Part 23 (1/2)
As to the accommodation, at first the guard of a train in some cases sat perched on a back seat of the last carriage outside! like a cab driver, but things had already begun to improve a little at the time I am writing of. Here is a description by one of the old Royston travellers of a journey from Broxbourne to London.
”At first the 3rd cla.s.s carriages were open, like cattle trucks, and without seats, and when seats were added they were very rough ones.
Later on the open carriages were improved by placing iron hoops over the top and tarpauling over these, something after the fas.h.i.+on of a railway van in our streets now. A smartly-dressed young man in his Sunday best, desiring to appear to great advantage in London, would find his white waistcoat--which was generally worn in those days--a very sorry spectacle, after standing in an open carriage and catching the smoke of the engine, from which there was no protection! On one occasion there was a very great pressure in the train up from Broxbourne to London, and one of these 3rd cla.s.s carriages with the iron hoop and tarpauling roof over it was so full that the pressure on the wheels and consequent friction began to produce sparks and then smoke! All the pa.s.sengers were in a terrified state! Some of them set to work trying to tear the tarpauling away from the roof in order to communicate with the guard, but unfortunately the tarpauling seemed to be the strongest part of the carriage, and it appeared to be a case of all being burned to death before the train stopped! At last one young fellow becoming more desperate, got his head through the top of the carriage--that is through the tarpauling--and had his high top hat carried away by the breeze; but succeeded in getting sight of the guard perched on behind. When the train came to the next station there was a general stampede and most of the pa.s.sengers refused to go any further.
A few of them were obliged to go on, and the reduced weight and lessened friction removed all further danger.”
After the above period the Great Northern Company came upon the scene in Hertfords.h.i.+re; but frightened not a few people by the formidable character of its undertaking near Welwyn, for before the famous Digswell Viaduct had spanned the picturesque valley of Tewin, or the tunnels had pierced the last barrier of the hills, it is said that many persons who had invested heavily in Great Northern shares, began to tremble in their shoes, owing to the enormous expense, and a person with enough foresight and judgment might have bought up, for a small amount, shares enough to have made him a wealthy man for the rest of his life!
The railway did not touch the neighbourhood of Royston until much of the novelty of the change, and also of the opposition to it had pa.s.sed away. The opposition to it here was therefore one of a compet.i.tive and interested character, rather than of prejudice against {178} George Stephenson and his iron horse. Owing to the opposition of Lord Mornington in the interest of the Great Eastern Railway Company, the Royston and Hitchin Railway was prevented running into Cambridge, and ran only as far as Shepreth, hence the joint use of a part of the line, after it was carried on to Cambridge.
The first effect of a railway in any neighbourhood was felt upon the conveyance and upon the price of the necessities of life. Reference has already been made in an earlier sketch to the difficulties of getting coals from Cambridge, thirteen miles along bad roads to Royston, and it may be added that the first year after the railway to Royston was opened, the price of coal was so much reduced that the gain to the townspeople was calculated to be sufficient to pay all the rates for the year!
The shares of the Royston and Hitchin Company, whose work of construction involved much less difficulty than the part of the main line already referred to, were at one time sold at a discount though carrying a guaranteed six per cent. dividend, and they are now worth, I suppose, about 80 per cent. more than they cost.
The accommodation at first was not as luxurious as it is now. Some of the carriages on this line, were at first open at the sides like cattle trucks, and at a pinch on market day cattle trucks were attached and the pa.s.sengers stood up in them!
Having already exceeded the bounds of time and s.p.a.ce contemplated for these Sketches, and travelled a little beyond the period indicated by the t.i.tle, the writer might here, in a few words, have taken leave of his task, but for the fact that he finds himself still in possession of a small collection of troublesome ”fragments,” some of them of peculiar interest, which would not lend themselves very readily to being cla.s.sified or blended together into any of the foregoing chapters.
These fragments are chiefly short paragraph records of local events, on a mult.i.tude of topics, and therefore must be treated as such, and thrown as far as possible into chronological order.
1745. Cooper Thornhill, of the Bell Inn, Stilton, near Huntingdon--in whose house, from the hands of a relative, Mistress Paulet, originated Stilton cheese--this year achieved a remarkable feat of horsemans.h.i.+p by way of Royston to London; riding for 500 guineas from Stilton to London, 71 miles, in 3 hours and 52 minutes.
