Joseph Tatlow - Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland

J >> Joseph Tatlow >> Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland

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In our own office about half our number were youths and single men and
about half were married. Our youngest benedict was not more than
eighteen years of age, and his salary only 45 pounds a year. On this
modest income for a time the young couple lived. It was a runaway match;
on the girl's part an elopement from school. They lived in apartments,
kept by an old lady, a widow who, being a woman, loved a bit of romance,
and was very kind to them. He was a manly young fellow, a sportsman and
renowned at cricket, and she was amiable and pretty, a little blonde
beauty. The parents were well to do, and in due time forgave the
imprudent match. At this we all rejoiced for he was a general favourite.

Looking back now it seems to me the office staff was in some ways a
curious collection and very different to the clerks of to-day. Many of
them had not entered railway life until nearly middle-age and they had
not assimilated as an office staff does now, when all join as youths and
are brought up together. They were original, individual, not to say
eccentric. Whilst our office included certain steady married clerks, who
worked hard and lived ordinary middle-class respectable lives, and some
few bachelors of quiet habit, the rest were a lively set indeed, by no
means free from inclinations to coarse conviviality and many of them
spendthrift, reckless and devil-may-care. At pay-day, which occurred
monthly, most of these merry wights, after receiving their pay, betook
themselves to the _Midland Tap_ or other licensed house and there
indulged, for the remainder of the afternoon, in abundant beer, pouring
down glass after glass; in Charles Lamb's inimitable words: "the second
to see where the first has gone, the third to see no harm happens to the
second, a fourth to say there is another coming, and a fifth to say he is
not sure he is the last." Some of the merriest of them would not return
to the office that day but extend their carouse far into the night; to
sadly realise next day that it was "the morning after the night before."

I do not think our ladylike chief clerk ever indulged in these orgies,
but I never knew more than the mildest remonstrance being made by him or
by anyone in authority.

Pay-day was also the time for squaring accounts. "The human species,"
Charles Lamb says, "is composed of two distinct races, the men who borrow
and the men who lend." This was true of our office, but no equal
division prevailed as the borrowers predominated and the lenders, the
prudent, were a small minority. A general settlement took place monthly,
after which a new period began--by the borrowers with joyous unconcern.
"Take no thought for the morrow" was a maxim dear to the heart of these
knights of the pen.

Swearing, as I have said, was not considered low or vulgar or unbecoming
a gentleman. There was a senior clerk of some standing and position, a
married man of thirty-five or forty years of age, who gloried in it. His
expletives were varied, vivid and inexhaustible, and the turbid stream
was easily set flowing. Had he lived a century earlier he might have
been put in the stocks for his profanity, a punishment which magistrates
were then, by Act of Parliament, empowered to inflict. He was a strange
individual. _Long Jack_ he was called. He is not in this world now so I
may write of him with freedom.

No one's enemy but his own, he was kindly, good-natured, generous to a
fault, but devil-may-care and reckless; and, at any one's expense, or at
any cost to himself, would have his fling and his joke.

It was from his lankiness and length of limb that he was called "_Long
Jack_." He stood about six feet six in his boots. He must have had
means of his own, as he lived in a way far beyond the reach of even a
senior clerk of the first degree. How he came to be in a railway office,
or, being in, retained his place, was a matter of wonder. Sad to tell,
he had a little daughter, five or six years of age; his only child, a
sweet, blue-eyed golden-haired little fairy, who, never corrected,
imitated her father's profanity, and apparently to his great delight. He
treated it as a joke, as he treated everything. _Long Jack_ loved to
scandalise the town by his eccentricities. He would compound with the
butcher, to drive his fast trotting horse and trap and deliver their
joints, their steaks and kidneys to astonished customers, or arrange with
the milkman to dispense the early morning milk, donning a milkman's
smock, and carrying two milk-pails on foot. I remember one _Good Friday_
morning when he perambulated the town with a donkey cart and sold, at an
early hour, hot cross buns at the houses of his friends, afterwards
gleefully boasting of having made a good profit on the morning's
business. In the sixties and early seventies throughout the clerical
staff of the Midland Railway were many who had not been brought up as
clerks, who, somehow or other had drifted into the service, whose early
avocations had been of various kinds, and whose appearance, habits and
manners imparted a picturesqueness to office life which does not exist to-
day, and among these. _Long Jack_ was a prominent, but despite his
joviality, it seems to me a pathetic figure.

