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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The financial clouds, as all clouds do, after a time dispersed; the
outlook grew brighter, the Midland made the line, and it was opened, as I
have said, throughout to Carlisle in 1875.

In the autumn of 1872 Mr. Allport visited the United States and was
greatly impressed with the Pullman cars. On his return he introduced
them on the Midland, both the parlour car and the sleeper. About the
same time the London and North-Western also commenced the running of
sleeping cars to Scotland and to Holyhead. To which company belongs the
credit of being first in the field with this most desirable additional
accommodation for the comfort of passengers I am not prepared to say;
perhaps honors were easy.

But the greatest innovation of the time were the running by the Midland
of third-class carriages by all trains; and the abolition of second-class
carriages and fares, accompanied by a reduction of the first-class fares.
The first event took place in 1872, but the latter not till 1875. The
first was a democratic step indeed, and aroused great excitement.
Williams, in his book _The Midland Railway_, wrote, "On the last day of
March, 1872, we remarked to a friend: 'To-morrow morning the Midland will
be the most popular railway in England.' Nor did we incur much risk by
our prediction. For on that day the Board had decided that on and after
the first of April, they would run third-class carriages by all trains;
the wires had flashed the tidings to the newspapers, the bills were in
the hands of the printers, and on the following morning the Directors
woke to find themselves famous." At a later period, Mr. Allport said, if
there was one part of his public life on which he looked back with more
satisfaction than another it was the time when this boon was conferred on
third-class passengers.

When we contemplate present conditions of third-class travel it is hard
to realise what they were before this change took place; slow speed,
delays and discomfort; bare boards; hard seats; shunting of third-class
trains into sidings and waiting there for other trains, sometimes even
goods trains, to pass. Mr. Allport might well be proud of the part he
played.

Another matter which concerned, not so much the public as the welfare of
the clerical staff of the railways, was the establishment of
Superannuation Funds; yet the public was interested too, for the
interests of the railway service and the general community are closely
interwoven. Up till now station masters and clerks had struggled on
without prospect of any provision for their old age. Their pay was
barely sufficient to enable them to maintain a respectable position in
life and afforded no margin for providing for the future.

At last, the principal railway companies, with the consent of their
shareholders, and with Parliamentary sanction, established Superannuation
Funds, which ever since have brought comfort and security to their
officers and clerical staff, and have proved of benefit to the companies
themselves. A pension encourages earlier retirement from work, quickens
promotion, and vitalises the whole service. On nearly all railways
retirement is optional at sixty and compulsory at sixty-five.

The London and North-Western was the first company to adopt the system of
superannuation, the London and South-Western second, the Great Western
came third, the Midland fourth, and other companies followed in their
wake.

In 1873 the Railway Clearing House obtained Parliamentary power to form a
fund for its staff, with permission to railway companies not large enough
to successfully run funds of their own, and also to the Irish Railway
Clearing House, to become partners in this fund. The Irish Clearing
House took advantage of this, as also have many railway companies, and
practically the whole of the clerical service throughout the United
Kingdom can to-day look forward to the benefits of superannuation.

CHAPTER VIII.
SCOTLAND, GLASGOW LIFE, AND THE CALEDONIAN LINE.

On the last day of December, in the year 1872, between seven and eight
o'clock in the evening, I arrived at Glasgow by the Caledonian train from
Carlisle, and was met at Buchanan Street Station by my good friend Tom.

After supper we repaired to the streets to see the crowds that congregate
on _Hogmanhay_, to make acquaintance with the mysteries of
"first-footin'," and to join in ushering in the "guid new year." It was
a stirring time, for Scotchmen encounter their _Hogmanhay_ with ardent
_spirits_. They are as keen in their pleasures as in their work. Compare
for instance their country dances with ours. As Keats, in his letters
from Scotland says, "it is about the same as leisurely stirring a cup o'
tea and beating up a batter pudding." The public houses and bars were
driving a lively trade, but "Forbes Mackenzie" was in force, and come
eleven o'clock, though it were a hundred _Hogmanhays_, they all had to
close. We met some new-made friends of Tom's and joined in their
conviviality. I was the dark complexioned man of the party, and as a
"first-footer" in great request. We did not go home till morning, and
reached there a little hilarious ourselves, but it was our first
_Hogmanhay_ and may be forgiven.

