., 140, 231. 
 
 Time-table, first G. N., 73. 
 "Times" newspaper, 43, 49, 158, 
 
 370. 
 Triple Alliance, 182, 191. 
 
 W 
 
 Warfare, Railway, at Nottingham, 
 121. 
 at Manchester, 163. 
 
 Watkin, Sir Edward, 142, 155, 161, 
 185, 186, 191, 213, 216, 240, 242, 
 244-255, 268, 283, 391, 405, 409, 
 414. 
 
 Welwyn Tunnel accident, 228. 
 
 West Riding of Yorkshire, 198, 260. 
 
 Wharncliffe, Lord, 102. 
 
 Wrangham, Serjeant, 35, 40, 164. 
 
 1 . 
 
 \i 
 
 
■•^W^*"*"^ 
 
 i 
 
 
 PLYMOUTH 
 
 WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON 
 
 PRINTERS 
 
 it 
 
 , \. 
 
/ 
 
 i( 
 
 V 
 
 V 
 
 A CATALOGUE OF BOOKS 
 
 AND ANNOUNCEMENTS OF 
 
 METHUEN AND COMPANY 
 
 PUBLISHERS : LONDON 
 
 36 ESSEX STREET 
 
 W.C. 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 FORTHCOMING BOOKS, . . . . 
 
 a 
 
 POETRY, ...... 
 
 JO 
 
 BELLES LETTRES, . , . . • 
 
 XX 
 
 ILLUSTRATED BOOKS, . . • . 
 
 X3 
 
 HISTORY, .....•• 
 
 X4 
 
 BIOGRAPHY, ... . . . 
 
 x6 
 
 TRAVEL, ADVENTURE AND TOPOGRAPHY, 
 
 x8 
 
 GENERAL LITERATURE, . . . . 
 
 X9 
 
 SCIENCE, ..... 
 
 • 3X 
 
 PHILOSOPHY, ...... 
 
 33 
 
 THEOLOGY, ...... 
 
 23 
 
 LEADERS or RELIGION, • 
 
 a4 
 
 FICTION, . . . . • 
 
 as 
 
 BOOKS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS, . . . 
 
 34 
 
 THE PEACOCK LIBRARY, . > . 
 
 35 
 
 UNIVERSITY EXTENSION SERIES, 
 
 35 
 
 SOCIAL QUESTIONS OF TO-DAT, . . 
 
 . 36 
 
 CLASSICAL TRANSLATIONS, . . 
 
 37 
 
 EDUCATION AX. BOOKS, 
 
 38 
 
 i \ 
 
 DECEMBER 1897 
 
If 
 
 December 1897. 
 
 Messrs. Methuen's 
 
 ANNOUNCEMENTS 
 
 I » I 
 
 ^ 
 
 / 
 
 Poetry 
 
 SHAKESPEARE'S POEMS. Edited, with an Introduction and 
 Notes, by George Wyndh AM, M. P. Crown ^vo. Buckram. 6s. 
 This is a volume of the sonnets and lesser poems of Shakespeare, and is prefaced 
 with an elaborate Introduction by Mr. Wyndham. 
 
 ENGLISH LYRICS. Selected and Edited by W. E. Henley. 
 Crown Svo. Buckram, ds. 
 
 Also 15 copies on Japanese paper. Demy Svo. £2, 2s. net. 
 
 Few announcements will be more welcome to lovers of English verse than the one 
 that Mr. Henley is bringing together into one book the finest lyrics in our 
 language. 
 
 NURSERY RHYMES. With many Coloured Pictures. By 
 F. D. Bedford. Small ^0. 5^. 
 
 This book has many beautiful designs in colour to illustrate the old rhymes. 
 
 THE ODYSSEY OF HOMER. A Translation by J. G. 
 CORDERY. Crown Svo. Js. 6d. 
 
 Travel and Adventure 
 
 BRITISH CENTRAL AFRICA. By Sir H. H. Johnston, 
 K.C.B. With nearly Two Hundred Illustrations, and Six Maps. 
 Crown 4I0. 30J. net. 
 
 Contents.— (i) The History of Nyasaland and British Central Africa generally. 
 
 (2) A detailed description of the races and languages of British Central Africa. 
 
 (3) Chapters on the European settlers and missionaries ; the Fauna, the Flora, 
 minerals, and scenery. (4) A chapter on the prospects of the country. 
 
 WITH THE GREEKS IN THESSALY. By W. Kinnaird 
 
 Rose, Reuter's Correspondent. With Plans and 23 Illustrations. 
 
 Crown Svo. 6s. 
 
 A history of the operations in Thessaly by one whose brilliant despatches from the 
 seat of war attracted universal attention. 
 
 THE BENIN MASSACRE. By Captain Boisragon. 
 
 With Portrait and Map. Crown Svo. y. 6i. 
 
 This volume is written by one of the two survivors who escaped the terrible 
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 and of the events which led up to the outbreak. 
 
 Messrs. Methuen's Announcements 
 
 FROM TONKIN TO INDIA. By Prince Henri of 
 Orleans. Translated by Hamley Bent, M.A. With 80 Illus- 
 trations and a Map. Crown ^to. 255-. 
 
 The travels of Prince Henri in 1895 from China to the valley of the Bramaputra 
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 of from 11,000 to 13,000 feet. The journey was made memorable by the discovery 
 of the sources of the Irrawaddy. To the physical difficulties of the journey were 
 added dangers from the attacks of savage tribes. The book deals with many of 
 the burning political problems of the East, and it will be found a most important 
 contribution to the literature of adventure and discovery. 
 
 THREE YEARS IN SAVAGE AFRICA. By Lionel Decle. 
 With an Introduction by H. M. Stanley, M.P. Witn 100 Illus- 
 trations and 5 Maps. Demy Svo. 2\s. 
 
 Few Europeans have had the same opportunity of studying the barbarous parts of 
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 the Zambesi, Nyasaland, Ujiji, the headquarters of the Arabs, German East 
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 Owen), and British East Africa. In his book he relates his experiences, his 
 minute observations of native habits and customs, and his views as to the work 
 done in Africa by the various European Governments, whose operations he was 
 able to study. The whole journey extended over 7000 miles, and occupied 
 exactly three years. 
 
 WITH THE MOUNTED INFANTRY IN MASHONA- 
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 THE HILL OF THE GRACES: OR, the Great Stone 
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 ADVENTURE AND EXPLORATION 
 Captain A. St. H. Gibbons, F.R.G.S. 
 C. Whymper, and Maps. Demy Svo. 21s. 
 
 IN AFRICA. By 
 With Illustrations by 
 
 This is an account of travel and adventure among the Marotse and contiguous tribes, 
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 author's experiences in hunting big game. The illustrations are by Mr. Charles 
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 History and Biography 
 
 A HISTORY OF EGYPT, from the Earliest Times to 
 THE Present Day Edited by W. M. Flinders Petrie, D.C.L., 
 r ; ^' ' . 0^^°^, °1 Egyptology at University College. Fully Illus- 
 trated. In Six Volumes. Crown ^vo. ds. each. 
 Vol. V. ROMAN EGYPT. By J. G. Milne. 
 
 THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 
 
 aL.^'^'''''' ?^^r^°^V ^ ,^^^ ^^^'^°"» ^^'^^ ^i'h Notes, 
 
 Appendices and Maps by J. B. Bury, M.A., Fellow of Trinit^ 
 
 College, Dublin. In Seven Volumes. Demy %vo,gilt top. %s 6d 
 
 each. Crown ivo. 6s. each. Vol. IV. f o^. va. 
 
 THE LETTERS OF VICTOR HUGO. Translated from the 
 
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 lOs. 6d. each. Vol. II. 1835-72. 
 
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 OLD HARROW DAYS. By J. G. Cotton Minchin. Crow?i 
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 A PRIMER OF THE BIBLE. By Prof. W. H. Bennett. 
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 THE HOLY SACRIFICE. By F. Weston, M.A., Curate of 
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 A small volume of devotions at the Holy Communion. 
 
 If 
 
 Naval and Military 
 
 A HISTORY OF THE ART OF WAR. By C. W. Oman, 
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6 Messrs. Metiiuen's Announcements 
 
 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE ROYAL NAVY, From 
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 General Literature 
 
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 VOCES ACADEMICS. By C. Grant Robertson, M.A., 
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 A PRIMER OF V^ORDS WORTH. By Laurie Magnus. 
 
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 THE WALLYPUG IN LONDON. By G. E. Farrow, 
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 An extravaganza for children, written with great charm and vivacity. 
 
 RAILWAY NATIONALIZATION. By Clement Edwards. 
 
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 SPORTING AND ATHLETIC RECORDS. By H. Morgan 
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 THE GOLFING PILGRIM. By Horace G 
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 Hutchinson. 
 
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 EVAGRIUS Edited by Professor L^on Parmentier of 
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 THE ODES AND EPODES OF HORACE. Translated by 
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 ORNAMENTAL DESIGN FOR WOVEN FABRICS. By 
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 A guide to Commercial Education and Examinations. 
 
« I 
 
 I 
 
 I' 
 
 • \ 
 
 8 Messrs. Methuen's Announcements 
 
 PASSAGES FOR UNSEEN TRANSLATION. By E C 
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 ™1 ^y7\^LE MANY. By Robert Barr, Author of Mn 
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 TRAITS AND CONFIDENCES. By The Hon. Emily Law- 
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 THE CLASH OF ARMS. By J. Bloundelle Burton, 
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 ^ ^h^^^^^^'^^ PILGRIM. By Percy White, Author of 
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 THE BUILDERS. By J. S. Fletcher, Author of ^When 
 
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 BY STROKE OF SWORD. By Andrew Balfour. Illus- 
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 SCOTTISH BORDER LIFE. By James C. Dibdin. Crown 
 
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 A 2 
 
Messrs Methuen's List 
 
 II 
 
 A LIST OF 
 
 Messrs. Methuen's 
 
 PUBLICATIONS 
 
 Poetry 
 
 
 RUDTARD KIPLING'S NEW POEMS 
 
 Rudyard Bapling. THE SEVEN SEAS. By Rudyard 
 
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 ' The new poems of Mr. Rudyard Kipling h.ive all the spirit and swing of their pre- 
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 ' Full of passionate patriotism and the Imperial ?,^\r\\..^— Yorkshire Post. 
 
 ' The Empire has found a singer ; it is no depreciation of the songs to say that states- 
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 Rudyard Kipling. BARRACK-ROOM BALLADS; And 
 
 Other Verses. By Rudyard Kipling. Twelfth Edition, Crown 
 
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 rings in every line.' — Times. 
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 *Q." POEMS AND BALLADS. By "Q.," Author of * Green 
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 "Q." GREEN BAYS : Verses and Parodies. By «Q.," Author 
 
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 E Mackay. A SONG OF THE SEA. By Eric Mackay, 
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 'Everywhere Mr. Mackay displays himself the master of a style irarked by all the 
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 Ibsen. BRAND. A Drama by Henrik Ibsen. Translated by 
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 *The greatest world-poem of the nineteenth century next to "Faust." It is in 
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 instinctively regard as high and holy.'— Z>a/Vy Chronic U. 
 
 "A.G." VERSES TO ORDER. By " A G." Cr.Svo. 2s,6d. 
 net. 
 
 A small volume of verse by a writer whose initials are well known to Oxford men. 
 A capital specimen of light academic poetry. These verses are very bright and 
 engaging, easy and sufficiently witty. —.S"/. James's Gazette. 
 
 Belles Lettres, Anthologies, etc. 
 
 R. L. Stevenson. VAILIMA LETTERS. By Robert Louis 
 
 Stevenson. With an Etched Portrait by William Strang, and 
 
 other Illustrations. Second Edition. CrownSvo. Buckram, 'js. 6d. 
 
 * Few publications have in our time been more eagerly awaited than these " Vailima 
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 Henley and WMbley. A BOOK OF ENGLISH PROSE. 
 Collected by W. E. Henley and Charles Whibley. CrownSvo. 6s. 
 
 •A unique volume of extracts— an art gallery of early ^rose.'— Birmingham Post. 
 An admirable companion to Mr. Henley's "Lyra Hcro\c:i.:" —Saturday Review. 
 Quite delightful. A greater treat for those not well acquainted with pre-Restoration 
 prose could not be imagined. '—/I /A««<7»m. 
 
 H. C. Beeching. LYRA SACRA : An Anthology of Sacred Verse. 
 Edited by H. C. Beeching, M.A. Crotvn Svo. Buckram. 6s, 
 'A charming selection, which maintains a lofty standard of excellence.'— 7Vm«f. 
 
 "Q." THE GOLDEN POMP : A Procession of English Lyrics 
 from Surrey to Shirley, arranged by A. T. Quiller Couch. Crown 
 Svo. Buckram. 6s. 
 •A delightful volume : a really golden " "9001^."*— Spectator. 
 
 W. B. Yeats. AN ANTHOLOGY OF IRISH VERSE. 
 Edited by W. B. Yeats. Crown Svo. ^s. 6d. 
 • An attractive and catholic selection.'— Times. 
 
 O. W. Steevens. MONOLOGUES OF THE DEAD. By 
 
 G. W. Steevens. Foolscap Svo. y. 6d. 
 
 A series of Soliloquies in which famous men of antiquity— Julius Caesar, Nero, 
 Alcibiades, etc., attempt to express themselves in the modes of thought and 
 language of to-day. 
 
 '^*n*^?S5J^.*S,'"^^''"" splendid, sometimes bizarre, but always amazingly clever 
 •^Palt Mall Gazette. 
 

 12 
 
 Messrs. Methuen's List 
 
 Victor Hugo. THE LETTERS OF VICTOR HUGO. 
 
 Translated from the French by F. Clarke, M.A. In Two Volumes, 
 Demy %vo. loj. dd. each. Vol. I. 1S15-35. 
 
 This is the first volume of one of the most interesting and important collection of 
 letters ever published in France. The correspondence dates from Victor Hugo's 
 boyhood to his death, and none of the letters have been published before. The 
 arrangement is chiefly chronological, but where there is an interesting set of 
 letters to one person these are arranged together. The first volume contains, 
 among others, (i) Letters to his father ; (2) to his young wife ; (2) to his confessor, 
 l^mennais; a very important set of about fifty letters to Sainte-Beauve : (s) 
 letters about his early books and plays. 
 
