Great British Railway Journeys (2010) s04e02 Episode Script

In 1840, one man transformed travel In the British Isles.
His name was George Bradshaw, and his railway guides Inspired the Victorians to take to the tracks.
Stop by stop, he told them where to travel, what to see and where to stay.
Now, 170 years later, I'm making a series of journeys across the length and breadth of these Isles to see what of Bradshaw's Britain remains.
I'm continuing my journey through England's industrial heartland towards rural Wales.
Even before the Victorian period, the Midlands had experienced an intellectual enlightenment that put it at the core of Britain's Industrial Revolution.
And by the time my guidebook was published, their Ideas had turned Britain Into the world's most advanced economy.
On this stretch, I'll learn how the railways helped to make Birmingham the pen making capital of the world It was a trade that brought writing to the masses, really.
hear the chilling tale of one of 19th-century Britain's most notorious murderers Thirty-thousand turned up for his execution.
They had special trains laid on from Bristol, from Manchester and from London.
and sample the delicacies concocted In a Victorian kitchen.
- Look at that.
Wow.
Did you make that? - I certainly did.
That's got a real wobble factor on it, hasn't it? This journey began In the Chilterns and Is now taking me towards the heart of the Industrial Midlands.
I'll then join the picturesque Severn Valley before crossing Into Wales, en route to my final stop at Aberystwyth.
Today I'll begin In Birmingham, then explore the Staffordshire towns of Tamworth and Rugeley, finishing In the county town of Stafford.
I'm on my way to Birmingham, which Bradshaw's tells me is "the great centre of the manufactured metal trades, being situated in north Warwckshire on the borders of the south Staffordshire iron and coal district".
During Victorian times, Birmingham was known as the workshop of the world and the city of a thousand trades, a place where the currencies were skill and invention.
We are now approaching Birmingham Moor Street.
To trace the vestiges of that hive of Industry, I'm alighting at Birmingham Moor Street, the spectacular gateway from the Chiltern Railway to Britain's second largest conurbation.
Thank you.
It's an uplifting way to enter this dynamic city.
Birmingham Moor Street Station.
What a joy.
First opened in 1909, in Edwardian Britain.
Rebuilt in the 21st century in 1930s style.
It has the feel of a film set for a period costume drama, and I love it.
From the start of Britain's Industrial Revolution, Birmingham led the way, enthusiastically adopting the new technologies that would change the world.
According to my guidebook, "scarcely a street Is without Its manufactory and steam engine".
"At the same time, a considerable amount of the labour Is of a manual kind.
" By the middle of the 19th century, Birmingham had a population of a quarter of a million.
In the previous 100 years its inhabitants had applied for three times as many patents as those of any other city.
My Bradshaw's recommends that amongst the principal establishments worth visiting in Birmingham, I should go to one for the manufacture of steel pens, here in the jewellery district.
In Bradshaw's day, Birmingham was a global centre for the making of pen nibs and my guidebook singles out one producer, saying, "We should think that the reputation of Messrs.
Gillott and Son, Graham Street, has reached all parts of the world.
" Whilst the Graham Street factory Is no longer In operation, just opposite the site Is a pen museum, where I'm meeting expert Larry Hanks.
- Larry.
- Good morning.
Good to see you.
I've got an advertisement in my Bradshaw's Guide for a Joseph Gillott.
It's a fantastic advertisement.
"Joseph Gillott, metallic pen maker to the Queen, begs to inform the commercial world of his useful productions which for excellence of temper, quality of material and cheapness ensure universal approbation.
" That sounds pretty good.
Joseph Gillott was just across the street.
That's it.
His factory was built in 1839.
He was a great entrepreneur.
He made sure that anybody of any note who visited Birmingham did the tour, went round his works.
In Victorian times, factories like Gillott's were helping to transform society.
The first steel nib was Invented In Birmingham for a local doctor In 1780.
But In those days pens were a hand-crafted luxury, so even the few who were literate couldn't afford to write.
Then, In the 1820s, the process was mechanised, with far-reaching consequences.
When the steel pen nib was put into mass production, did it remain an expensive item? No.
The price came down dramatically.
I mean to say you could be paying two or three shillings each for a steel pen when they first came out.
