Combined with the sudden rush of national affection for George was an increasing awareness that the railway, which many people still alive had first seen appearing with some trepidation, was a great British invention, just one more sign that Victorian England ruled the waves. When railway anniversaries started cropping up, they were seen as great excuses for national celebrations, for steam and for George, Father of it all.
The first railway anniversary was in 1875, the Jubilee of the Stockton and Darlington. The North Eastern Railway, which had taken over the Stockton and Darlington in 1863 (the S & D being worth at that time £4 million) contributed £5,000 towards the celebrations and Darlington Corporation a further £1,000. As Jeans said in his 1875 history of the Stockton and Darlington, which came out to mark the jubilee, it was a problem knowing exactly what to do. ‘A railway jubilee is an event of character so unique that there is no precedent to guide those who are concerned in its celebration.’
The problem was solved by unveiling a statue to Joseph Pease, and presenting a portrait of the said Joseph Pease. Mr Henry Pease, whose idea it was to have a jubilee celebration, served on a committee which contained Mr W. R. Pease, Mr J. W. Pease, Mr A. Pease and Mr H. F. Pease. There wasn’t a Stephenson in sight. Pride of place in an exhibition of old engines was Locomotion number one which had continued running strong from the opening day in 1825 until 1850, when it went into Mr Joseph Pease’s collieries for seven years before ending up on a pedestal opposite Darlington Railway Station.
Over a thousand VIP visitors were invited, including bishops, lords and members of the cabinet and on Monday 27 September 1875, they were fêted in a large tent erected specially in a cricket field, there being no hall in Darlington big enough for such an assembly. ‘The banquet will be purveyed,’ so the announcements said, ‘by King and Brymes (late Birch and Birch) who purvey the Lord Mayor’s banquets at the Guildhall.’
For the ordinary populace there were fireworks, processions, displays, and for the children of the town a tea party in the marquee, two days after the VIPs. Special trains ran from King’s Cross and there were specials to Darlington from all over the north east. Thousands of handbills about the jubilee celebrations were printed which can still be bought at most railway enthusiasts shops for only a pound or two.
The Peases and their Quaker friends had always dominated the town of Darlington so it wasn’t surprising that they should still be so prominent. Edward came from a large family, had eight children himself and Joseph, his eldest son, in turn had eight children. They were everywhere and they seemed to live for ever. Old Edward Pease, who’d come to George’s funeral despite his years, had many more years to go. He was fit and well when Samuel Smiles came to interview him in 1854, at the age of eighty-eight. He’d had a few qualms over the years, wondering what sort of monster he’d brought into the world, but Smiles must have convinced him he’d done a great job, according to what he wrote in his diary.
Fri., Oct. 20 – S. Smiles was with me to obtain particulars for a memoir of the life of George Stephenson. It appears to me that Railways will be a favour to the world, and I do not regret, but far otherwise, that my time, care and attention was so closely occupied for many months. Except with the help of a faithful secretary, R. Oxley, the care and charge of providing all materials and all the costs for the waymen’s wages rested on me. If I have been in any way made a humble instrument of use in the creation, all the praise, and I render it, is due to my God.
Three days later, Robert Stephenson came to see him:
Mon, Oct. 23 – My friend, Robert Stephenson the engineer, to spend two or three days with me – a man of most highly gifted and talented power of mind, of benevolent, liberal, kindly, just, generous dispositions, in company most interesting. My dear Sons John and Henry dined with me. At tea at my son Joseph’s, a considerable and interesting company. At home to sup, and after it some social interesting subject occupied us to near eleven.
The evening pleasantly spent nearly alone, expressing to Robert Stephenson my anxious desire that smoking and taking wine might be carefully limited. Oh my soul, be upon the watch.
One of the aspects that worried Edward about railways was how much he himself had made, even though he could console himself by remembering that he’d simply been trying to help young Robert.
Dec 28, 1848 – … Pecuniarily, I have cause to admire how an effort to serve a worthy youth, Robert, the son of George Stephenson, by a loan of £500, at first without expectation of much remuneration, has turned to my great advantage. During the course of the year I have received £7,000 from the concern at Forth Street.
It will be remembered that Edward Pease put £1,600 into Robert Stephenson and Company in 1823 (apart from helping Robert with his own stake). Receiving £7,000 annually after twenty-five years for an investment of £1,600 is certainly pecuniary.
In 1857 there was a movement in Darlington to have a testimonial to Edward Pease and to erect a statue in his name but he categorically refused to allow it. He died the next year, aged ninety-one. Joseph Pease, his son, had long since been the controlling influence in the Pease railway, colliery and banking concerns which had by now grown to an enormous size, mainly thanks to Joseph himself who wasn’t as guilt ridden about money as his father. In 1830 Joseph had bought up enough local collieries to be known as the largest colliery owner in the whole of the South Durham coalfield. The S & D had similarly expanded, though it soon had competition from Hudson to face, but perhaps Joseph’s most inspired investment was to buy five hundred acres of swamp land lower down the Tees in 1829. He saw this as a better site for a port than Stockton and also as an ideal site for new iron smelting works, using the recently discovered Cleveland iron mines. This swamp, which he got for a few pounds an acre, is now Middlesbrough, still one of the most important iron and steel towns in the country.
