The Subterranean Railway Read online

  There are conflicting reports about the atmosphere in the tunnels during those early days, though most are negative. Very soon, there were accounts of ‘singular occurrences’ on the railway. The Morning Advertiser5 described how, on the opening day, a train appeared to get stuck at Portland Road (now Great Portland Street) station and ‘the station began to get full of steam, the passengers became alarmed and got on to the platform’. The train could not proceed as the signal was not clear and ‘passengers began to run about in all directions, and many of them left the station and proceeded on their journey by omnibus’. The reporter was told by a local publican that ‘he had to assist some of the porters over to his own house and bathe their heads and temples with vinegar, as they were exhausted and suffering from the effects of bad air’. After the train finally got under way, there was a noise like ‘an explosion or the letting off of a small cannon’ which caused ‘great alarm amongst the females and children’ and the gas went out in the carriage in which the reporter was travelling. The paper said that a porter had to be admitted to hospital, but gave no details of the incident. Another account, in a letter to the Daily Telegraph6 four days later, describes a similar incident when a train broke down in a tunnel between Farringdon and King’s Cross, causing ‘great alarm’ to passengers as the carriages filled with smoke and steam.

  A history of Clerkenwell written a couple of years after the opening of the Metropolitan summed up these complaints, suggesting that the public had been deceived in being ‘promised to be carried in handsome and well-lighted carriages through a tunnel free from smell; but very shortly after the line was opened, old dingy carriages, lighted with oil, were no rarity, and, worse than all, the tunnel was far from being free of sulphuric fumes, and of blended smells from coke and steam’.7

  Obviously it cannot have been as bad as that the whole time, since so many people were prepared to use the system. Indeed, as drivers became more skilled at managing their engines, the atmosphere may well have improved. A couple of weeks after the opening Sir John Hardman, describing his trip along the line – which he called the Drain8 – was impressed that he and his wife ‘experienced no disagreeable odour, beyond the smell common to tunnels’.9 He was taken by the fact that the compartments were so spacious that a six-foot man could stand upright with a hat on. His principal problem was that all the stations looked the same and he reported that it was so difficult to know where to get off that many people were carried past their destination. This may have been because the drivers were always in a hurry to get out of the steamy tunnels and tended not to stop for the full minute specified in the timetable. A passenger, Irving Courtenay, wrote to The Times complaining that he had not been able to board a train at Portland Road because it had not stopped long enough. He took the next train and timed its stay at the following three stations, finding they were a mere twenty, fifteen and twenty-five seconds respectively.

  Within weeks of the opening, the Metropolitan Railway’s PR machine was in full flow on the issue of the smoky atmosphere, a problem that was to dog the railway for years to come. When the shareholders gathered, in April 1863, for their first half-yearly meeting after the opening, apart from granting an annuity of £250 per year to Charles Pearson’s widow (a notable act of generosity given that he had not even been a director of the company), they heard from the company’s engineer that ‘the experience of working for some months has quite dispelled all fears as to the noise and vibration to either streets or houses. I have heard no complaints of any kind and the feeling generally appears to be that a vast convenience is accomplished without interference with streets or otherwise and that the appearance of London is not prejudicially affected by anything we have done’. The company claimed to be using the coke ‘made from the best and finest Durham coal’ that was pre-burnt in the ovens for long enough to ‘deprive it of every trace of sulphur and other objectionable exhalations’, and that consequently ‘the fuel is much better than that used on any other railway through the country’.10

  The noise and vibration may well have been less than expected, but there was no getting away from the fact that, despite Sir John’s account, the sulphurous fumes emitted by the engines – ‘choke damp’ as it was called – did not make for a pleasant atmosphere, especially for staff who worked long hours. The Metropolitan found itself in real difficulties over the problem when, in 1867, three people died in separate incidents in circumstances where choke damp seemed to have been a contributory factor. The company’s damage limitation strategy was just as sophisticated as those presented by today’s spin doctors. Despite the fact that in one of the cases the coroner specifically mentioned that the death be attributed to the fumes in the tunnel, the Metropolitan’s board argued there was no connection. The company rousted up three tame medical experts who found that the sickness rate among staff in 1866 had been less than half that among Great Western rail workers. Indeed, the company went further, suggesting that the atmosphere underground in the steam days ‘provided a sort of health resort for people who suffered from asthma, for which the sulphurous and other fumes were supposed to be beneficial, and there were several regular asthmatical customers who daily took one or two turns round the circle to enjoy the – to them – invigorating atmosphere’.11 Such accounts should be taken with more than a pinch of salt, although one must remember that the Victorians were great hypochondriacs and therefore eager enthusiasts for patent medicines and bizarre remedies of the most obscure kind.

  The drivers, in fact, were conscious of the problem and took care not to stoke up the fires in their engines while they were in tunnels, intent on saving their own lungs as well as those of the passengers. When the smoke nuisance persisted, the guards, policemen and porters petitioned the company for leave to grow beards in the misguided notion that they would provide protection against the sulphur. The matter was solemnly discussed at a Great Western board before permission was granted. The Times, siding with the Metropolitan’s board, argued that the unpleasantness was greatly exaggerated and, on rather thin evidence, attributed the illness among station staff to exhaustion from long hours of work in circumstances where the constant throng of passengers and running of trains meant that they had no time off for meals, a sad commentary on the conditions faced by the staff.