 •A charming and vivid picture of a man whose egotism never marred his natural 
 kindness, and whose vanity did not impair his greatness.'— ^/««</ar</. 
 
 0. H. Pearson. ESSAYS AND CRITICAL REVIEWS. By 
 
 C. H. Pearson, M.A., Author of * National Life and Character.* 
 
 Edited, with a Biographical Sketch, by H. A. Strong, M.A., 
 
 LL.D. With a Portrait. Demy %vo. \os. 6d. 
 
 ' Remarkable for careful handling, breadth of view, and knowledge.'— ^Jc/^/jwan. 
 Charming essays. —Spectator. 
 
 W. M. Dixon. A PRIMER OF TENNYSON. By W. M. 
 Dixon, M.A., Professor of English Literature at Mason College. 
 Crown Svo. 2s. 6d. 
 
 • Much sound and well-expressed criticism and acute literary judgments. The biblio- 
 graphy is a hoon.—S/iaker. 
 
 W. A. Craigie. A PRIMER OF BURNS. By W. A. Craigie. 
 Crown Svo. 2s. 6d. 
 
 This book is planned on a method similar to the ' Primer of Tennyson.' It has also 
 
 a glossary. 
 •A valuable addition to the literature of the poet.'— Times. 
 'An excellent short account.'— Pa/t Mai/ Gazette. 
 'An admirable introduction.' — Gloie. 
 
 Sterne. THE LIFE AND OPINIONS OF TRISTRAM 
 SHANDY. By Lawrence Sterne. With an Introduction by 
 Charles Whibley, and a Portrait. 2 vols. p. 
 
 •Very dainty yolumes are these; the paper, type, and light-green binding are all 
 very agreeable to the eye. Simplex munditiis is the phrase that might be applied 
 to them. — Globe. 
 
 CJongreve. THE COMEDIES OF WILLIAM CONGREVE. 
 
 With an Introduction by G. S. Street, and a Portrait. 2 vols. ys. 
 
 ' The volumes are strongly bound in green buckram, are of a convenient size, and 
 
 pleasant to look upon, so that whether on the shelf, or on the uble, or in the hand 
 
 the possessor is thoroughly content with them.'— Guardian. 
 
 Morier. THE ADVENTURES OF HAJJI BABA OF 
 ISPAHAN. By James Morier. With an Introduction by E. G. 
 Browne, M.A., and a Portrait. 2 vols. 75. 
 
 Walton. THE LIVES OF DONNE, WOTTON, HOOKER 
 HERBERT, and SANDERSON. By Izaak Walton. With 
 an Introduction by Vernon Blackburn, and a Portrait, y. td. 
 
 MESSRS. METHUEN'S LiST 
 
 13 
 
 Johnson. THE LIVES OF THE ENGLISH POETS. By 
 Samuel Johnson, LL.D. With an Introduction by J. H. Millar, 
 and a Portrait. 3 vols. \os. 6d. 
 
 Bums. THE POEMS OF ROBERT BURNS. Edited by 
 Andrew Lang and W. A. Craigie. With Portrait. Demy Svo, 
 gilt top. 6s. 
 
 This edition contains a carefully collated Text, numerous Notes, critical and textual, 
 a critical and biographical Introduction, and a Glossary. 
 Among the editions in one volume, Mr. Andrew Lang's will take the place of 
 authonty.'— Times. 
 
 r. Langbridge. BALLADS OF THE BRAVE: Poems of 
 Chivalry, Enterprise, Courage, and Constancy. Edited, with Notes, 
 by Rev. F. Langbridge. Crown Svo. Buckram. 3^. 6d. School 
 Edition. 2s. 6d. 
 
 •A very happy conception happily carried out. ITiese " Ballads of the Brave " are 
 intended to suit the real tastes of boys, and will suit the taste of the great majority.' 
 —spectator. ' The book is full of splendid things.'— ^^r^. 
 
 Illustrated Books 
 
 Jane Baxlow. THE BATTLE OF THE FROGS AND MICE, 
 translated by Jane Barlow, Author of * Irish Idylls,' and pictured 
 by F. D. Bedford. Small 4/0. 6s. net. 
 
 S. Baring Gould. A BOOK OF FAIRY TALES retold by S. 
 Baring Gould. With numerous illustrations and initial letters by 
 Arthur J. Gaskin. Second Edition. Crown Svo. Buckram. 6s. 
 •Mr. Baring Gould is deserving of gratitude, in re-writing in honest, simple style the 
 old stories that delighted the childhood of " our fathers and grandfathers." As to 
 the form of the book, and the printing, which is by Me^rs. Constable, it were 
 difficult to commend overmuch. —Saturday Review. 
 
 S. Baring Gould. OLD ENGLISH FAIRY TALES. Col- 
 lected and edited by S. Baring Gould. With Numerous Illustra- 
 tions by F. D. Bedford. Second Edition. CrownSvo. Buckram. 6s. 
 'A charming volume, which children will be sure to appreciate. The stories have 
 been selected with great ingenuity from various old ballads and folk-tales, and, 
 having been somewhat altered and readjusted, now stand forth, clothed in Mr' 
 Baring Gould's delightful English, to enchant youthful xe2Aexs,: —Guardian. 
 
 S. Baring Gould. A BOOK OF NURSERY SONGS AND 
 RHYMES. Edited by S. Baring Gould, and Illustrated by the 
 Birmingham Art School. Buckram^ gilt top. Crown Svo. 6s. 
 
 • The volume is very complete in its way, as it contains nursery songs to the number 
 of 77, game-rhymes, and jingles. To the student we commend the sensible intro- 
 duction, and the explanatory notes. The volume is superbly printed on soft 
 thick paper, which it is a pleasure to touch ; and the borders and pictures are 
 among the very best specimens we have seen of the Gaskin school.'- Birmin^- 
 ham Gazette. * 
 
H 
 
 Messrs. Methuen's List 
 
 Messrs. Methuen's List 
 
 IS 
 
 H. C. Beeching. A BOOK OF CHRISTMAS VERSE. Edited 
 by H. C. Beeching, M.A., and Illustrated by Walter Crank. 
 Crown SvOj gilt top, ^s. 
 
 A collection of the best verse inspired by the birth of Christ from the Middle Aecs 
 to the present day. A distinction of the book is the large number of poems it 
 contains by modern authors, a few of which are here printed for the first time. 
 : An anthology which, from its unity of aim and high poetic excellence, has a better 
 right to exist than most of its fellows. —Guardian 
 
 History 
 
 Gibbon. THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN 
 EMPIRE. By Edward Gibbon. A New Edition, Edited with 
 Notes, Appendices and Maps, by J. B. Bury, M.A., Fellow of 
 Irmity College, Dublin. In Seven Volumes. Demy%vo. Gilt top 
 8j. 6flf. each. Also crown Svo. 6s. each. Vols. /., //., and III. 
 
 •The time has certainly arrived for a new edition of Gibbon's great work. ... Pro- 
 fe^or Bury IS the right man to undertake this task. His learning is amazing^ 
 both in extent and accuracy. The book is issued in a handy form, and at a 
 moderate price, and It is admirably printed. '—riwrw. , u «i a 
 
 '^t^VviiiTnf t'lfi^'*^ T * *i'f -'^ •*'°"-''^ ^ ''^T^^ removing nothing, yet indicating 
 the value of the text, and brmging it up to date. It promises to be of the utmost 
 value, and will be a welcome addition to many Xxhxzxi^'— Scotsman. 
 