That would have been a lot of money.
It would have been in those days.
It really made a difference to public literacy, - the availability of cheaper pens.
- Oh, yes, it did.
It was a trade that brought writing to the masses, really.
Suddenly, schools could afford to buy pens In bulk, and the means of writing were put within everybody's reach.
The advent of the railways gave the Industry a further boost.
Trains carried steel from Sheffield, and by the mid 19th century Birmingham pens were conveyed by rail for export around the globe.
What scale did pen nib manufacture reach in Birmingham? We say that three-quarters of people writing in the world with a steel pen were writing with one made in Birmingham.
Nobody came anywhere near us, really.
Most of the workers were women, expected to produce tens of thousands of nibs every day.
Why women? Cheap labour, unfortunately.
Of course, women have got nimble fingers.
The other thing was that, in the early days, you could be fined for talking or even singing.
But the bosses then didn't realise that women can multitask.
They can talk and work, where unfortunately men can only talk or work.
So, once the bosses realised this, the workplace became happier and the production most likely went up.
The machinery worked by the women was simple but effective.
Each hand press completed one stage of the process, the first being to cut the outline of the nib.
The first operation was blanking, which was done on a strip.
The women were expected to do 36,000 in a day on this.
That's in position.
So if you'd like to pull that, sharp snatch towards you.
That's it.
Push it back.
So I've just pressed out the shape of a pen nib? I wouldn't want to do 36,000 of those in a day.
There were machines for shaping, piercing and slitting the nibs, but discerning Victorian customers demanded more than just functionality from their pens.
Right.
On this last process here, this started from about the 1850s, where they started to do more decorative pen nibs.
And to decorate them, they embossed them.
For VIPs and big companies, personalised nibs became a way of showing off.
And In Bradshaw's day, no business was bigger than the railways.
All companies and people had their names and things embossed on pen nibs.
They were supplying the rail companies.
It even went on into the British Rail era as well.
Sadly, Birmingham's Victorian domination of the global pen trade wasn't to last.
In the 20th century, the Invention of the ballpoint pen dealt the Industry a devastating blow.
But one local firm continues the tradition.
- Hello, Tim.
- Hi.
Nice to meet you.
Very good to see you.
Tim Tufnell's company makes traditional pens for the luxury market.
And you're doing, I think, very intricate, high-end work.
- Using modern machinery for that? - Not at all, no, no.
A lot of the tooling we're using is this sort of thing, which goes back to Victorian times, exactly how they would have produced this product in the 1800s.
- Is this what you start with? - Yes.
This is a piece of silver tubing.
So, that's what we buy in from the manufacturer.
Then, believe it or not, it ends up looking like that.
Now that is exquisite.
A far cry from the usual mass production of today, these solid silver pens are reminiscent of Birmingham's past.
The techniques used would have been familiar to the Jewellery Quarter's artisans In the 19th century.
How many blows do you think you deliver to a single piece to build up the pattern? - About 2,000.
- About 2,000.
We're so used to admiring Victorian craftsmanship, but it's wonderful to know that it's alive and thriving here today.
I'm now leaving Industrial Birmingham behind to continue my progress through the Midlands.
In the past I've been very rude about Birmingham New Street Station, which is truly hideous.
But now they are completely rebuilding it, and in the meanwhile they are keeping all the trains running, which is an engineering achievement on a Victorian scale.
From this busy railway hub, my next train takes me just 17 miles northeast, crossing from Warwickshire Into Staffordshire.
I'm on my way to Tamworth, which my Bradshaw's tells me "is a market town with a population of 8,650 who return two members".
That means they elected two MPs to Westminster.
And in Tamworth, unusually for me, I'm in search of a politician.
In the mid 1800s, Tamworth's Member of Parliament was the great 19th-century statesman Sir Robert Peel.
Today he's seen as one of the founding fathers of the Conservative party, so I can't resist following my guidebook to the marketplace, to meet the vice chairman of the Peel Society, Nigel Morris.
- Hello, Nigel.
- Hello, Michael.
Welcome to Tamworth.
- Sir Robert Peel, I assume? - Yes, that's correct.
Bradshaw's says he's looking towards Bury, the place of his birth? That's correct.
