THE GREAT RAILWAY MANIA DAY.
Never had there occurred, in the history of joint-stock enterprise, such another day as the 30th of November, 1845. It was the day on which a madness for speculation arrived at its height, to be followed by a collapse terrible to many thousand families. Railways had been gradually becoming successful, and the old companies had, in many cases, bought off, on very high terms, rival lines which threatened to interfere with their profits. Both of these circumstances tended
to encourage the concoction of new schemes. There is always floating capital in England waiting for profitable employment; there are always professional men looking out for employment in great engineering works; and there are always scheming moneyless men ready to trade on the folly of others. Thus the bankers and capitalists were willing to supply the capital; the engineers, surveyors, architects, contractors, builders, solicitors, barristers, and Parliamentary agents were willing to supply the brains and fingers; while, too often, cunning schemers pulled the strings. This was especially the case in 1845, when plans for new railways were brought forward literally by hundreds, and with a recklessness perfectly marvellous.
By an enactment in force at that time, it was necessary, for the prosecution of any railway scheme in Parliament, that a mass of documents should be deposited with the Board of Trade, on or before the 30th of November in the preceding year. The multitude of these schemes in 1845 was so great that there could not be found surveyors enough to prepare the plans and sections in time. Advertisements were inserted in the newspapers offering enormous pay for even a smattering of this kind of skill. Surveyors and architects from abroad were attracted to England; young men at home were tempted to break the articles into which they had entered with their masters; and others were seduced from various professions into that of railway engineers. Sixty persons in the employment of the Ordnance Department left their situations to gain enormous earnings in this way. There were desperate fights in various parts of England between property-owners who were determined that their land should not be entered upon for the purpose of railway surveying, and surveyors who knew that the schemes of their companies would be frustrated unless the surveys were made and the plans deposited by the 30th of November. To attain this end, force, fraud, and bribery were freely made use of. The 30th of November, 1845, fell on a Sunday; but it was no Sunday at the office near the Board of Trade. Vehicles were driving up during the whole of the day, with agents and clerks bringing plans and sections. In country districts, as the day approached, and on the morning of the day, coaches-and-four were in
greater request than even at race-time, galloping at full speed to the nearest railway station. On the Great Western Railway an express train was hired by the agents of one new scheme. The engine broke down; the train came to a stand-still at Maidenhead, and, in this state, was run into by another express train hired by the agents of a rival project; the opposite parties barely escaped with their lives, but contrived to reach London at the last moment. On this eventful Sunday there were no fewer than ten of these express trains on the Great Western Railway, and eighteen on the Eastern Counties! One railway company was unable to deposit its papers because another company surreptitiously bought, for a high sum, twenty of the necessary sheets from the lithographic printer, and horses were killed in madly running about in search of the missing documents before the fraud was discovered. In some cases the lithographic stones were stolen; and in one instance the printer was bribed, by a large sum, not to finish in proper time the plans for a rival line. One eminent house brought over four hundred lithographic printers from Belgium, and even then, and with these, all the work ordered could not be executed. Some of the plans were only two-thirds lithographed, the rest being filled up by hand. However executed, the problem was to get these documents to Whitehall before midnight on the 30th of November. Two guineas a mile were in one instance paid for post-horses. One express train steamed up to London 118 miles in an hour-and-a-half, nearly 80 miles an hour. An established company having refused an express train to the promoters of a rival scheme, the latter employed persons to get up a mock funeral cortege, and engage an express train to convey it to London; they did so, and the plans and sections came in the hearse, with solicitors and surveyors as mourners!
Copies of many of the documents had to be deposited with the clerks of the peace of the counties to which the schemes severally related, as well as with the Board of Trade; and at some of the offices of these clerks, strange scenes occurred on the Sunday. At Preston, the doors of the office were not opened, as the officials considered the orders which had been issued to keep open on that particular Sunday, to apply only to the Board of Trade; but a crowd of law agents and surveyors assembled, broke the
windows, and threw their plans and sections into the office. At the Board of Trade, extra clerks were employed on that day, and all went pretty smoothly until nine o’clock in the evening. A rule was laid down for receiving the plans and sections, hearing a few words of explanation from the agents, and making certain entries in books. But at length the work accumulated more rapidly than the clerks could attend to it, and the agents arrived in greater number than the entrance hall could hold. The anxiety was somewhat allayed by an announcement, that whoever was inside the building before the clock struck twelve should be deemed in good time. Many of the agents bore the familiar name of Smith; and when ‘Mr. Smith’ was summoned by the messenger to enter and speak concerning some scheme, the name of which was not announced, in rushed several persons, of whom, of course, only one could be the right Mr. Smith at that particular moment. One agent arrived while the clock was striking twelve, and was admitted. Soon afterwards, a carriage with reeking horses drove up; three agents rushed out, and finding the door closed, rang furiously at the bell; no sooner did a policeman open the door to say that the time was past, than the agents threw their bundles of plans and sections through the half-opened door into the hall; but this was not permitted, and the policeman threw the documents out into the street. The baffled agents were nearly maddened with vexation; for they had arrived in London from Harwich in good time, and had been driven about Pimlico hither and thither, by a post-boy who did not, or would not, know the way to the office of the Board of Trade.
The Times newspaper, in the same month, devoted three whole pages to an elaborate analysis, by Mr. Spackman, of the various railway schemes brought forward in 1845. “There were no less than 620 in number, involving an (hypothetical) expenditure of 560 millions sterling; besides 643 other schemes which had not gone further than issuing prospectuses. More than 500 of the schemes went through all the stages necessary for being brought before Parliament; and 272 of these became Acts of Parliament in 1846—to the ruin of thousands who had afterwards to find the money to fulfil the engagements into which they had so rashly entered.
—Chambers’s Book of Days.
PARODY UPON THE RAILWAY MANIA.
About the time of the bursting of the railway bubble, or the collapse of the mania of 1844–5, the following clever lines appeared:—
“There was a sound of revelry by night.”—Childe Harold.
“There was a sound that ceased not day or night,
Of speculation. London gathered then
Unwonted crowds, and moved by promise bright,
To Capel-court rushed women, boys, and men,
All seeking railway shares and scrip; and when
The market rose, how many a lad could tell,
With joyous glance, and eyes that spake again,
’Twas e’en more lucrative than marrying well;—
When, hark! that warning voice strikes like a rising knell.Nay, it is nothing, empty as the wind,
But a ‘bear’ whisper down Throgmorton-street;
Wild enterprise shall still be unconfined;
No rest for us, when rising premiums greet
The morn to pour their treasures at our feet;
When, hark! that solemn sound is heard once more,
The gathering ‘bears’ its echoes yet repeat—
’Tis but too true, is now the general roar,
The Bank has raised her rate, as she has done before.And then and there were hurryings to and fro,
And anxious thoughts, and signs of sad distress
Faces all pale, that but an hour ago
Smiled at the thoughts of their own craftiness.
And there were sudden partings, such as press
The coin from hungry pockets—mutual sighs
Of brokers and their clients. Who can guess
How many a stag already panting flies,
When upon times so bright such awful panics rise?”