 •This edition, so far as one may judge from the first instalment, is a marvel of 
 erudition and critical skill, and it is the very minimum of praise to predict that the 
 seven volumes of It wib supersede Dean Milman's as the standard edition of our 
 great historical classic.'— G/a^^ow Herald. 
 
 • The beau-ideal Gibbon has arrived at Xzs^r.: —Sketch. 
 
 'At last there is an adequate modem edition of Gibbon. ... The best edition the 
 nineteenth century could ^xo^yxz^.'— Manchester Guardian. 
 
 Flinders Petrie. A HISTORY OF EGYPT,fromthe Earliest 
 Times to the Present Day. Edited by W. M. Flinders 
 Petrie, D.C.L., LL.D., Professor of Egyptology at University 
 College. Fully Illustrated, In Six Volumes. Crown %vo. 6s, each. 
 
 Vol. I. Prehistoric Times to XVI. Dynasty. W. M F 
 Petrie. Third Edition, ' ' 
 
 Vol. II. The XVIIth and XVIIIth Dynasties. W. M. F. 
 Petrie. Second Edition. 
 
 •A history written in the spirit of scientific precision so worthily represented by Dr 
 Petrie and his school cannot but promote sound and accurate studv and 
 supply a vacant place in the English literature of Egyptology. '—r/w^x. 
 
 Plinders Petrie. EGYPTIAN TALES. Edited by W M 
 Flinders Petrie. Illustrated by Tristram Ellis. In Two 
 Volumes. Crown Svo. y. 6d. each. 
 
 •A valuable addition to the literature of comparative folk-lore. The drawines are 
 
 really illustrations m the literal sense of the word.'— C/oiJr. 
 • It has a scientific value to the student of history and SirchsEology/— Scotsman. 
 Invaluable as a picture of life in Palestine and Egypt.— Daify News 
 
 Flinders Petrie. EGYPTIAN DECORATIVE ART. By 
 W. M. Flinders Petrie, D.C.L. With 120 Illustrations. Crown 
 8zv. 3^. 6d, 
 
 • Professor Flinders Petrie is not only a profound Egyptologist, but an accomplished 
 student of comparative archaeology. In these lectures, delivered at the Royal 
 Institution, he displays both qualifications with rare skill in elucidating the 
 development of decorative art in Egypt, and in tracing its influence on the 
 art of other countries.' — Times. 
 
 S. Baring Gould. THE TRAGEDY OF THE CAESARS. 
 
 The Emperors of the Julian and Claudian Lines. With numerous 
 
 Illustrations from Busts, Gems, Cameos, etc. By S. Baring Gould, 
 
 Author of * Mehalah,' etc. Fourth Edition, Royal %vo. i^s. 
 
 ' A most splendid and fascinating book on a subject of undying interest. The great 
 feature of the book is the use the author has made of the existing portraits of the 
 Caesars, and the admirable critical subtlety he has exhibited in dealing with this 
 line of research. It is brilliantly written, and the illustrations are supplied on a 
 scale of profuse magnificence.' — Daily Chronicle. 
 
 • The volumes will in no sense disappoint the general reader. Indeed, in their way, 
 
 there is nothing in any sense so good in English. . . . Mr. Baring Gould has 
 presented his narrative in such a way as not to make one dull p2igt.'— A ihetugum. 
 
 H. de B. Gibbins. INDUSTRY IN ENGLAND : HISTORI- 
 CAL OUTLINES. By H. de B. Gibbins, M.A., D.Litt. With 
 5 Maps. Second Edition, Demy Svo, 10s. 6d. 
 
 This book is written with the view of affording a clear view of the main facts of 
 English Social and Industrial History placed in due perspective. Beginning 
 with prehistoric times, it passes in review the growth and advance of industry 
 up to the nineteenth century, showing its gradual development and progress. 
 The book is illustrated by Maps, Diagrams, and Tables. 
 
 A. Clark. THE COLLEGES OF OXFORD : Their History 
 and their Traditions. By Members of the University. Edited by A. 
 Clark, M.A., Fellow and Tutor of Lincoln College. Svo. 12s. 6d. 
 
 • A work which will certainly be appealed to for many years as the standard book on 
 
 the Colleges oiOxioxA'—Athefueum. 
 
 Perrens. THE HISTORY OF FLORENCE FROM 1434 
 TO 1492. By F. T. Perrens. Translated by Hannah Lynch. 
 Svo, 1 2 J. 6d. 
 
 A history of Florence under the domination of Cosimo, Piero, and Lorenzo de 
 Medicis. 
 
 • This is a standard book by an honest and intelligent historian, who has deserved 
 
 well of all who are interested in Italian history.'— Manchester Guardian. 
 
 J.Wells. A SHORT HISTORY OF ROME. By J. Wells, 
 
 M.A., Fellow and Tutor of Wadham Coll., Oxford. With 4 Maps. 
 
 Crown Svo. 3J. 6d. 
 
 This book is intended for the Middle and Upper Forms of Public Schools and for 
 
 Pass Students at the Universities. It contains copious Tables, etc. 
 'An original work WTJtten on an original plan, and with uncommon freshness and 
 vigour. '—Speaker, 
 
 \ 
 
 i 
 
i6 
 
 Messrs. Methden's List 
 
 Bv E ?*^^"«'^ THE CAMPAIGN OF WATERLOO. 
 By E. L. b. HORSBURGH, B.A. WUh Plans. Crcwnivo. c" 
 
 -&A,.ir-t.« ^^^,"" °"" ""="*• "■« "">« "i"'*" <^<- has bMo produced. 
 
 ^^pfr'^*'-.,^,^""LES OF ENGLISH HISTORY. ByH B 
 
 0. Browning. A SHORT HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL ITALY 
 CmlTc^^l ./^ ^c'^^ Browning, Fellow and Tutor of King's 
 
 Vol. I. 1250.1409.— Guelphs and Ghibellines. 
 Vol. II. 1409-1530. -The Age of the Condottieri. 
 
 ' mT" p P'*'*"'''' of mediaval Italy. '-^/aH./ar^. 
 "llwTriLl^iil^l^S;^-^^^^^^^ production of a wor. of iounense 
 
 O'Grady. THE STORY OF IRELAND. By Standish 
 
 Biography 
 
 ^* ^fE^^B^^^S T.™^ r'''^ '''' NAPOLEON BONA- 
 
 tht Tltand L PK r''''' ^T""' ^^^^ °^'^' 450 Illustrations in 
 
 Ndson.'''-J/a«.A^.?;;SwSS ^ '"^^ as good as Southey's "life of 
 chronicle of Napoleon I. s pergonal hifto,^ ifom ?h^ h" '"^ a complete pictorial 
 
 '^i?«™;CWr "^"'""^ °' ^^P^'^'^ «-^ P-d"-d by an English writer.'- 
 
 ;^&:;trs2!5.r^sSti^si^?sSiffs^ s?^ --^ng 
 
 ^SSSr'" '- '- - ^^^ -^ -"-^on of c:nte.trt7ntt:;ations..- 
 
 Messrs. Methuen's List 
 
 17 
 
 Morris Fuller. THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF JOHN 
 DAVENANT, D.D. (1571-1641), President of Queen's CoIIecre, 
 Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity, Bishop of Salisbury. By 
 Morris Fuller, B.D. Demy ^vo. los. 6d, 
 
 ' A valuable contribution to ecclesiastical history/— Birmin^/tavi Gazette. 
 
