Joseph Locke Read online

  Another scheme was also being pursued in the 1840s for a line to Perth, which eventually resulted in the formation of the Scottish Central Railway. One of the problems facing the new company was how to gain access to Glasgow and Edinburgh. at first they had hoped to make a junction with the Edinburgh & Glasgow Railway, but when that failed to materialise they reached an agreement with the Caledonian for a junction at Castlecary. Locke and Errington were appointed as engineers for the 46-mile long line. The Scottish lowlands presented rather more problems than the flat lands just south of the Clyde, but nevertheless there were no very steep gradients involved, though there were cuttings and embankments. The Forth had to be crossed near Stirling, but the river did not present the extreme challenge of the more famous bridge built far later north of Edinburgh. work proceeded steadily but there were hold ups in finishing the Moncrieff tunnel, just outside Perth. The line to Perth was opened in May 1848.

  North of Perth, there was more complexity, with the Scottish Midland Junction Railway, authorised in 1845, arrived at Forfar in 1848, where it joined the arbroath & Forfar Railway, that had been built as a 3ft 9in gauge line in 1839. That led up to Guthrie, where the aberdeen Railway took over for the rest of the way. Eventually all these different sections would be absorbed into the Caledonian, but when the route from Carlisle to aberdeen first opened, there was an extraordinary mish-mash of lines. Starting out on the Caledonian, passengers would then pass over the tracks of the wishaw & Coltness followed by the Monkland & Kirkintilloch, then back to the Caledonian again as far as Castelcary. after that it was the Scottish Central followed by the Scottish Midland Junction, the newtyle & Coupar angus, newtyle & Glamis, then back to the SMJ. completing the journey via the arbroath & Forfar and the aberdeen Railway. It is doubtful if a more complex system could be found anywhere else in Britain, yet somehow Joseph Locke had managed to pull all these disparate parts together to create the first railway system to penetrate the north of Scotland: Stephenson’s east coast route had just reached Edinburgh by the time Locke’s west coast lines had arrived at Aberdeen. It was a triumph for the engineer, an honour which he shared in good measure with his partner John Errington. By now Locke had been established as one of the leading engineers in the country, and not only had his reputation grown, but so too had his bank balance: he was ready to venture into new territories and make the political ambitions he had first considered in Scotland a reality in England.

  Chapter Fourteen

  THE MEMBER FOR HONITON

  Honiton, in devon, originally developed as a town situated on the Fosse Way, the Roman road that linked Exeter to Lincoln. It was also considered centuries later as a town that would be served by a main-line railway. It had always been intended that the London & South Western line to Exeter would come through that way. The whole idea of a route from London to Exeter, however, became a little less appealing when the GwR beat them to it with their route from Paddington. Nevertheless, Locke would have been taking an interest in the possible line and, on visiting Honiton, he would have found an interestingly attractive town.

  Much of the ancient town had been destroyed by fire, which involved extensive rebuilding in the eighteenth century. Even today the town centre is notable for its many fine Georgian buildings. It was also the centre of a thriving lace industry, though one that had not yet been largely mechanised: most of the lace was handmade in surrounding villages. It had a very high reputation for quality and the town was given the honour of making the lace for Queen Victoria’s wedding dress. Lace was not, however, the town’s main attraction for Locke. The town returned two members to Parliament.

  The 1832 Reform Act had removed some of the worst scandals of the outdated Parliamentary system: the so-called rotten boroughs. The most famous example was Old Sarum in Wiltshire, a place that had once been important but had shrunk to a population of just a few scattered cottages and yet elected two members. It lost both seats and several other towns that had dwindled in size were disenfranchised, while others were reduced to returning a single member. Honiton kept its two-member status, though it was hard to justify in terms of population. And in an age when only the better off sections of the population had a vote, here was ample room for the very wealthy to buy their way into Parliament by making sure those who depended on them also voted for them. Locke, who had toyed with finding a Scottish constituency, now saw the chance to achieve his old ambition to become an MP.

  In September 1847 the Devonport Chronicle carried a speculative news item: ‘It is said that Mr. Joseph Locke, the engineer on the London & South Western Company and the Yeovil line, has become the purchaser of the manor of Honiton, including the whole of the borough. The purchase money, it is believed, was about £80,000.’

  The story was almost true. Locke had bought the manor, but not the whole borough, just a considerable part of it. There was no grand manor house, simply some 500 acres (200 hectares) of land, largely made up of smallholdings and a few larger properties. He collected rents, but that was not the point of the investment: he was also collecting cast-iron guaranteed votes. He had, in effect, bought his seat in Parliament. The cost was immense, equivalent to some £80 million today. It is a measure both of just how wealthy Locke had become and how very ambitious he must have been to enter Parliament. It was not, of course, all money spent just for that one end: he would have had some return on his investment, but far less than he could have received from other sources. He also felt that with his new position he needed a coat of arms, which was duly authorised by the College of Heralds. The motto ‘Mente non marte’ can be roughly translated as ‘Mind not Force’ or perhaps more colloquially ‘Brain not Brawn’. In 1847 he received his reward: he was elected as the Liberal member for Honiton and retained the seat for the rest of his life.

