WORKING PAPER The Centre for Research in Applied Economics (CRAE) 04062015, June 2015

A Journey through the Industrial Revolution

Tim Barmby University of Aberdeen

ISSN 1834-9536

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A Journey through the Industrial Revolution

Tim Barmby

PrefacePrefacePreface The following booklet stems from a discussion that Professor Peter Kenyon and I had in the rear courtyard of his and his wife Jan’s house in Perth, Australia, in November 2011. Peter had been ill but at that time was in remission from cancer. We were talking about Economic History and in particular the events and linkages of events pertaining to the Industrial Revolution in Britain in the 18th and 19th centuries. Peter was intending to take early retirement, and he and Jan had already planned a trip to the UK for the summer of 2012.

Peter expressed a desire to see some of the places where key events in the Industrial Revolution had taken place. This desire struck a real chord with me as being very similar to the thoughts which might have occurred to the enquiring mind of a 17th/18th century scholar who would want to go and take a look and see what could be learnt. Peter was having difficulty drawing the information together so I said I would draft a proposed schedule for him. I am glad that I didn’t leave this too long; as the cancer returned over that Christmas and Peter died in February 2012. He read some of the following text in hospital as he underwent chemotherapy.

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I suggested the idea of writing my notes up as a short pamphlet to Jan and this is the result. Jan made some part of tour in the summer of 2012.

IIIntroductionIntroductionntroductionntroduction:: Looking at the past

It is a difficult but fundamentally important question to ask how effectively we see the past, Carr (1961), and how we can use that perception to put our modern experience into context. Humphrey Jennings’ book “Pandemonium” used the written impressions of the great industrial changes which were seen from the end of the 17th century onwards which people at the time felt the need to record to do this. Emma Griffin’s more recent book “Liberty’s Dawn” in a similar way draws on autobiographical writings from the late 18th into the 19th century to try and form a picture of the changes which were occurring.

As we look back from our 21st century position, we can also use remains of now defunct industrial locations to interpret the past. This tradition is possibly strongest in local history and, of course, industrial archaeology, W G Hoskins’ “The Making of the English Landscape” being a seminal work in this regard. Hoskins used the term “palimpsest” to try and give a framework to the process of interpreting what we see now, and what it tells us about the past. The Marxist historian E J Hobsbawm comments that Hoskins teaches historians to walk and see as well as read. Palimpsest is a parchment which has been used repeatedly,

2 so previous writings are hidden under the surface, so in this way we think of the landscape as being reused for different purposes; movement and travel, trade, industry and agriculture.

The great historian of the English Village Maurice Beresford demonstrates this way of looking at the landscape in startling clarity as he interprets, in his inaugural lecture as Professor of Economic History at Leeds in 1961, the way in which back-to-back houses in Leeds were built, and sometimes the way the row would abruptly stop, in terms of how enclosed fields were bought up and developed. The edges of things are always there; many of the roads that you would drive along in Britain today are, of course, following the lines of old drove roads which before the canals and the railways were one of the main ways of travelling and moving things around. In 1806 , to whom we will refer to again later, took a job in Scotland, and although not exactly a poor man, he walked from Killingworth to Montrose to take up this job presumably along well-trodden ways known to working men. Hobsbawm’s 1964 essay entitled “The Tramping Artisan” suggests that mobility of labour was more prevalent than modern perception might have it.

The early 18th century was a period poised for change. It was a period of enquiry, not just among those instigating the change but also amongst others, for whom human development, either their own, or as a general objective, was important. In the early part of the century Daniel Defoe, perhaps driven by his journalistic instinct, made a number of tours

3 around Britain. His instinct was, of course, quite right. There was a big story breaking. The incentives for enterprise were fundamentally altering, and the activity which flowed from this was everywhere to be seen. Esther Moir (1964) documents the 18th century traveller seeking out instructive visits to lead, copper and tin mines. People were keen to see, and also had the resources to fund this curiosity because of the wealth the very same activity was imparting. The question as to why there were so many seeking to instigate change in Britain at this time is still an open question, Mokyr (1985) remarks that, “There was a certain hard-nosed practical knack among British inventors, engineers, and businessmen that is harder to spot on the Continent at this time .. (with) .. not only the ability to generate new ideas but, equally important, the ability to recognize and value somebody else’s.” Many important innovations originated outside Britain but were exploited within Britain during this period, silk making and the Jaquard loom perhaps being two such examples.

Mokyr (2009) developed the idea that what we saw, in particular in Britain in the 18th century, was an emphasis on practical knowledge so that “pure” scientific enquiry was more likely to have a practical focus. This can be seen as a continuation of the approach expounded by Francis Bacon in the 16th century. Recent research by Kelly, Ó Gráda and Mokyr (2013) suggests that labour productivity and the potential for further growth was particularly high in Britain during this period, and this can possibly be traced back to the superior diet of the British worker at the

4 time. Peter would have been interested in this as an accomplished chef himself and founder of a business1 giving cooking lessons.

The interplay of political and economic views and pressures were causing people to think about work and the relation of the human spirit to it. Humphrey Jennings’ parents were influenced by the 19th century ideas of William Morris and Jennings’ documentary instinct produced the book “Pandemonium” which records the coming of the machine age by contemporary observers. E P Thompson in his biography of Morris make clear how many early socialist thinkers saw something in the idea of earlier pre-industrial societal values that the new industrial capitalism was destroying. Thompson suggests in his “Making of the English Working Class” that in this pre-industrial world a different moral economy existed

Artists such as Thomas Hair were also looking to depict the changes that were taking place, in his case in a very detailed way allowing for a very clear view to be formed of actual operations. Collier boats being loaded at drops. So, for instance, in this picture we can see Drawing by Thomas Hair very clearly how coal would be loaded from waggonways to colliers on the . Hair was recording what he saw but often casting our gaze backwards, we need to try and reconstruct in our minds what would have been happening. Mark Sorrell, the son of the famous reconstructional

1 This business still survives http://www.thecookingprofessor.com.au/ 5 artist Alan Sorrell (1981), describes how his father would build up the details he would need to inform his paintings and drawings. The minute attention paid to all aspects of the historical situation parallels, and I am sure in many cases surpasses, the research needed for an academic paper. Sorrell devoted much of his attention to Roman and Ancient Britain. Had he focused his attention more on the 18th and 19th centuries, our industrial archaeology would certainly be the richer for it.