 J. M. Rigg. ST. ANSELM OF CANTERBURY : A Chapter 
 ^ IN THE History of Religion. ByJ.M. Rigg. Demy%vo. 7s.6d. 
 
 '^h.?:\^" t""^ told the story of the great Primate's life with scholarly abilin- and 
 
 P. W. Joyce. THE LIFE OF SIR FREDERICK GORE 
 OUSELEY. By F. W. Joyce, 1\LA. With Portraits and Illustra- 
 tions. Crown Svo. Js. 6d. 
 
 ' '^:iS?^^<Si:i^^t^^ -^ -"- -t^ sy-Pathy 
 
 W. G. Collingwood. THE LIFE OF JOHN RUSKIN By 
 W. G. Collingwood, M.A., Editor of Mr. Ruskin's Poems. ' With 
 numerous Portraits, and 13 Drawings by Mr. Ruskin. Second 
 iLattton. 2 vols. ^vo. 32 j. 
 
 ; No more magnificent volumes have been published for a long time.'-r.W, 
 
 C. Waldstein. JOHN RUSKIN : a Study. By Charles 
 Waldstein. M.A., Fellow of King's College, Cambridge. With a 
 Photogravure Portrait after Professor Herkomer. Post Svo. 5^. 
 
 •A thoughtful, impartial, well-written criticism of Ruskin's teaching Jnr.n^.^ ♦ 
 separ.^te what the author regards as valuable and permanent from « ft. ^c^^ *" 
 and erroneous in the great master's writing. '-Z^i^^XrTwzvS transient 
 
 W. H. Hutton. THE LIFE OF SIR THOMAS MORE By 
 W. H. HuTTON, M.A., Author of « William Laud.' m^A Portraiil 
 Crown Svo. ^s. 
 
 • The book lays good claim to high rank among our biographies It is evrMl.nfl,, 
 
 even lovmgly, written. '-.Tc./.^an. "' An excdleKonograpr'-S: 
 
 Clark Russell. THE LIFE OF ADMIRAL LORD COL 
 LINGWOOD. By W. Clark Russell, Author of 'The Wreck 
 of the Grosvcnor.' With Illustrations by F. Brangwyn. Third 
 Edition. Cro7vn Svo. 6s. 
 
 * "V/Vwfcr^LjJr '' "''^ *° ''' '° % '"'if ^ ^' 7r^^y - the country.-- 
 
 y «,« * uaserte. a really good book. 'Satvr.ia v Review 
 
 I 
 
t 
 
 If 
 
 i8 
 
 Messrs. Methuen*s List 
 
 Southey. ENGLISH SEAMEN (Howard, Clifford, Hawkins, 
 Drake, Cavendish). By Robert Southey. Edited, with an 
 Introduction, by David Hannay. Second Edition. CrownZvo. 6j. 
 • Admirable and well-told stones of our naval history.'— /4wy and Navy Gazette. 
 •A brave, inspiriting book.'— i5//«r/6 and White. 
 
 Travel, Adventure and Topography 
 
 R. S. S. Baden-Powell. THE DOWNFALL OF PREMPEH. 
 A Diary of Life with the Native Levy in Ashanti, 1895. By Colonel 
 Baden -Powell. With 21 Ilhistrations and a Map. Deviy Zvo, 
 \os. 6d. 
 
 ' A compact, faithful, most readable record of the campaign.'— Z?ai/y A'ews. 
 ' A bluff and vigorous narrative.' — Glasgmv Herald. 
 
 R. S. S. Baden-PoweU. THE MATEBELE CAMPAIGN 1896. 
 
 By Colonel R. S. S. Baden-Powell. With nearly 100 Illustrations. 
 Second Edition, Demy ^vo. i^s. 
 
 'Written in an unaffectedly light and humorous style.'— TAr IVorld. 
 
 'A very racy r.nd eminently read.able hoo\i.'—St. James s Gazette. 
 
 ' As a straightforward account of a great deal of plucky work unpretentiously done, 
 this book is well worth reading. The simplicity of the n.-irrative is all in its 
 favour, and accords in a peculiarly English fashion with the nature of the subject.' 
 
 ' Times. 
 
 Captain Hinde. THE FALL OF THE CONGO ARABS. 
 
 By Sidney L. IIinde. With Portraits and Plans. Detny Svo. 
 12s. 6d. 
 
 * The book is full of good things, and of sustained interest. —.S"^. James's Gazette. 
 
 A graphic sketch of one of the most exciting and important episodes in the struggle 
 for supremacy in Central Africa between the Ar.ibs and their Europcon rivals. 
 Apart from the story of the campaign, Captain Hinde's book is mainly remark- 
 able for the fulness with which he discusses the question of cannibalism. It is, 
 indeed, the only connected n.-irrative— in English, at any rate— which has been 
 published of this particular episode in African history.' — Times. 
 'Capt.-iin Hinde's book is one of the most interesting and valuable contributions yet 
 made to the literature of modern Africa. —Z>a;7y News. 
 
 W. Orooke. THE NORTH-WESTERN PROVINCES OF 
 INDLA. : Their Ethnology and Administration. By W. 
 Crooke. With Maps and Illustrations. DemyZvo. los. 6d. 
 
 * A carefully and weil-written account of one of the most important provinces of the 
 
 Kmpire. In seven chapters Mr. Crooke deals successively with the land in itis 
 physical aspect, the province under Hindoo and Mussulman rule, the province 
 under llritish rule, the ethnology and sociology of the province, the religious and 
 soci.-il life of the people, the l.uid and its settlement, and the native peasant in his 
 relation to the land. The illustrations are good and well selected, and the map is 
 excellent.' — A fanchester Guardian. 
 
 Messrs. Metiiuejs's List 
 
 19 
 
 W. B. Worsfold. SOUTH AFRICA : Its History and its Future. 
 By W. Basil Worsfold, M.A. With a Map. Sccotui Edition. 
 Crown %vo. 6s, 
 
 'An intensely interesting book.' — Daily Chronicle. 
 
 •A monumental work compressed into a very moderate compass.'— /rt^/i/. 
 
 General Literature 
 
 
 S. Baring Gould. OLD COUNTRY LIFE. By S. Baring 
 Gould, Author of * Mehalah,' etc. With Sixty- seven Illustrations 
 by W. Parkinson, F. D. Bedford, and F. Masey. Lar^& 
 Crown Svo. los. 6d. Fifth and Cheaper Edition. 6s. 
 
 '"Old Country Life," as healthy wholesome reading, full of breezy life and move- 
 ment, lull of quaint stories vigorously told, will not be excelled by any book to be 
 published throughout the year. Sound, hearty, and English to thecorc'—lVorld. 
 
 S. Baring Gould. HISTORIC ODDITIES AND STRANGE 
 EVENTS. By S. Baring Gould. Third Edition. CrownZvo. 6s. 
 
 * A collection of exciting and entcruining chapters. The whole volume is delightful 
 reading. ' — Times. 
 