CHAPTER VI.
FRIENDSHIP

Delicate health, as I have said, was my lot from childhood. After about
eighteen months of office work I had a long and serious illness and was
away from duty for nearly half a year. The latter part of the time I
spent in the Erewash Valley, at the house of an uncle who lived near Pye
Bridge. I was then under eighteen, growing fast, and when convalescing
the country life and country air did me lasting good. Though a colliery
district the valley is not devoid of rural beauty; to me it was pleasant
and attractive and I wandered about at will.

One day I had a curious experience. In my walk I came across the
Cromford Canal where it enters a tunnel that burrows beneath coal mines.
At the entrance to the tunnel a canal barge lay. The bargees asked would
I like to go through with them? "How long is it?" said I, and "how long
will it take?" "Not long," said bargee, "come on!" "Right!" said I. The
tunnel just fitted the barge, scarcely an inch to spare; the roof was so
low that a man lying on his back on a plank placed athwart the vessel,
with his feet against the roof, propelled the boat along. This was the
only means of transit and our progress was slow and dreary. It was a
journey of Cimmerian darkness; along a stream fit for Charon's boat.
About halfway a halt was made for dinner, but I had none. Although I was
cold and hungry the bargees' hospitality did not include a share of their
bread and cheese but they gave me a drink of their beer. The tunnel is
two miles long, and was drippingly wet. Several hours passed before we
emerged, not into sunshine but into the open, under a clouded sky and
heavy rain which had succeeded a bright forenoon. I was nearly five
miles from my uncle's house, lightly clad, hungry and tired. To my
friends ever since I have not failed to recommend the passage of the
Butterley tunnel as a desirable pleasure excursion.

When I returned to work my health was greatly improved and a small
advancement in my position in the office made the rest of my time at
Derby more agreeable, though, to tell the truth, I often jibbed at the
drudgery of the desk and the monotony of writing pencilled-out letters
which was now my daily task. Set tasks, dull routine, monotonous duty I
ever hated.

About this time shorthand was introduced into the railway. A public
teacher of Pitman's phonography had established himself in Derby, and the
Midland engaged him to conduct classes for the junior clerks. It was not
compulsory to attend the classes, but inducements to do so were held out.
A special increase of salary was promised to those who attained a certain
proficiency, and a further reward was offered; the two clerks who earned
most marks and, in the teacher's opinion, reached the highest
proficiency, were to be appointed assistants to the teacher and paid
eight shillings weekly during future shorthand sessions, in addition to
the special increase of salary. It was a great prize and keen was the
contest. I had the good fortune to be one of the two; and the praise I
got, and the benefit of the money made me contented for a time. My
companion in this success, I am glad to know, is to-day alive and well,
and like myself, a superannuated member of society. In his day he was a
notable athlete, at one time bicycling champion of the Midland counties;
and his prowess was won on the obsolete velocipede, with its one great
wheel in front and a very small wheel behind.

A shorthand writer, my work was now to take down letters from dictation,
a remove only for the better from the old way of writing from pencilled
drafts.

Now it was that I made my first sincere and lasting friendship, a
friendship true and deep, but which was destined to last for only ten
short years. Tom was never robust and Death's cold hand closed all too
soon a loveable and useful life. Our friendship was close and intimate,
such as is formed in the warmth of youth and which the grave alone
dissolves. To me, during those short years, it lent brightness and
gaiety to existence; and, in the days that have followed, its memory has
been, and is now, a rich possession.

With both Tom and me it was friendship at first sight, and nothing until
the final severance came ever disturbed its course. He came from Lincoln
and joined the office I was in. He was two years my senior and had the
advantage of several years' experience in station work which I had not.
We were much alike in our tastes and habits, yet there was enough of
difference between us to impart a relish to our friendship. Indifferent
health, for he was delicate too, was one of the bonds between us. We
were both fond of reading, of quiet walks and talks, and we hated crowds.
He was a good musician, played the piano; but the guitar was the
favourite accompaniment to his voice, a clear sweet tenor, and he sang
well. I was not so susceptible to the "concord of sweet sounds" as he
was, but could draw a little, paint a little, string rhymes together; and
so we never failed to amuse and interest each other. He was impulsive,
clever, quick of temper, ingenuous, and indignant at any want of truth or
candour in others; generous to a fault and tender hearted as a woman. I
was more patient than he, slower in wrath, yet we sometimes quarrelled
over trifles but, like lovers, were quickly reconciled; and after these
little explosions always better friends than ever.

