The Subterranean Railway

by Christian Wolmar

  While there were no serious accidents, there was, of course, the odd mishap. Within weeks of opening, in February 1863, there were two minor crashes at the same spot at Farringdon Street station. On 17 February, a train leaving the station was switched onto the wrong track and collided head-on with one arriving, but at low speed so only a few passengers were injured. The interlocking had been temporarily disconnected. Ten days later much the same thing happened again at the same location, this time causing thirty injuries and providing another proof that the ‘compensation culture’, generally considered a modern scourge, was already flourishing in Victorian times. Most of the passengers accepted under £20 in compensation, but one victim, a Mrs Mee, was more persistent, turning down £150 and eventually receiving £220 for her pains in an out of court settlement.

  Bearing in mind the novelty of the whole concept of underground railways, it is impressive that eighteen months passed before there was a fatality on the line, and even then it was caused, as many since, by drunkenness. A couple rushed for the last service from Portland Road to Edgware Road and the woman, Kate Gollop, somehow got onto the tracks underneath the train, where the porter on duty found her dying. The man, Thomas Powell, disappeared, having caught the train. In the subsequent court case, when her husband John sued the Metropolitan Railway – yet another example of Victorian litigiousness – it emerged that both had drunk large quantities of alcohol. Powell remembered taking her to the station and seeing her fall, but he then went home without realizing she had been hit by a train. Other evidence was conflicting and the precise circumstances never emerged. Although Gollop won his case, the jury only awarded him one shilling, despite the fact that he was disabled and his wife was the breadwinner.

  Despite isolated incidents such as these, the Metropolitan had a remarkably unblemished safety record and in its first forty-four years did not experience a single railway accident resulting in the death of a passenger, which is extraordinary given the intensity of service, the use of steam engines and high passenger numbers. Indeed, according to the definitive history of London’s transport, ‘during the whole period of steam operation, there was no fatal accident to any passenger in these cuttings and tunnels’20 caused by a train collision or derailment. The first serious accident on the underground system involved a head-on collision near Earls Court in August 1885 between a District train and a Great Western service, which killed the two crew of the Great Western train. Safety was the cornerstone of the rapid success of the railway but its excellent economic performance was based on the fact that the line fulfilled a hitherto unmet need, offering the convenience of reaching Farringdon from Paddington far more quickly and for the same fare (sixpence) as the lumbering omnibus. What a joy it must have been to escape the hurly-burly of the streets for the relative, if smoky, peace below. With 650 services per day, each train of four coaches carried, on average, only fifty people on its whole journey. Of course there were peak hours when the trains were crowded, just as there are today, but for the most part the experience – especially in those early days when passenger numbers were building up – must have been relatively pleasant.

  The Metropolitan’s attitude to smoking provides a comic counterpoint to the constant complaints about the foul air in the Underground. Uniquely for the time, the Metropolitan – of all railways – banned smoking in its carriages, presumably not wishing to add to the already smoky atmosphere. Yet, five years after the opening of the line, the provision of smoking carriages was made compulsory when the MP for Dudley, H.B. Sheridan, successfully moved an amendment to the Railway Regulation Bill requiring all railways to provide a smoking carriage, unless excused by the Board of Trade. The amendment attracted the endorsement of none other than the political philosopher, John Stuart Mill, who devoted the last speech he made in the House of Commons to supporting the clause, and it was largely thanks to his advocacy that the measure was passed by a majority of twenty-two. Although the Metropolitan was initially excluded from the requirement and endeavoured to continue to prevent people lighting up, other railway companies using its lines all had smoking carriages and there was a public clamour for the Metropolitan to follow suit. In fact, when the smoking coaches were officially introduced in 1874, the company was probably merely meeting the demands of its passengers since contemporary reports suggest that the ban was being widely flouted.

  The people who flocked to the new subterranean railway were a disparate bunch. Top-hatted bankers travelled on the same trains as the artisans, albeit, of course, in different classes. While the fares represented a substantial amount of money for some low-income earners, most Londoners in work could afford to use the service. The Metropolitan realized that there was a whole new market to exploit, using spare capacity in the early mornings when their more affluent customers were still tucked up in bed. In line with Pearson’s aspirations, it became the first railway to provide cheap workmen’s trains when in 1864 the Metropolitan started running two trains in each direction before 6 a.m. at a return fare of just threepence (later reduced to twopence), with the right to go back by any train, which greatly increased their attractiveness. The workmen’s service immediately attracted 300 daily users, a number which soon doubled. In fact, overall, the working classes provided by far the greatest proportion of the Metropolitan’s passengers since 70 per cent of tickets sold in those early years were for third-class travel, with 20 per cent and 10 per cent respectively for second and first. Only a minority of travellers, around a sixth according to figures given to Mayhew by Fenton, travelled between the two termini, with the rest joining or alighting at one of the intermediate stations. Fenton told him: ‘Each additional station produces a large accession of traffic creating as it does an interchange with each previous station; whilst great numbers of passengers now travel between the terminal stations, yet the numbers conveyed between the several intermediate stations are much greater.’ In other words, Londoners were learning to use the Underground for short hops around town and railway managers were beginning to understand the real benefits of an urban rail network.