One of the most enigmatic studies (by another Marxist!) of the way in which art and artistic depiction is bound up with the social and cultural changes which were seen in the Industrial Revolution must be Francis Klingender’s “Art and the Industrial Revolution”. Klingender, through his discussion of the artistic representation of the new industrial landscape, opens up new layers of how the changes were perceived, and maybe how J C Bourne – inside Brunel’s first Bristol those in positions of power might want Station 1846 the changes to be perceived. The pride and verve of the achievement of Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s Great Western Railway just leap out from John Cooke Bourne’s drawings of the GWR, and indeed they were meant to, the architectural splendour and the breathtaking span of the roofs. Of course the ascetic appeal was heightened by Brunel’s 7’ gauge. In the first series of Michael Portillo’s recent “Great British Railway Journeys”, Michael seemed distinctly saddened to see Brunel’s first station in Bristol depicted here (not the present bigger Temple Meads) empty though in

6 surprisingly good condition. I believe it is now used as an enterprise centre, which seems fitting.

Other feelings can be picked up in other artistic representations. The depiction of the semi idyllic scene outside a Wigan cotton mill by Eyre Crowe is difficult to interpret; it would seem that the mill girls have plenty of time for relaxed interaction, and although it is true that the new industrialisation did ultimately mean improved material wellbeing, and some economic independence for women, the artist is going out of his way to avoid Dinner Time at Wigan– Eyre Crowe any depiction of the harsh conditions of the mills.

The Victorian male psyche had any number of difficulties coming to terms with what the Industrial Revolution might mean for women. Karl Marx had shown a rather moralistic side to his character in his apparent disapproval of Fredrick Engels’ love for Mary Burns, an Irish factory girl. It was Mary Burns that showed Engels parts of Manchester to which he wouldn’t otherwise have had easy access and on which he based much of his “Condition of the Working Class in England”. Of course, as is well known, Engels unstintingly supported Marx financially as he worked on Das Kapital, but reading this the idea of the corrupting influence of industrialisation, and especially factory work on women’s morals certainly comes to the surface in places, in part IV on the

7 production of relative surplus value, Marx describes how factory girls will “…during meal times... lie at full length in the fields, or watch the boys bathing in the neighbouring canal” and then maybe later on “….. put on better clothes and accompany the men to the public houses” ! Similar conflicts, but perhaps less moralistic, may be seen in Arthur Munby’s concern with Wigan’s female colliery workers. He seemed to caught between some confused concern for their loss of femininity and a fascination with their strength and maybe what we would today call One of Munby’s Pit Brow empowerment. Lasses

The Tour: Coalbrookdale to Sunderland

Chronology of Events

1709 Iron smelted by coke at Coalbrookdale 1761 Brindley builds the Barton Aqueduct 1771 Arkwright’s First Mill at Cromford 1774 James Watt moves to Birmingham 1779 The first iron bridge at Ironbridge 1796 First iron bridge over River Wear 1802 builds first engine at Coalbrookdale 1813 “Puffing Billy” at 1825 Stockton and Darlington Railway 1893 Barton Aqueduct replaced by swing aqueduct for the Manchester Ship Canal

A Map of the Journey

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A) Coalbrookdale

Nowadays Shropshire seems to conjure up rural images but in the 18th century it was right at the heart of the Industrial Revolution, one reason being that the river Severn was navigable right up to Welshpool, so products could be moved down

to Bristol. It was here, in Coalbrookdale at The Old Furnace at Coalbrookdale Photograph Tim Barmby the beginning of the 18th century that Abraham Darby I developed new methods of smelting iron by coke. This essentially provided the building material for the Industrial Revolution – Iron.

A problem in technique which had existed before was that smelting iron by coal (which was in plentiful supply) resulted in weakness in the metal. Coal has impurities in it, sulphur for instance. If you smelt iron using coal these impurities are transferred to the metal and it is this will result in weakness, especially in castings which are needed for large constructions such as bridges, etc. It had always been possible to produce smaller items (swords etc) by smelting iron ore using charcoal but this was simply impractical on an industrial scale as you would have had to burn whole forests to build even modestly sized constructions. It is interesting to note that, as is the case with many new technologies, it took time for the techniques to be refined, as Trinder (1973) discusses, but the incentive to do so was really very strong, as the supply of coal for coking was certainly more readily available than were supplies of charcoal. The

9 solution was to burn coal in a controlled way restricting the oxygen. Initially this would be done by just burning the coal in heaps, the outer layer of coal would burn off but in doing so would create a sort of shell restricting the supply of oxygen to the inner core creating coke, the technique was subsequently improved and the burning took place in what were know as

“beehive”(because they looked a bit like A “Beehive” Coke oven photo Tim Barmby beehives) coke ovens which was sufficient to drive off the impurities. The technique was not too dissimilar to the way charcoal was made. The picture above is from the former Inkerman iron works near Tow Law in the North East of England

The Darby ironmasters improved this method sufficiently in the 18th century so that Abraham Darby III could demonstrate the potential of this innovation by constructing over the River Severn the world’s first iron The Ironbridge Photograph Tim Barmby bridge, at what would naturally come to be known as Ironbridge, in Shropshire in 1779. For a fuller discussion of the first iron bridge see Cossons and Trinder (2002). Bridges were, of course, important as a way of connecting activity. Abraham Darby III was not only improving the industrial infrastructure of Coalbrookdale and Ironbridge by building the bridge, but also advertising the potential of the The Ironbridge by Michael Angelo Rooker

