Daunton M. The Cambridge Urban History of Britain, Volume 3: 1840-1950
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removing from the urban environment. Hence alongside the inward networks
there was also an outward flow, though of a less valuable and more noxious type.
At the simplest level the human and animal excrement needed to be removed at
least until mains drainage made the former less visible. Both waste products had
value as fertilisers and were often processed locally initially. Agar Town in north
London was on the edge of the built-up area in the early nineteenth century and
was where rubbish sorters, knackers’ yards, bone boilers and tallow chandlers
congregated to carry out their smelly trades.
30
This was increasingly unaccept-
able and the waste products had to be removed from the towns before process-
ing. Thus sailing barges bringing grain and hay from East Anglia into London
often took street scourings and night soil back to fertilise the farms.
31
Similarly,
the canal barges bringing vegetables into Manchester took the contents of its
privies back to fertilise the loamy southern plains of Lancashire and Cheshire.
32
Ash was a by-product of the immense quantities of coal burnt in domestic grates
and their relative inefficiency meant that it contained significant amounts of
combustible material. Hence it was sought by brickmakers to mix with the clay
and reduce their need for more expensive small coal.
33
As a result small coasters
and canal barges carried this waste product out to Essex, Kent and Middlesex
from central London to provide the brickmakers with a cheap fuel. In these ways
transport from the city was crucial in preventing the urban centres from becom-
ing more unhealthy than they were and may be seen as having contributed to
the reduction in the death rate in the later nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Without such a rubbish removal system health considerations might have placed
a limit on town size.
One aspect of industrialisation and urbanisation was growing specialisation of
production in larger scale factories thus extracting economies of scale and lower
unit costs. This brought about urban centres as houses and other social infra-
structure clustered around the factory, e.g. Port Sunlight on the Wirral and
Bournville on the south-western edge of Birmingham.
34
Such large-scale units
of production depended on the efficiency of the transport systems both to bring
in their raw materials and to distribute their finished goods. Most factories were
engaged in the transformation of bulky inputs, such as tallow, alkali and various
vegetable oils in the case of Lever, or cocoa beans, milk and sugar in Cadbury’s
operations, into higher-value finished goods or components. Thus regular reli-
able transport was required to keep an even flow of raw materials, for substan-
tial losses resulted from any interruption to the production lines. Also, as these
John Armstrong
30
J. T. Coppock and H. C. Prince, Greater London (London, ), p. .
31
Benham, Down Tops’l, pp. and .
32
Scola, Feeding.
33
P. Malcolmson, ‘Getting a living in the slums of Victorian Kensington’, LJ, (), .
34
D. J. Jeremy, ‘The enlightened paternalist in action: William Hesketh Lever at Port Sunlight’,
Business History, (), –; C. Wilson, The History of Unilever, vol. (London, ), ch.
; I. A. Williams, The Firm of Cadbury (London, ), pp. –.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
firms shifted from serving a local market to servicing a national and then inter-
national market, based on their cost and quality advantage, reinforced by heavy
advertising of branded products, so their reliance on transport networks
increased. Thus the ability of railway, coaster and canal to bring in raw materi-
als and distribute branded products was crucial to industrialisation and urbanisa-
tion. These large-scale firms used cheap transport to penetrate distant markets,
ending local high cost monopolies and creating a more national market of rela-
tively homogeneous tastes. The interurban exchange of goods grew in scale and
scope and relied on the improved speed and frequency of the transport systems.
Nor should the movement of passengers between towns be ignored. The growth
of trade created a rise in the number of contacts and meetings between business-
men and hence in the number of journeys between towns. These the railway
facilitated by virtue of its speedy, reliable and comfortable service. It also gave
birth to intertown travel for pleasure and leisure, allowing comparisons to be
made between towns within the UK, and hence the beginnings of a move
towards conformity to a national pattern, more evident in the early twentieth
century when the same multiple shops with company-specific styles could be
seen in most high streets. The growth of firms dedicated to organising trips
between towns, such as Thomas Cook, facilitated mass movement. As early as
the s Cook was arranging excursions from one town to another by railway.
35
This gave rise to a new profession, the travel agent, which was of increasing
importance in the later twentieth century.
