Dickens and the Railways
On May 23 rd 1822 Thomas Meynell was taken from his home at the Friarage in Yarm by his railway workers, numbering about three hundred men. He went to lay the first track for the Stockton and Darlington Railway. Afterwards the workers went back to a local hostelry where they were supplied with free bread, cheese and beer in honour of the occasion whilst local dignitaries proceeded to a celebratory banquet. This was a foretaste of how the railways would go on to change transport and the fabric of society throughout the world. By the time Charles Dickens became a journalist for the Morning Chronicle, the age of the railway had begun. He joked about this in 1835 as he travelled on newspaper business by train “I have a presentiment that I shall run over an only child before I reach Chelmsford”. Although road traffic accidents were common even before the arrival of the internal combustion engine the railway brought with it the fear that people were literally being ground and mo...