Autobiography of Sir John Rennie, F.R.S 43
In the year 1844 came the great railway mania. Railways were considered
as a mine of wealth to whoever would undertake them; and consequently
new lines were projected in all directions, and I had my full share of
them: amongst others the Great Northern, the Leeds and Carlisle, the
Leeds and Bradford, the York and Scarborough, the Bristol and Monmouth,
the Bishop’s Stortford and Thetford (called the Direct Norwich), the
Birmingham and Boston, the Newry and Enniskillen, the East Lincolnshire,
the Lincoln and Hull, the Cannock Chase, and the North Wales, &c. The
consequence was that the demand for engineering surveyors and assistants
was very great. Engineering was considered to be the only profession
where immense wealth and fame were to be acquired, and consequently
everybody became engineers. It was not the question whether they were
educated for it, or competent to undertake it, but simply whether any
person chose to dub himself engineer; hence, lawyers’ clerks, surgeons’
apprentices, merchants, tradesmen, officers in the army and navy, private
gentlemen, left their professions and became engineers; the consequence
was that innumerable blunders were made, vast sums of money were
recklessly expended, and the greater part of the lines were thrown out of
Parliament in consequence of the innumerable errors committed in them.
The committee rooms of the Houses of Lords and Commons were thronged
to such a degree with engineers, lawyers, and witnesses, that it was
scarcely possible to find sufficient room for them. The barristers,
solicitors, and parliamentary agents made enormous sums, and so did
those engineers who were fortunate enough to get paid. My labours were
most arduous. I had to work night and day for several weeks in preparing
plans for Parliament, and if I had only got paid, I should have made a
good fortune, for I employed in one department or another above three
hundred assistants. It is true that I received a great deal of money; but
the expenses were so great that the advances made to me were immediately
absorbed, and before I could balance my accounts, most of the companies
had vanished, remaining largely in my debt. As to recovering my debts in
a court of law, it was impossible on account of the difficulty of proving
whether there was a sufficient number of directors present when the order
was given, and what were the names of the directors present; because, as
they were not legally constituted companies, the different members of
the board could only be sued in their individual capacities, whilst I,
who employed the different parties to make the surveys and work out the
details, was clearly liable to them; so that the claims against me were
innumerable, and made without mercy, and I had the greatest difficulty in
satisfying them without material loss.
To give an example of the difficulties I had to contend with in
establishing my case against one of the companies that employed me--viz.
the Cannock Chase Railway, an essentially good concern, which has since
been carried into effect with considerable profit to another company who
took it up afterwards: My company had paid me 2500_l._ on account of the
expenses, and they owed me 2700_l._ more, which they never disputed. They
had 12,000_l._ in hand, and could have easily paid my bill; but finding
that they could not at that time carry their line, they united with
another company without paying me, and handed over to them the 12,000_l._
subscribed for my company. I then got them to call a meeting, and said
that as their original company had collapsed, I was prepared to meet them
upon the most equitable terms, namely, that they should pay the balance
of my disbursements actually out of pocket; this they declined to do. I
then offered to deduct my share of the disbursements if they would pay
the balance; this they declined also, and they would pay no more. Finding
that I could do nothing with them, I sued them at law, and brought an
action against the chairman; he, however, proved that he was not present
when the order was given to me, I was therefore nonsuited, and had to
pay my expenses and his, which cost me 500_l._ I then brought an action
against two other parties, who were present when the order was given; but
then it was proved against me that there was not a quorum, and as I could
not get hold of the books, the secretary having absconded with them, I
was nonsuited again at the cost of 500_l._ more. At last this secretary
having got into difficulties, I got hold of the minutes of proceedings
by an extraordinary combination of circumstances, went to the Court of
Chancery, and eventually established my case, and recovered the whole
of my claim, viz. 2700_l._; but without the costs. So that after seven
years’ litigation I recovered the 2700_l._, which was wholly absorbed in
the expenses; and therefore I was where I began.
The principal parliamentary battle I had was in 1844-5; and in the
following year I had another with the Great Northern Railway. The late
Mr. Gravatt had the dual line from King’s Cross by Barnet, Welwyn,
Stilton, Stamford, Corby, Lincoln, Asking to York; this was in every
respect the shortest and the most easy of execution; unfortunately,
our company was not formed until the end of September, so that it was
extremely difficult, in so short a time, to get the surveys and levels
made correctly. The late Mr. Francis Giles undertook to have the whole
completed in the most perfect manner by the 30th November, 1844, for
depositing with the respective Clerks of the Peace, as required by the
Standing Orders of Parliament. Mr. Giles’s well-known reputation as
a first-rate engineering surveyor appeared to Mr. Gravatt and myself
a sufficient guarantee that the surveys would be well completed by
the required time; in this, unfortunately, we were most grievously
disappointed, for Mr. Giles, who had a good deal of other business in
hand, could not devote his whole attention to it, which was absolutely
necessary; in fact, he ought never to have undertaken it; but he always
assured us that it would be properly done in time. However, finding
that he did not go on so well as we expected, we endeavoured, as far
as practicable, to remedy the evil by setting on additional surveyors
ourselves, under the control of Mr. Giles; but in spite of all our
exertions, Mr. Giles failed completely, and our line, in consequence
of the numerous defects in the survey, was thrown out upon Standing
Orders, and the present Great Northern line, which was our rival, but
acknowledged to be not so good, notwithstanding a strong opposition, was
carried through Parliament, very much to the annoyance of Mr. Gravatt and
myself, and Mr. Gravatt never forgave Mr. Giles’s neglect.