Dear reader, did you ever lie in a _concealed bed_? It is a Scottish
device cunningly contrived to murder sleep. At least so Tom and I found
it. It was my fate to sleep, to lie I should say, in one for several
weeks. Its purpose is to economise space, and like Goldsmith's chest of
drawers, it is "contrived a double debt to pay," a sleeping room by
night, a sitting room by day.

Whilst Glasgow is a city of _flats_ its people are resourceful and
energetic. Keen and canny, they drive a close bargain but, scrupulous
and conscientious, fulfil it faithfully. Proud of their city and its
progress, its industries and manufactures, its civic importance, they are
a little disdainful perhaps, perhaps a little jealous, of their beautiful
elder sister, Edinburgh. Glasgow is the Belfast of Scotland!

Self-contained houses are the exception and are limited to the well-to-
do. The flat, in most cases, means a restricted number of apartments,
insufficient bedroom accommodation, and the _concealed bed_ is Glasgow's
way of solving the difficulty.

Tom and I did not take kindly to our hole in the wall, and soon found
other lodgings where space was not so circumscribed, and where we could
sleep in an open bed in an open room.

Our new quarters were a great success; a ground-floor flat with a fine
front door; a large well-furnished sitting room with two windows looking
out on to the street, and an equally large double-bedded room at the back
of the sitting room. Our landlady, a kind, motherly, canny Scotchwoman,
looked after us well and favoured us with many a bit of good advice: "You
must be guid laddies, and tak care o' the bawbees; you maun na eat
butchers' meat twice the week; tak plenty o' parritch and dinna be
extravagant." Economy with the good old soul was a cardinal virtue,
waste a deadly sin. I fear she was often shocked at our easy Saxon ways,
though Tom and I thought ourselves models of thrift.

Once, it was on a Sunday, Tom and I, with a party of friends, had had a
very long walk, a regular pedestrian excursion, thirty miles, there or
thereabouts, to use a Scotticism, and poor Tom was quite knocked up and
confined to bed for several days. Our good old landlady was greatly
shocked; a strict Sabbatarian, she knew it was a punishment for "breakin'
the Sabbath; why had na ye gane to the kirk like guid laddies?" We
modestly reminded her that we always did go, excepting of course on this
particular Sunday. "Then whit business had ye to stay awa on ony
Sabbath?" We had nothing to say in answer to this. The dear old
creature was really shocked at our backsliding; but she nursed Tom very
tenderly all the same.

When the sultry heat of summer came we found Glasgow very trying, and
though sorry to leave our good landlady, moved into the country, to
Cambuslang, a village some four miles from the city, which was then
becoming a favourite residential resort.

At Cambuslang I made the acquaintance and became the friend of _Cynicus_,
the humorous artist whose satirical sketches have, for many years, been
well-known and well sold in England, in Scotland and in Ireland too. He
was then a youth of about twenty. Longing to see the world and without
the necessary means, he emulated Goldsmith, made a prolonged tour in
France and Italy supporting himself not by his flute nor by disputations,
but by his brush and palette. For a few weeks at a time he worked in
towns or cities, sold what he painted, and then, with purse replenished,
wandered on. He and I were living "doon the watter," at Dunoon, on the
Clyde, one summer month. A Fancy Dress Bazaar was on at the time. The
first evening we went to it, and he, unobserved, made furtive sketches of
the most prominent people and the prettiest girls. We both sat up all
that night, he working at and finishing the sketches. Next morning by
the first boat and first train, we took them to Glasgow, had six hundred
lithographic copies struck off; back post-haste to Dunoon; in the evening
to the Bazaar, and sold the copies at threepence each. It was an immense
success; we could have disposed of twice the number; every pretty girl's
admirer wanted a copy of her picture, and the portraits of the presiding
"meenister" and of the good-looking unmarried curate were eagerly
purchased by fond mammas and adoring daughters. We had our fun, and
cleared besides a profit of nearly four pounds sterling. This financial
_coup_ would not have come off so well but for the warm-hearted
co-operation of our railway printers, McCorquodale and Coy. They, good
people, entered into our exploit with a will, did their part well, and
made little if any profit, generously leaving that to _Cynicus_ and
myself.

