WOLVERTON.
Flying by rail through green fields below Harrow Hill and thence
to Watford,--stopping for a moment in a deep cutting to hear a man
cry “_Tring!_” and a bell say “_Ring!_” until the passenger gets so
confused with the paltry squabble that he scarcely knows which of
the two competitors is vociferating the substantive and which the
verb,--we will now conduct our readers to the Station and little town
of Wolverton.
As every city, village, or hamlet on the surface of the globe is
usually inhabited by people of peculiar opinions, professions,
character, tastes, fashions, follies, whims, and oddities, so there
is always to be witnessed a corresponding variety in the allinement
and architecture of their dwellings--the forms and excrescences of
each often giving to the passing traveller a sort of phrenological
insight into the character of the inmates. One street, inhabited
by poor people, is as crooked as if it had been traced out by the
drunken Irishman who, on being kindly questioned, in a very narrow
lane across which he was reeling, as to the length of road he had
travelled, replied, “_Faith! it’s not so much the length of it as
the_ BREADTH _of it that has tired me_!” Another--a rich street--is
quite straight. Here is a palace--there are hovels. The hotel is of
one shape--the stock-exchange of another. There are private houses
of every form--shops of every colour--columns, steeples, fountains,
obelisks _ad infinitum_. Conspicuous over one door there is to
be seen a golden pestle and mortar--from another boldly projects
a barber’s pole--a hatchment decorates a third--the Royal Arms a
fourth--in short, it would be endless to enumerate the circumstantial
evidence which in every direction proves the truth of the old saving,
“_Many men, many minds_.”
To all general rules, however, there are exceptions; and certainly
it would be impossible for our most popular auctioneer, if he wished
ever so much to puff off the appearance of Wolverton, to say more of
it than that it is a little red-brick town composed of 242 little
red-brick houses--all running either this way or that way at right
angles--three or four tall red-brick engine-chimneys, a number of
very large red-brick workshops, six red houses for officers--one
red beer-shop, two red public-houses, and, we are glad to add, a
substantial red school-room and a neat stone church, the whole
lately built by order of a Railway Board, at a railway station, by
a railway contractor, for railway men, railway women, and railway
children; in short, the round cast-iron plate over the door of every
house, bearing the letters L. N. W. R., is the generic symbol of the
town. The population is 1405, of whom 638 are below sixteen years
of age; indeed, at Wolverton are to be observed an extraordinary
number of young couples, young children, young widows, also a
considerable number of men who have lost a finger, hand, arm, or
leg. All, however, whether whole or mutilated, look for support to
“the Company,” and not only their services and their thoughts but
their parts of speech are more or less devoted to it:--for instance,
the pronoun “_she_” almost invariably alludes to some locomotive
engine; “_he_” to “the chairman;” “_it_” to the London Board. At
Wolverton the progress of time itself is marked by the hissing of
the various arrival and departure trains. The driver’s wife, with a
sleeping infant at her side, lies watchful in her bed until she has
blessed the passing whistle of “the down mail.” With equal anxiety
her daughter long before daylight listens for the rumbling of “the
3½ A.M. goods up,” on the tender of which lives the ruddy but
smutty-faced young fireman to whom she is engaged. The blacksmith
as he plies at his anvil, the turner as he works at his lathe, as
well as their children at school, listen with pleasure to certain
well-known sounds on the rails which tell them of approaching rest.
The workshops at Wolverton, taken altogether, form, generally
speaking, an immense hospital or “Hôtel des Invalides” for the
sick and wounded locomotive engines of the Southern District.
