The official launch of the Stockton & Darlington Railway (S&DR) bicentenary celebrations will take place on 29 March 2025. This will be the ‘All Change’ opening spectacle at Bishop Auckland, organised by S&DR 200. However, 2025 is already turning out to be a busy year marking 200 years of the S&DR, and some events have already taken place.
One such happening took place at Stockton Central Library on 12 March. Caroline Hardie of the Friends of the Stockton & Darlington Railway, came to talk about the women of the Stockton & Darlington Railway.
They also serve…
Anyone familiar with the history of the S&DR will know the famous names associated with it. George and Robert Stephenson. Joseph and Edward Pease, Thomas Meynell, Jonathan Backhouse, to name but a few. The list goes on, but there’s something jarring about that list when you analyse it. All of those people are men. Every single one of them.
The disappeared
Caroline Hardie came to Stockton to talk about the 50% of the population who don’t appear in 200 years of documents, minutes, archives, portraits and engravings. Or, on the rare occasions that they do, women appear as unnamed cast extras, listed as unidentified ‘women’. Or even, in some cases, a ‘Female’ (The capital letter was obligatory, it seems).
The railway that got the world on track
But first, a summary of the impact of the S&DR. There are many disputed claimants to that title of the world’s first railway. The Liverpool and Manchester Railway is one of these, but there are others too numerous to mention. But the S&DR blazed a trail like no other. The first permanent railway, 26 miles long on its first day, 27 September 1825. There were others before it, but these were temporary colliery railways, removed as soon as the coal was exhausted. The first railway stations were built on the S&DR. Previously there were only roadside stops. The first transport police. The S&DR found out, by trial and error, that the railway’s own police force would be needed. The world’s first railway settlement at Shildon. However, Shildon grew organically. The S&DR went one better five years later in 1830 with the worlds’ first planned railway settlement. That was Middlesbrough, of course.
Tourist attraction
For five years, between the inauguration of the S&DR in 1825, and the birth of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway in 1830, there was nothing like the S&DR anywhere in the world, and people travelled from all over the world to visit it.
Smile for the camera
It was time to talk about the subject of today’s talk, the women of the S&DR. Would we see pictures of these women? No, we wouldn’t. Photography hadn’t been invented in 1825, of course. If you were wealthy, you could commission your portrait. But women had little independent wealth, so this was a rarity. Even worse, the S&DR was almost exclusively a Quaker project. And, back then, the Quakers considered portraiture to be vanity. I wonder what they would have made of selfies. Caroline went on to name some of the prominent women of the S&DR:
The women shareholders of the S&DR
Women made up 2% of the shareholders of the S&DR. Comprehensive records of the shareholdings survive, so the names of some of the women survive too. They were all widows and spinsters, because wives had no economic power. The list of shareholders reveals some famous connections. Three members of the Backhouse family featured. Backhouse’s Bank financed the S&DR, and in 1896 it became one of the largest of the 12 founder members of Barclays Bank. Another shareholder, Emma Martin was a scion of the family that founded Martin’s Bank. Martin’s was another bank that became a member of the Barclays family, although didn’t happen until 1969, by which time it had become one of the largest banks in the UK.
Rachel Pease
Two of the female shareholders were members of the Pease family. Rachel Pease was married to Edward Pease, the main promoter of the S&DR. Rachel and Edward had eight children, two of whom died in 1825. Isaac died on 26 September, the day before the inaugural journey of the S&DR. But the Pease children and their descendents became prominent campaigners and public servants for generations to come. They campaigned against slavery, promoted education for all, and highlighted animal welfare. They were anti-vivisectionists when such views were still considered fringe. Rachel died in 1833, and was interred in the Quaker Burial Ground in Darlington.
Margaret Foxton
Margaret Foxton was the wife of Stockton businessman Henry Wade Foxton. Henry owned the Hope and Anchor public house on the ground floor of Stockton Town Hall. The celebratory banquet on 27 September 1825 was held in the Assembly Rooms upstairs. Henry and his wife Margaret provided the food, although Margaret will have been the chief caterer. There were 102 specially invited guests, all of them prominent men. As was the custom at such events, their womenfolk probably watched the men eat their meal from the public gallery. Twenty four of the men who had actually built the railway tucked into bread, cheese and beer in the pub on the ground floor of the town hall. The remainder dined at local pubs such as the Black Lion.