He was born there in 1788.
Peel entered parliament In 1809, aged just 21.
By the 1820s he'd risen to the rank of Home Secretary, where he made a rather famous decision.
Londoners have good reason to remember Sir Robert Peel.
Yes, absolutely.
Of course, he passed through Parliament the Metropolitan Police Act in 1829, founding the police force as we know it today.
Originally they were known as peelers.
They wore top hats and bright white trousers.
But, after that, it became after his first name, Robert, bobbies.
Peel was to go on to be Prime Minister twice, where his achievements included Acts of Parliament curbing child labour In mines and factories.
He was also a keen supporter of the railways, cutting the first sod But for me, It's another local event that Is Peel's most Important claim to fame.
And It took place here In the town hall.
This is a delightful and impressive council chamber.
And here's his portrait, a copy of the one by Sir Thomas Lawrence.
It shows him as a relatively young man still, about the age of 30.
You can see his ginger hair.
Peel's first stint as Prime Minister came at a tumultuous time In British history.
His political opponents, the Whigs, had recently Instituted constitutional reform, bitterly contested by the Tories.
When Peel came to power, he was determined to start afresh.
He set out his political vision In a document read out to the people of Tamworth from the window of this town hall.
What was significant about it? The main point about it was that he accepted the Reform Act of 1832.
Which had extended the franchise to many more voters.
Yes, including the great industrial cities of Manchester and Birmingham.
The Tamworth Manifesto, as It's become known, Is seen as the first example of the kind of party manifesto that we know today.
And It also set an Important precedent.
And actually we've seen that in politics again and again, haven't we? That the party that's in opposition has opposed something that the government does, but then it finds that it becomes the norm, that it becomes something irreversible.
Then that party has to accept it to have any chance of being re-elected.
Exactly.
We see it time and time again.
It's very interesting that it started, really, in this room.
Shall we go to the window and look down on the great man? Exactly.
Yes.
I'm now joining the Victorian-built Trent Valley line to continue my journey north.
On this stretch, I'm following In the footsteps of 19th-century thrill seekers.
I'm on my way to Rugeley, which my Bradshaw's tells me "will ever be memorable on account of its having been the residence of the sporting Dr Palmer, who was accused of poisoning his wife, his brother and friend John Parsons Cook by strychnine.
" "But at the post-mortem examinations, not a particle of that poison was discovered.
" Very intriguing.
The Victorians had a taste for the macabre.
And Victorian press was ever willing to feed their ghoulishness.
In the 19th century, urbanisation saw people living side by side with strangers as never before, and this, combined with Increasingly professional policing, fuelled a public obsession with crime.
Cheap penny dreadfuls enabled the masses to read the lurid details of Infamous murders, and railway companies even ran special trains to crime scenes.
Dave Lewis has been researching the still puzzling case of Dr William Palmer.
- David! - Good morning, Michael.
- Good to see you.
- Welcome to Rugeley.
Thank you very much indeed.
Who was this Dr William Palmer? Well, he was the most infamous person ever, I think, to live in Rugeley.
People were shocked because he was a respectable doctor.
He was early 30s when he came to trial.
They were just shocked that somebody who's taken the Hippocratic Oath could be accused of so many murders.
My Bradshaw's tells me that he poisoned his wife and his brother.
- Now, was he accused of that? - He was accused of that, but he was never brought to trial for the murder of his wife and his brother.
He was only ever accused and tried for one murder, that is the murder of John Parsons Cook.
- Shall I show you the grave? - Let's have a look.
Cook was a friend of Dr Palmer, and the events leading to his death began In 1855.
By that time, the sporting doctor had all but given up medicine to Indulge his passion for horse racing and had accumulated substantial gambling debts.
Well, they'd gone to the races at Shrewsbury.
There, John Parsons Cook's horse, Polestar, had won.
He'd won a tidy sum, whereas poor old Palmer, his horse, Chicken, had fallen and he'd lost quite a lot of money and was even more heavily in debt than ever.
Palmer Invited his friend to Rugeley, Installed him In the local pub and visited him frequently.
Cook became Increasingly unwell and on the seventh night, shortly after Dr Palmer had administered two pills, his patient took a dramatic turn for the worse.