  The railway fraternity thought the decision mistaken – although Robert Stephenson had also taken a similar parliamentary path. Herepath’s Journal & Railway Magazine described standing for Parliament as ‘a silly ambition’, while the Railway Times declared that the House of Commons was ‘a place above all others ill-suited to a thoroughly practical man’. Events tended to prove that the Railway Times may well have had a point. Although John Francis who wrote a history of English railways, published in 1851 speaks of Locke’s ‘eloquence of oratory’ and that ‘he speaks there with much effect’, he was less than wholly successful in getting his ideas across.

  Although nominally a Liberal, that did not necessarily make him especially liberal in his views, particularly when it came to Parliamentary reform. The 1832 Act had begun the process of making essential changes, but there were still absurd anomalies. The great industrial conurbation that was Birmingham, for example, had a population at that time of roughly 250,000 but returned two MPs, the same as Honiton with a mere 2,500. There was a swelling movement for reform, from the Chartists who wanted a simple one-man-one-vote system, regardless of income and property, to those who wanted more modest changes – especially on dual representation. Locke’s views on the subject were made clear by Alfred Austin in his autobiography:

  He called himself a Liberal, but the designation represented, in those days, something very different from what it represents in these; and one who sat for what was in effect a ‘rotten borough’ was not likely to entertain very Radical opinions. Being independent alike of Electors and Ministers, he voted as he pleased, and I remember being with him in the lobby at the time of the Reform Bill, and his being asked casually by Lord Panmure, then Secretary of State for War, if he thought the Bill would pass a second reading, and his replying, ‘Not if it depends on my vote.’ Very shortly afterwards, the office of Commissioner of the Board of Works became vacant through death, and in ordinary circumstances it would have been offered to him. I need scarcely say it was not.

  Austin’s view was from first-hand experience, but Devey in his biography suggested that he actually supported the Reform Bill proposed by the Conservative administration. Austin’s version seems reasonable – it was the o
ld, if corrupt, system that had got him a seat in the first place – which he could well lose after reform. He was not, it seems, partisan in his politics. His view was that he would support measures that he deemed worthy, no matter which party had proposed them.

  ‘There were cabinets,’ he said, ‘who passed good measures from expediency and others from principle. Now, he would prefer to have liberal measure from those who had an interior conviction of their worth; who accepted the principles of liberalism as a doctrine; but he was not going to reject liberal measures when offered by men who adopted them from motives of expediency, since he very clearly saw that if he did not get them from that quarter he was not likely in the present position of party to get them at all.’

  It is interesting to speculate as to why a man with an immensely successful and lucrative career would want to be a Member of Parliament, especially as his busy life would not have given him many opportunities to attend the House. Two possibilities present themselves. The first is that the boy who had begun his working life as a lowly apprentice and had worked his way, by his own efforts, to the point where he had acquired considerable wealth, now wanted social status. Engineering was still considered by polite society as not quite the occupation for a gentleman – some might argue that it still is – and he wanted the prestige that went with the initials MP after his name. The other, rather more honourable, theory is that he knew from personal experience that Parliament was still too tied to the past and landed gentry and did not represent the new world where the nation’s wealth was being created by industry and the huge technological revolution, of which the development of the steam railway was a prime example. We can get some idea of which theory is more likely to be accurate by looking at the causes in which he took an active interest during his years in Parliament.

  Locke tended to speak only on subjects on which he had very decided opinions based on personal experience and knowledge. One of the first causes he took up was Sunday railway travel in Scotland. Sunday travel frequently cropped up in discussing railway legislation, with several attempts to persuade the legislature to ban it – and it was even used as an argument against allowing a railway to be built at all. A typical objection to Sunday travel was raised by Dr G.E. Corrie, Master of Jesus College, Cambridge, who wrote to a Cambridge newspaper in 1851 to ‘express his pain that they had made arrangements for conveying foreigners and others to Cambridge at such fares as might be likely to tempt persons who, having no regard for Sunday themselves, would inflict their presence on the University on that day of rest.’ The arrangements were, he declared, ‘as distasteful to the University authorities as they must be offensive to Almighty God and to all right thinking Christians.’