  The Metropolitan had been the first railway to be required to run such cheap workmen’s trains, as this was a condition of being granted powers, in 1861,21 to extend the line through to Moorgate and double the tracks to four between King’s Cross and Farringdon. The condition had been suggested by the Metropolitan to allay criticism that the railway was destroying large swathes of housing and therefore turning working men out of their homes. However, the Metropolitan began running these trains even before the extension was completed, exploiting what was a very useful source of extra revenue. The London, Chatham & Dover Railway, which, as we see below, connected over the Thames with the Metropolitan in 1866, was also required to provide similar cheap trains but those using them had to go through huge bureaucratic hoops. The trains were to be for the exclusive use of ‘artisans mechanics and daily labourers, both male and female’ going to their work or returning from their jobs to their homes. They were required to buy a weekly ticket for a shilling, and, to prevent abuse, the ticket holder was required to give not only their name and address but those of their employer and not vary the journey or carry any luggage except for a workman’s basket of tools ‘not exceeding 28lbs in weight’.

  The Metropolitan imposed no such conditions on its trains. Mayhew, travelling on a 5.15 train one Saturday morning in 1865, complained of having to get up at such a ‘ghostly and burglarious’ hour in order to catch the workers’ train. He was most impressed with the whole set-up, though one slightly suspects that he was in a frame of mind to be positive about the new invention from the outset. His book of reportage about Britain’s industry, which took him around the country, starts with a typically florid and upbeat description:

  It was so novel a means of transit, so peculiar and distinctive a feature of the great English capital, that to omit this underground mode of intercommunication from a publication professing to be descriptive of the foremost institutions and establishments of the
British metropolis would be the same as playing the tragedy of Hamlet with the principal character left out. Indeed this subterranean method of locomotion had always struck us as being the most thoroughly Cockney element of all within the wide region of Cockaigne.22

  Mayhew’s positive feelings about the railway may well have been encouraged by the fact that his book had an advertisement for ‘J Willing, Advertising Contractors, 366 Grays Inn Road, WC’, who were sole contractors for advertising on the Metropolitan, the North London, Hammersmith & City and several other railways and had paid £1,150 for the right to sell books and post advertisements at the stations for a period of three years. The deal must have been a real money-spinner since Willing paid more than £34,000 to renew the contract for a further seven years in 1866. Despite what may appear to readers as a potential conflict of interest, Mayhew’s account is invaluable as it is one of the most detailed contemporary reports of early Underground travel and has the added advantage of being written by someone with an acute eye and a reporter’s instinct.

  Mayhew found the carriages to be ‘extremely handsome and roomy vehicles’, forty feet long, and in first class, luxuriously fitted up ‘with six compartments arranged to hold as many as sixty passengers in all’. But even the second and third class, which had eight compartments, he described as ‘fine spacious vehicles; indeed there are no third class carriages on any other line which are the least comparable to them’.

  When Mayhew reached the platform at Bishop’s Road, there was, despite the early hour, ‘a bustle with men, a large number of whom had bass baskets in their hand or tin flagons or basins done up in red handkerchiefs. Some few carried large saws under their arms, and beneath the overcoat of others one could just see a little bit of the flannel jacket worn by carpenters, whilst some were habited in the grey and clay stained fustian suit peculiar to ground labourers.’

  His compartment was full of plasterers, joiners and labourers: ‘All present agreed that the cheap and early trains were a great benefit to the operative classes. The labourer assured us that he saved, at least, two shillings a week by them in the matter of rent only. He lived at Notting Hill and would have to walk six miles to and from his work every day, if it were not for the convenience of the railway.’ Moreover, the labourer had benefited from better housing conditions in the way that Pearson had hoped. Thanks to the railway, he was able to live in greater comfort further out of town than he would otherwise. He had two rooms, almost in the open country, for the same price as he would have had to pay for one in a much less salubrious court in the heart of London, and thereby, Mayhew noted, avoided needing ‘medicine for his wife and family’. A plasterer, on his way to Dockhead, joined the conversation and said ‘it was impossible to reckon up how much workmen gained by the workmen’s trains, especially if you took into account the saving in shoe leather, the gain in health and strength and the advantage for men to go to their work fresh and unfatigued by a long walk at the commencement of the day’. The plasterer added that there was a moral benefit, too, ‘since it enabled operatives to have different sleeping rooms for themselves and their young children’.

  Mayhew later met another man who also benefited from improved accommodation out of town. He had rented ‘a six roomed house, with a kitchen and for this he paid £28 the year, rent and taxes. He let off four rooms for 8s the week so that he stood at about 3s a week rent for himself and for the same accommodation as he had now, he would have to pay from 6s to 6s 6d, the week in some wretched dog hole in town.’ The only problem was that the local food was more expensive than in the centre of town, but he bought most of his provisions after work and took them home.