At Derby, for three years or so, we were inseparable. What walks we had,
what talks, "what larks, Pip!" Dickens we adored. How we talked of him
and his books! How we longed to hear him read, but his public readings
had ended, his voice for ever become mute and a nation mourned the loss
of one who had moved it to laughter and to tears. Tom had a wonderful
memory. He would recite page after page from _Pickwick, David
Copperfield, Barnaby Rudge_ or _Great Expectations_, as well as from
_Shakespeare_ and our favourite poets. He was fond of the pathetic, but
the humorous moved him most, and his lively gifts were welcome wherever
we went.

Our favourite walk on Saturday afternoons was to the pleasant village of
Kedleston, some five miles from Derby, and to its fine old inn, which to
us was not simply the _Kedleston Inn_ and nothing more but Dickens'
_Maypole_ and nothing less. We revelled in its resemblance, or its
fancied resemblance to the famous old hostelry kept by old John Willet.
Something in the building itself, though I cannot say that, like the
_Maypole_, it had "more gable ends than a lazy man would like to count on
a sunny day," and something in its situation, and something in the
cronies who gathered in its comfortable bar, and something in the bar
itself combined to form the pleasant illusion in which we indulged. The
bar, like the _Maypole_ bar, was snug and cosy and complete. Its rustic
visitors were not so solemn and slow of speech as old John Willet and Mr.
Cobb and long Phil Parkes and Solomon Daisy, "who would pass two mortal
hours and a half without any of them speaking a single word, and who were
firmly convinced that they were very jovial companions;" but they were as
reticent and stolid and good natured as such simple country gaffers are
wont to be.

I remember in particular one Saturday afternoon in late October. It was
almost the last walk I had with Tom in Derby. The day was perfect; as
clear and bright, as mellow and crisp, as rich in colour, as only an
October day in England can be. We reached the _Maypole_ between five and
six o'clock. No young Joe Willet or gipsy Hugh was there to welcome us,
but we were soon by our two selves in a homely little room, beside a
cheerful fire, at a table spread with tea and ham and eggs and buttered
toast and cakes--our weekly treat.

When this delightful meal was over, a stroll as far as the church and the
stately Hall of the Curzons, back to the inn, an hour or so in the snug
bar with the village worthies, who welcomed our almost weekly visits and
the yarns we brought from Derby town; then back home by the broad
highway, under the star-lit sky--an afternoon and an evening to be ever
remembered.

The _Kedleston Inn_, I am told, no longer exists; no longer greets the
eye of the wayfarer, no longer welcomes him to its pleasant bar. Now it
is a farmhouse. No youthful enthusiast can now be beguiled into calling
it _The Maypole_; and, indeed, in these unromantic days, though it had
remained unchanged, there would be little danger of this I think.

Soon after this memorable day Tom left the service of the Midland for a
more lucrative situation with a mercantile firm in Glasgow, and I was
left widowed and alone. For six months or more we had been living
together in the country, some four miles from Derby, in the house of the
village blacksmith. It was a pretty house, stood a little apart from the
forge, and was called Rock Villa. I wonder if the present Engineer-in-
Chief of the Midland Railway recollects a little incident connected with
it. He (now Chief Engineer then a well grown youth of eighteen or
nineteen) was younger than I, and was preparing for the engineering
profession in which he has succeeded so well. He lived with his parents
very near to Rock Villa, and one day, for some reason or other, we said
we would each of us make a sketch of Rock Villa, afterwards compare them,
and let his sister decide which was the better, so we set to work and did
our best. In the matter of correct drawing his, I am sure, far surpassed
mine, but the young lady decided in my favour, perhaps because my
production looked more picturesque and romantic than his!