 S. Baring Gould. FREAKS OF FANATICISM. By S. Baring 
 Gould. Third Edition. Crown Svo. 6s. 
 
 'Mr. Baring Gould has a keen eye for colour and effect, and the subjects he has 
 chosen give ample scope to his descriptive and analytic faculties. A perfectly 
 fascinating hook.'—Scottish Leader. 
 
 S. Baring Gould. A GARLAND OF COUNTRY SONG : 
 
 English Folk Songs with their Traditional Melodies. Collected and 
 arranged by S. Baring Gould and H. Fleetwood Sheppard. 
 Demy 1^0. 6s. 
 
 S. Baring Gould. SONGS OF THE WEST: Traditional 
 Ballads and Songs of the West of England, with their Traditional 
 Melodies. Collected by S. Baring Gould, M.A., and II. Fleet- 
 wood Sheppard, M.A. Arranged for Voice and Piano. In 4 Parts 
 (containing 25 Songs each). Parts /., //., ///., 3^. each. Fart 
 IV.f 5j. In one Voi.f French morocco^ \^s. 
 
 ' A rich collection of humour, pathos, grace, and poetic fancy.' — Saturday Review. 
 
 
 • 
 
 
20 
 
 Messrs. Methuen's List 
 
 S. Baring Gould. YORKSHIRE ODDITIES AND STRANGE 
 EVENTS. Fourth Edition. Crown 8vo. 6s. 
 
 S. Baring Gould. STRANGE SURVIVALS AND SUPER- 
 STITIONS. With Illustrations. By S. Baring Gould. Croun 
 Svo. Second Edition. 6s. 
 
 ' We have read Mr. Baring Gould's book from beginning to end. It is full of ouaint 
 and vanous mformat.on. and there is not a dJl pag^nit!^- Neil I'^Qu^^^^^^ 
 
 S. Baring Gould. THE DESERTS OF SOUTHERN 
 FRANCE. By S. Baring-Gould. With numerous Illustrations 
 by F. D. Bedford, S. Hutton, etc. 2 vo/s. Demy %vo. 325. 
 
 '"tiV^r^hl'^V''""!"'^'^/*'? ''°'T** ^'■^^"" °^ "^a"" of interest to the geologist, 
 the archaeologist, and the student of history and manners. '-^-Ci^.'fwa*. ^~*°***'' 
 
 G. W. Steevens. NAVAL POLICY: With a Descrip- 
 TiON of English and Foreign Navies. By G. W. Steevens 
 Deviy Svo. 6s. 
 
 This book is a description of the British and other more important navies of the worlH 
 With a sketch of the l.nes on which our naval policy m^hr^ssfbTy U dcvebJed 
 
 Jef-fn^H W°" '.^T'- "r^' P°"*=5:' ^"^ shows what our nl^ilf7ce really iT A 
 detailed but non-technjcal account is given of the instruments of mcScrnwLf^e- 
 guns, armour engines, and the like-with a view to determSie bow "^ w^!;! 
 
 Sc\1d foTtt™b„";n"'^°" ^h"^ '"°^."" ^-q"'«'n«nts. An ide^l ^olky bthe" 
 sketched for the bui ding and manning of our fleet ; and the last chanter Is 
 ^ devoted to docks, coahng-stations, and especially colonial defence. 
 An extremely able and interesting work.'— Z>a//y Chronicle. 
 
 W. E. Gladstone. THE SPEECHES AND PUBLIC AD 
 DRESSES OF THE RT. HON. W. E. GLADSTONE M P 
 Edited by A. W. HuTTON, M.A., and H. J. Cohen, M.A.' With 
 Portraits. %vo. Vols. IX. and X. \2s. 6d. each. 
 
 J. Wells. OXFORD AND OXFORD LIFE. By Members of 
 the University. Edited by J. Wells, M.A., Fellow and Tutor of 
 Wadham College. Crown Svo. 3^. 6d. 
 
 ' ^f ^"Sra^uJate Mr. Wells on the production of a readable and intelligent account 
 of Oxtord as it is at the present time, written by persons who are pSressed of a 
 close acquaintance with the system and life of the University. -yl/wiw 
 
 L. Whibley. GREEK OLIGARCHIES : THEIR ORGANISA- 
 TION AND CHARACTER. By L. Whibley, M.A., Fellow 
 of Pembroke College, Cambridge. Crown Svo. 6s. 
 '^su^c!^:-Tl!^f''^ handbook : a careful and well-arranged study of an obscure 
 •Mr. ^Vhibley is never tedious or pedantic.'— Pa// .Valt CazttU. 
 
 MESSRS. MeTHUEN'S LiST 
 
 21 
 
 J 
 
 L. L. Price. ECONOMIC SCIENCE AND PRACTICE. 
 By L. L. Price, M.A., Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford. Crown 
 Svo, dr. 
 
 ' The book is well written, giving evidence of considerable literary ability, and clear 
 mental grasp of the subject under consideration. ' — /r«/irr-« Morning News. 
 
 C. p. Andrews. CHRISTIANITY AND THE LABOUR 
 QUESTION. By C. F. Andrews, B.A. Crown Svo. 2s. 6d. 
 
 'A bold and scholarly survey.' — Speaker. 
 
 J. S. Shedlock. THE PIANOFORTE SONATA: Its Origin 
 and Development. By J. S. Shedlock. Crown Svo. 55. 
 
 ' This work should be in the possession of every musician and amateur, for it not 
 only embodies a concise and lucid history ot the origin ofoneof the most im- 
 portant forms of musical composition, but, by reason of the painstaking research 
 and accuracy of the author's statements, it is a very valuable work for reference ' 
 — A therueum. 
 
 E.M. Bowden. THE EXAMPLE OF BUDDHA: Being Quota- 
 lions from Buddhist Literature for each Day in the Year. Compiled 
 by E. M. Bowden. With Preface by Sir Edwin Arnold. Third 
 Edition. \6mo. 2s. 6d. 
 
 Science 
 
 Freudenreich. DAIRY BACTERIOLOGY. A Short Manual 
 for the Use of Students. By Dr. Ed. von Freudenreich. 
 Translated from the German by J. R. Ainsworth Davis, B.A., 
 F.C.P. Crown Svo. 2s.6d. 
 
 Caialmers Mitchell. OUTLINES OF BIOLOGY. By P. 
 Chalmers Mitchell, M.A., F.Z.S. FuHy Illustrated. Crown 
 Svo. 6s. 
 
 A text-book designed to cover the new Schedule issued by the Royal College of 
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 G.Massee. A MONOGRAPH OF THE MYXOGASTRES. By 
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 • A work much in advance of any book in the language treating of this group of 
 organisms. It is indisjiensable to every student of the Myxogastres. The 
 Coloured plates dcicrve high praiic for their accuracy and execution.*— iV«/«r<r. 
 
 
22 
 
 Messrs. Metiiuen's List 
 
 Messrs. Methuen's List 
 
 23 
 
 h' 
 
 I 
 
 Philosophy 
 
 L. T. Hobhouse. THE THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. By 
 L. T. Hobhouse, Fellow aiid Tutor of Corpus College, Oxford. 
 Demy %vo. 7.\s. 
 
 * The most important contribution to English philasophy since the publication of Mr. 
 