We witnessed sixty of them undergoing various operations, more
or less severe, at the same time. Among them was Crampton’s new
six-wheel engine, the hind wheels of which are eight feet high,
weighing thirty-eight tons, and with its tender sixty tons. It is
capable of drawing at the usual speed twelve carriages laden with
passengers. The workshops at this station are so extensive, that it
would be tedious and indeed almost impracticable to describe them
in detail; we will therefore merely mention that in one of them we
saw working at once by the power of an 18-horse steam-engine twelve
turning-lathes, five planing-machines, three slotting-machines, two
screw-bolt ditto--and, as a trifling example of the undeviating
accuracy with which these contrivances work, we may state that from
a turning-lathe a shaving from cold iron will sometimes continue to
flow for forty feet without breaking. There are a large cast-iron
foundry, a brass foundry, machines for grinding, and also for
polishing; sheers for cutting, and stamps for punching cold iron
as if it were pasteboard; an immense oven for heating tires of
wheels; a smith’s shop containing twenty-four forges, all of which
were in operation at once. Two steam-engines--one for machinery,
the other for pumping water for the town and offices only, for the
Company’s well-water here, as at Camden Station, disagrees with
the locomotives. A large finishing store, in which were working by
steam fifteen turning-lathes, five slotting-machines, five planing
ditto, one screwing ditto, two drilling ditto, two shaving ditto.
Beneath the above we entered another workshop containing sixteen
turning-lathes, two drilling-machines, one slotting ditto, one
screwing ditto, one nut ditto, one cylinder-boring ditto, one shaping
ditto. In the great store-yard there is an hydraulic press of a power
of 200 tons for squeezing wheels on to their axles, or wrenching them
off. Another workshop is filled with engines undergoing repair, and
adjoining it there is a large store or pharmacopœia, containing, in
the form of oil, tallow, nuts, bars, bolts, &c., all the medicine
which sick locomotives occasionally require.
At a short distance towards the south we entered a beautiful
building, lighted during the day by plate-glass in the roof, by gas
at night, and warmed by steam. In its centre there stands a narrow
elevated platform, whereon travels a small locomotive, which brings
into the building, and deposits on thirteen sets of rails on each
side, twenty-six locomotive engines for examination and repair. On
the outside, in the open air, we found at work what is called “_a
scrap drum_” which by revolving cleans scraps of old rusty iron,
just as a public school improves awkward boys by hardly rubbing
them one against another. The scrap iron, after having been by this
discipline divested of its rust, is piled on a small wooden board
for further schooling, and when sufficiently hot the glowing mass is
placed under a steam-hammer alongside, whose blows, each equal to
about ten tons, very shortly belabour to “equality and fraternity”
the broken bolts, bars, nuts, nails, screw-pins, bits of plate-iron,
&c., which are thus economically welded into a solid mass or
commonwealth. In another smelting-shop, 150 feet in length, we saw at
work fourteen forges, six turning-lathes, one drilling-machine, and
one iron-shaving machine. Lastly, there are gas-works for supplying
the whole of the Company’s establishment with about seventy or eighty
thousand cubic feet of gas per day.
The above is but a faint outline of the Company’s hospital at
Wolverton for the repair and maintenance merely of their locomotive
engines running between London and Birmingham.
The magnitude of the establishment will best speak for itself; but
as our readers, like ourselves, are no doubt tired almost to death
of the clanking of anvils--of the whizzing of machinery--of the
disagreeable noises created by the cutting, shaving, turning, and
planing of iron--of the suffocating fumes in the brass-foundry, in
the smelting-houses, in the gas-works--and lastly of the stunning
blows of the great steam-hammer--we beg leave to offer them a cup of
black tea at the Company’s public refreshment-room, in order that,
while they are blowing, sipping, and enjoying the beverage, we may
briefly explain to them the nature of this beautiful little oasis in
the desert.
_Wolverton Refreshment-Room._
In dealing with the British nation, it is an axiom among those who
have most deeply studied our noble character, that to keep John Bull
in beaming good-humour it is absolutely necessary to keep him always
_quite full_. The operation is very delicately called “_refreshing
him_;” and the London and North-Western Railway Company having, as in
duty bound, made due arrangements for affording him, once in about
every two hours, this support, their arrangements not only constitute
a curious feature in the history of railway management, but the
_dramatis personæ_ we are about to introduce form, we think, rather a
strange contrast to the bare arms, muscular frames, heated brows, and
begrimed faces of the sturdy workmen we have just left.