To his mother, like many another clever son, _Cynicus_ owed his talent.
She was a woman of great intellectual endowment, with highly cultivated
literary tastes. Her memory was remarkable and her conversational powers
very great. She read much and thought deeply. In a modest way her
parlour, which attracted many young people of literary and artistic
leanings, recalled the _Salons_ of France of a century ago. She
entertained charmingly with tea and cakes and delightful talk. Of
strong, firm, decided character, she might, perhaps, have been thought a
little deficient in womanly gentleness had not genuine kindness of heart,
motherly feeling, and a happy humour lent a softness to her features and
imparted to them a particular charm. She exercised an authority over her
household which inspired respect and contrasted strikingly with the easy-
going parental ways of to-day. There were other sons and there were
daughters also, all more or less gifted, but _Cynicus_ was the genius of
the family--its bright particular star.

The various lodgings of my bachelor days was never quite of the
conventional sort. The Cambuslang quarters certainly were not. The
house was large and old-fashioned. Originally it had been two smallish
houses: the two front doors still remained side by side, but only one was
used. The rooms on the ground floor were small, the original building
composed of one storey only, but another had been added of quite spacious
dimensions. We had two excellent, large well-furnished rooms upstairs.
The landlady was an interesting character and so was her husband. She
was Irish, he Scotch; she about seventy years of age, he under fifty; she
ruddy, healthy, hearty, good-looking; he, pale, nervous, shy, retiring.
But on the last Thursday of each month he was quite another man. On that
day he went to Glasgow to collect the rents of some small houses he
owned; and generally came home rather "fou" and hilarious, when the old
lady would take him in hand, and put him to bed.

They had an only child, a son, a grown up man, an uncouth ill-looking
ungainly fellow, who did no work, smoked and loafed about, but was the
idol of his mother. He resembled neither parent in the least, and,
except that such vagaries of nature are not unknown, it might have been
supposed that some cuckoo had visited the parental nest.

A gaunt, hard-featured domestic completed this interesting family, and
she was uncommon too. By no means young, what Balzac calls "a woman of
canonical age," she resembled Pere Grandet's tall Nanon. Like Nanon, she
had been the devoted servant of the family for nearly a quarter of a
century, and like her, had no interest outside that of her master and
mistress. She was always working, rarely went out, spoke little, but
ministered to the wants of Tom and myself, and waited on us with
unremitting attention.

Despite all drawbacks, however, they were fine lodgings. The old lady
was a wonderful cook and had all the liberality of her race.

New Year's Day, the great Scotch holiday, Tom and I spent in Edinburgh,
and returned much impressed with its stately beauty.

The next morning I entered upon my work at St. Rollox, where the stores
department of the Caledonian Railway is situated. The head of the
department was styled Stores Superintendent. I thought him the most
impressive looking man I had ever seen. He overpowered me; in his
presence I never felt at ease. He was a big man, and looked bigger than
he was; good-looking too; ruddy, portly, well-dressed and formal. An
embodiment of commercial energy and dignity. In his face gravity,
keenness, and good health were blended. Soon after I joined his staff he
left the Caledonian to become General Manager of Young's Paraffin Oil
Company, and subsequently its Managing Director. Success, I believe,
always attended him. No position could lose any of its importance in his
hands. When he left St. Rollox a great blank was felt; he filled so
large a space. He has lately gone to his rest full of years and honors.

I fear he never liked me, nor had any great opinion of my abilities. This
was not to be wondered at, for I am sure I did not display any excessive
zeal for the work on which I was then employed, and which I found
monotonous and uninteresting.

He confided to his chief clerk, who was my friend, that one day he had
seen me, in business hours, in the city, smoking a cigarette and looking
at the girls, and was sure I would never do much good. He had very
strict business notions. I confessed to the cigarette, but not to the
graver charge. It was a wholesome tonic, however, and pulled me up. I
wanted to get on in life; ambition was stirring within me; and I formed
some good resolutions which, as time went on, I kept more or less
faithfully.

At St. Rollox one's daily lunch was a matter of some difficulty. It was
a district of factories, and the only restaurants were the Great Western
Cooking Depots, where one could get a steak and bread and cheese for
fivepence, but the rooms and tables and accessories were, to say the
least, unappetising. Hunger had to be satisfied, however, and I had to
swallow my pride and my five-pennyworth. I varied this occasionally by
bringing with me my own sandwiches and eating them seated on a tombstone
in Sighthill cemetery, which was less than a quarter of a mile distant
from the stores department.