When Tom had gone I became dissatisfied with my work, and a
disappointment which I suffered at being passed over in some office
promotions increased that dissatisfaction. I was an expert shorthand
writer and this seemed to be the only reason for keeping me back from
better work, so at least I thought, and I think so still. My sense of
injustice was touched; and I determined I would, like Tom, if the
opportunity served, seek my fortune elsewhere. The chance I longed for
came. I paid a short visit to Tom, and whilst in Glasgow, obtained the
post of private clerk to the Stores Superintendent of the Caledonian
Railway, and on the last day of the year 1872, I left the Midland
Railway, to the service of which I had been as it were born, in which my
father and uncles and cousins served, against the wish of my father, and
to the surprise of my relatives. But I had reached man's estate, and
felt a pride in going my own way, and in seeking, unassisted, my fortune,
whatever it might be.

What had I learned in my first five years of railway work? Not very
much; the next few years were to be far more fruitful; but I had acquired
some business habits; a practical acquaintance with shorthand, which was
yet to stand me in good stead; some knowledge of rates and fares, their
nature and composition, which was also to be useful to me in after life;
some familiarity with the compilation of time-tables and the working of
trains; but of practical knowledge of work at stations I was quite
ignorant.

Thus equipped, without the parental blessing, with little money in my
purse, with health somewhat improved but still delicate, I bade good-bye
to Derby, light-hearted enough, and hopeful enough, and journeyed north
to join my friend Tom, and to make my way as best I could in the
commercial capital of "bonnie Scotland."

CHAPTER VII.
RAILWAY PROGRESS

Before entering upon any description of the new life that awaited me in
Glasgow, I will briefly allude to the principal events connected with the
Midland and with railways generally which took place during the first
five years of my railway career.

Closely associated with many of these events was Mr. James Allport, the
Midland general manager, one of the foremost and ablest of the early
railway pioneers, regarding whom it is fit and proper a few words should
be said. Strangely enough I never saw him until nearly two years after I
entered the Midland service, and this was on the occasion of a visit of
the Prince and Princess of Wales to Derby. We clerks were allowed good
positions on the station platform to witness the arrival of their Royal
Highnesses by their special train from London. Mr. Allport accompanied
them along the platform to the carriages outside the station. Probably
the chairman and directors of the company were also present, but our eyes
were not for them. Directors were to us junior clerks, remote
personalities, mythical beings dwelling on Olympian heights.

[Sir James Allport: allport.jpg]

It was a great thing to see the future King and Queen of England, and our
loyalty and enthusiasm knew no bounds. They were young and charming, and
beloved by the people; but, hero worshipper as I was, our great general
manager was to me even more than royalty. I little thought, as I looked
on Mr. Allport then, that, twenty years later, I should appear before him
to give evidence concerning Irish railways, when he was chairman of an
important Royal Commission.

The great abilities which enable a man to win and hold such a position as
his fired my fancy. I look at men and men's affairs with different eyes
now; but Mr. Allport was a great personality, and youthful enthusiasm
might well be excused for placing him on a high pedestal. He was tall
and handsome, with well-shaped head, broad brow, large clear keen eyes,
firm well-formed mouth, strong nose and chin, possessed of an abundant
head of hair, not close cropped in the style of to-day, but full and
wavy, and what one never sees now, a handsome natural curl along the
centre of the head with a parting on each side. This suited him well,
and added to his distinctive individuality. When I entered the Midland
service he was fifty-six years of age and in the plenitude of his power,
for those were days when the company was forcing its way north and south
and widely extending its territory. He was the animating spirit of all
the company's enterprises. No opposition, no difficulties ever daunted
him. His nature was bold and fitted to command, and to him is due, in a
large degree, the proud position the Midland holds to-day. It was not
until late in life, 1884 I think, when he had reached the age of seventy-
two, that his great qualities were accorded public recognition. He then
received the honour of knighthood but had retired from active service and
become a director of his company.

There was another personality that loomed large, in those years, on the
Midland--Samuel Swarbrick, the accountant. His world was finance, and in
it he was a master. So great was his skill that the Great Eastern
Railway Company, which, financially, was in a parlous condition and their
dividend _nil_, in 1866 took him from the Midland and made him their
general manager, at, in those days, a princely salary. Their confidence
was fully justified; his skill brought the company, if not to absolute
prosperity, at least to a dividend-paying condition, and laid the
foundation of the position that company now occupies.