The refreshment establishment at Wolverton is composed of--
1. A matron or generallissima.
2. Seven very young ladies to wait upon the passengers.
3. Four men and three boys do. do.
4. One man-cook, his kitchen-maid, and his two scullery-maids.
5. Two housemaids.
6. One still-room-maid, employed solely in the liquid duty of
making tea and coffee.
7. Two laundry-maids.
8. One baker and one baker’s-boy.
9. One garden-boy.
And lastly, what is most significantly described in the books of the
establishment--
10. “An odd-man.”
“Homo sum, humani nihil à me alienum puto.”
There are also eighty-five pigs and piglings, of whom hereafter.
The manner in which the above list of persons, in the routine of
their duty, diurnally revolve in “the scrap-drum” of their worthy
matron, is as follows:--Very early in the morning--in cold winter
long before sunrise--“the odd-man” wakens the two house-maids, to
one of whom is intrusted the confidential duty of awakening the
seven young ladies exactly at seven o’clock, in order that their
“première toilette” may be concluded in time for them to receive
the passengers of the first train, which reaches Wolverton at 7h.
30m. A.M. From that time until the departure of the passengers by
the York Mail train, which arrives opposite to the refreshment-room
at about eleven o’clock at night, these young persons remain on
duty, continually vibrating, at the ringing of a bell, across the
rails--(they have a covered passage high above them, but they never
use it)--from the North refreshment-room for down passengers to the
South refreshment-room constructed for hungry up-ones. By about
midnight, after having philosophically divested themselves of the
various little bustles of the day, they all are enabled once again
to lay their heads on their pillows, with the exception of one, who
in her turn, assisted by one man and one boy of the establishment,
remains on duty receiving the money, &c. till four in the morning
for the up-mail. The young person, however, who in her weekly turn
performs this extra task, instead of rising with the others at seven,
is allowed to sleep on till noon, when she is expected to take her
place behind the long table with the rest.
The scene in the refreshment-room at Wolverton, on the arrival of
every train, has so often been witnessed by our readers, that it
need hardly be described. As these youthful handmaidens stand in a
row behind bright silver urns, silver coffee-pots, silver tea-pots,
cups, saucers, cakes, sugar, milk, with other delicacies over which
they preside, the confused crowd of passengers simultaneously
liberated from the train hurry towards them with a velocity exactly
proportionate to their appetites. The hungriest face first enters
the door, “magnâ comitante catervâ,” followed by a crowd very much
resembling in eagerness and joyous independence the rush at the
prorogation of Parliament of a certain body following their leader
from one house to the bar of what they mysteriously call ‘another
place.’ Considering that the row of young persons have among them
all only seven right hands, with but very little fingers at the end
of each, it is really astonishing how, with such slender assistance,
they can in the short space of a few minutes manage to extend and
withdraw them so often--sometimes to give a cup of tea--sometimes
to receive half-a-crown, of which they have to return two
shillings--then to give an old gentleman a plate of warm soup--then
to drop another lump of sugar into his nephew’s coffee-cup--then to
receive a penny for a bun, and then again threepence for four “lady’s
fingers.” It is their rule as well as their desire never, if they can
possibly prevent it, to speak to any one; and although sometimes,
when thunder has turned the milk, or the kitchenmaid over-peppered
the soup, it may occasionally be necessary to soothe the fastidious
complaints of some beardless ensign by an infinitesimal appeal to the
generous feelings of his nature--we mean, by the hundred-thousandth
part of a smile--yet they endeavour on no account ever to exceed
that harmless dose. But while they are thus occupied at the centre
of the refreshment table, at its two ends, each close to a warm
stove, a very plain matter-of-fact business is going on, which
consists of the rapid uncorking of, and then emptying into large
tumblers, innumerable black bottles of what is not unappropriately
called “_Stout_,” inasmuch as all the persons who are drinking the
dark foaming mixture wear heavy great-coats, with large wrappers
round their necks--in fact, are _very_ stout. We regret to have to
add, that among these thirsty customers are to be seen, quite in the
corner, several silently tossing off glasses of brandy, rum, and
gin; and although the refreshment-room of the Wolverton Station is
not adapted for a lecture, we cannot help submitting to the managers
of the Company, that, considering not only the serious accidents
that may occur to individual passengers from intoxication, but the
violence and insolence which drunken men may inflict upon travellers
of both sexes, whose misfortune it may be to be shut up with them;
considering moreover the ruin which a glass or two of brandy may
bring upon a young non-commissioned officer in the army, as also the
heavy punishment it may entail upon an old soldier, it would be well
for them peremptorily to forbid, at all their refreshment-rooms, the
sale by any of their servants, to the public, of ardent spirits.