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 W. H. Fairbrother. THE PHILOSOPHY OF T. H. GREEN. 
 By W. H. Fairbrother, M.A., Lecturer at Lincoln College, 
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 * In every way an admirable book. As an introduction to the writings of perhaps the 
 
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 F. W. BusselL THE SCHOOL OF PLATO : its Origin and 
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 * A highly valuable contribution to the history of ancient thought.'— G/asg^&w Herald. 
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 — Manchester Guardian. 
 
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 •A scholarly analysis of the religious ceremonies,beliefs, and superstitions of ancient 
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 Times. 
 
 Theol 
 
 ogy 
 
 . C. S. Gibson. THE XXXIX. ARTICLES OF THE 
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 * So far from repelling the general reader, its orderly arrangement, lucid treatment, 
 and felicity of diction invite and encourage his attention.' — Yorkihire Post. 
 
 
 J 
 
 n 
 
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 • The merit of this book lies in the penetration, the singular acuteness and force of the 
 
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 recommend it. Dr. Jevons is something more than an historian of primitive 
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 S. R. Driver. SERMONS ON SUBJECTS CONNECTED 
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 E. B. Layard. RELIGION IN BOYHOOD. Notes on the 
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 1 
 
24 
 
 Messrs. Methuen's List 
 
 ^' Jr^^^^r ^aussett. THE DE CATECH/ZANDIS 
 RUDIBUS OF ST. AUGUSTINE. Edited, v^ith Introduction, 
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 ^""r^SuJ H'^ Treatise on the Esf^entials of Christian Doctrine, and the best 
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 THE IMITATION OF CHRIST. By Thomas A Kempis. 
 With an Introduction by Dean Farrak. Illustrated by C. M 
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 •Amongst all the innumerable English editions of the "Imitation," there can have 
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 THE CHRISTIAN YEAR. By John Keble. With an Intro- 
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 Ireland, Professor at Oxford. Illustrated by R. Anning Bell. 
 
 '^Mr^7^.f **^'i-ii°" '^ a""ot*''t^d with all the care and insight to be expected from 
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 • The most acceptable edition of this ever-popular yfotV.'— Globe. 
 
 ;/6 
 
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 Messrs. Methuen's List 
 
 25 
 
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 A ROMANCE OF TWO WORLDS. Sixteenth Edition, 
 
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 WORMWOOD. Eighth Edition. 
 
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 THE SORROWS OF SATAN. Thirty-sixth Edition. 
 
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 Anthony Hope's Novels 
 
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 A CHANGE OF AIR. Fourth Edition. 
 
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 A MAN OF MARK. Fourth Edition. 
 
 * ^(.^l ^'■- .Hope's books, "A Man of Mark " is the one which best compares with 
 * * The Prisoner of Zenda. " ^—National Observer. 
 
26 
 
 Messrs. Methuen's List 
 
 THE CHRONICLES OF COUNT ANTONIO. Third Edition, 
 
 • It is a perfectly enchanting story of love and chivalry, and pure romance. The 
 
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 lovers, a peerless gentleman, an intrepid fighter, a very faithful friend, and a most 
 magnanimous ioc.'— Guardian. 
 
 PHROSq. Illustrated by H. R. Millar. Third Edition. 
 
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 dashingly told.'— ^/. James's Gazette. 
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 — speaker. 
 
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 ARM I NELL : A Social Romance. Fourth Edition. 
 URITH : A Story of Dartmoor. Fifth Edition. 
 
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 IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA. Sixth Edition. 
 
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 MRS. CURGENVEN OF CURGENVEN. Fourth Edition. 
 
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 CHEAP JACK ZITA. Fourth Edition. 
 
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 THE QUEEN OF LOVE. Fourth Edition. 
 
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 KITTY ALONE. Fourth Edition. 
 
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 and, above all, with vivid and enthralling human interest. —Z?a//y Telesraph. 
 
 N06mI : A Romance of the Cave- Dwellers. 
 
 R. Caton WOODVILLE. Third Edition. 
 ' " Noemi " is as excellent a tale of fighting and adventure as one may wish to meet. 
 
 The narrative also runs clear and sharp as the Loire itself.'— /'a// Mall Gazette. 
 'Mr. Baring Gould's powerful story is full of the strong lights and shadows and 
 
 vivid colouring to which he has accustomed us.' — Standard. 
 
 Illustrated by 
 
 , 
 
 Messrs. Methuen's List 
 
 27 
 
 THE BROOM-SQUIRE. Illustrated by Frank Dadd. 
 
 Fourth Edition. 
 ' A strain of tenderness is woven through the web of his tragic tale, and its atmosphere 
 
 is sweetened by the nobility and sweetness of the heroine's character.' — Daily Nervs. 
 'A story of exceptional interest that seems to us to be better than anything he has 
 
 written of late.' — Speaker. 
 
 THE PENNYCOMEQUICKS. Third Edition. 
 DARTMOOR IDYLLS. 
 
 * A book to read, and keep and read again ; for the genuine fun and pathos of it will 
 
 not early lose their effect.' — Vanity Fair. 
 
 GUAVAS THE TINNER. Illustrated by Frank Dadd. Second 
 Edition, 
 
 * Mr. Baring Gould is a wizard who transports us into a region of visions, often lurid 
 
 and disquieting, but always full of interest and enchantment.' — Spectator. 
 
 * In the weirdness of the story, in the faithfulness with which the characters are 
 
 depicted, and in force of style, it closely resembles ' ' Mehalah. " '—Daily Telegraph. 
 There is a kind of flavour about this book which alone elevates it above the ordinary 
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 Gilbert Parker's Novels 
 
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 PIERRE AND HIS PEOPLE. Fourth Edition. 
 
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 MRS. FALCHION. Fourth Edition, 
 
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 THE TRANSLATION OF A SAVAGE. 
 
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 THE TRAIL OF THE SWORD. Fifth Edition. 
 
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 WHEN VALMOND CAME TO PONTIAC : The Story of 
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 itself. ^ "rhe book must be read, we may say re-read, for any one thoroughly to 
 appreciate Mr. Parker's delicate touch and innate sympathy with humanity.' — 
 Pall Mall Gazette. 
 'The one work of genius which 1895 has as yet produced.' — New Age. 
 
 AN ADVENTURER OF THE NORTH: The Last Adven- 
 tures of * Pretty Pierre.' Second Edition, 
 'The present book is full of fine and moving stories of the great North, and it will 
 add to Mr. Parker's already high reputation.' — Glasgow Herald. 
 
 . \ 
 
28 
 
 Messrs. Methuen's List 
 
 ™n??^^TS OF THE MIGHTY. Illustrated. Eighth Edition, 
 
 Ihe best thing he has done ; one of the best things that any one has done lately.'— 
 St. James s Gazette. ««•<;•>. 
 