In 1832, Joseph Pease entered parliament, becoming the first Quaker MP. MPs previously had to take an oath to the Established Church but Joseph was now allowed to affirm. He still retained other Quaker ways, never taking his hat off when entering the House of Commons (instead an alert door-keeper always took it off for him, thus solving the problem). His son Joseph Whitwell Pease (later Sir Joseph) was also an MP for many years. There is a story told in the Pease family of the time in the Commons cloakroom when he put his hand in his coat pocket and found a gun. The Quakers, of course, were against all firearms. The mystery was solved when he discovered he’d picked up the wrong coat. The House of Commons coat pegs were in alphabetical order and next to him was Parnell.
Joseph Pease died in 1872 and Henry, his younger brother, became the leading Pease and the inspiration of the jubilee celebrations. He too became an MP and carried on his father’s tradition of beseeching world leaders to give up war. In 1853 he went to Russia and had a long interview with the tzar and then to Paris where he saw the emperor.
The Peases kept up their expansion in business, helped by their relations the Barclays and other bankers, and in politics. By the end of the century there had been ten MPs in the family and not long afterwards their total in the Lords went up to three – Lord Gainford, Lord Daryngton, Lord Wardington. They also managed three baronets. The family is going strong to this day, many of them still in the City, though few of them are now Quakers.
The Stephensons, by comparison, have almost disappeared. They had no more distinguished members after Robert, the last and only member of his father’s line. There were many cousins and they were active in Robert Stephenson and Company for many years but none became public figures. Robert Stephenson and Company eventually moved their works to Darlington and were finally taken over by larger combines. Today they are lost in GEC.
George Stephenson, meanwhile, kept marching on, in fact and in fiction. For the centenary of his birth in 1881 over fifteen thousand people turned up at a festival in his honour at the Crystal Palace. Belgium sent a large deputation and in every foreign country where George or Robert had sent locomotives or built a railw
ay some form of commemoration took place. In Rome, the station was bedecked with flowers and the Italian papers contained potted histories of George, most of them based on Smiles. In Germany there were long editorials, One of them likening his deeds to those of Napoleon and Bismarck. In England there were fireworks and processions in all the main towns and railway commercialisation, which had first raised its tentative head at Liverpool in 1830, erupted in a flood of sheets, posters, books, poems, mugs, plates and other suitable or unsuitable objects. Many books came out to mark the event and there was even a book brought out in 1886, edited by William Duncan, which contained reports of all the 1881 George Stephenson celebrations up and down the country.
In recent decades there has been a lessening of public interest in George Stephenson, though Chesterfield did remember the centenary of his death in 1948 with a buffet tea. The 1975 celebrations for the 150th anniversary of the Stockton and Darlington Railway did do a lot to revive interest in George himself. Smiles made him into a Victorian legend and today the Victorians and their legends are back in favour.
His face and his engines often appear on railway medals and stamps abroad, when they are celebrating some anniversary, but many countries have their own pioneer engineers and their own railway sagas which are taught to children at school, forgetting that many of their railways, if not their engines, owed their inspiration to George. In Britain, every child does learn the name of George Stephenson but even educated adults soon forget what exactly it was he did, thinking perhaps he was the one who watched the kettle boil or wrote Kidnapped.
In the engineering and railway worlds his works are of course still well known to everyone, and they still argue about where he got his tubular boiler from. But, as ever, it is his engines and railways which have been constantly analysed and argued about at length rather than Stephenson the man.
Professor Jack Simmons of Leicester University, the leading academic in the field, says that before the war there was a slight period of debunking of the Stephenson legend. Railway writers, tired of the perfect picture of him as painted by Smiles, began to find a few warts. L.T.C. Rolt, with his theory about the relationship with William James, even if that particular row now can’t be proved, was one of the first not to treat George as a plaster figure in a glass case.
‘There are many things we still don’t know about George Stephenson, as a person and as an engineer,’ says Professor Simmons. ‘I would like to know much more about the early days at Killingworth, from about 1814 onwards. He’d done so much by the time 1820 came, and he became involved in the Stockton and Darlington line, yet so little is known about it.
‘There is also something strange about the way he seemed to give up railways around 1845. Something appears to have snapped in him. It was the height of the mania, yet he kept out of it. Something made him withdraw and I think whatever it was happened around 1842–3. Perhaps he was worried by Hudson’s success, jealous of Robert even, or perhaps he just physically suddenly aged and decided to retire? I’ve never seen anyone attempt an explanation.
‘We know him best from the late twenties and by then he was rather overbearing and arrogant, though it was understandable, when you know what went before. I think the incident of the Safety Lamp resolved him not to let such a thing happen again, to make sure he always got the credit where it was due and not give it to others.
‘He did become a megalomaniac. You should have a look at what he said to the people of Sheffield in 1836. He was unscrupulous in attacking his opponents’ plans. He told Sheffield that unless they did things his way they would be excluded for ever from Railways! He did get rather carried away at times.