  At Gower Street (now Euston Square) Mayhew moved to the next compartment where he found a butcher on the way to the meat market, a newsvendor going to fetch his morning papers, and others connected with the building trade. Most of those he met were extremely supportive of the railway but inevitably he found the odd grouch, a carpenter who ‘was one of those growling and grumbling characters so often met among the working class’ and who failed to perceive the benefit of paying a shilling a week for the service. The carpenter was interrupted by another passenger who extolled the virtues of commuting: ‘If a man gets home tired after his day’s labour, he is inclined to be quarrelsome with his missus and the children, and this leads to all kinds of noises, and ends in him going off to the pub for a little bit of quiet; while if he gets a ride home, and has a good rest after he has knocked off for the day, I can tell you he is as pleasant a fellow again over his supper.’ This might not quite chime with the experience of today’s commuters, crammed by the hundreds into tiny Underground trains.

  Mayhew also noted the excellent refreshment bars provided by Messrs Spiers and Pond and here his report seems so like advertising copy that one wonders how many free cakes he was offered: ‘So moderate are the prices and excellent the fare that 300–400 people come daily to dine at the Farringdon Street terminus.’ The company, which also had the concession for the London, Chatham & Dover Railway and the station at Birmingham New Exchange, were ‘manufacturers of all the biscuits, cakes, ices and even soda water which they dispense to their customers and are able to supply better articles at cheaper prices than usually prevail at the wretchedly served refreshment bars of other railways’.

  Although Mayhew may have been slightly too ready to accentuate the positives and ignore the negatives about the railway, there is no doubt that the Metropolitan’s immediate impact on London was enormous. It had the same kind of regenerative effect as modern urban railway systems in London such as the Docklands Light Railway, the Jubilee Line Extension and the London Overground. Landlords and businesses were quick to exploit the potential of the new railway. Its convenience was unrivalled – a mere eighteen minutes from Paddington to Farringdon was the normal schedule (fast non-stopping trains which did the journey in fourteen minutes were briefly introduced but soon dropped because such a schedule was impossible to maintain). Newspaper advertisements for shops began to stress their proximity to the line. Messrs Samuels Brothers of 29 Ludgate Hill, for example, explained how ‘Underground railway passengers have the great advantage of a speedy transit to within four minutes walk of the warehouses’ where they would find that ‘every description of plain and fashionable clothing is supplied to gentlemen and their sons, ready made or made to measure’. Thus, part of the success of the railway was that it not only provided a new mode of transport for existing travellers but generated its own business, a lesson that is still not sufficiently taken account of when ideas for new lines for the twenty-first century are conceived. Even this short section of line was having a major impact on London’s economy.

  But the railway was not only for Londoners. The Metropolitan had been forward-looking right from the start by encouraging other rail companies onto its tracks as a way of contributing revenue. They carried people from stations on their own lines, before connecting with the Metropolitan at Paddington or King’s Cross. This, however, caused the row between the Great Western and the Metropolitan as, very soon after its opening, the latter wanted to increase the frequency of its trains from four to six per hour throughout the day. The Great Western, whose rolling stock was being used, was only willing to provide that intensity of service during the peak hours, because it wanted to retain sufficient train paths for its through trains coming off its network into the Underground at Paddington.

  Although, as we have seen, the Great Western rather childishly withdrew its stock, the company continued to run its through trains along the subterranean railway track to Farringdon Street. Indeed, to understand the role of the Metropolitan in these early days, it is best to visualize the railway as a part of the main line network which happened to go underground when it reached London. Through trains for the Great Western via Paddington and for the Great Northern via King’s Cross, which started to operate in October 1863, gave Underground users a host of destinations in the suburbs and beyond. The Great Western, for example, ran trains be
tween Farringdon Street and Windsor, initially using its commodious broad gauge trains. The Great Northern ran trains out to Hatfield and Hitchin and their popularity was clear from the beginning, when the passengers on the first through train to Farringdon Street were reported as expressing their delight by swooping down in force on the newly opened station refreshment buffet and consuming all it contained.

  And while the Metropolitan was conceived as primarily a passenger railway, there was also, surprisingly, freight. Mayhew suggests that the ‘the original idea was that [the Metropolitan railway] would receive its chief income from the conveyance of goods from the west to the eastern district of London’ but concedes that ‘this proved so complete a fallacy that, whilst millions of passengers have been carried by it annually, the goods traffic has been comparatively inconsiderable’. However, he predicted this would change when the Circle was complete. In fact, there is little evidence for Mayhew’s assertion. The railway was principally seen by Pearson and its other promoters as a people mover, with goods playing only a small role towards helping the finances of the project. An early example was the carriage of carcasses from the cattle market, which previously had been at Smithfield but had moved a couple of miles north to Islington. After the connection at King’s Cross was opened, the underground line was used to take the dead animals through to Smithfield where there was a special underground spur for deliveries of meat. There were, too, various new warehouses on the section between King’s Cross and Farringdon which had been built near the line specifically to make use of it and freight was carried until well after World War Two.