Dickens and the Railways

 On May 23rd 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 mown down by the gears and pistons associated with the steam age. In 1830 the first passenger train had resulted in the fatality of the MP William Huskisson who tumbled to death under the wheels of Stevenson’s Rocket at the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway.

Dickens was aware of the changes that the railways brought: he knew that whistles had been introduced to warn people about the dangers posed by trains and the hazards of railway construction. Yet he was excited by the thrusting power and speed of a train could achieve. An example of Dickens’ excitement at the coming of the railway is clear in his book “Dombey and Son” where the train is the “remorseless monster” that gobbles up everything in its path. “Away and still away. Onward and ever, glimpses of cottage homes, houses, mansions, rich estates of husbandry and handicraft, of old roads and paths…………”. In Dickens’ imagination he was like a train, a container of energy that needed to be directed along precisely engineered lines. He described the need to “build up a head of steam” in his writing and over time this desire would lead to exhaustion as he drove himself harder and harder. The introduction of the railway had a deep impact on Dickens. How do new technologies and innovations impact your life?

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