  As complaints persisted, ventilation shafts were installed between King’s Cross and Edgware Road, in the early 1870s, creating blowholes whose sudden emission of smoke and steam frequently startled passing horses. Glass was removed from some of the roofs of the stations in order to allow the smoke to escape but this did not seem to help much. A letter to The Times12 several years later describes how a passenger, a mining engineer, reported that he was ‘almost suffocated and was obliged to be assisted from the train at an intermediate station’. He was taken to a nearby chemist who said, ‘Oh, I see, Metropolitan Railway,’ and gave the poor fellow a wineglass full of what he concluded was ‘designated Metropolitan Mixture’. The chemist reported that he did a roaring trade in this potion, often dealing with twenty cases a day. In truth, despite the attempts at better ventilation, the problem of foul air was never really overcome until electric trains replaced steam in the first decade of the twentieth century.

  Finding locomotives which created the least pollution was the main technical problem facing the Metropolitan. At first the Metropolitan had used the Great Western ones designed by Gooch but a dispute with the company led to the withdrawal of all of its trains, locomotives and staff at the end of September 1863. With superhuman effort, the Metropolitan had obtained stock from the Great Northern which fortuitously was building locomotives to use on their own services on the Metropolitan’s line, but they were far too crude to be a long-term solution. Therefore, the Metropolitan was anxious to commission its own locomotives specifically designed to operate on the Underground13 and ordered eighteen tank locomotives from a well-established company, Beyer, Peacock, which had earlier supplied similar engines for a Spanish railway. The key feature was the condensin
g equipment which prevented most of the steam from escaping in the tunnels although partly this depended on the diligence of the driver who needed to refill the water as often as possible in order to keep it cool. Oddly, though cabs had become standard on the main line railways, these locomotives had none, just a weatherboard to protect the driver and his fireman. Perhaps this design was aimed at ensuring that drivers would make every effort possible not to allow steam to escape – or perhaps it was an economy measure since the drivers on the Underground would not have to face the elements as the main-line drivers did. They were beautiful little engines, painted green and distinguished particularly by their enormous external cylinders. The design proved so successful that eventually 120 were built, providing the basis of traction on the Metropolitan and all the other early ‘cut and cover’ Underground lines until the advent of electrification.

  Despite the improvement provided by the new Beyer locomotives, running steam engines in long tunnels was a fundamentally bad idea, necessitated by the available technology. Indeed, the situation was so bad that a Board of Trade inquiry was set up in 1898 to examine ventilation in the tunnels, which were then being used by a staggering 550 passenger and goods trains daily. The Metropolitan again mounted a campaign to allay concerns. The General Manager, Colonel John Bell, repeated the line of his predecessors that the company’s employees were the healthiest railwaymen in the country and that Great Portland Street was ‘actually used as a sanatorium for men who had been afflicted with asthma and bronchial complaints’.

  The staff would have taken issue with Colonel Bell. According to a Mr Smethurst, President of the Short Hours League, ‘hours of men on the Metropolitan, although not so long as others, are yet in my opinion dangerous, excessive and injurious. The effect of a daily journey on the underground railway is too well known to need description. What must the men feel who spend their lives in whirling round the sulphurous tunnel?’14 He reported that drivers and firemen worked up to thirteen hours per day. Signalmen normally worked eight or nine hours per day but they also did thirteen on Sundays. Most Met staff worked three out of five Sundays, too.

  These hardworking men were largely newcomers to London. Henry Mayhew, the journalist and social reform campaigner, visited the line in May 1865 and was most impressed with the railway officials who ‘struck us as being so smart a body of men’15 that he wondered how they had been gathered together in such a short space of time. Mayhew was accompanied by Myles Fenton, the general manager of the Metropolitan, who told him that most of them, particularly the inspectors, guards and signalmen, came from the West Country, with Somerset and Wiltshire contributing the greatest number. ‘It is surprising,’ noted Mayhew patronizingly, ‘how soon a raw rustic is converted by a severe course of discipline into a smart civil and skilful officer.’ The drivers, however, were mostly local people who had been poached from main line companies, especially the Great Northern.

  Another objection was that there were no waiting rooms at any of the stations. These had not been deemed necessary by the Metropolitan since trains were so frequent, but one small shareholder, a civil servant commuter, suggested that this was mistaken: ‘I can assure you that the draughts during the winter months are enough to kill a bronze rhinoceros.’16 There were buffets, but he argued that he should not have to lay out sixpence merely to seek shelter. Another option was the penny-in-the-slot weighing machine. Every station had one and they were a popular feature of platform life in the Victorian tunnels. They were large balances fitted with red velvet cushions which, in effect, provided a free comfortable seat for old gentlemen waiting for a train.