 •Mr. Parker seems to become stronger and easier with every serious novel that he 
 
 attempts. . . . In " The Seats of the Mighty - he shows the matured power which 
 
 his former novds have led us to «pect and has produced a really fiSe historical 
 
 \\' C ' Most sincerely is Mr. Parker to be congratiUated on the finest 
 
 ^ novel he has yet written.'— ^M#«<««m. »icu on ine nnest 
 
 ^c' f"r!u* If *l' ^^ P'**^** ^*"' *" *^« ''™"t '■a"l« of Hving novelists. "The 
 . r^^*^*r ''u *^' ^ '^^^^ " * ^"^* ^'^^- '-Black and White. •'°^^""*- ^ »»« 
 
 Une of the strongest stories of historical interest and adventnre that we have read 
 for many a day. ... A notable and successful \^oV:-Speaker, 
 
 Conan Doyle. ROUND THE RED LAMP. By A. Conan 
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 .u r^ u ' '"^i^eti. composed of leaves from life, and is far and away the best view 
 that has been vouchsafed us behind the scenes of the consuliing-room. It is very 
 superior to The Diary of a late Physician. '"-///«,/ra/^*/ ZW^ /^ewt. ^ 
 
 Stanley Weyman. UNDER THE RED ROBE. By Stanley 
 
 Weyman, Author of * A Gentleman of France. ' With Twelve Illus- 
 . trations by R. Caton Woodville. Twe//tA Edition. Crown Svo. 6s. 
 
 whlrhw.'*'^?^''* have read every word for the sheer pleasure of reading, and 
 
 s!?;;'j:r;&r:"' * ^^"^ '"^^ ^^ ^^^-^^^^ ^°"^««' " *•• -^ ^^-^ «s--'- 
 
 • Every one who reads books at all must read this thrilling romance, from the first 
 
 page of which to the last the breathless reader is haled Ilong. An inspirat!on?f 
 
 manliness and courage. " '—Daily Chronicle. 'sp'rauon oi 
 
 Lucas Malet. THE WAGES OF SIN. 
 Malet. Thirteenth Edition. Crown %vo. 6s. 
 
 By Lucas 
 
 Lucas Malet THE CARISSIMA. By Lucas Malet, 
 
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 Arthur Morrison. TALES OF MEAN STREETS. By Arthur 
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 • Told with consummate art and extraordinary detail. He tells a plain, unvarnished 
 
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 • A great book. The author's method is amazingly effective, and produces a thrilline 
 
 sense of reality. The wnter lays upon us a master hand. The book is simp"? 
 ^f^^^^^^^^l^ irresistible ,n its interest. It is humorous also ; without humJur 
 It would not make the mark it is certain to make.'— IfVrA/. ""wur 
 
 Arthur Morrison. A CHILD OF THE TAGO. By Arthur 
 
 Morrison. Third Edition. Crown Svo. 6s. 
 
 ^^'« Tnte 5? w'^^V.^^'y '^^''''^ ^^'- Morrison has written, is like his remarkable 
 . ^ ., °/ M*^" Streets,' a realistic study of East End life. '^^KaDie 
 
 ' J"* °°?^ *^ * masterpiece.'— /•«// Malt Gazette. 
 Told with great vigour and powerful simplicity.'— /JM^«<«<»f. 
 
 Mrs. Clifford. A FLASH OF SUMMER. By Mrs. W K Clif 
 
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 Ihe story is a very sad and a very beautiful one, exquisitely told, and enriched with 
 
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 author s reputation-already high-in the ranks of novelists.'-5/^a>tJr 
 
 . 
 
 . 
 
 Messrs. Methuen's List 
 
 29 
 
 Emily Lawless. HURRISH. By the Honble. Emily Law- 
 less, Author of ' Maelcho,' etc. FzYth Edition. Crown Svo. 6s. 
 A reissue of Miss Lawless' most popular novel, uniform with • Maelcho.' 
 
 Emily Lawless. MAELCHO : a Sixteenth Century Romance. 
 
 By the Honble. Emily Lawless. Second Edition. Crown Svo. 6s. 
 
 ' A really great book.' — Spectator. 
 
 •There is no keener pleasure in life than the recognition of genius. Good work is 
 commoner than it used to be, but the best is as rare as ever. All the more 
 gladly, therefore, do we welcome in " Maelcho " a piece of work of the first order, 
 which we do not hesitate to describe as one of the most remarkable literary 
 achievements of this generation. Miss Lawless is possessed of the very essence 
 of historical genius.'— Manchester Guardian. 
 
 J. H. Pindlater. THE GREEN GRAVES OF BALGOWRIE. 
 By Jane H. Findlater. Fourth Edition. Crown Svo. 6s. 
 
 'A powerful and vivid story.'— .S"/a«/i»r</'. 
 
 ' A beautiful story, sad and strange as truth \t^\L'— Vanity Fair. 
 
 • A work of remarkable interest and originality.'— A'a^zVjwa/ Observer. 
 
 • A very charming and pathetic la\c.'— Pall Mall Gazette. 
 
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 ' "The Green Graves of Balgowrie" reveals to us a new Scotch writer of undoubted 
 
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 •An exquisite idyll, delicate, aficcting, and beautiful.'— ^/iic/fe and White. 
 
 H. G. Wells. THE STOLEN BACILLUS, and other Stories. 
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 • The ordinary reader of fiction may be glad to Icnow that these stories are eminently 
 
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 within Its xtzxii.' Saturday Review. 
 
 H. G. Wells. THE PLATTNER STORY and Others. By H. 
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 I ^* L*? *"^ mysterious, they seem to hold the reader as by a magic spfilV-Scotsfnan. 
 Such IS the fascination of this writer's skill that you unhesitatingly prophesy that 
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 ere he has read from first word to last.'— Black and IVhite. 
 'No volume has appeared for a long time so likely to give equal pleasure to the 
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 • Mr. Wells is a magician skilled in wielding that most potent of all spells— the fear 
 
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 E. F. Benson, DODO : A DETAIL OF THE DAY. By E. F. 
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 ' A delightfully witty sketch of society.' — Spectator. 
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 E. F. Benson. THE RUBICON. By E. F. Benson, Author of 
 
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 Mrs. Oliphant. SIR ROBERT'S FORTUNE. By Mrs. 
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 • Full of her own peculiar charm of style and simple, subtle character-painting comes 
 
 her new gift, the delightful story before us. The scene mostly lies in the moors, 
 and at the touch of the authoress a Scotch moor becomes a living thing, strong, 
 tender, beautiful, and ohiageivX.'— Pall Mall Gazette. 
 
 { 
 
 \ 
 
30 
 
 Messrs. Methuen's List 
 
 Mrs. Oliphant. THE TWO MARYS. By Mrs. Oliphant. 
 Second Edition. Crown Svo. 6s. 
 
 W.ENorris. MATTHEW AUSTIN. By W. E. NoRRis, Author 
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 "Matthew Austin " may safely be pronounced one of the most intellectually satis- 
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 W. E. Norris. HIS GRACE. By W. E. Norris. Third 
 Edition, Crown Svo. 6s. 
 
 •Mr. Norris has drawn a really fine character in the Duke of Hurstbourne, at once 
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 W. E. Norris. THE DESPOTIC LADY AND OTHERS. 
 By W. E. Norris. Crown Svo. 6s. 
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 W. R Norris. CLARISSA FURIOSA. By W. E. Norris, 
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 • One of Mr. Norris's very best novels. As a story it is admirable, as a jeu d esprit 
 
 It IS capital, as a lay sermon studded with gems of wit and wisdom it is a model 
 which will not, we imagine, find an efficient imitator.'— ZA^ World, 
 The best novel he has written for some time : a story which is full of admirable 
 character-drawing. '—The Standard. 
 
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