(iii) -
In addition to linking towns to each other, and to the rural areas which provided
raw materials and raw foodstuffs for the urban centres, the other contribution of
transport to Victorian cities was in making it easier for people and goods to travel
within towns. As we have already seen, in the early decades of Victoria’s reign
the majority of people moved by foot and this continued to be the case in most
provincial towns and cities until the last quarter of the nineteenth century.
London was always different because of its huge size compared to other cities in
terms both of population and built-up area. As a result it often led in the search
for improved methods of urban transport because its population was more far
flung than that of any other British city.
While the horse remained the power source passenger transport was likely to
be both expensive and relatively slow. As previously explained, the horse was
costly to feed and had a short working life. If it was made to work above a walk
the former increased and the latter decreased, thus raising costs. As a result even
Transport and the urban environment
35
D. A. Reid, ‘The “iron roads” and “the happiness of the working classes”: the early development
and social significance of the railway excursion’, Journal of Transport History, rd series, (),
; P. Brendon, Thomas Cook (London, ).
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
just before the First World War Maud Pember Reeves reported a fish fryer living
in Kennington who walked every day to Finsbury Park and a bottle washer who
walked to and from work daily in the north of London.
36
They were not unusual.
The first important technical change in surface transport continued to rely on
the horse but eased its burden by putting the bus on rails and calling it a tram.
The effect was to double the burden the horse could draw,
37
so that trams carried
up to forty seated passengers.
38
This was much in excess of the horse omnibus
and thus reduced the operating cost per passenger. Of course, the capital costs of
installing track were high and needed approval from the local authority, some of
which were resistant to the disruption. The first commercial tram in Britain was
opened in Liverpool docks in and was pioneered by W. J. Curtis and William
Busby.
39
In Curtis laid his first line in London, along the Liverpool Road
in Islington. However, horse trams were still expensive, costing d. per mile
40
and
thus available for the middle class on a regular basis or as a novelty, rather than
daily commuting, for workers. There was also much initial opposition to them,
not merely from bus proprietors, but from other road users because in some cases
the rail was raised above the surface of the road and caused an obstruction. It was
the adoption of the flush rail which made the tramway acceptable.
There is much controversy over the effects of the Tramways Act. It was
intended to simplify the procedure for obtaining permission for tramways by
allowing the Board of Trade to authorise them by certificates which would not
need parliamentary approval but merely be laid on the table of the two Houses
of Parliament.
41
This procedure would have overridden any objections by local
authorities. However, the act did not turn out as intended as a result of par-
liamentary complications. It continued to allow local authorities to prevent a
scheme going ahead, and frontagers (property holders on the route) could also
stop the tramway, if enough of them objected.
42
This was reinforced by the
act.
43
Thus, this legislation made it more difficult to obtain approval rather than
easing it. As Charles Harvey and Jon Press say, ‘Tramway promotion was time-
consuming and costly . . . regulation seriously handicapped the growth of urban
transport.’
44
John Armstrong
36
M. Pember Reeves, Round About a Pound a Week (London, ), pp. and .
37
Ochojna, ‘The influence’, .
38
Tilling, Kings, p. ; R. J. Buckley, A History of Tramways from Horse to Rapid Transit (Newton
Abbot, ), pp. –.
39
C. E. Lee, ‘The English street tramways of George Francis Train’, The Journal of Transport History,
(), – and –, which comprehensively demolishes Train’s claims to have pioneered
horse trams in Britain; Tilling, Kings, p. ; Buckley, History, pp. –.
40
Lee, ‘English’, ; Ochojna, ‘The influence’, –.
41
Barker and Robbins, London Transport, , p. .
42
Ibid., p. ; Ochojna, ‘The influence’, –.
43
Barker and Robbins, London Transport, , p. .
44
C. E. Harvey and J. Press, ‘Sir George White and the urban transport revolution in Bristol
–’, in C. E. Harvey and J. Press, eds., Studies in the Business History of Bristol (Bristol,
), p. .
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Yet despite this setback, many historians agree that there was a boom in
tramway promotions in the early s. Richard Buckley suggests the act was
‘the signal for a wave of promotions and construction’.
45
Harvey and Press state
that ‘a promotional boom followed’ the act.
46
By there were forty
tramway companies and about miles ( km) of track laid.
