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_.