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The Carrying Trade and the First Railways in England, C1750-C1850

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The Carrying Trade and the First Railways in England, C1750-C1850 The Carrying Trade and the First Railways in England, c1750-c1850 Carolyn Dougherty PhD University of York Railway Studies November 2018 Abstract Transport and economic historians generally consider the change from moving goods principally on roads, inland waterways and coastal ships to moving them principally on railways as inevitable, unproblematic, and the result of technological improvements. While the benefits of rail travel were so clear that most other modes of passenger transport disappeared once rail service was introduced, railway goods transport did not offer as obvious an improvement over the existing goods transport network, known as the carrying trade. Initially most railways were open to the carrying trade, but by the 1840s railway companies began to provide goods carriage and exclude carriers from their lines. The resulting conflict over how, and by whom, goods would be transported on railways, known as the carrying question, lasted more than a decade, and railway companies did not come to dominate domestic goods carriage until the 1850s. In this study I develop a fuller picture of the carrying trade than currently exists, highlighting its multimodal collaborative structure and setting it within the ‘sociable economy’ of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century England. I contrast this economy with the business model of joint-stock companies, including railway companies, and investigate responses to the business practices of these companies. I analyse the debate over railway company goods carriage, and identify changes in goods transport resulting from its introduction. Finally, I describe the development and outcome of the carrying question, showing that railway companies faced resistance to their attempts to control goods carriage on rail lines not only from the carrying trade but also from customers of goods transport, the government and the general public. I suggest some reasons why the railway companies were able to establish a monopoly over rail goods transport despite this resistance, and briefly describe the ramifications of the change in control of goods transport. 2 Table of Contents Abstract 2 List of Tables 6 List of Figures 7 Acknowledgements 8 Author’s Declaration 9 Introduction .............................................................................................................10 Purpose and scope of this study .........................................................................10 Historical background and literature review .........................................................17 Parameters of this study .....................................................................................25 Structure of this study .........................................................................................26 Chapter 1: Development of the carrying trade 1750-1850 .......................................31 Introduction .........................................................................................................31 Scope and scale of the carrying trade .................................................................32 Organisation and operation of the carrying network ............................................34 Road carriers ..................................................................................................35 Inland waterway carriers .................................................................................38 Coastal shipping .............................................................................................39 Comparative cost and mode choice ....................................................................40 The logistics of carrying ......................................................................................43 Intermodal and intercarrier cooperation ...............................................................45 The carrying trade and other businesses ............................................................48 Carrying inns and other storage facilities .........................................................48 Literacy and the Post Office ............................................................................51 Carriers and transport assets ..........................................................................53 Legal, regulatory and customary framework of the carrying trade .......................55 The place of carriers in the economy, society and culture ...................................59 Summary and conclusions ..................................................................................70 Chapter 2: The carrying trade and the 'sociable economy' of eighteenth-century England ..................................................................................................................72 Introduction .........................................................................................................72 Contemporary and recent historiography of the 'sociable economy' ....................72 Evidence of the ‘sociable economy’ in contemporary business correspondence .77 Arranging the sending of goods ..........................................................................79 Negotiating costs and payments for carriage ......................................................83 Dealing with problems .........................................................................................88 Personal relationships among participants in trade .............................................90 3 Summary and conclusions .................................................................................. 95 Chapter 3: The business culture of joint-stock companies ...................................... 97 Introduction......................................................................................................... 97 The joint-stock company and its business practices ........................................... 98 Public responses to the business practices of joint-stock companies................ 104 Responses to conflict with municipal water supply monopolies in London, 1818 to 1828 ................................................................................................................. 109 Summary and conclusions ................................................................................ 117 Chapter 4: Reorganisation of the carrying trade 1840-1850 ................................. 119 Introduction....................................................................................................... 119 Precedents in inland waterway company ‘self-carrying’ .................................... 120 The origin of railway company carrying ............................................................. 126 The debate over railway company monopoly carrying ...................................... 132 The change in railway company carrying policy, 1840-1850 ............................. 147 The effect of railway company policy on goods carriage ................................... 152 Collective action by railway companies ............................................................. 163 Summary and conclusions ................................................................................ 166 Chapter 5: Responses to railway company carrying ............................................. 168 Introduction....................................................................................................... 168 Communicating with joint-stock companies ...................................................... 170 The carrying question in the courts ................................................................... 186 Public response to railway company policy ....................................................... 194 Government response to the carrying question ................................................ 201 Attempts to boycott railway companies ............................................................. 217 Summary and conclusions ................................................................................ 219 Chapter 6: Carrying after the railways .................................................................. 221 Introduction....................................................................................................... 221 Why did the railway companies succeed? ........................................................ 221 Railway companies eliminate or integrate competitors ..................................... 224 The change in the legal meaning of ‘carrier’ ..................................................... 225 Effects of the change in goods transport on the wider economy ....................... 233 Summary and conclusions ................................................................................ 234 Summary and conclusions ................................................................................... 235 Introduction....................................................................................................... 235 Summary of arguments .................................................................................... 235 This study and the wider research agenda ....................................................... 236 4 Appendix: Companies cited in chapter 2 241 References 247 5 List of Tables Table 1: Value of monetary legacies in carriers’ wills 65 Table 2: Comparison of railway company goods and passenger revenue, 1842- 1865 129 Table 3: Percentage of men in the carrying trade, 1813-1851 158 Table 4: Number and percentage of women working in
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