10 burgeoning industry; perhaps because this was before photography, artists were very quickly producing detailed pictures of the bridge this by Rooker for example. The importance of the actual demonstration was clear. Thomas Paine returning from the American War of Independence, and before the French Revolution would take his full attention, was thinking about bridges of even greater span than Darby’s Ironbridge. One reason for this was that American economic development would be accelerated by being able to build a single span bridge over rivers which would experience ice-floes in the winter, such as the River Schuylkill in Philadelphia. His thinking would eventually have some reflection in the 240 foot span of

The “Catch-me-who-can” at the bridge over the River Wear in Sunderland Bridgenorth as we will see, but would people believe it possible ? To overcome this a demonstration bridge was built in Lisson Grove an area in London. This process of demonstration was also followed by Richard Trevithick with one of his first railway locomotives “Catch-me-who-can” being demonstrated on a circular track in London in 1808 near what was to be Euston Station.

It is one of the more curious aspects of modern industrial heritage that many of these key objects have been brought back to life by enthusiast groups. The group Trevithick 200 has reconstructed a replica of “Catch-me-who-can” for the two

The Euston Arch

11 hundredth anniversary of its running on the circular track. There are also plans to reconstruct the famous Euston Arch which would be built at the London Terminus of ’s London to Birmingham Railway. The arch was destroyed in an act of modern state vandalism at the start of the 1960’s despite the opposition of many including Sir John Betjeman.

Coalbrookdale also has another connection to the story of innovation in the Industrial Revolution. It was here in 1803 shortly before his famous Pen-y-Darren Trevithick’s Coalbrookdale Locomotive locomotive that Richard Trevithick built his first locomotive (three years after the lapse of Boulton and Watt’s patent) see Raistrick (1953) Parts of a Trevithick engine appear to Parts of a Trevithick Locomotive in Coalbrookdale’s Museum of Iron. Photo still exist in Cooalbrookdale’s Museum of Tim Barmby

Iron, as in the photograph to the right . This is apparently from a slightly later engine circa 1815.

B) Birmingham

“I sell here, Sir, what all the world desires to have – Power”

This confident declaration was apparently made by Matthew Boulton in 1776 at his Soho works in Birmingham, where in partnership with James Watt, Boulton-Watt steam engines were manufactured

12 firstly to pump the mines of Cornwall (and elsewhere) more efficiently and then as the problem of converting linear to circular motion was solved, Boulton-Watt engines could power anything which had previously been driven by water, and in the late 18th century this essentially meant cotton mills.

Birmingham was possibly one of the most likely places in 18th century England to make money. The money making ethos of the period has already been referred to but Birmingham had the added advantage of being less shackled by trade rules from the old craft guilds. Many of the dissenting groups such as Quakers in the words of Jenny Uglow (2002) “….infused the place with energy..” In her book “The Lunar Men” she describes the force of scientific curiosity of people like Erasmus Darwin (Grandfather of Charles Darwin), Josiah Wedgewood, Matthew Boulton, and later on James Watt and their constant search to turn new knowledge into human betterment and also money.

Jim Andrew (2009) describes how Watt and Boulton first met in Birmingham when , in 1768, Watt broke a journey from London back to Glasgow. Watt and Boulton had been corresponding for some years. Boulton was keenly interested in Watt’s ideas, especially regarding the separate condenser for a Newcomen type engine. Watt was at this time funded by John Roebuck, who was connected with the Carron Ironworks but Roebuck was having some financial difficulties. Boulton saw the opportunity to buy out Roebuck’s interest, persuaded Watt to move to Birmingham in 1774 to continue his work and proposed a business

13 partnership the following year. It seems to have been a very effective matching of skills, Boulton saw uses for the new portable power source which was the and was able to encourage Watt who reputedly could be quite cautious.

Boulton also knew who to go to when the developing steam technology needed steam cylinders machined to finer tolerances. John “Iron Mad” Wilkinson had been developing ways of machining cannons and these same techniques could be applied to the machining of steam cylinders.

C) CromfordC) Cromford

Richard Arkwright set up the first mechanised cotton spinning mill in the world in Cromford, Derbyshire, in 1771. The building is still there and being restored and conserved by the Arkwright Society. The original mill had 5 storeys (two were lost in a fire) and was extended during its life (the nearest 4 windows were added) so the first 3 floors of the original mill are windows 5 onwards in the picture to the left. The original waterwheel

Arkwright’s Cromford Mill Photo – was on the side of the building the hole for the Tim Barmby axle being visible where the 9th window on the ground floor would be.

Arkwright, a Lancastrian born in Preston, had been a wigmaker and travelled the country buying hair. The market for hair continues to

14 this day, and in Victorian times long female hair could bring up to £1 an ounce. There would be ‘hair harvests’ in poorer Italian villages and Wilson (2002) reports that 200,000 lbs of hair would be traded annually on markets in Paris. Arkwright visited Cromford, possibly arranging to buy hair from (mainly) servant girls who needed money. If we conjecture that a full head of hair might weigh 3 or 4oz this would imply that by selling her hair a servant girl could perhaps get her hands on almost the equivalent of a month’s earnings of a male skilled worker.

Arkwright was also involved in developing mechanisms for spinning, collaborating with a clockmaker John Kay in what was later to be known as Arkwright’s water frame. The picture to the right is of a water frame which is in the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester. Spinning was the bottleneck in textile production at this time as improvements in weaving had placed great

demands on spinsters. An 1775 Arkwright water frame Photo – Tim Barmby

Arkwright saw that Cromford was an ideal place for a water powered mill as it had two water supplies, one being a drainage adit from a nearby lead mine. This was of some importance as while lead mines were not necessarily very deep, they were deep enough that the drainage water would have been sufficiently warm so as not to freeze so readily in the winter; ideal for running a mechanised cotton mill.