My work, as I have said, was monotonous enough: writing letters from
dictation, an occupation which gave but little exercise to one's
faculties. I obtained some variation by occasionally taking a turn
through the various stores and getting into touch with the practical men
in charge. They were always very civil and ready to talk of their
business, and so I learned something of the nature, quality, uses and
cost of many things necessary to the working of a railway, which I
afterwards found very useful. Occasionally also I visited the
laboratory, in which an analytical chemist was regularly engaged.

The event which, in my short service of two years with the Caledonian,
seemed to me of the greatest moment, was that, after six months or so, I
became a taxpayer! This was an event indeed. In the offices at Derby it
was only, as a rule, middle-aged or old men who attained this proud
distinction; and here was I, not yet twenty-two, with my salary raised to
100 pounds a year, paying income tax at the rate of _threepence_ in the
pound on forty pounds, for an abatement of sixty pounds was allowed.
Until I got used to the novelty I was as proud as Lucifer.

The office in which I now worked had no Apollos, no literary geniuses, no
Long Jacks, no boy benedicts, such as adorned our desks at Derby, but it
rejoiced in one _rara avis_, who came a few months after and left a few
months before me. He was a middle-aged, aristocratic, kind,
good-hearted, unbusinesslike man, and was brother to a baronet. He
professed a knowledge of medicine and brought a bottle, a bolus or a
plaster, whichever he deemed best, whenever any of us complained of cold
or cough, of headache or backache or any ailment whatever. When he left
we all received from him a parting gift. Mine was a handsome, expensive,
red-felt chest protector. I wore it constantly for a year or two and,
for aught I know, it may be that by its protecting influence against the
rigour of Glasgow winters, the bituminous atmosphere of St. Rollox and
the smoke-charged fogs of the city, I am alive and well to-day. Who can
tell? It is certain that I then had a bad cough nearly always; and this
I am sure was what decided the form of his parting gift to me.

It was about this time that I attended my first public dinner and made my
first speech in public. Several days before the event I was told that,
being in the Volunteer Force, I had been placed on the toast list to
reply for the Army, Navy and Volunteers. It was a railway dinner, for
the purpose of celebrating the departure to England, on promotion, of the
chief clerk in the Midland Railway Company's Scottish Agency Office. The
dinner was largely attended. The idea of having to speak filled me with
trepidation. But to my great surprise I acquitted myself with credit.
Once on my legs I found that nervousness left me, words came freely and I
even enjoyed the novel experience. To suddenly discover oneself
proficient where failure had been feared increases self esteem and adds
to the sum of happiness. At this dinner I also made my first
acquaintance with that "Great chieftain o' the puddin' race," the
_Haggis_, which deserves the pre-eminence it enjoys.

One night, towards the end of December, in 1874, when skating by
moonlight, not far from Cambuslang, I chanced to meet a young friend, a
clerk in the Glasgow and South-Western Railway, who, like myself, was
enjoying the pleasures of the ice. Tom was not with me, for he, poor
fellow! was not well enough to be out o' nights in winter. My young
friend gave me, with great eagerness, a rare piece of news. Mr.
Johnstone, the Glasgow and South-Western general manager, was retiring
and Mr. Wainwright was to succeed him! Well, that did not excite me, and
I wondered at his earnestness; but more was to follow. Mr. Wainwright,
as general manager, required a principal clerk and there was, it seemed,
no one in the place quite suitable. He must be good at correspondence,
and expert at shorthand. I was, my young friend said, the very man; I
must apply. Mr. Wainwright was English, so was I; I came from the
Midland, and the Midland and the Glasgow and South-Western were hand and
glove. How lucky we had met; he had not thought of me till this very
moment. It was fate. Would I write tonight? By this time I was as
eager as himself. No more skating for me that night. I hurried home,
Tom and I composed a careful and judicious letter. I posted it in Her
Majesty's pillar box hard by; went to bed, but was too excited to sleep.
An answer soon came, and an interview with Mr. Wainwright followed. I
received the appointment, at a salary of 120 pounds a year to begin with;
and in the early days of the new year, two years after my first
appearance in Scotland, entered upon my duties, not at Saint Enoch
Station, where the headquarters of the Glasgow and South-Western now are,
but at Bridge Street Station on the south side of the river, where the
office staff of the company was then accommodated.