Buzzkill
Despite their crucial role in founding the S&DR, the Quakers didn’t attend the banquet. They didn’t like that kind of a fuss. The Quakers weren’t keen on toasts, of which there were 23, because toasts could promote intemperance. They also didn’t approve of grace before meals, which was considered frivolous. No music either; that could promote sensual and voluptuous thoughts.
Check please
Months after the meal, the S&DR was still being chased for the greater part of the bill, over £53. The failure to pay was one of the main causes of Henry Foxton’s bankruptcy, and he died three years later. His widow Margaret outlived him by 20 years, having found employment as a housekeeper.
Outsourcing
The S&DR decided to outsource its passenger services to three separate operators, allowing them to focus on the profitable freight business. Initially two, then all three, of these operators were women. So, who were the women who ran the railway?
Martha Howson
Martha ran the Black Lion coaching inn on Stockton High Street. She and her husband George had taken over the inn in 1810, but George died ten years later, so Martha had been running the Black Lion for five years before the S&DR arrived. The property included a burbage plot, a narrow strip of land stretching down to the river Tees. The S&DR bought some of Martha’s land to build the Stockton terminus of the railway on the quayside. A second entrance to the Black Lion Inn was soon built here.
Horsepower
And so, when the S&DR needed people to run their new passenger trains, Martha Howson stepped forward. She acquired a coach named Defiance and was soon running trains between Stockton and Darlington featuring a red-liveried driver. Passenger trains along the S&DR were horse-drawn for the first nine years. The famous Locomotion No 1 had hauled the first train on the S&DR in 1825, but steam locomotives only hauled freight trains after this. In many ways the passenger service closely resembled the stage coach service that it replaced. But the new rail services were still much faster and more reliable than the stage coaches, although some media descriptions are inaccurate.
Jane Scott
Over in Darlington, Jane and Richard Scott ran the King’s Head Hotel on Priestgate. It’s still there. In 1826, Jane and Richard signed up with the S&DR to run a complimentary service to Martha Howson’s, between Darlington and Stockton. They bought a coach which they named Defence, later to be followed by another one called Union.
Ann Adamson
Daniel Adamson was given the contract to run passenger services between Shildon and Darlington. A coach named Perseverance was acquired for this service. After Dan died in 1832, his wife Ann took over the business. In addition to running a passenger service on the S&DR, Ann ran the Grey Horse Inn Shildon, and possibly another pub in the town. Ann was also responsible for coal shipments on the Surtees Line between Shildon Lodge Colliery and the S&DR. During this time Ann had 15 children. She was still running the Grey Horse Inn when she was 80 years old. Quite a busy schedule for Ann Adamson, then.
Mary Simpson
In 1833, the S&DR converted their Northgate stop in Darlington from a goods station to a passenger station, and decided to open a shop there. The railway hired their first named female employee, Mary Simpson, to run the shop, and paid her £5 per year. Mary’s name wasn’t recorded in the company minutes, only ‘a Female’. Although somebody later had the good grace to add her name to the minutes. In small letters. With a pencil.
Jane Hackworth
Jane was married to TImothy, the superintendent engineer and locomotive of the S&DR. She was later described as ‘a woman of great individuality, competent, energetic, and an admirable housewife’. But correspondence between Jane and Timothy reveals that Jane was much more than a housewife and mother. Maintenance of locomotives in a newly developing industry was a complicated and demanding task, and the pair were effectively a business partnership. They raised six daughters and three sons. Jane’s descendent, Jane Hackworth-Young, is Vice-President of the Friends of the S&DR.
Karen Harrison
Karen Harrison’s story doesn’t directly relate to the S&DR, but it’s worth telling. In 1977, more than 150 years after the birth of the railways, Karen applied to be a train driver with British Rail. She used only the initial ‘K’ on her application form, which led the company to accept her application. Karen qualified as the UK’s first woman train driver in 1978. She suffered ten years of sustained harassment, including verbal abuse and defacement of her locker. Many male drivers refused to work with her. Incredible to think that this happened at the end of the 20th Century.
The women of the Stockton & Darlington Railway
These women played crucial roles in fund-raising for, building, and running the S&DR. But, up until now, they’ve been airbrushed from history. Some of the wrongs from that era are slowly being righted, and we now live in a more enlightened era. Well, at least for now anyway. Thanks to Stockton-on-Tees Libraries, and Caroline Hardie of the Friends of the S&DR, for a fascinating talk. And, by the way, Caroline is funny too.
Further Reading
