George Stephenson (29 page)

A cannon boomed to announce the start of the processions and George's
Northumbrian
drew out of Liverpool to the cheers of the crowds, pulling the train containing the Duke of Wellington and the other eighty highly important guests, including Fanny Kemble.

Though the weather was uncertain [she wrote], enormous crowds of densely packed people lined the road, shouting and waving hats and handkerchiefs as we flew by them. What with the sound of these cheering multitudes and the tremendous velocity with which we were bourne past them, my spirits rose to the true champagne height, and I never enjoyed anything so much as the first hour of our progress.

The procession got safely over the Sankey Viaduct, an ideal spot if any saboteurs had had a plan to dislocate the duke's train. The crowds in the grandstands and those below, looking up from the boats on the canal, cheered and applauded. George Stephenson, having one line to himself, was able to stop and start the
Northumbrian
at will without fear of any other train running into the rear, and so allowed the Duke and the other chief guests to take their time exclaiming over the remarkable engineering constructions. The duke was heard to say ‘Magnificent', ‘Stupendous'. Behind them, on the other line, the other seven trains had to wait patiently for the white flag to signal them on.

It had been arranged that at Parkside, some seventeen miles from Liverpool, the duke's train would take a scheduled stop for water. It had also been arranged ‘that at this time the other seven trains would overtake on the other line, thus giving the duke a fine view of each of the trains steaming past.

The duke's train, having taken on water, stopped and waited. Two trains arrived and passed successfully, the
Phoenix
and the
North Star
, and were duly admired by all. There was a slight delay before the third train arrived and while they waited several passengers decided to get out and stretch their legs, including William Huskisson and Prince Esterhazy. This was strictly against the rules. All passengers had been given verbal and written instructions on no account to leave their carriages. Huskisson was standing in the gap between the two rails of the second line, discussing with friends the wonders they'd seen when the duke, sitting in the corner seat of his carriage, caught sight of him and gave a nod and wave of his hand. It was the sign many Tories had been hoping for, wanting the two statesmen to make up their disagreement and become friends once again. The duke opened his carriage, leaned out and shook Huskisson's hand. They'd scarcely begun a conversation when there were shouts that the third train was in sight at last and was about to steam past them on the other track. Prince Esterhazy, with great presence of mind, managed to scramble into the duke's carriage. The other guests either rushed across the track to the far side and got on to the safety of the embankment or flattened themselves beside the Duke's train. Unfortunately for Huskisson he did none of those things. He was confused and frightened and far from agile. According to Creevey, he hadn't been well since attending the late king's funeral. He'd done too much kneeling and developed paralysis in one leg and thigh. He lost his balance and fell and the third train, which happened to be
Rocket
, passed over his thighs. ‘I have met my death,' he was heard to shout.

If the space between the tracks had only been wider, six feet as they are today, Huskisson might have escaped. But someone, and it can only have been George, had had the bright idea of making the space between the tracks 4ft 8½ ins, the same as the width of the tracks themselves. The theory was that extra wide loads would be able to run down the middle at off-peak times. (This was agreed to be ridiculous years later and the LNWR had to go to the trouble of altering the tracks.) When therefore Huskisson fell in the narrow gap between the tracks, through panic or paralysis, his legs were splayed across the track, right in the path of the oncoming
Rocket
.

Huskisson didn't die at once, though he might easily have done. There was complete pandemonium with everyone screaming, shouting and arguing, not knowing what to do. Only George took any action. He uncoupled all but one carriage from
Northumbrian
and placed Huskisson inside. Two doctors in the party applied a tourniquet with a handkerchief and George set off at full speed in the direction of Manchester. (He travelled the fifteen miles to Eccles, on the outskirts of Manchester, at an average speed of thirty-six miles per hour, a world record, not that anyone was noting such things at the time.)

William Huskisson died that evening in the vicar's house at Eccles, after dictating a codicil to his will. ‘It is an extraordinary fact,' reported the
Manchester Guardian
, ‘and evinces the uncommon firmness and self possession of the right hon. gentleman under such awful circumstances, that after he had signed the papers he turned back, as it were, to place a dot over the i and another between the W. and H.' His last spoken words were equally measured. ‘The country has had the best of me. I trust it will do justice to my public character. I regret not the few years which might have remained to me, except for those dear ones whom I leave behind.'

Huskisson was aged sixty. He had been an eminent and radical president of the board of trade, a long time supporter of the Liverpool Railway and had now become enshrined forever as the first casualty of the railway age. (Various navvies had been seriously injured, some fatally, in the construction of the Darlington and the Liverpool lines, but navvies don't go down in history.)

Back at the scene of the accident, it took the great men of the day an hour and a half to decide their next move. The seven trains stood idle as the duke and Sir Robert Peel argued that it was only good taste to cancel everything, pack up the celebrations and go home, but the leading citizens of Manchester said that a multitude was waiting for them in Manchester and the mob might take over if they didn't arrive. ‘Something in that,' said the duke. So they eventually set off for Manchester, all their best laid schemes and timetables completely ruined, stopping on the way to get the latest report on Huskisson and to pick up George and
Northumbrian
. A lot of coupling and uncoupling and tying of chains took place as the trains were rearranged.

Manchester was indeed in a state of mob rule. The military had been called in to help the police but the crowds had grown impatient with the long delay. When the trains finally arrived the crowds invaded the line and forced the duke and his long procession to crawl into town. The duke had to put up with rowdies banging on his window, shaking their fists, throwing missiles and waving banners right in his face. ‘At the Manchester station,' says Smiles, ‘the political element began to display itself; placards about “Peterloo” etc were exhibited and brickbats were thrown at the carriage containing the Duke.' Jeaffreson, in his description of the arrival is even more explicit about who was causing the trouble. ‘A Lancashire mob is never docile; and just then political discontents had made the lower orders especially unruly.'

