Great Victorian Railway Journeys: How Modern Britain was Built by Victorian Steam Power. Karen Farrington
using saltpetre from the middle of the sixteenth century.
The site was taken under government control in 1787 to secure supply, and production stepped up from the middle of the nineteenth century to supply arms for the Crimean War, the Indian Mutiny and, later, the Boer War. It also became central to weapons science and technology. In 1865 a patent was granted for gun cotton, a new if somewhat unstable explosive, which was then produced at Waltham Abbey. It was also the focus of production for cordite, a smokeless alternative to gunpowder pioneered in 1889.
A network of railways crossed the site after a building programme escalated during the Crimean War at a time when steam could provide the necessary power for production. The rails were for wagons which were gently pushed rather than towed – a nod to the volatile cargo aboard. Initially the gauge of the rails was 2 ft 3 in.
© Illustrated London News Ltd/Mary Evans
Her Majesty's Gunpowder Mills at Waltham Abbey.
In 1862 at Crewe, John Ramsbottom, chief engineer of the London & North Western Railway, proved the versatility of an 18-inch gauge for industrial trains, which could run not only up to but into warehouses. Eventually the gauge at Waltham Abbey was changed, so when production went into overdrive during the First World War the factory was at its most efficient.
Freight across the Great Eastern Railway was for years dominated by food. In addition to fish from the east coast there were vegetables – linking the fortunes of the railway company inextricably to the wealth of the harvest. There was also milk, which first travelled in churns hoisted into ventilated vans to keep it as fresh as it could be for thirsty city folk. This way the train service made a significant contribution to the health of the nation, supplying fresh food to cities at comparatively low costs.
In the same way (but in the opposite direction), railways carried newspapers fast and efficiently into rural areas, improving education and awareness everywhere in a way that was once confined to cities.
In 1847 the Eastern Counties Railway began to build a depot at Stratford where its locomotives were made. It was extended time and again throughout its history until it became a maze of track and workshops. In 1891, when it was under the aegis of the Great Eastern Railway, a new record was set there for building a locomotive. It took just nine hours and 47 minutes to produce a tender engine from scratch, complete with coat of grey primer. As a sign of the frantic railway times, the locomotive was dispatched immediately on coal runs, and covered 36,000 miles before returning to Stratford for its final coat of paint. Its working life lasted for 40 years and it ran through 1,127,000 miles before being scrapped.
When Bradshaw’s was written in 1866, the terminus of the Great Eastern line was Bishopsgate in Shoreditch. The guidebook calls it ‘one of the handsomest (externally) in London’. It was opened in 1840 by the Eastern Counties Railway and its name was changed from Shoreditch to Bishopsgate in 1847.
When Eastern Counties Railways amalgamated with other lines to form Great Eastern Railways, the new company found its two options for terminals – Bishopsgate and Fenchurch Street Stations – were not sufficiently large and set about building Liverpool Street Station and its approach tunnel, which opened in 1874.
© Mary Evans Picture Library
An engraving of Bishopsgate Street by Gustav Doré, 1872.
© Stephen Sykes/Alamy
Railway carriages at Weybourne Station on the North Norfolk Railway.
Nowhere in Britain has the railway map changed more than in London, not least due to the Blitz in the Second World War. In 1866 it was possible to jump on a North London line train at Fenchurch Street or Bow, within moments of getting off a Great Eastern line train.
This is a route that became infamous in 1864 for being the scene of Britain’s first train murder. The victim was 69-year-old Thomas Briggs, a senior clerk at the City bank Messrs Robarts, Curtis & Co. On Saturday 9 July he had worked as he always did until 3 p.m. and then visited a niece in Peckham before making his way home by train.
No one knows just what happened in the first-class carriage of the 9.50 p.m. Fenchurch Street service. It was, in common with many other carriages, sealed off from other travellers. There were six seats, three on each side, and two doors in a design reminiscent of stagecoaches. Subsequent passengers found the empty seats covered in blood and an abandoned bag, stick and hat. Almost simultaneously, a train driver travelling in the other direction saw a body lying between the tracks. After he raised the alarm the badly injured Mr Briggs was carried to a nearby tavern but he died later from severe head injuries.
There was a public outcry at the killing, although crimes like theft and even assault had been carried out on trains almost since their inception. Now, however, a sense of peril accompanied train travel as never before.
At first there seemed little for detectives to go on. Mr Briggs’s family identified the stick and bag as his but the hat was not, and his own hat was missing. Cash was left in his pocket but his gold watch and chain were gone.
A wave of scandalised press coverage yielded the first clue. It alerted a London silversmith, appropriately called John Death, who told police he had been asked to swap Mr Briggs’s watch chain for another, and described the customer making the request. Later, a Hansom driver confirmed that a box with the name Death written on it was at his house, brought there by a German tailor, Franz Muller, who had been engaged to his daughter. The Hansom driver obligingly produced a photo of Muller and the silversmith confirmed him to be the watch-chain man.
Before a warrant could be issued for his arrest, Muller had boarded the sailing ship Victoria bound for New York in anticipation of a new life in America. Detective Inspector Richard Tanner, along with his material witnesses, soon booked tickets aboard the steamship City of Manchester, easily beating the Victoria to its destination. In fact, the Metropolitan Police party had to wait four weeks for it to catch up. When the police finally approached Muller on the dockside he asked, ‘What’s the matter?’
© Mary Evans Picture Library
A report, taking the form of verse, on the murder of Thomas Briggs in a railway carriage on 9 July 1864.
A swift search established he was in possession of Mr Briggs’s watch and remodelled hat. At the time, relations between Britain and America – torn by civil war – were strained. Nonetheless, a judge agreed to extradite Muller and he was soon brought back to England.
Muller maintained his innocence throughout his Old Bailey trial and claimed he bought the watch and hat on the London dockside. He was small, mild-mannered and apparently lacked a motive. There were also witnesses to say Mr Briggs was seated with not one but two men on the night he was killed. But the jury took just 15 minutes to find Muller guilty.
Despite pleas for clemency from the Prussian King Wilhelm I, Muller was publicly hanged at Newgate Prison just four months after the crime. Later the prison chaplain claimed his final words were ‘I did it’. Still, his death nearly resulted in a riot, with many Londoners filled with doubt about the verdict.
The savage killing of Thomas Briggs resulted in new legislation, introduced in 1868, which made communication cords compulsory on trains. Although open carriages were still viewed unfavourably it was felt Mr Briggs’s life could have been saved if the train driver only knew he had been in difficulties.
In 1897 an American journalist, Stephen Crane, travelled on the Scotch Express between London and Glasgow, and revealed that, some 30 years after the death of Mr Briggs, communication cords were causing unforeseen difficulties. The problem arose when dining cars came into use and shared the same alarm system, causing confusion. He wrote:
…if