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DDD)D) Manchester) Manchester

Many Economic Historians consider the growth in the cotton industry to be the spark which initiated the growth experienced during the Industrial Revolution, this may be so but why Manchester ? It is miles inland and yet its main raw material, cotton, was imported from overseas. In the 18th century much of the cotton came from the Levant and India. As the industry reached its peak in the 19th century, the southern states of America became the principle source. However, coming from overseas it had to be brought inland, and while not as heavy as some raw materials, methods for compressing bails were developed, to ease transportation which did increase the weight. Although transport in the mid 18th century could be problematic, the source of power was the main issue at the start of the industrial revolution the power for cotton mills was supplied by water wheels, and the edge of the Pennines had any number of fast flowing rivers.

Ultimately the location of mills became less dependent on location as, now as Boulton and Watt had continued the development of steam engines to produce rotary motion power which could drive textile machinery wherever it was located.

Manchester was also the destination of one of the first commercial canals. The Duke of Bridgewater’s canal ran from his coal mines in Worsley, which were to the north west of Manchester into Manchester itself; the terminus being just near Liverpool Road which was to be the

16 first railway station in Manchester for the Liverpool and Manchester Railway in 1830, and now part of the Museum of Science and Industry.

The Bridgewater canal was built by one of the most famous canal builders of the time, James Brindley, in the mid 18C. Brindley didn’t like canal locks, so when he had to cross the river Irwell he built an aqueduct. Unfortunately the James Brindley’s Barton Aqueduct over the river Irwell 1761 Barton aqueduct no longer exists, at least in its original form, however it exists in spirit as later in the 19th century the Manchester merchants seeking to improve the transport times built the Manchester Ship Canal and audaciously sidestepped Liverpool’s spatial monopoly on the landing of raw materials. The line of the River Irwell was part of the Ship Canal, so they replaced the original Barton aqueduct canal with a swing aqueduct, which pivots (full of water !) to allow the ships to pass – James Brindley himself would have been truly impressed. The line of the canal was slightly altered as, of course, the canal had to be keep in operation while the swing aqueduct was constructed, as the photographs above make clear. The position 1893 photographs showing the original of Brindley’s original Barton aqueduct is Barton Aqueduct and the swing aqueduct that was to replace it behind closer to the present road bridge.

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E) Glasgow

Glasgow, the heart of Scotland’s central industrial belt, where a young Adam Smith matriculated to the University at 14, the normal age in the 18th century. He was apparently fascinated by all the trade, driven primarily by the tobacco trade, he witnessed. The swirl of enlightenment thinking which would have been all around him would ultimately find distillation in the “Wealth of Nations”.

Later James Watt in his reminiscences recorded in the Transactions of the Glasgow Archaeological Society 1859 remembered earlier years in Glasgow before he moved to Birmingham to go into business with Matthew Boulton:-

“I had gone for a walk on a fine Sabbath afternoon. I had entered the Green by the Gate at the foot of Charlotte Street – had passed the old washing house. I was thinking upon the engine at the time and had gone as far as the Herd’s house when the idea came into my mind, that as steam was an elastic body it would rush into a vacuum, and if a communication was made between the and an exhausted vessel, it would rush into it, and might there be condensed without cooling the cylinder… I had not walked further than the Golf-house when the whole thing was arranged in my mind”

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The story of James Watt illustrates many of the subtle influences at play on innovative activity by the mid 18th century. This was the period after the Glorious Revolution of 1688 when the last Stuart King ,James II, was ousted and the “Immortal Seven” members of the Whig and Tory aristocracy issued an invite to William of Orange to invade and assume the throne with his wife Mary, the daughter of the ousted James. This process undoubtedly received support from powerful merchants.

At this time many changes were taking place in terms of property rights and intellectual property rights in particular. The links between Holland (or as it would have been known at the time, the United Provinces) and Britain were very strong. The two were competitive in trade but scientific advances flowed back and forth with the individuals involved. It is often remarked that there was a ready supply of skilled mechanics in Britain, the type of people who were moving back and forth between Britain and the United Provinces give a clue as to why this may have been.

Take for example Ahasuerus Fromanteel, born in 1607 in Norwich, the Fromanteel family were in Britain to escape life under Spanish occupation of the United Provinces at this point of the 17th century. Ahasuerus was a clockmaker and mechanic, as was his son, John who we see in Amsterdam in 1648 talking to Benjamin Worsley about the making of microscopes, the fine engineering of the tubes and the grinding of lenses. Worsley was one of those who felt that Dutch trade was becoming

19 so dominant that he became one of the chief promoters of the Navigation Acts, see Leng (2008). In 1657 John was back in Amsterdam learning more about pendulum clocks as recently invented by Christiaan Huygens, as Jardine (2008,9) describes

Returning to the story of James Watt. Watt though not an academic scientist was clearly possessed of a huge natural intelligence, driven by a strong practical curiosity but he was also thinking about making money ! The picture below is of Professor Anderson’s demonstration Newcomen pumping engine. Watt had completed his apprenticeship as an instrument maker in London. On returning to his native Glasgow he was faced with restrictions on trade due to the declining, but still present power of the trade guilds. Since he had’t been apprenticed in Glasgow Watt had difficulty working at his trade in the city. The only place outside the power of the guilds was the Professor Anderson’s Engine. Photo – University. Tim Barmby

Here other aspects of 18th century Scotland came into play, apart from having more Universities than England, by the beginning of the 18th century it would have had 5 Universities (King’s College Aberdeen, Marishal College Aberdeen, St Andrews, Edinburgh and Glasgow) to Englands 2 (Oxford and Cambridge) the curriculum was more in tune with the scientific advances of the time. Glasgow was giving lectures on what we would call natural history or science. One of the hot topics of

20 the day was that atmosphere had weight. Professor Anderson demonstrated this in Glasgow’s lectures by a small scale Newcomen engine. James Watt was employed to maintain this engine, in what was a sort of 18th century science park !