His reputation as a man of figures stood as I have just said very high,
but, whilst I was at Derby, and before he moved to the Great Eastern, he
was prominent also as the happy possessor of the best coloured meerschaum
pipes in the county, and this, in those days, was no small distinction.
But a man does not achieve greatness by his own unaided efforts. Others,
his subordinates, help him to climb the ladder. It was so with Mr.
Swarbrick. There was a tall policeman in the service of the company, the
possessor of a fine figure, and a splendid long sandy-coloured beard. His
primary duty was to air himself at the front entrance of the station
arrayed in a fine uniform and tall silk hat, and this duty he
conscientiously performed. Secondarily, his occupation was to start the
colouring of new meerschaums for Mr. Swarbrick. Non-meerschaum smokers
may not know what a delicate task this is, but once well begun the rest
is comparatively easy. The tall policeman was an artist at the work; but
it nearly brought him to a tragic end, as I will relate.

Outside Derby station was a ticket platform at which all incoming trains
stopped for the collection of tickets. This platform was on a bridge
that crossed the river. One Saturday night our fine policeman was airing
himself on this platform, colouring a handsome new meerschaum for Mr.
Swarbrick. It was a windy night and a sudden gust blew his tall hat into
the river, and after it unfortunately dropped the meerschaum. Hat and
pipe both! Without a moment's hesitation in plunged the policeman to the
rescue; but the river was deep and he an indifferent swimmer. The night
was dark and he was not brought to land till life had nearly left him. He
recovered, but lost his sight and became blind for the rest of his life.
Mr. Swarbrick provided for him, I believe, by setting him up in a small
public house, where, I am told, despite his loss of sight, he ended his
days not unhappily.

In 1867, compared with 1851, the Midland had made giant strides. It
worked a thousand miles of railway against five hundred; its capital had
doubled and reached thirty-two millions, about one-fourth of what it is
to-day; its revenue had risen from about a million to over a million and
a half; and the dividend was five and a half compared with two and five-
eighths per cent.

The opening of the Midland route to Saint Pancras; the projection of the
Settle and Carlisle line; the introduction of Pullman cars, parlour
saloons, sleeping and dining cars; the adoption of gas and electricity
for the lighting of carriages; the running of third-class carriages by
all trains; the abolition of second-class and reduction of first-class
fares; and the establishment of superannuation funds were amongst the
most striking events in the railway world during this period.

On the first day of October, 1868, the first passenger train ran into
Saint Pancras station, and the Midland competition for London traffic now
began in earnest, and from that time onward helped to develop those
magnificent rival passenger train services between the Metropolis and
England's busy centres and between England and Scotland and Ireland,
which, for luxury, speed and comfort, stand pre-eminent. Prior to this,
the Midland access to London had been by the exercise of running powers
over the Great Northern Railway from Hitchin to King's Cross. The Great
Northern, reluctant to lose the Midland, and fearing their rivalry, had,
a few years previously, offered them running powers in perpetuity. "No,"
said Mr. Allport, "it is impossible that you can reconcile the interests
of these two great companies on the same railway; we are always only
_second-best_." Second-best certainly never suited the ambitious policy
of the Midland, and so the offer was rejected, and their line to London
made. It was at that time thought that the Midland headquarters would be
removed from Derby to London, and I remember how excited the clerical
staff and their wives and sweethearts were at the prospect. The idea was
seriously considered but, for various reasons, abandoned.

The Settle and Carlisle line, perhaps the greatest achievement of the
Midland, was not completed until sometime after I left their service. It
was opened in the year 1875. In 1866 they obtained the Act for its
construction. For some years their eyes had been as eagerly turned
towards Scotland as the eyes of Scotchmen had ever been towards England,
and for the same reason--the hope of gain. The Midland had hitherto been
excluded from any proper share of the Scotch traffic, but now having
secured the right to extend their system to Carlisle, they hoped to join
forces with their allies, the Glasgow and South-Western, and secure a
fair share of it. But "there's many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip,"
and in 1869 in a fit of timidity--a weakness most unusual with them--they
nearly lost this valuable right. The year 1867 was a time of great
financial anxiety; the Midland was weighted with heavy expenditure on
their London extension, the necessity for further capital became clamant,
the shareholders were seized with alarm, and a shareholders' consultative
committee was appointed, with the result that, in 1869, the company,
badgered and worried beyond endurance, actually applied to Parliament for
power to abandon the Settle and Carlisle line, and for authority to enter
into an agreement with the London and North-Western for access over that
company's railway to Carlisle. That power and authority, however,
Parliament, _in its wisdom_, refused to give.

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