A Brief History of Life in Victorian Britain

by Michael Paterson

  The creation of Britain’s railway system was described by contemporaries as the greatest building project since the Egyptian pyramids. There had certainly never been anything like it in British history. Between 200,000 and 250,000 labourers, many of them from Ireland, worked to create the multitude of lines that ultimately reached to the far north of Scotland. At the height of the railway-building boom, between 1844 and 1847, over nine and a half thousand miles of track were laid and, while the lines stretched out toward remote regions, the suburbs of cities were enmeshed in systems that carried local traffic. Because there were innumerable companies of varying size and ambition, there were hundreds of building projects in progress at once – many of them duplicating services and thus giving towns more than one station – and no unified plan. For passengers on long journeys, the need to book a ticket that involved travelling with several different railway companies created such inconvenience that in 1842 the Railway Clearing House, a centralized booking office, was set up. The railway network that covered the country grew haphazardly, though much of it eventually resolved into a logical pattern that linked together the major cities. The man most responsible for this was George Hudson, nicknamed ‘the railway king’. The personification of the get-rich-quick railway decade, he was a Yorkshire businessman who bullied his way to control of several railway companies and then embezzled hundreds of thousands of pounds. His motives were, of course, selfish, and after a few years he was discovered and disgraced. Together with his greed, however, he had had a genuine flair for organization, and had consolidated his various railway holdings into a viable, nascent network, an achievement on which others could build.

  Building the Line

  The builders – and Brunel in particular – made valiant efforts to blend their work with the landscape. Cuttings hid the line, embankments were sown with grass and planted with trees. Bridges and viaducts were designed to be graceful, and built with costly materials. The architecture of the railway bridge in the shadow of Conwy Castle in Wales pays tribute to its illustrious neighbour, and the entrance to Box Tunnel, near Bath, is decorated with italianate balustrades and keystoned arches to resemble something from the Renaissance. In the towns, where the coming of the railways had caused the most havoc (for entire districts had been truncated or demolished to allow the tracks through), equal care was taken to make this new intrusion appear dignified and appropriate. Temple Meads station in Bristol looks like a castle but has hints of an Oxford college. There were others that resembled Greek temples or Jacobean country houses. Small rural stations often looked like cottages or farmhouses. Not only the lines and stations were built by the railway ‘navvies’, but the engineering marvels that carried trains over rivers and through hills and mountains. Their most striking monument is surely the Forth Bridge, completed in 1890.

  In London, on which all the main lines converged, there were a number of great termini. Every one of them was built during Victoria’s reign, and, because no two looked alike, they usefully reflect the change of taste and the competing styles that characterized the era. The first was at Euston Square, completed in 1838. It was followed by London Bridge, Fenchurch Street, King’s Cross, Paddington, Bishopsgate, Victoria, Charing Cross, Waterloo, Cannon Street, St Pancras and Marylebone, which, opened in 1899, was the smallest as well as the last. Euston, with its Doric-pillared arch, was severely Classical. King’s Cross was prim and understated, as functional as an engine-shed, while its neighbour, St Pancras, was a colossal neo-Gothic fantasy that looked more like a city hall in Flanders. It is worth remembering that no secular structure on the scale of these buildings had been seen before (with the exceptions of the contemporary Crystal Palace and Houses of Parliament). Even the smallest were as big as cathedrals. Although their architecture often looked to the past, they were a potent symbol of the Victorian present – massive, expensive, technically bold and accomplished, expressive of a great and unassailable confidence.

  Even as the railways were covering their own country, British engineers were taking their skills abroad. Western European countries quickly adopted the new form of transport, and lines began extending eastwards and southwards across the Continent. The railway was even more popular in the vastness of India and Russia and of North and South America, where it was not simply a convenience – as it was in Britain – but a crucial link that made life viable in remote settlements. Britain manufactured the locomotives (often tailored to local terrain or conditions), rails and rolling-stock, and sent the engineers, builders, coal, drivers and maintenance men to set up the systems. In the process, they learned to solve problems and cope with extremes that were far greater than anything found at home – jungles, deserts and mountain ranges like the Andes and Himalayas. The manufacture and export of railways was a major industry that employed thousands and earned millions throughout the century.