Thomas Newcomen had developed atmospheric pumping engines predominately for the Cornish tin mining industry in the early part of the 18th century. Pumping water out of these mines was a real problem as tin is found relatively deep in the ground.

These weren’t exactly “steam” engines, in the sense that steam was pushing pistons in cylinders. These were atmospheric engines, steam was injected into a cylinder, and then cold water was sprayed into the same cylinder, condensing the steam which then created a vacuum, whereupon the weight of the atmosphere pushed the piston down creating the Watt’s separate condenser pumping stroke. This was tremendously inefficient Photograph Tim Barmby in terms of energy. The main cylinder was first heated up by the steam and then immediately cooled down by the cold water. Eventually the piston could also weaken and crack. Watt’s genius was to conceive of a separate condenser, where the steam from the main cylinder would be drawn away and in which the vacuum would be created without cooling the main cylinder. This achieved a massive increase in the efficiency of the engine, and effectively paved the way for modern steam engines.

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F) WF) WylamWylamylamylam

Moving across the country and down towards Newcastle, we enter an area rich in stories of innovation. In the early 19th century coal was increasingly needed to power the continuing Industrial Revolution. London was growing and the North East had ample and easily won sources of coal, but coal was heavy and needed to be got to where it was needed. This was achieved by getting supplies to the banks of navigable rivers like the Tyne/Tees or Wear and then outward to London and elsewhere by coastal barge.

George Stephenson’s cottage is on the banks of the Tyne near Wylam. Its location on the banks of the River Tyne, just says it all; between the cottage and the Tyne would have been the Wylam Colliery waggonway, which would have taken coal from Wylam Colliery the few miles down to the river staithes at Lemington and thence by keel boat to Newcastle. The coal would have hauled by horse in chaldron wagons. The first waggonways were made of wood. There were miles of these waggonways in this area, the young Stephenson would have seen these and it seems likely also the first experiments in steam traction.

The Napoleonic wars had increased the relative price of (real) horsepower, and so the incentive was to substitute capital. Christopher Blackett, the owner of Wylam colliery, responded to these incentives. He was keen to mechanise the movement of coal. He placed an order for a locomotive from the Cornish engineer Richard Trevithick to operate on his

22 waggonway (although he didn’t eventually take delivery, due to the weight of the engine, the technology for the rails still lagging a little) . This engine was constructed at the foundry of John Whinfield, in Pipewellgate in Gateshead late 1804/early 1805, under the supervison of John Steel, a North-Easterner who had Threvithick’s “Newcastle” engine worked with Trevithick previously according to Trevithick’s biographers Dickinson and Titley (1934). Although the engine was used as a stationary engine at Whinfield’s foundry, the seeds for the idea for a functioning railway were almost in place, in the North East of England in the first decade of the 19th century.

It is interesting to speculate on how public this construction may have been. As we have seen in other contexts, industrial experiments could become something of a tourist attraction, but on the other hand there was a recognition that secrecy also had its place, see Henderson(1966) who describes a visit to Boulton and Watt’s Soho works in Birmingham in 1814. In this case, the view of Tomlinson (1914) and much more recently Smith (2012) is that it is very likely that certain individuals, such as George Stephenson, who would subsequently play a key role in railway development, would have seen the building of the Trevithick engine. James Hodge who was for many years chairman of the Trevithick Society, seems certain that he did.

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George had obtained the post of brakesman at West Moor Colliery at Killingsworth. Although after George’s wife Fanny died in May 1806, George took a job for a year supervising a Boulton-Watt steam engine which drove a flax mill in Montrose in Scotland, as Ross (2010) chronicles he was in the North-East of England during the period the Trevithick engine was being built. On his return to Dial Cottage in Killingworth, he continued to be interested in all aspects of steam, and it is known that John Steel, who had supervised the building of the Trevithick engine in Gateshead, was a visitor to Stephenson’s cottage.

Trevithick was also instrumental in developing engines with higher boiler pressure and this enabled more powerful, and smaller, The gearing of Stephenson’s first Killingworth engine engines to be imagined and then built. A short span of years starting around 1813 was absolutely pivotal, Stephenson was at Killingworth and his huge talents were becoming overwhelming apparent to his employers. In this year he was given the go ahead to build a locomotive engine to haul coal at West Moor colliery. We have already

Chapman and Buddle’s 1815 seen the interest that Christopher Blackett had shown a few years earlier , and now the race was on; , who was the viewer at Wylam colliery, working with to build an engine known as “Puffing Billy”. Also at Wallsend Colliery William Chapman and in the following year built an engine which is known now as the “Steam Elephant”

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So in this early period of the 19th century we had a number of colliery engines being developed, a full 10 years before the Stockton and Darlington Railway opened in 1825 and 15 years before the Liverpool to Manchester opened. Replicas of Chapman and Buddle’s “Steam The author and his son Tom driving a replica of Elephant” and William Hedley’s the Steam Elephant at Beamish’s Pockerley Waggonway “Puffing Billy”, which was even older being designed about 1813/14, run on the Pockerley Waggonway at Beamish Open Air Museum which is near Consett in County Durham. Jarman (2007) discusses Beamish’s approach this invoking of the past through the creation of replicas. Beamish is undoubtedly worth a visit, even if just for the Waggonway. Travelling along the short length of track there it is easy to imagine you are really in the early 19th century at the very start of the railway revolution.