The duke, wisely, refused to leave his carriage. When the train did eventually push itself into the station he managed to kiss a few babies which several well-wishers had pressed upon him, but kept safely inside. He was greatly relieved when the procession finally turned round to head back for Liverpool. The journey back was a nightmare, with mix-ups between the trains now that their schedules had broken down, couplings breaking and engines having to be watered and refuelled.

It started to rain, which made the rails very dangerous, but even worse, there were reports that the mob had put sand on the line. They went as slowly as possible, to avoid any crashes, and were soon travelling in the pitch dark. Signalling lamps, or railway lamps of any sort, had yet to be invented. However, they met with only one minor obstacle on the track, a wheelbarrow which was crushed harmlessly, and they finally arrived safely in Liverpool at ten at night.

Apart from the death of Huskisson, it was a successful day, but there was no forgetting the death of Huskisson. The duke personally never forgot and was against railways till the end of his life. In the public mind, that is all most people remember today about the opening of the Liverpool–Manchester Railway. But it was the greatest single day in the history of railways. George had reached the pinnacle of his lifetime's work. The railway age had begun.

13

A
FTER
L
IVERPOOL
, T
HE
W
ORLD

W
hat happened in Liverpool and Manchester before, during and after the grand opening was in the next twenty years mirrored in every town worthy of the name, not just in Britain but in Europe, the USA and throughout the industrial world. The hardest railways were yet to be built. The biggest locomotives were yet to be created. The multi-million-pound schemes had yet to be dreamt up and fought over. George Stephenson had many more wonderful constructions ahead. But for railways, and for George Stephenson, the worst was over. After 1830, railways became matters of public importance, public concern and of intense public interest.

The Liverpool opening, unlike the Darlington opening, was a commercialised event. Public and promoters and souvenir makers, all of them knew that they had witnessed a major event in the progress of industrial civilisation. You don't run off several thousand penny handkerchiefs showing scenes from the Liverpool–Manchester Railway unless you know there's an audience panting for them – and not simply for the purpose of wiping noses. One of them came up at Sothebys in 1945, part of the enormous railway collection built up by the late C.F. Dendy Marshall. It was made of cotton, measured twenty-nine inches by thirty-two and realised £16. It would fetch five times that today. On sale at Liverpool that famous day, and for a long time afterwards, were scores of other articles showing the engines or bridges and aqueducts. You could have bought a papier mâché tea tray, a quart mug, a tobacco jar, a wall plaque, a glass tumbler, a snuff box, all of them a souvenir of the happy day, and most of them with a picture of
Rocket
. The
Rocket
had completely captured the public imagination, becoming the best-known railway engine in the world. It still is.

The makers of commemorative medals, who are still hard at it today, turning out a fresh medal for every conceivable, and sometimes inconceivable event, were exceedingly quick. They had an advertisement in the
Liverpool Courier
on the day of the opening, 15 September 1830. The hand-tooled prose, appealing to the snob in everyone who could afford the price, reads very much like that special brand of highly sincere, vellum smooth, soft sell which accompanies such advertisements in the colour magazines today.

THE RAIL-WAY MEDAL. – We were highly gratified yesterday with a sight of the very superb metal just published by Thomas Woolfield, Fancy Bazaar, to commemorate the opening of the railway. As a work of art, it is a beautiful and highly-finished production and leaves its competitors far behind, and, being the production of one who is so constantly exerting himself to place before our fair townswomen and townsmen every elegant novelty in his business, we trust it will meet with the patronage so splendid a production deserves. A copy in gold was last evening forwarded to his Grace the Duke of Wellington, Sir Robert Peel and Mr. Huskisson, and we suppose they will be generally worn by those who attend the ceremony this day.

Not every railway company could manage the Duke of Wellington when the railway came to their town, but there were few places that didn't manage some handkerchiefs or the odd commemorative medal. Most of this tat has failed to survive, which is why rare pieces can produce high prices today.

News of the opening travelled fast and many foreign manufacturers produced their own versions of Liverpool–Manchester souvenirs. There was a ‘peep-show' of the Liverpool railway produced in Germany – a set of drawings fitted together which pulled out like a concertina to give the impression of travelling down the line. A similar peep-show is known to have been made in France.

It was not only on a commercial level that the Liverpool opening was celebrated. For the first time, serious artists turned their attention to the wonders of the industrial revolution. The water colours by Bury of the Liverpool–Manchester Railway, and the engravings by Ackermann and Shaw, were from the beginning collectors' items, and sets of prints can fetch many hundreds of pounds today. Other well-known artists painted their local railway, such as Richardson in Newcastle, Arthur Tait in Leeds. They introduced an era of documentary illustration which spread from railways, which artists saw immediately as romantic subjects, to other industrial spectacles – bridges, factories, warehouses. It has been suggested that the high quality of many of these industrial paintings encouraged young men to think of becoming engineers, a profession which the better bred families had hitherto rather disdained. Technology suddenly became beautiful, looked at the right way. Perhaps the most beautiful railway painting, which is all emotion and very little technology, is Turner's view of the Great Western Railway,
Rain, Steam and Speed
, now in the National Gallery.

Railways became a literary topic and there is no major Victorian writer, from Dickens downwards, who didn't work at least one railway scene into his or her book. Like Fanny Kemble before them, every writer, amateur and professional, rushed to get their first reactions on seeing a railway into print. Some of the reactions were naturally reactionary. ‘Is there no nook of English ground secure from the rash assault,' asked Wordsworth when he heard of a project to bring a railway through the Lakes. But most writers, when they saw their first iron monster, realised that a revolution had taken place. ‘We who have lived before Railways were made,' wrote Thackeray, ‘belong to another world.'