My rule on all these occasions was to endeavour to conciliate the
landowners through whose estates we went, always asking and obtaining
their permission before entering upon their lands, and by this means we
made friends wherever we went; amongst other great proprietors we went
through a considerable portion of the Marquis of Exeter’s estate, near
Stamford. Upon going down the line I found one of our surveyors drunk,
and he had so completely departed from his instructions that I paid and
discharged him at once. I called on the Marquis to explain this, but he
was not visible, as he was busy with preparations for the reception of
Her Majesty and H.R.H. the Prince Consort, who were expected to arrive
the next day. I then went down the line as far as York, and upon my
return called again upon the Marquis at Burleigh, who received me very
coldly, and said when he gave me permission to go through his estate, it
was upon a particular line, which I faithfully promised to adhere to;
but he was much surprised and sorry to find that I had broken my word,
for that when H.R.H. the Prince Consort was shooting in his preserves
he found one of my surveyors with several assistants breaking into and
carrying the line through them, which he had strictly forbidden, and
which I had as strictly promised to his Lordship that I would not touch;
and it was most fortunate that the surveyor and his assistants were not
shot, for it was never for a moment expected that they would be there.
After having heard his Lordship quietly, and having asked the day, and
the name of the surveyor, which his Lordship told me, I said that the
man was not in my employment, for the very day on which I last called at
Burleigh I found this same surveyor drunk, and carrying the line into the
preserves, which I had strictly forbidden, and I immediately discharged
him. And I added that as his Lordship found him in the preserves, he must
have been sent there by somebody else. His Lordship was at once perfectly
satisfied with this explanation, and became as friendly as ever, and
pressed me to stop and dine with him; this invitation I courteously
declined, for I was so much occupied that I had not an hour to spare.
One very important feature of our line, besides making it shorter, more
direct, and easier of execution, was the position of the station at
York, which we proposed to make on the main line, immediately outside
the walls of the city; and in order to effect this we carried our line
by a bridge across the railways then entering the York station, while
our rivals proposed to carry their line into the station itself; which
scheme having been adopted, compels them to back in and out, and not only
occasions considerable loss of time, but materially increases the risk of
collisions.
Another important line was the Bristol and Chepstow, which would
materially have shortened the distance between Bristol, Birmingham, and
Liverpool, instead of going round by Gloucester, and would have enabled
the South Wales Railway to shorten materially their distance to London.
In order to effect this I proposed to carry the line across the Severn at
the old passage by an iron bridge, with a clear height of 100 feet above
the high-water level of spring tides, so as to enable the largest ships
to pass under. It happened that the rocks in the river afforded excellent
foundations for the piers.
The late Mr. Cobden was chairman of the Committee in the House of
Commons to whom this Bill was referred, and they were all astonished
at the boldness and grandeur of the undertaking; although the late Mr.
Brunel and others did not deny its practicability, yet the promoters of
the undertaking could not see their way to find the means for carrying it
into effect, and therefore the Bill was withdrawn.
I forgot to mention the Central Kent Railway line, 1838. It had long been
considered a desirable object to connect Dover and London by a railway
for the Continent, and the South-Eastern had already obtained an Act to
make a line by Redhill, thence to Tunbridge, Ashford, and Folkestone,
to Dover, the distance being 86 miles, whereas the old coach road was
only 72. Moreover, the South-Eastern avoids all the principal towns
and population in Kent; so much so, that it was considered to be very
objectionable, and that it would not pay.
I was accordingly requested by a most influential committee to examine
the county of Kent carefully, and endeavour to find out a better line. I
was not long in discovering one, namely, to commence at London Bridge,
thence by Lewisham, Eltham, the Crays, the Darent, 4 miles above
Dartford, thence by Gravesend, through Gad’s Hill, crossing the Medway a
mile above Rochester, thence, within a mile of Maidstone, to Eastwell,
where it was to separate into two branches, one to Ashford, and thence on
to Folkestone and Dover; another to Canterbury, thence to Sandwich, where
it was to terminate; while from the Darent another branch was intended to
run up the valley of that river, with a tunnel at its head, and thence
to Sevenoaks and Tunbridge. From this it will be seen that the main line
connected all the principal towns in the county together; each was at the
same time within the shortest distance from the metropolis, and nearly
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