The oldest original engine of this group still in existence is the “Puffing Billy” which is in the Science Museum in London. This is due to the activity of Bennet Woodcroft

who was involved in the Puffing Billy in the Science Museum and her sister Wylam Dilly in the National Museum of Scotland– Photographs Tim Barmby Patent Office in the mid 19th century, and the Patent Office Museum which became the Science

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Museum. He sought out early locomotives and secured for exhibition the “Puffing Billy” and also the Liverpool and Manchester locomotive “Rocket”, winner of the . Woodcroft also secured the workshop of James Watt which has only recently been redisplayed at the Science Museum. Hewish (1980) refers to a description published in ‘The Engineer’ in 1877 of Woodcroft visiting Watt’s workshop at the Watt family house at Heathfield in Birmingham in 1864. The workshop had been sealed since Watt’s death in 1819, and Woodcroft was keen to put this on display, in London, exactly as it appeared. This was first done in 1924.

The sister engine to “Puffing Billy” the “Wylam Dilly”which also worked at Wylam Colliery but 20 years longer than “Puffing Billy” until 1882, is also preserved and is to be found at Scotland’s National Museum in Edinburgh, presented by William Hedley’s sons2.

The original “Locomotion No.1”, which was the engine which pulled the first train on the Stockton and Darlington railway, still exists and is in the North Road Railway Museum in Darlington. The development of the business model of the Stockton and Darlington Peter’s wife Jan beside a replica of Locomotion No.1 at Railway, is interesting in many ways. The way in which it outsourced any of the activities involved, has a very

2 Though the two still exist in spirit in Wylam in the form of two excellent models in the small, but beautifully conceived, museum in Wylam’s library. 26 modern feel to it, but initially this was taken to, what in modern eyes, would seem an extreme. So, for instance, anybody could, at a payment of a fee, use the rails, and with really no effective timetabling !

Outsourcing also extended to the operation of engines. The driver wasn’t paid by the company to just drive the engine, he would be financially responsible for employing the fireman and for other aspects of maintenance like a self-employed contractor. He was paid in the same way as men who had operated the horse drawn waggonways in the area; that is by piece rate, usually so much per ton per mile. This piece rate made sense for a colliery owner who wanted a big pile of coal moved from the colliery to the staithes on the Tyne where it could be moved out by keelmen, down to Newcastle and then by coastal barges down to, almost certainly, London.

However, continuing this piece rate system when the first engines started to replace horses in the second decade of the 19th century resulted in some quite high payments to the early engine drivers. William Gowland received £37/8s/11d in the single month of March 1828 for driving “Royal George”, Timothy Hackworth’s very successful engine design for the Stockton and Darlington Railway, at a time when a coal miner would perhaps receive £4 for the month. Now Gowland would have certainly been a skilled driver and general engineer, so part of his pay would have reflected that. However, the usually very “canny” owners of the Stockton and Darlington Railway seem to have miscalculated the productivity gain which the Royal George imparted.

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The evidence does suggests this, as by the 1830’s drivers like Gowland would have been normal salaried employees of the company.

From our current perspective, performance pay and when it might be deemed appropriate seems another very modern concern. The financial crisis of the early 21st century is, in some part, related to poorly constructed incentives. It is the proverbial double-edged sword. It is good to give people incentives but if the remuneration structure isn’t designed well enough the outcomes are not so good in an overall sense. Many of the discussions of the Industrial Revolution can be traced back to a fundamental alteration in the productivity of labour. Modern economic theory, I think, has undeniably shown that correctly structured incentives lead to increased productivity, much of the work of Ed Lazear (1995) and onwards has given us a body of theory to think about these effects.

It is still an active research question as to why the Industrial Revolution occurred first in Britain ? It is certainly the case that almost wherever you look in description of how 18th and 19th century labour markets worked in Britain you will see piece rates of some sort. It would be an interesting research question to tabulate accurately how widespread piece rates were in Britain as opposed to their other competitors to be the first to industrialise.

These early years of the development of the business of building railways contain any number of interesting economic stories. George Stephenson’s son, Robert, was the first of what we would now call managing director of the first locomotive works in South Street (even

28 though they are called the Forth Street works) behind the present station in Newcastle. He was only 19 at the time, but clearly he had been brought up with a good grasp of the economics of business. George had made sure that Robert received the education which he hadn’t. He attended school in Newcastle and as a member of the Literary and Philosophical Society in Newcastle (still there beside the station) would borrow books to take home for he and his father to read. For a period Stephenson’s Forth Street works had at Stephenson’s Locomotive works least some monopoly and when the Bedlington Iron Works, which had been one of Stephenson’s suppliers decided they might be able to build locomotives as well, some consternation was caused amongst the financial backers of the Forth Street works, Robert showed a good grasp of the notion of a competitive market in his letter to Joseph Pease, one of the Quaker backers, of the 12th of April 1836

“… the concern is now I believe, doing tolerably well, but the high prices we are getting is bringing others daily into the field, and though I do not doubt that we may keep some ascendency over others for a few years, I am not so sanguine as to expect anything like extraordinary profits…”

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G) ShildonG) Shildon

Timothy Hackworth was another native of Wylam whose name has a significant link to the successful development of steam railways. His crucial contribution came in the late 1820’s as he developed his role as what was effectively the first chief engineer of a railway company. The company was, of course, the Stockton and Darlington Railway founded in 1825. In more popular

TimothyHackworth’s Royal George discussions of the Stockton and Darlington 1827

Railway, the fact that it was the first to carry passengers draws attention away from its main purpose which was to move coal. For the business to succeed a reliable steam freight engine was a key requirement and it was this which Timothy Hackworth supplied in the form of his engine the “Royal George” built in Shildon in 1827.

It is sometimes forgotten that the steam technology, which was to become so central to the transportation of people and movement of freight did go through a period when the re-introduction of horses as the main form of traction was considered as Kirby (1993) discusses. Kirby also gives some support to the notion that it was Timothy Hackworth and his efforts at Shildon in this crucial transition period which put the modern steam railway on a firm footing; the rest, as they say, is history.