  Yet, despite the awful conditions for the staff and the various complaints from passengers (vitiated, perhaps, by other reports like those of Sir John Hardman and by the Metropolitan’s effective PR), most Londoners seemed to have been prepared to venture down to use the line. Indeed, the bad publicity before the opening may even have contributed towards the Metropolitan’s success by lowering expectations so that travellers were then surprised to find it was not quite as bad as they had been led to expect. By the standards of Victorian railway building the Metropolitan was highly successful, even in financial terms. In the first full year of operation, 11.8 million people used the line, more than four times the population of the capital – a daily average, including Sundays, of 32,300, which was a remarkable achievement given the limited route it served. There was, incidentally, only a partial timetable on the Sabbath, since the trains were suspended during the morning church service hours, a practice which survived on the Metropolitan until October 1909. The peak day in the first year for the Metropolitan was Saturday, 7 March, when Princess Alexandra of Denmark arrived in London for her marriage to the Prince of Wales: 60,000 people, double the usual number, travelled on the line. The Princess did not venture onto the Metropolitan herself, but thousands travelled on the line to Paddington to see her off on her journey to Windsor.

  The Metropolitan’s receipts were so healthy, with profits of £102,000 in its first year, that initially generous dividends could be paid to the shareholders: 6.25 per cent in 1864, a much better return than most railway companies paid. In May 1864, the Metropolitan made a staggering £720 per mile per week, compared with the £80 for the London, Chatham & Dover, the next best performing railway, and just £22 for the Great Eastern & Midland. Yet there were still attempts to do down the Metropolitan. William Pinks, the Clerkenwell historian who wrote that analysis of the early traffic, suggested there were only half the expected number of passengers, providing a weekly income of £1,885 rather than the £4,000 or so needed to make a profit.17 But this seems at odds with the Metropolitan’s figures and it was apparent that the line was well used and profitable. It was only when the railway started expanding that it hit financial difficulties as the cost of the work was normally too high to earn shareholders a decent return on their capital. As the authors of the definitive history of London’s transport put it:

  Shareholders were not to reap the full reward of this important pioneer venture, for the board had already become involved in much less remunerative expenditure. The initial successes had played into the hands of those who have a vested interest in extending the line: the contractors who built the railway, the engineers who supplied the technical advice, and the solicitors who looked after the parliamentary proceedings and the subsequent conveyancing.18

  While this is a somewhat harsh judgement, which ignores the enormous social benefit for London of the Underground, it is one that has resonance today given that the infamous public–private partnership introduced by the Labour government in 2003 cost a staggering £500m in fees for lawyers, consultants and engineers before a single improvement had been made.

  The speed with which the Metropolitan was accepted as a vital part of London is shown by the fact that a music hall ditty about the railway soon became widely sung. To the air of ‘Yankee Doodle Dandy’, it went:

  The underground railway’s a fact

  It’s made cab-owners groaners

  Sent drivers and conductors crack’d

  And riled the great ’bus owners.

  LGOC monopolists weep,

  That railway each one curses;

  It’s sure to do, because it’s cheap,

  And runs under the ’buses.

  The ‘monopolist’ of the London General Omnibus Company (LGOC) no doubt preferred the comic song ‘The Underground Railway’ by Watkin Williams. Although its publisher claimed it was widely sung, that seems unlikely and it is too tedious to set out here in full. It laboriously relates how a man and his sweetheart, Mary Jane, decided to journey to Paddington from Farringdon Street. In the crush on the platform Mary Jane collapsed, as young Victorian women were wont to do, and was helped by another traveller. In the meantime her fiancé had to rescue another woman who had fainted in his compartment. The net result was that when reunited at the end of the journey, the couple found they had been the victims of clever pickpockets:

  And of our little s
tock, they eas’d the whole lot,

  We’d sav’d to get wed when we’d a little more got,

  Now till more is earn’d that bliss is adjourned,

  Through going on the underground railway.

  So what was the explanation for the immediate phenomenal success of the Metropolitan? Underpinning the heavy usage was the fact that the system was remarkably safe and, more importantly, was perceived as such, allaying the natural fear of walking down those steps to go beneath the streets. Had there been a big accident early on, the whole concept might never have taken off. Indeed, in France during August 1903 the number of passengers slumped by more than half, just three years after the opening of the first Métro line following the world’s first major disaster on an underground railway. A fire had been allowed to spread as a result of staff incompetence and panic, and eighty-four people were killed. Despite the predictions and, at times, rather haphazard safety practices, there was no such disaster on the Metropolitan.

  The signalling, for example, was simple but effective. Clearly, it was necessary to have a proper signalling system rather than just leaving a time gap between departures, a method still prevalent on the main line railways.19 Mayhew cited an article in Railway News which described how signalmen at each station had to press keys to communicate with the next one, making a dial show either ‘line clear’ or ‘train on line’. With this simple but clever system, trains could run at intervals of two minutes while without them Mayhew reckoned it would have been a quarter of an hour. Moreover, there was also a system of interlocking which meant that the points and the signals worked together and could not be set in a conflicting way – a safety device that was becoming standard in the railways at that time.