Of this railway Edward Pease was the projector. A thoughtful and sagacious man, ready in resources, possessed of indomitable energy and perseverance, he was eminently
qualified to undertake what appeared to many the hopeless enterprise of obtaining an Act for a railway through such an unpromising district. One who knew him in 1818 said, “he was a man who could see a hundred years ahead.”
When the writer last saw him, in the autumn of 1854, Mr. Pease was in his eighty-eighth year; yet he still possessed the hopefulness and mental vigour of a man in his prime. Hale and hearty, and full of reminiscences of the past, he continued to take an active interest in all measures calculated to render men happier and better. Still sound in health, his eye had not lost its brilliancy, nor his cheek its colour;
and there was an elasticity in his step which younger men might have envied. [125]
In getting up a company for surveying and forming a railway, Mr. Pease had great difficulties to encounter. The people of the neighbourhood spoke of it as a ridiculous undertaking, and predicted that it would be ruinous to all concerned. Even those most interested in the opening of new markets for their coal, were indifferent, if not actually hostile. The Stockton merchants and shipowners, whom it was calculated so greatly to benefit, gave the project no support; and not twenty shares were subscribed for in the whole town. Mr. Pease nevertheless persevered; and he induced many of his friends and relations to subscribe the capital required.
The necessary preliminary steps were taken in 1818 to apply for an act to authorise the construction of a tramroad from Witton to Stockton. The measure was however, strongly opposed by the Duke of Cleveland, because the proposed line passed close by one of his fox covers; and the bill was rejected. A new survey was then made, avoiding the Duke’s cover; and in 1819 a renewed application was made to Parliament. The promoters were this time successful, and the royal assent was given to the first Stockton and Darlington Railway Act on the 19th April, 1821.
The projectors did not originally contemplate the employment of locomotives. The Act provided for the making and maintaining of tramroads for the passage “of waggons and other carriages” “with men and horses or otherwise,” and a further clause made provision for damages done in course of traffic by the “waggoners.” The public were to be free “to use with horses, cattle and carriages,” the roads formed by the company, on payment of the authorised rates, “between the hours of seven in the morning and six in the evening,” during winter; “between six in the morning and
eight in the evening,” in two of the spring and autumn months; and “between five in the morning and ten in the evening,” in the summer months of May, June, July, and August. From this it will be obvious that the projectors of the line had themselves at first no very large conceptions as to the scope of their project.
One day, in the spring of 1821, two strangers knocked at the door of Mr. Pease’s house in Darlington; and the message was brought to him that some persons from Killingworth wanted to speak with him. They were invited in, on which one of the visitors introduced himself as Nicholas Wood, viewer at Killingworth, and then turning to his companion, he introduced him as George Stephenson, engine-wright, of the same place.