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H) Sunderland

The story of the first bridge over the River Wear in Sunderland in 1796 draws together so many elements of interest it is difficult to know where to start. As mentioned earlier, bridges were a tremendous boost to the industrial infrastructure of any growing city. We have seen that the first bridge at Coalbrookdale was built in 1779. This had a span of 100 feet, and was certainly considered as one of the wonders of the age.

Sunderland was in a similar situation to Newcastle; its position next to one of the richest coal fields of late 18th century England, was key. Waggonways were daily bringing coal down to staithes on the banks of the River Wear. Rowland Burdon was the prime local mover in the affair; he was a member of a wealthy local family involved in banking. It was his business connections which brought in Walkers, the Rotherham Ironmasters. As is often the case the local geography was important. Many Wearmouth Bridge 1849 before Stephenson’s first of the coal staithes were further up the rebuilding watercolour by James Wood river, beyond the obvious place to cross the river which was relatively near the mouth. This dictated that the bridge had to be sufficiently high for ships to access the staithes, and a single span was imagined.

As we have already discussed Thomas Paine was also thinking of large single spans in the context of bridging the River Schuylkill in

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Philadelphia. Between the American War of Independence and the French Revolution, Paine had to turn his mind to making some money. He had donated any profits generated by his political pamphlets to the American military. This may have been pivotal as it seems that the military almost ran out of money several times at crucial points of the campaigns. So back in Britain, he was thinking about the idea of long single span bridges. He approached the bridge business a little more realistically than his pamphleteering and patented designs for a large single span bridge. He sought out one of the most advanced, and famous ironmasters of the time, Walkers of Rotherham whose foundry the artist JMW Turner had sketched in the late 18th century.

Although Paine was not in Britain at this time, the French revolution was underway, it is arguable that some elements of Paine’s design were to found their way into the Sunderland Bridge, even if it was just the ambitious 240 foot span.

The story of the Sunderland Bridge provides one further interesting piece of economics, which I am sure Peter would have been curious about. In 1806 Rowland Burdon went bankrupt, and his interests in the Sunderland Bridge were to be disposed of by lottery ! which is an unusual means, at least to the modern mind, to realise the value of an asset. This however, ultimately seems to have led to a good deal of financial double dealing, not involving Burdon himself, which the modern mind, witnessing the financial crisis of the early 21st century would certainly recognise !

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Postscript: The summer of 2012

Jan outside George Stephenson’s Cottage

Culinary Postscript

Peter Kenyon was an accomplished chef. Founding his own business as the “Cooking Professor”, which, as has already been mentioned, still exists. I know he would have been interested in what people were eating and drinking during the 18th and 19th centuries. I have already mentioned this as one of the elements of the narrative on the Industrial Revolution and Allen (2015) returns to this idea in a recent restatement of the case for the high wage economy argument. In this short postscript, I try to give some idea of this and also the relationship of diet to economic development.

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In terms of what people ate a good place to start is to think about the staples; oats, wheat and potatoes. Griffiths (2006) cites a quote from a John Bailey in 1810, who was reporting on agricultural labourers in County Durham:-

“The food and mode of living of the labouring classes are very simple: the bread used is made of maslin, leavened and baked in loaves, called brown bread; the most usual breakfast is bread and milk and in winter when the latter is scarce, hasty pudding or crowdy is substituted for it; for dinner, pudding, or dumpling and potatoes, with a small portion of animal food, or bread and cheese, with milk and very often bread and milk only; for supper, bread and milk, or potatoes and milk and when the latter is scarce, treacle beer is used in its stead”

To the modern ear some of the words are now unfamiliar, maslin was mixed grain flour; hasty pudding is essentially boiled down porridge. crowdy was porridge. Bread and potatoes appear quite a lot in a standard diet, so high prices which would be caused by the Corn Laws, and potato blight, which could affect potato crops, were life threateningly serious. Though Salaman (1949) points out that the potato was adopted only slowly, not attaining a significant proportion of working people’s diet until the late 18th century. The reason for this was that the knowledge of how to grow them disseminated slowly as there were no similar staples which grew from tubers.

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Crowes’ mill girls would have certainly know how to prepare Hot Pot which combines meat and potatoes as in Bailey’s quote; it was a dish whose preparation fitted in with the time discipline imposed by the industrial day. It could be slow cooked on ranges during the day, giving a warm meal on completion of the shift. There are a number of dishes which show adaption to working requirements, Cornish Pasties with their heavy crimping allowing metal miners to minimise ingestion of copper or tin.

Lancashire Lamb Hotpot 2tbsp plain flour 2 ¼ lb lamb neck fillet, cut into cubes 2-3 tbsp oil 1 tsp dried herbs 1 ½ lb sliced onions 2 ¼ lb potatoes peeled and sliced into rounds 18 fl oz lamb or vegetable stock 2 oz butter Salt and pepper i) Season flour with salt and pepper, and coat diced lamb ii) Fry lamb in pan with some oil iii) Fry onions with the herbs and add to meat iv) Layer the potatoes over top and pour over the stock. Dot the butter over top and add some final seasoning. v) Cook slowly. When cooked move to hotter part of oven to brown off Serve hot from the oven with pickled cabbage

Jan sampled this with some Eccles cakes; when she made part of the tour in 2012. Eccles is on the route of the Liverpool to Manchester Railway and very close to the Barton Aqueduct.