  In Britain, the consolidation of a swift and increasingly efficient railway system had led to the standardization of timekeeping, a concept unknown and unattainable until then. When travel had been slower, every city, or district, could set its clocks as it pleased. With the advent of timetables – and of the electric telegraph through which the railways communicated – it became necessary for far-distant towns to synchronize. ‘Railway time’ became uniform, and was the standard to which all municipalities, organizations and institutions came to adhere. The result – a single, agreed reckoning of time, based on Greenwich – appears obvious to us. To the Victorians it seemed a miracle.

  If the railway stations with their soaring glass-and-iron vaults were engineering marvels, the locomotives that arrived and departed within them were no less impressive. Within twenty years of the Rainhill trial, the engines of the Rocket generation looked as anachronistic as a propeller-driven aircraft does to us. Engines were bigger, sleeker and, above all, faster. They had acquired longer boilers, lower funnels, larger tenders to carry more coal and more, and bigger, wheels, driven by pistons (by 1870 the famously elegant Stirling locomotive with its eight-foot driving wheel was in service on the line from London to Scotland). Drivers and footplates were given protection within semi-enclosed cabs, water and coal were made strategically accessible at track-sides so that trains could refuel without lengthy delays. Speed and efficiency were constantly, relentlessly being increased, though there were constant accidents, numerous deaths, frequent official enquiries and several Acts of Parliament aimed at making the service safer.

  Passengers were divided, according to their means, into three classes – as they were in society itself. First Class carried the nobility and gentry and the upper middle class. Second was appropriate for the clerk, shopkeeper and suburbanite. Third was for the lower middle class and for workmen. In First Class there were horsehair-stuffed seats. In Second, the seats were wooden. In Third – at least until the 1844 Act – there were no seats, or indeed roofs. The carriages, known as ‘standipedes’, were simply open wagons in which the travellers huddled, and only gradually did this section of the public gain any basic comforts. The standard of accommodation in all classes improved rapidly, however, once competition for passengers between the companies became more acute.

  Though railway travel had ceased to have the excitement of novelty, it came to acquire a different sort of glamour. The longest routes in Britain were those between London and Scotland, and on the east-coast line, to York and Edinburgh, a train left King’s Cross at ten o’clock each morning. This, initially called the ‘Special Scotch Express’, soon took on the more resonant nickname ‘The Flying Scotsman’, and became one of the world’s most famous train journeys. It was known not only for speed but comfort. Engines and rolling-stock were the best available, carriages were well appointed and there was no Third Class. The companies that ran the –slightly longer – west-coast route from Euston had to compete for passengers in what became bitter rivalry, and the ‘railway race to the north’ saw both sides increase train speeds and shorten passengers’ comfort-stops in an attempt to improve the service. This
sense of witnessing, or participating in, a sporting event that might involve breaking records (both sides reduced the time of their run to eight hours), increased public excitement and affection for the ‘permanent way’.

