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04062015, June 2015

A Journey through the Industrial Revolution Tim Barmby University of Aberdeen

1

A Journey through the Industrial Revolution

Tim Barmby PrefacePrefacePrefacePreface

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.

2

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.

IIIIntroductionntroductionntroductionntroduction: Looking at the past: Looking at the past: Looking at the past: 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,

3

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 George Stephenson, 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

4

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

5

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.

So, for instance, in this picture we can see

very clearly how coal would be loaded from waggonways to colliers on the

River Tyne. 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/

Collier boats being loaded at Wallsend drops. Drawing by Thomas Hair

6

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

those in positions of power might want

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

J C Bourne – inside Brunel’s first Bristol Station 1846

7

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

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

Dinner Time at Wigan– Eyre Crowe

8

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

empowerment.

The Tour: Coalbrookdale to Sunderland

One of Munby’s Pit Brow Lasses

A Map of the Journey

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 Richard Trevithick builds first engine at

Coalbrookdale 1813 “Puffing Billy” at Wylam 1825 Stockton and Darlington Railway 1893 Barton Aqueduct replaced by swing

aqueduct for the Manchester Ship Canal

9

A) CoalbrookdaleA) CoalbrookdaleA) CoalbrookdaleA) 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 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

The Old Furnace at Coalbrookdale Photograph Tim Barmby

10

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

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

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 Photograph Tim Barmby

A “Beehive” Coke oven photo Tim Barmby

The Ironbridge by Michael Angelo Rooker

11

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 bridge over the River Wear in Sunderland

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 “Catch-me-who-can” at Bridgenorth

The Euston Arch

12

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 Robert Stephenson’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

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

still exist in Cooalbrookdale’s Museum of

Iron, as in the photograph to the right . This is apparently from a slightly

later engine circa 1815.

B) BirminghamB) BirminghamB) BirminghamB) 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

Trevithick’s Coalbrookdale Locomotive

Parts of a Trevithick Locomotive in Coalbrookdale’s Museum of Iron. Photo Tim Barmby

13

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

14

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 steam engine 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) CromfordC) 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

was on the side of the building the hole for the

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

Arkwright’s Cromford Mill Photo – Tim Barmby

15

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.

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.

An 1775 Arkwright water frame Photo – Tim Barmby

16

DDDD) Manchester) Manchester) 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

17

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

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

of Brindley’s original Barton aqueduct is

closer to the present road bridge.

James Brindley’s Barton Aqueduct over the river Irwell 1761

1893 photographs showing the original Barton Aqueduct and the swing aqueduct that was to replace it behind

18

E) Glasgow E) Glasgow E) Glasgow 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 cylinder 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”

19

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

20

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

University.

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

Professor Anderson’s Engine. Photo – Tim Barmby

21

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

pumping stroke. This was tremendously inefficient

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.

Watt’s separate condenser Photograph Tim Barmby

22

F) WF) WF) WF) Wylamylamylamylam

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

23

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

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.

Threvithick’s “Newcastle” engine

24

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,

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

seen the interest that Christopher Blackett had

shown a few years earlier , and now the race was on; William Hedley,

who was the viewer at Wylam colliery, working with Timothy

Hackworth to build an engine known as “Puffing Billy”. Also at

Wallsend Colliery William Chapman and John Buddle in the following

year built an engine which is known now as the “Steam Elephant”

Chapman and Buddle’s Steam Elephant 1815

The gearing of Stephenson’s first Killingworth engine

25

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

Elephant” and William Hedley’s

“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

Patent Office in the mid 19th

century, and the Patent Office Museum which became the Science

The author and his son Tom driving a replica of the Steam Elephant at Beamish’s Pockerley Waggonway

Puffing Billy in the Science Museum and her sister Wylam Dilly in the National Museum of Scotland– Photographs Tim Barmby

26

Museum. He sought out early locomotives and secured for exhibition the

“Puffing Billy” and also the Liverpool and Manchester locomotive

“Rocket”, winner of the Rainhill trials. 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

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.

Peter’s wife Jan beside a replica of Locomotion No.1 at Beamish Museum

27

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 steam

locomotive 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.

28

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

29

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

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…”

Stephenson’s Locomotive works

30

G) ShildonG) ShildonG) 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

discussions of the Stockton and Darlington

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.

TimothyHackworth’s Royal George 1827

31

H) SunderlandH) SunderlandH) SunderlandH) 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

of the coal staithes were further up the

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

Wearmouth Bridge 1849 before Stephenson’s first rebuilding watercolour by James Wood

32

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 !

33

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.

34

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.

35

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.

36

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

37

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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