1748. In this year, on August 18th, occurred a fire which is memorable in the annals of Barkway. The record preserved in the parish papers consists chiefly of the accounts of the losses, but it is sufficient to show that there must have been nineteen houses burned, {179} and, as the losses were for small amounts, probably nearly all of them cottages.
I give a few of the articles and items of loss and expense--
A publican and farmer lost ”hogsheads bare”; L9 in wine, L16 in ”sider”
(cider), 42 cheeses, silver spoons, ”a chest of lining [linen] L20,”
and claimant's sister lost in ”lining” and other things L7, and there are ”30 trenchers,” earthenware and wooden dishes, &c., &c.
John Sharp--my Lost at the fier as Folows-- In weat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0 7 0 housal goods to the valuer . . . . . . . . . . 3 0 0 In wood to valuer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0 12 0 L3 19 0 Expense at Royston for two Engins and Buckets 1 10 0 Expense at Buntingford for Engine and Bucketts 0 15 0 L2:05: 0
1785. On the 16th June, 1785, there was a fire at Biggleswade, which in the s.p.a.ce of less than five hours burnt down one hundred and three dwelling-houses and nine maltings. The want of water and the rapidity of the flames, with the falling of the houses, being so dreadful, little good could be done till evening, when the fire was happily stopped. Upwards of 60 houses in the middle of the town were burnt down, with all the shops, warehouses, stables, &c., adjoining. It is generally supposed to have been wilfully occasioned.
1786. June 3rd, the Roy-stone, at Royston, was removed from the Cross to the Market Hill by order of G. Wortham, surveyor. [Removed to present site in Inst.i.tute Garden, 1856.]
There was a remarkable frost in 1786, when among other fatal results of the rigour of the season, a maltster named Pyman, of Royston, when returning home from Kelshall, was frozen to death, and a butcher's boy taking meat from Royston to Morden met with the same fate.
1787. In 1787 the following awful visitation of divine vengeance befell a man near Hitchin, in Hertfords.h.i.+re. He had applied to a Magistrate, and informed him that he had been robbed by such a gentleman.--”The Magistrate told him that he was committing perjury, but the miscreant calling G.o.d to witness, that if what he had advanced was not true, he wished that his jaws might be locked and his flesh rot on his bones; and, shocking to relate, his jaws were instantly arrested, and after lingering nearly a fortnight in great anguish, he expired in horrible agonies, his flesh literally rotting on his bones.”
1788. A burial ground as a present for winning a law-suit may seem an odd acknowledgment, but this was what happened in Royston {180} during last century, when, in 1788, the following obituary notice was published which explains itself--
”Died in the Workhouse in Royston, Thomas Keightly, and on the following Friday his remains were interred in the family burying ground in the Churchyard of that parish. He was the eldest son of the late Wm. Keightley, Esq., of that place, who some years ago, to his immortal honour, stood forward on behalf of the parish, and at his own expense supported a very litigious and expensive law-suit, which he gained and for which the said parish as an acknowledgment made him and his posterity a present of the aforesaid burying ground.”
What the law-suit was about I am unable to say.
The following remarkable incident is taken from an old newspaper, the _Cambridge Intelligencer_--
1794. June 15th. On Wednesday last a son and two daughters of the Widow Curtis, of Wimpole, in this county, were returning from Royston Fair in a one-horse tilted cart. They were stopped in the street at Royston by a concourse of people surrounding some recruiting sergeants who had been parading the streets with a flag and playing ”G.o.d Save the King.” The young man, being in liquor, attempted to drive through the crowd. The horse reared up, being frightened by a musket let off close to him, the young man whipped the horse and struck some persons who obstructed the cart. This aroused the courage of the sons of Mars, who thrust their swords through the tilt of the cart, which alarmed the young women who leaped from the cart, and, fainting away, were carried to a house at a trifling distance. The soldiers, not satisfied with the exploit, wreaked their anger upon the horse by stabbing it with a bayonet in such a manner that the poor animal died in a few minutes.
During the tumult, one of the sergeants threatened a tradesman in the town, a person of unsuspected loyalty, that if he did not say ”G.o.d Save the King,” he would run him through the body. To which he replied with the spirit of a Briton--”You may stab me if you dare, but no man shall make me say 'G.o.d Save the King' only when I please.”