  Because railway travel was within reach of all but the very poorest, it altered the habits of the population. Public events, such as the weekly Saturday afternoon musical concerts at London’s Crystal Palace, were attended by thousands who were able to reach its rather off-the-beaten-track location within minutes from Victoria. It became possible for the first time, from the late thirties, for many people to take holidays. Naturally, many wished to go to the coast – although inland spas like Malvern and Buxton, and places of known beauty like the Lake District were also popular – and an increasing amount of railway traffic was devoted to getting them there. It became possible to reach a town such as Brighton or Eastbourne, spend some hours there and return within the same day, and thus the ‘day trip’ became a staple experience for the lower middle class. Railways also meant that families with their luggage – and even servants – could be transported to seaside resorts relatively easily. It was common for a wife, children and nanny to be installed in a hotel or boarding house while Father remained in town to work, joining them at weekends. Traffic to the coast proved so lucrative that railway companies began promoting resorts themselves, and actually building piers and other attractions to lure the public. Southend, Seaford, Minehead and Weston-super-Mare were all created, or improved, by railway companies to generate holiday traffic. With the growth of rail systems on the Continent, it also became possible for tourists to venture further afield by catching boat-trains that delivered them to Channel steamers, and – in another example of a ‘shrinking world’ – it was possible to book tickets at the London termini to destinations all over Europe and Asia. Captain Fred Burnaby, the traveller who wrote the epic and bestselling narrative A Ride to Khiva about a trek through Turkestan, began his journey, somewhat prosaically, by boarding the Folkestone train at Charing Cross.

  At Sea

  The steam engine could be used, with equal success, to drive vessels on water. In the United States, Robert Fulton had patented a steam boat driven by paddles, and tested it on the Hudson River with a four-day journey from New York to Albany and back. It represented an important victory over nature, for it was the first time in history that the propulsion of a vessel through water did not depend on the power of wind or muscle.

  Steam boats ran on coal, and moved with the aid of paddle wheels. With one of these at each side, it was possible to turn the vessel by using one or other of them, though a version with a single, wide wheel at the back was also developed. These boats quickly proved their worth on rivers and in coastal work, and within ten or fifteen years had become commonplace, but they could not easily be used for long sea voyages because they needed constant supplies of coal. When, in 1818, an American steam vessel, the Savanna, succeeded in crossing the Atlantic, she did so only with the help of sails.

  What caused the revolution in steam navigation was the invention of the screw propeller. Two men developed the idea at more or less the same time. In 1834 a Hampshire clergyman, the Reverend Edward Berthon, conceived the idea that a boat could be driven by a type of finned screw in the vessel’s stern below the waterline. He proved it by building a model which performed well in a pond in his garden. Almost simultaneously, Francis Pettit Smith came to the same conclusion, and he too experimented. Both men patented their idea in the same year – 1837 – though Smith was the first actually to build a full-sized boat and sail in it. The Admiralty was persuaded to test the notion, and a larger screw-driven vessel, the Archimedes, was built. Her top speed of ten knots meant that she outperformed the Vulcan, which was among the Navy’s most powerful paddle-steamers. A trial of strength was subsequently arranged between two other boats, this time involving a tug of war. They were of similar size and design, and had the same engines. The Rattler was propeller-driven and her rival, the Alecto, had port and starboard paddles. A tow-rope was fixed between their sterns, and on a signal they steamed in opposite directions. Watched by an interested crowd, Alecto suffered the indignity of being dragged backwards by her opponent. It was a victory for progress. Throughout the twenties and thirties, steam navigation companies came into existence, and steamers began to carry mail for considerable distances – from London to Alexandria, for instance.

  In the meantime Isambard Brunel, already heavily involved in building the Great Western Railway, was considering the possibilities of extending its reach all the way to the New World. He wanted to create a shipping service that would enable train passengers from London to disembark at Bristol and directly board a boat to America so that, as he put it, it would be possible to book a ticket ‘from Paddington to New York’. He managed to persuade the company’s directors to back him. Because Brunel was an engineer and not an administrator, he was less interested in the logistics of the scheme than in the design of the vessels that would make it possible, and he wanted a steamship that could carry enough coal to make the 2,500-mile voyage without recourse to sails. He planned, and built, such a ship, and named it after the railway. The Great Western was a paddle steamer, though she had masts and carried sail. At 212 feet long, she was the world’s largest vessel, and though built of oak her hull was reinforced with iron. She was launched in the year that Victoria became Queen.