Here we have on the left the famous room number ten, where John Parsons Cook died.
- Was it a painful death? - It was a horrendously painful death.
At one stage he was described as resting on his heels and the back of his head, he was in so much agony, At first, Cook's death was ascribed to natural causes.
But when Palmer claimed to have lost his friend's betting book, suspicions were aroused.
The accusation was that Palmer had dosed Cook with the rat poison strychnine.
But my Bradshaw's says that in the post-mortem examination, no trace of strychnine was found.
That was because of the incompetency of the people carrying out the post-mortem.
The doctor in charge arrived from Stafford.
He had no medical equipment.
He didn't even bring a pencil and paper.
The people who cut open the body, one was a medical student and one was an assistant at a local chemists.
Despite the botched post-mortem, Palmer was charged.
And the case Immediately captured the public Imagination.
It was probably the trial of the century.
In fact, three months before the trial, the London Illustrated Times produced a 15-page supplement which talked about the Rugeley tragedies, and all the suspicious deaths that occurred that were linked to Dr William Palmer.
Amongst the most shocking claims was the accusation that Palmer had killed his own wife and brother, both of whose lives he'd Insured for large sums.
He was never tried for those crimes, but the Cook case was heard at the Old Balley In London.
And despite confused and contradictory evidence, the doctor was convicted and sentenced to death.
The execution was back in Stafford in accordance with the sentence, and at a time when Stafford had a population of 12,500, 30,000 turned up for his execution.
They had special trains laid on from Bristol, from Manchester and from London.
And evidently his fame survived a long time after his death.
Oh, he did indeed.
Being in Staffordshire, they produced pottery figurines.
They have a figurine of William Palmer himself.
Good Lord.
And this is a photograph of his effigy that stood in Madame Tussauds London in the Chamber of Horrors for 127 years, labelled as a mass murder, even though he was only ever tried for one murder.
Chilled to the marrow by grisly tales, It's time to seek the sunshine.
I'm hunting out the picturesque charms of the Staffordshire countryside.
I'm on my way to Stafford.
My guidebook tells me that the line passes through "a country of singular beauty, having almost the appearance of one continued park.
" These were the estates of the great landed gentry.
Of the Harrowbys, Shrewsburys and Dartmouths and of the Lichfields, at their estate of Shugborough.
Most readers of my guidebook satisfied themselves with a glimpse of Shugborough Park from the train, but the upper crust of 19th-century society would arrive to stay.
In 1832, one visitor was a young princess, destined to become one of our greatest monarchs.
I'm now following In her footsteps.
As I walk across the estate, across the park, towards Shugborough, the house appears in all its magnificence, and this, I think, is my guide Hello, Chris.
Hello, Michael.
Welcome to Shugborough.
Chris Copp is a local historian.
When Princess Victoria came here, would she have seen the house much as it is today? Yes.
It's very little changed from October 1832.
What had drawn her to the house? Well, she was 13 years old.
She came with the Duchess of Kent on her first tour, really, round the country, round the grand stately homes of England.
The future queen arrived at Shugborough by horse and carriage, but just 13 years later, plans were drawn up to build the Trent Valley Railway through the heart of the estate.
The Earl of Lichfield was horrified, until he realised that there could be a silver lining.
He'd come into financial difficulties in the 1840s.
He basically negotiated with the railway company £30,000 in compensation.
That included £2,000 for the land the railway took up, and then the rest of the money was to make good the look of the estate, to avoid damaging the appearance of Shugborough.
My Bradshaw's tells me that the railway passes through a tunnel in Shugborough Park, 779 yards in length.
"The north face of the tunnel is a very striking architectural composition.
" Part of their attempts to make it a more ornamental look, to fit in with the other monuments.
The north portal looks like a Norman castle.
It's got turrets and this glorious Norman arch.
Then this side, it's slightly less impressive, but still ornamental.
It's meant to look like an Egyptian temple, but it takes a bit of a leap of imagination.
In Its Victorian heyday, Shugborough employed 120 Indoor and outdoor staff, Including gardeners, gamekeepers and farm labourers.
It's still run as a working estate, and a look at the kitchen garden brings home the scale of the operation.