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References

Introduction

M W Beresford (1984) “Time and Place: An Inaugural Lecture” reprinted in Time and Place The Hambleton Press. E H Carr (1961) “What is History?” Pelican Books Daniel Defoe “A Tour through the Whole Island of Great Britain” Penguin Classic Edition 1986 Emma Griffin (2013) “Liberty’s Dawn: A People’s History of the Industrial Revolution” Yale University Press E J Hobsbawn (1964) “Labouring Men: Studies in the History of Labour” Weidenfeld and Nicholson W G Hoskins (1977) “The Making of the English Landscape” Folio Humphrey Jennings (2012) “Pandemonium” Icon Books Francis Klingender (1968) “Art and the Industrial Revolution” Adams and Dart Tristram Hunt (2009) “The Frock-Coated Communist:The Revolutionary Life of Friedrick Engels” Allen Lane Karl Marx (1974) Capital Lawrence Wishart Edition Kelly Morgan, Cormac Ó Gráda and Joel Mokyr (2013) “Precocious Albion:A New Interpretation of the British Industrial Revolution” University College Dublin School of Economics working paper 13/11 Esther Moir (1964) “The Discovery of Britain: The English Tourists 1540-1840” Routledge and Kegan Paul Joel Mokyr (1985) Editor “The Economics of the Industrial Revolution” George Allen Unwin Joel Mokyr (2009) “The Enlightened Economy: An Economic History of Britain 1700-1850” Yale University Press Alan Sorrell (1981) “Reconstructing the Past” Edited by Mark Sorrell Book Club Associates E P Thompson (2011) “William Morris: Romantic to Revolutionary” Merlin Press E P Thompson (1968) “The Making of the English Working Class” Penguin Books

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A) Coalbrookdale

Barrie Trinder (1973) “The Industrial Revolution in Shropshire” Neil Cossons and Barrie Trinder (2002) “The Iron Bridge: Symbol of the Industrial Revolution” Phillimore and Co Arthur Raistrick (1989) Dynasty of Iron Founders

B) Birmingham

Jim Andrew (2009) “The Soho Steam-Engine Business” in Matthew Boulton: Selling what the World Desires edited by Shena Mason Birmingham City Council/Yale University Press Jenny Uglow (2002) “The Lunar Men”Faber

C) Cromford

A N Wilson (2002) “The Victorians” Hutchinson London R S Fitton (1989) “The Arkwrights: Spinners of Fortune” Manchester University Press

D) Manchester

Michael Nevell (2013) “Bridgewater: The Archaeology of the First Arterial Industrial Canal” Industrial Archaeology Review Vol 35 pp1-21.

E) Glasgow

Adam Smith “The Wealth of Nations” Bantam Edition 2003 Thomas Leng (2008) “Benjamin Worsley 1618-1677” Boydell Press Lisa Jardine (2008) “Going Dutch” Harper Lisa Jardine (2009) “Accidental Anglo-Dutch Collaborations: Seventeenth-Century Science in London and the Hague” The Sarton Chair Lecture at the University of Ghent 2009

F) Wylam

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H W Dickinson and Arthur Titley (1934) “Richard Trevithick: The Engineer and the Man” Cambridge University Press John Hewish (1980) “The Indefatigable Mr Woodcroft” The Britsh Library W O Henderson (1966) “J C Fischer and his Diary of Industrial England 1814-1851 Frank Cass & Co James Hodge (2010) “Richard Trevithick: an Illustrated Life 1771-1833” Shire Books Jarman Paul (2007) “The Earlier the Better” Heritage Railway, Issue 98 May pp 40-45. Ed Lazear (1995) Personnel Economics MIT Press Evan Martin (1974) “Bedlington Iron and Engine Works” Frank Graham Newcastle. David Ross (2010) “George and Robert Stephenson: A Passion for Success” The History Press George Smith (2012) “Wylam, 200 Years of Railway History” Amberley Publishing William Weaver Tomlinson (1914) “The North Eastern Railway, Its Rise and Development” Andrew Reid and Company Ltd Newcastle-upon- Tyne and Longmans, Green and Company London.

G) Shildon

Maurice Kirby (1993) “The Origins of Rail way Enterprise: The Stockton and Darlington Railway, 1821-63” Cambridge University Press Robert Young (1923) “Timothy Hackworth and the Locomotive” reprinted 1975 Athenæum Press, Gateshead

H) Sunderland

J G James (1986) “The Cast Iron Bridge at Sunderland (1796)” Occasional Papers in the History of Science and Technology No.5 Newcastle upon Tyne Polytechnic

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Culinary Postscript References

Robert C Allen (2015) “The High Wage Economy and the Industrial Revolution: A Restatement” Economic History Review Vol (68):1 pp 1- 22 Redcliffe N Salaman (1949) “The History and Social Significance of the Potato” Cambridge University Press Bill Griffiths (2006) “Stotty ‘n’ Spice Cake: The Story of North –East Cooking” Northumbria University Press

Acknowledgements of images used

I would like to try to give acknowledgment for images used in the most appropriate way possible. If it is felt that this hasn’t been done I would be pleased to try and rectify this.

Page 5: Collier boats being loaded at Wallsend drops. Drawing by Thomas Hair. Hatton Gallery, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, Structural Images of the North East.

Page 7: Dinner Time at Wigan Painting by Eyre Crowe. Manchester Art Gallery

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Tim Barmby has held the Jaffrey Chair of Political Economy at the University of Aberdeen since 2004. He would like to acknowledge the help of Meg McHugh, Curator of the Museum of Science and Industry (MOSI) in Manchester for questions about Arkwright’s Water Frame, Mike Nevell of Salford University for putting me right about the location of the original Barton Aquduct, Matt Thompson of the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust for information on the pieces of the Trevithick engine in the Museum of Iron, Darren O’Connell and John Skåtun for reading an earlier version and making valuable suggestions, and also Siobhan Austen and Peter Dawkins. The secretarial staff of the Business School at the University of Aberdeen (Julia Braik , Anne Mcpherson and Anne Cook) and Elena Mente for considering the question of the weight of female hair, Peter Bartlam for help with the map. Thanks also to another Jan, my proofreader, for her thoroughness and encouragement.

Text © Tim Barmby 2015

Peter was a great supporter of the Big Issue. If you have enjoyed reading this short pamphlet, any support of the work of the Big Issue would be appreciated.

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