  In 1838 she made her first voyage to New York. By the time she departed, she had attracted a rival in the shape of the Sirius, another sail-and-paddle hybrid that was attempting to make her way across on behalf of the British & American Steam Navigation Company. They did not set off together – Sirius had a head start – but their time across the ocean was measured. Sirius arrived first, though only by a few hours, after a voyage of eighteen days. It was a pyrrhic victory. She had run out of coal and been forced to burn all her cabin furniture, and even her doors. When the Great Western reached port, having taken fifteen days to make the crossing, she was found to have more than 12,000 tons of coal left.

  This achievement was not built upon, and the Great Western Railway failed to create its own fleet. Brunel’s ideas, however, moved on. His next ship was even more ambitious. The Great Britain, launched at Bristol in 1843, was 108 feet longer than Great Western and at 3,500 tons she boasted two important innovations: her hull was completely built from iron, and she had a propeller.

  It was this latter feature that made the difference. The screw propeller finally came of age in the 1840s, and shipping experienced something of a renaissance (Samuel Cunard, to cite one example, founded his fleet in 1840). The British shipbuilding industry expanded to meet demand, producing 131,000 tons during the forties – a figure that increased to 314,000 tons for the sixties. This was not simply the result of growing interest in global commerce. The repeal, in 1849, of the Navigation Act meant that all restrictions were removed on the carriage of British goods by foreign vessels. British ships were no longer protected against fierce competition, and it was necessary to fight back. Also significant, however, was the increase in passengers with the immense flood in emigrants from Ireland and the discovery of gold in California and Australia. In addition, during the sixties, British yards built vessels for the Confederate Navy. The slipways were kept busy, and by the fifties it was largely iron ships they were turning out.

  Brunel had planned yet another leviathan. In the autumn of 1857 three years’ work on the Great Eastern was completed at Millwall. Once again this was the largest ship ever built (a record she was to keep until 1906), and this time undoubtedly dwarfed all that had gone before. She was 692 feet in length and 18,915 tons. She had a 24-foot propeller and side paddle-wheels which, at 58 feet, were as high as a three-storey house, though she also had masts and sails. The ship was so vast that she could not be launched bow-first, and she had to be lowered, somewhat gingerly, sideways into the Thames, watched by a crowd that exceeded 3 million.

  Unfortunately she stuck, and it required a further three mont
hs of careful nudging before she reached the river. Once at sea, her performance was disappointing, for her colossal engines could not coordinate the work of the wheels and propeller, and the ship never reached the speeds expected. Brunel died before she made her maiden voyage, and when she crossed the Atlantic in the summer of 1860, she was welcomed in New York but attracted few passengers. A year later she was badly damaged in a storm while on a return voyage, losing both wheels and what little prestige she had left. In 1864 she was sold to become a cable-laying vessel, and, made redundant from this, in 1886 she became a funfair in Liverpool harbour. Two years later she was broken up.

  Great Eastern had symbolized the power of British technology, and her failure was unable to dent the confidence of the engineers and mechanics who continued to design. In the same decade that Brunel’s great ship was lying idle, British yards were building more ships than the rest of the world put together. A greater achievement – for it was to power the fleets of the twentieth century – was the steam turbine. This was invented in the eighties by Charles Parsons, who took a further ten years to develop one that could be used aboard a vessel. It was a steam engine that did not use a piston, whose basic principle was the shooting of very hot steam at a revolving set of fan-blades. This simple idea, which was extremely difficult to fulfil in practice, was used for the first time in a small vessel Parsons built called the Turbinia, which was able to travel at a speed of thirty-four knots, almost twice the rate of one of the sail-driven tea-clippers, the ‘greyhounds of the ocean’. The future had arrived.

  While steam navigation represented progress, the sailing ship continued to claim a hefty share of the oceans until the end of the century – in 1865 only a sixth of British shipping was steam-driven – and did not tamely give up its glamour. The clippers that brought China tea and Australian wool to England were the fastest merchant vessels ever powered by wind. The races to the Thames from Shanghai or Melbourne were not only epics of seamanship but major sporting events that attracted wagers and enthralled the public.