A vast walled garden.
Yes, and this is only one of six compartments here.
Some of them are walled, four walled compartments.
Then the other two are hedged, But yes, it is a large garden.
Were walled gardens quite an innovation? They were very fashionable in 1805 when this was built.
Estates at that time were trying to be more self sufficient, grow all their own produce.
So as well as the garden here for fruit, vegetables, flowers, et cetera, honey, you had the park farm built at the same time for meat, dairy products, cereals and so on.
For Illustrious visitors like the young Princess Victoria, the estate would pull out all the stops, offering the very best produce In lavish banquets.
Above stairs, amid the splendour of this grand stately home, It would all seem effortless.
But all that luxury came at a price.
Thank you.
Bye-bye.
To get a sense of the graft Involved, I'm visiting the kitchens, overseen today by resident cook Penny Lock.
Oh, this is the kitchen on the grand scale, isn't it? What equipment have you got here from the Victorian times? We have all sorts of things.
We have a bottle-jack for spit roasting meat on.
It's actually clockwork.
We wind it up and it spit roasts the meat for us.
We have a lemon squeezer.
That is brilliant.
Works very well.
Put half a lemon in there.
The idea is it turns it inside out as you squeeze it so there's no wastage.
Isn't that beautiful? What a fine invention.
And even the squashed out lemon was then given to the youngest girl to dip in salt and clean all the copper with.
The kitchens were a model of efficiency, but 19th-century entertaining was extravagant.
During Princess Victoria's three-day stay, the guests got through 76 pheasants and 67 bottles of sherry.
But some Victorian delicacies have since disappeared Into obscurity.
They would make cucumber soup.
Have a cucumber soup there.
It actually tastes an awful lot better than it looks.
Erm and also stewed cucumbers.
Look at that.
What have they been stewed in? What do they taste of? Stewed in salted water to start with.
Then you make a stock up and put them into the stock and thicken the sauce from the stock.
It's believed very bad to eat raw cucumber.
It's very bad for your digestion.
And this I don't need to have identified.
Look at that.
Wow.
- Did you make that? - I certainly did.
That's got a real wobble factor on it, hasn't it? What's different from a Victorian jelly and a present-day jelly? It takes a long time to make a Victorian jelly.
A good hour or so.
Obviously you have the fresh gelatine from the farm come up.
All the ingredients are stewed and the gelatine is added.
It's quite a skill.
With so many mouths to feed, there was no space for Idlers In a Victorian kitchen.
Time for me to get stuck In.
- What's the recipe, Penny? - They're fresh trout from the river.
Mm! What a couple of beauties, Can we have two glasses of the beer in there? Beer was a big Victorian thing, wasn't it? This beer is made at the brewhouse on the estate here, where staff allocated eight pints of beer a day each.
Eight pints? They must have been paralytic! The brew is made to make the strong ale and the same mash is brewed six or seven more times.
That's what the staff would be given, purely because it's safe to drink.
A little wine, a little lemon - Like a little thumb as well? - Preferably not.
and my trout's ready for the coal-fired range.
It'll go across the middle section there.
Once it starts steaming, it'll take about 20 minutes.
Marvellous.
A delicacy fit for Princess Victoria.
Definitely.
Now for a taste of the kind of dish that George Bradshaw would have enjoyed.
Cook, this looks very fine.
Excellent.
From the kitchen maid to the earl, every member of this grand household had a specific role to play.
Victorian Britain organised and stratified.
As ever, I've been impressed by Birmingham, once the metal-bashing centre of the world, powered by the impersonal forces of capitalism and steam.
But this leg of my journey has been rich in Midlands personalities, too.
Prime Minister Peel, the landed Lichfields and the poisoner Palmer.
I encountered them all in the pages of my Bradshaw's Guide.
Next time, I'll explore one of the greatest locomotive factories In railway history The records are sketchy, but they talk about 20,000 people, so the size of it was immense.
discover the dark side of the Industrial Revolution The place was very heavily spoilt by pollution and the stench of the sewage.
It was like a large cesspit.
and learn how the potteries brought their products to the masses In Victorian times.
This is incredibly difficult.
This is fiendish.