  Such arguments seldom had any effect, but things were different in Scotland where Presbyterianism was a strong force and many lines were constructed under Acts which did not allow for any Sunday passenger services. Locke was given leave to introduce a Bill that would force Scots railway companies to add passenger coaches to the mail trains that were already permitted and proposed a penalty of £200 for those who failed to comply. Locke gave various examples of difficulties that had arisen from lack of trains but his main argument was simple. Hansard recorded the debate that took place on 25 April 1849 and in Locke’s opening address he said: ‘The House would bear in mind that it was not calculated by the Bill to enforce the running of any additional trains whatever, but only to oblige railway companies to attach carriages to those they were already compelled to run for Post Office services.’ Which sounds reasonable enough, but one of the opponents, Mr Plumptree declared that the ‘Bill was really an attempt to make the people irreligious by Act of Parliament.’ He appeared to think that passengers were going to be compelled to break the Sabbath, but as Locke pointed out there would be no extra staff compelled to work and only those people who wanted to travel need use the service. In the event, further discussion was put off for six months, which effectively killed the Bill. This was not to be the end of Locke’s confrontations with the Sabbatarians. On the last day of May 1850, when the House was poorly attended, largely it seems because many members had taken the day off to go to the races at Ascot, Lord Ashley rushed through a Bill to prevent mail deliveries to provincial towns on Sundays. Locke was one of the leaders of the opposition to this new law, which, he claimed, had actually resulted in more people working on a Sunday than had before – largely due to items such as provincial papers being rushed onto the last trains running on Saturday nights, so that they were being collected on Sundays. He also argued that if it was an evil for mail to be delivered on Sundays, why should this not apply to all workers? And he asked, rather slyly, whether the servants in Lord Ashley’s extensive household were given every Sunday off. It was agreed that the whole matter should be looked at again.

  As an engineer he had built much of his reputation on economy and scrupulous costing of all projects, and he was anxious to see Parliament legislate where necessary to ensure everyone was as careful with other people’s money as he was. One such question was the misuse of money invested in railways. There were examples of companies raising money by Act of Parliament to build a specific line and then using it to build a quite different route, and the Caledonian Railway had actually used £381,000 intended for construction in buying shares in other companies in the hope of a quick profit. But the 1840s saw a slump in many railway share prices and, as a result, a great deal of money was lost. Various Bills were put forward for establishing an Audit Board to investigate railway company finances. There were two proposed; one would have railway affairs investigated by an external board, the other by an internal audit set up by the companies. Locke supported the second, arguing that ‘men who had spent a hundred and twenty million in great public works were fit to be intrusted with the management of their own affairs.’ In the event neither Bill succeeded and the whole matter was dropped.

  Locke’s other concerns largely involved what he saw as a waste of public funds. As an engineer he had always contrived to work within budgets and to get the best possible value he could for the money spent. He did not find the same basic principle being applied in government. He complained about the way in which money was allocated for public works with no proper accountability. He was particularly concerned about money spent by the Admiralty, who seemed not to be required to explain how estimates were reached and how contracts were awarded. His views, it has to be said, were largely ignored. He was also highly critical of the Ordnance Survey, a body that, as its name suggests, was originally set up to provide maps for the military and was still run by army officers. It was, therefore funded by the government. The 1840s were marked by what became known as the Battle of the Scales. Maps were being produced to different scales for Ireland, Scotland and England and it was clear that some sort of uniformity was desirable. Mapping had begun in Ireland at 6 inches to the mile, but as Ireland was regarded as rather inferior to the rest of the United Kingdom by some, it was felt that to uphold the dignity of Scotland, mapping there should be at 24 inch and if Scotland was to get that scale then England could hardly settle for less, yet work there had already begun on the modest one-inch scale. Some now argued that was wholly inadequate and that 12 inches or even 24 inches to the mile would be far better, while yet a third party was calling for a scale that would fit with European practices and proposing 1:2500 as an appropriate measure.

  The advocates of the 24-inch mapping saw that as appropriate for surveying, but argued that 12 inches to the mile would be adequate for publication. Locke thought the larger scales were absurd, unnecessary and far too expensive to produce. He sarcastically pointed out that the map of Scotland at the gargantuan scale would be 250 yards long and could only be viewed through a telescope. In dismissing all the larger scales, he was thinking mainly in terms of what he, as a practical engineer, would find useful and argued that the largest scales would only be needed by private landowners who wanted details of their estates – in which case they should pay for their own surveys.
There were lengthy discussions, but it was to be years before the whole affair was settled and many committees were to meet to consider the facts and fail to reach conclusions.

  Parliamentary speeches in the nineteenth century tended to be long and wordy, but fortunately Locke gave a rather more pithy account of his views in a letter to The Times on 26 June 1857 in which he complained that his views and those of Robert Stephenson had been misrepresented. It was quite true that the engineers had explained that large-scale maps would be needed for several purposes but had then voted against the Ordnance Survey printing such maps. He then went on to quote their actual recommendation: ‘As regards engraving and publication we do not see any sufficient reason for the Government incurring any expense beyond that entailed in a one-inch map. A facility for making extracts from such a map is what the public would require, but any further expense ought to be borne by the parties requiring this accommodation.’ This was written half a dozen years after he had first debated the issue in Parliament, and clearly the matter was still unresolved – and Locke’s views on government involvement were still being ignored.