But the bell is violently calling the passengers to ‘Come! come
away!’--and as they have all paid their fares, and as the engine
is loudly hissing--attracted by their pockets as well as by their
engagements, they soon, like the swallows of summer, congregate
together and then fly away.
It appears from the books that the annual consumption at the
refreshment-rooms averages--
182,500 Banbury cakes.
56,940 Queen cakes.
29,200 patés.
36,500 lbs. of flour.
13,140 „ butter.
2,920 „ coffee.
43,800 „ meat.
5,110 „ currants.
1,277 „ tea.
5,840 „ loaf-sugar.
5,110 „ moist sugar.
16,425 quarts of milk.
1,095 „ cream.
8,088 bottles of lemonade.
10,416 „ soda-water.
45,012 „ stout.
25,692 „ ale.
5,208 „ ginger-beer.
547 „ port.
2,095 „ sherry.
And we regret to add,
666 bottles of gin.
464 „ rum.
2,392 „ brandy.
To the eatables are to be added, or driven, the 85 pigs, who after
having been from their birth most kindly treated and most luxuriously
fed, are impartially promoted, by seniority, one after another, into
an infinite number of pork pies.
Having, in the refreshment sketch which we have just concluded,
partially detailed, at some length, the duties of the seven young
persons at Wolverton, we feel it due to them, as well as to those
of our readers who, we perceive, have not yet quite finished their
tea, by a very few words to complete their history. It is never
considered quite fair to pry into the private conduct of any one who
performs his duty to the public with zeal and assiduity. The warrior
and the statesman are not always immaculate; and although at the
Opera ladies certainly sing very high, and in the ballet kick very
high, it is possible that their voices and feet may sometimes reach
rather higher than their characters. Considering, then, the difficult
duties which our seven young attendants have to perform--considering
the temptations to which they are constantly exposed, in offering
to the public attentions which are ever to simmer and yet never to
boil--it might be expected that our inquiries should considerately
go no further than the arrival at 11 P.M. of “the up York mail.” The
excellent matron, however, who has charge of these young people--who
always dine and live at her table--with honest pride declares, that
the breath of slander has never ventured to sully the reputation
of any of those who have been committed to her charge; and as this
testimony is corroborated by persons residing in the neigbourhood
and very capable of observation, we cannot take leave of the
establishment without expressing our approbation of the good sense
and attention with which it is conducted; and while we give credit to
the young for the character they have maintained, we hope they will
be gratefully sensible of the protection they have received.
_Postscript._
We quite forgot to mention that, notwithstanding the everlasting
hurry at this establishment, four of the young attendants have
managed to make excellent marriages, and are now very well off in the
world.