‘By the time we know him best, when he was rich and famous, his mind had set. His experiences had been learned a long time ago and he could be inflexible. He never quite got over his early triumphs. He was out of his depth when he got into any arguments with other people, such as the Parliamentary débâcle. He went harsh and rigid when opposed or when the situation got out of hand. He had created railways on his own and he naturally felt self-important. He was the perfect self-made man and he displayed all the classic self-made-man patterns. He was jealous and afraid of others. He was not a generous man, that is very clear. All these faults are understandable. Smiles completely hid them, yet they are to be expected in such a man who’s faced the struggles he’d faced.
‘It’s good that his character is now being filled out more, after all these years. The attacks on him by the professional engineers, which happened from the very beginning, have proved very little. There had been rival claims made by many other people for many of his successes. Most of them are nonsense. Nobody can pretend that George Stephenson was other than he was – the pioneer of railways.’
Postscript:
THE GEORGE STEPHENSON TOUR
The end of steam came to Britain in 1968. Overnight, everything to do with steam became an art form. As an art form, railway mania is one of the world’s growing pastimes. The nostalgia, and the prices, appear to be limitless. In Britain alone there are estimated to be two million railway enthusiasts who will buy or read or watch almost anything to do with their particular passion from the age of steam.
There are many places and objects associated with George Stephenson which can be seen today – some fascinating, some not worth the visit. True Stephenson pilgrims will go round them all. The layman might simply be interested in knowing what happened after George moved on.
WYLAM ON TYNE
George would be surprised to see his birthplace today. The industrial revolution has not left Wylam a wreck, as one might imagine, but a rather quaint country village with stone built cottages and some smart new desirable detached residences occupied by people like Tyne Tees TV executives who commute into Newcastle, nine miles further down the Tyne. As long as you stand with your back to the direction of Newcastle and its suburbs, which are moving steadily west every year, you can see gently rolling hills and a pretty river valley. The pits and ironworks have gone and George’s cottage now stands in rural seclusion about half a mile east of the village. You get to it along the river banks, following a path out of Wylam village, past a notice saying ‘University of Newcastle, Private Fishing’. The cottage is set back slightly from the river bank, right beside the overgrown relics of the old North Eastern Railway line. There are several Victorian railway notices still standing in situ, the sort which can cost £50 a time from the sharper London antique stalls.
It’s quite a handsome cottage, bigger than I’d expected, and in good condition, though of course in George’s day, he and his family occupied only one room. A plaque over the door states that this is George Stephenson’s birthplace, but most of the wordage is taken up with the names of long forgotten councillors who put up the plaque. The cottage was bought by the North East Coast Institute of Engineers and handed over to the National Trust in 1948. The present curator (Mrs Stephenson – no relation) welcomes visitors from April to the end of September who want to see round the house. Ring 0191 200 7146. She also does teas.
KILLINGWORTH
Killingworth is no longer a colliery village but it’s far from rural. It’s a new industrial estate with very little character, part of Newcastle’s northern sprawl. Stephenson’s cottage, Dial Cottage in Great Lime Road, stands out like an antique at Woolworths, a beautiful white-washed cottage in sparkling condition, obviously lovingly cared for. At the front is the famous sundial, put up by Robert and his father. Over the front door is a plaque which reads ‘George Stephenson, Engineer, Inventor of the locomotive engine, lived in this house, 1805–1823.’ William James’ daughter would have had apoplexy.
When I called in 1975, the owner, a Mr Cook, came to the front door in carpet slippers and invited me in. He turned off his colour TV, much to his son’s displeasure, and made me sit down. He’s a Mancunian who retired to Newcastle some years ago after working locally as a traveller for a knitwear firm. He said he had to be called Cappy and wouldn’t reveal his real christian na
me. ‘Even my wife calls me Cappy. Cappy Cook of course!’
He saw the house advertised for £4,500 in the Evening Chronicle in 1961. As a railway enthusiast he was immediately interested and offered £3,600, but expected that the council or some such body would offer more and open it to the public. ‘I still don’t know why they didn’t. Perhaps one day when I’m gone it might be open to the public.’
As it is, the public are constantly traipsing to his front door. ‘What I can’t stand are the nosey buggers who just peer through the windows, thinking it’s a museum. If they knock and ask and seem genuinely interested, I let them in. I had a man from California last week. He was in London on business but broke his journey to come all the way up here to look at this cottage. I’ve had Dutch, Japanese, Germans, Yankees, all sorts. The other day I had two Australians waken me up at 11.30 at night.
‘I get regulars coming every year. The Duke of Wellington’s butler, he’s been coming for years. He worked for the previous Duke, not the present one. He’s getting on now. He’s a Henderson and tells me he’s related to Fanny, George’s first wife.’
He’s done a lot of work modernising the cottage and filled it with his own railway knick-knacks, such as a model of the Rocket which actually works. ‘I don’t know who put the plaque up. I’ve looked in all the books. It should of course be pioneer, not inventor. George himself started off in just this end of the cottage, but as he got on he enlarged it himself and took over the rest. This is the room in which he nearly blew himself up when he was experimenting with his safety lamp.
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