CHAPTER IX.
GENERAL RAILWAY ACTS OF PARLIAMENT

Such unromantic literature as Acts of Parliament had not, it may be
supposed, up to this, formed part of my mental pabulum. I knew that an
Act was a necessary preliminary to the construction of a railway, and
this was all I knew concerning the relations between the railways and the
State. Whilst a little learning may be a dangerous thing, in my new
situation, I soon discovered that a general manager's clerk would be the
better of possessing some knowledge of the numerous Acts of Parliament
that affected railway companies. Almost daily questions arose in which
such knowledge was useful; so I determined to become acquainted with
them, and in my leisure hours made as profound a study as I could of that
compilation which, in railway offices was then in general use--_Bigg's
General Railway Acts_. I found the formidable looking volume more
readable than I had imagined and less difficult to understand than I had
expected.

Governments have ever kept a watchful eye on railway companies. Up to
1875, the year at which we have now arrived, no less than 112 general
Acts of Parliament affecting railways had been placed on the Statute Book
of the realm. They were applicable to all railways alike, and in
addition to and independent of the special Acts which each company must
obtain for itself, first for its incorporation and construction, and
afterwards for extensions of its system, for the raising of capital, and
for various other purposes.

Many of the general Acts have been framed upon the recommendations of
various Select Committees and Royal and Vice-Regal Commissions, which
have been appointed from time to time since railways began. From 1835
down to the present year of 1918 some score or more of these Committees
and Commissions have gravely sat and issued their more or less wise and
weighty reports.

What are these numerous Acts of Parliament and what are their objects,
scope, and intentions?

Whilst neither time nor space admit of detailed exposition, not to speak
of the patience of my readers, a few observations upon some of the
principal enactments may not be inapposite or uninteresting.

Pride of place belongs to the _Carriers' Act_ of 1830, passed in the
reign of William IV., five years after the first public railway (the
Stockton and Darlington) was opened. This Act, although in it the word
_railway_ does not appear, is an important Act to railway companies, and
possesses the singular and uncommon merit of having been framed for the
_protection_ of Common Carriers. It is intituled "_An Act for the more
effectual Protection of Mail Contractors, Stage Coach Proprietors, and
other Common Carriers for Hire, against the Loss or Injury to Parcels or
Packages delivered to them for Conveyance or Custody, the Value and
Contents of which shall not be Declared to them by the Owners thereof_."
The draughtsman of this dignified little Act it is clear was greatly
addicted to _capitals_. Probably he thought they heightened effect, much
as Charles Lamb spelt plum pudding with a _b_--"plumb pudding," because,
he said, "it reads fatter and more suetty." At the time this Act came
into being, railways in the eye of Parliament were public highways, upon
which you or I, if we paid the prescribed tolls, could convey our
traffic, our vehicles, or ourselves. In the years 1838-1840 many of the
companies obtained powers enabling them to act as public carriers; and in
1840 questions having arisen in Parliament as to the rights of the public
in this respect the subject was referred to a Select Committee of the
House of Commons. The Committee's report disposed of the view which,
until then, Parliament had held, and expressed the opinion that the right
of persons to run their own engines and carriages was a dead letter for
the good reason, amongst others, that it was necessary for railway trains
to be run and controlled by and under one complete undivided authority.

After the _Carriers' Act_, which applied to all carriers as well as to
railways, the first general railway Act of importance was the _Railways
(Conveyance of Mails) Act_ of 1838. This Act enabled the
Postmaster-General to require railway companies to convey mails by all
trains and to provide sorting carriages when necessary, the Royal Arms to
be painted on such carriages, and in 1844, under the _Railway Regulation
Act_, it was further enacted that the Postmaster-General could require,
for the conveyance of mails, that trains should be run at any rate of
speed, _certified to be safe_, but not to exceed 27 miles an hour!

As I have said, the Select Committee of 1840 reported against the right
of the public to run their own engines and carriages on railways. They
made recommendations which led to the passing of the _Railway Regulation
Act_ of that year, and in that Act powers were, for the first time,
conferred upon the Board of Trade in connection with railways. It was
the beginning of that authority, which since has greatly grown, but which
the Board of Trade have in the main exercised with an impartiality, which
public authorities do not always display. The Act empowered the Board,
before any new railway was opened, to require notice from the railway
company. This power was repealed by an Act of 1842, and larger powers
granted in its place, including the right to compel the inspection of
such railways before being opened for traffic. The Act of 1840 also
required the companies, under penalty, to furnish to the Board of Trade
returns of traffic, as well as of all accidents attended with personal
injury; and to submit their bye-laws for certification.

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