_Gardens, Libraries, and Schools._
Before leaving Wolverton Station our readers will no doubt be
desirous to ascertain what arrangements, if any, are made by the
Company for the comfort, education, and religious instruction of the
number of artificers and other servants whom we have lately seen hard
at work. On the western boundary of the town we visited 130 plots of
ground, containing about 324 square yards each, which are let by the
Company at a very trifling rent to those who wish for a garden; and,
accordingly, whenever one of these plots is given up, it is leased to
him whose name stands first on the list of applicants. A reading-room
and library lighted by gas are also supplied free of charge by the
Company. In the latter there are about 700 volumes, which have
mostly been given; and the list of papers, &c. in the reading-room
was as follows:--Times, Daily News, Bell’s Life, Illustrated News,
Punch, Weekly Dispatch, Liverpool Albion, Glasgow Post, Railway
Record, Airs’ Birmingham Gazette, Bentley’s Miscellany, Chambers’
Information, Chambers’ Journal, Chambers’ Shilling Volume, Practical
Mechanic’s Journal, Mechanic’s Magazine.
Besides the above there is a flying library of about 600 volumes for
the clerks, porters, police, as also for their wives and families,
residing at the various stations, consisting of books of all kinds,
excepting on politics and on religious controversies. They are
despatched to the various stations, carriage free, in nineteen boxes
given by the Company, each of which can contain from twenty to fifty
volumes.
For the education of the children of the Company’s servants, a
school-house, which we had much pleasure in visiting, has been
constructed on an healthy eminence, surrounded by a small court and
garden. In the centre there is a room for girls, who, from nine till
five, are instructed by a governess in reading, writing, arithmetic,
geography, grammar, history, and needlework. Engaged at these
occupations we counted fifty-five clean, healthy faces. In the east
wing we found about ninety fine, stout, athletic boys, of various
ages, employed in the studies above mentioned (excepting the last),
and learning, moreover, mathematics and drawing. One boy we saw
solving a quadratic equation--another was engaged with Euclid--others
with studying land-surveying, levelling, trigonometry, and one had
reached conic sections.
At the western extremity of the building, on entering the
infant-school, which is under the superintendence of an intelligent
looking young person of about nineteen years of age, we were struck
by the regular segments in which the little creatures were standing
in groups around a tiny monitor occupying the centre of each chord.
We soon, however, detected that this regularity of their attitudes
was caused by the insertion in the floor of various chords of hoop
iron, the outer rims of which they all touched with their toes.
A finer set of little children we have seldom beheld; but what
particularly attracted our attention was three rows of beautiful
babies sitting as solemn as judges on three steps one above another,
the lowest being a step higher than the floor of the room. They were
learning the first hard lesson of this world--namely, to sit still;
and certainly the occupation seemed to be particularly well adapted
to their outlines; indeed their pinafores were so round, and their
cheeks so red, that altogether they resembled three rows of white
dumplings, with a rosy-faced apple on each. The picture was most
interesting; and we studied their cheerful features until we almost
fancied that we could analyze and distinguish which were little
fire-flies--which small stokers--tiny pokers--infant artificers, &c.
On leaving the three rooms full of children, to whom, whatever may
be the religion of their parents, the Perpetual Curate, the Rev.
G. Weight, is apparently devoting very praiseworthy attention, we
proceeded eastward about 100 yards to the church, the property of the
Radcliffe Trustees, the interior of which is appropriately fitted up
with plain oak-coloured open seats, all alike. In the churchyard,
which is of very considerable area, there are, under the north wall,
a row of fraternal mounds side by side, with a solitary shrub or a
few flowers at the foot of each, showing that those who had there
reached their earthly terminus were kindly recollected by a few still
travelling on the rails of life. With the exception, however, of the
grave of one poor fellow, whose death under amputation, rendered
necessary from severe fractures, has been commemorated on a tombstone
by his comrades, there exists no interesting epitaph. Besides this
church, a room in the library is used, when required, as a Wesleyan
Chapel; at which on Sundays there are regular preachers both morning
and night--and on Tuesdays and Fridays about 100 of the Company’s
servants attend extempore prayers by one of their brother artificers.