47
By nearly
, miles (, km) of tramway had been opened in Britain and Michael
Thompson estimates the horse population employed in bus and tram haulage
was about ,.
48
Reconciling these two views is not as difficult as it might
seem. Despite the complicated process, the demand for tramways had reached a
point where sufficient interests were reconciled to them. At the same time there
were enough safeguards built in by the acts – the ability of local authorities to
purchase after twenty-one years, the inability to sell concessions – to convince
doubters that tramways might be a genuine service to the public rather than a
new way of lining the promoters’ pockets. This combined with the fact that in
Britain ‘private transport companies were forbidden to speculate in land or build
houses’
49
meant tramway development was slower in Britain than some other
countries, because transport promoters were unable to capture the increment in
land values brought about by improved transport systems.
50
In comparison, in
many other countries, such as America, the extension of transport networks was
accompanied by land purchases by the service provider in order to reap the eco-
nomic rent created by the rise in land values consequent upon the arrival of the
tramway. In these cases flat rate fares encouraged travellers to go to the end of
the line where the largest developmental gains were likely to be realised by the
promoters.
Towards the end of the nineteenth century a number of developments came
together to bring about regular use by working people of urban passenger trans-
port. On the demand side average real wages were rising from the s to the
turn of the century, providing extra purchasing power for semi-luxuries such as
a newspaper, tobacco or tram fares. At the same time working hours were
reduced, giving a little more time in which to complete longer journeys to work.
On the supply side there was a massive breakthrough with the application of
electricity to the tram. Horse traction had placed a severe limit on capacity, cost
reduction and speed. The average tramcar employed eleven horses which com-
Transport and the urban environment
45
Buckley, History p. .
46
Harvey and Press, ‘Sir George White’, p. .
47
Ochojna, ‘The influence’, .
48
P. S. Bagwell, The Transport Revolution since (London, ), pp. –; F. M. L. Thompson,
‘Nineteenth-century horse sense’, Ec.HR, nd series, (), .
49
R. Dennis, English Industrial Cities of the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, ), p. .
50
S. B. Warner, Streetcar Suburbs:The Process of Growth in Boston,– (Cambridge, Mass., );
D. Ward, ‘A comparative historical geography of streetcar suburbs in Boston, Massachusetts and
Leeds, England, –’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, (), –;
G. Lowry, Street Car Man:Tom Lowry and the Twin City Rapid Transit Company (Minneapolis, ),
p. . For an excellent summary of this debate see M. J. Daunton, ‘Urban Britain’, in T. R.
Gourvish and A. O’Day, eds., Later Victorian Britain, – (London, ), pp. –.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
prised well over half the operating costs of a tramway and the maximum speed
was constrained to miles (. km) per hour.
51
In the very last years of the nine-
teenth century and early years of the twentieth a number of lines were
electrified.
52
The ‘first electrically operated public tramway using the trolley
system in Britain’ was that from Roundhay to Sheepscar in Leeds, opened in
.
53
The first electric tramway in the London area was that from Shepherds
Bush along the Uxbridge Road to Acton and Kew Bridge operated by London
United Tramways Ltd and opened in April .
54
The crucial importance of
electricity was to reduce the operating costs by about per cent
55
and to
increase the speed of the tram. Producing electricity was cheaper than feeding
horses, and the electric tramcar carried greater numbers of passengers than the
horse-drawn. Increasing the working speed augmented the time saved over
walking. The capital costs were high, but the costs of electricity were often quite
reasonable because trams provided a daytime demand to complement the normal
peak evening and night-time load for lighting streets and later houses. By the
turn of the century in Bristol, whereas fares on horse trams had averaged a little
over d. a mile, those on electric trams were slightly under
⁄d. a mile and cheap
workman’s fares about
⁄d. As a result of this reduction in real costs, the number
of journeys per head rose from around eight per annum in the mid-s, to
fifty-five in the mid-s, and over by .
56
By the last years before the
First World War most towns and cities had a network of electric tramways easing
the burden of getting to and from work for the ordinary people, and they were
intensively used by them.
In retrospect the domination of the electric tramway might seem inevitable,
but there were experiments with forms of traction other than horse and electric-
ity. Steam was tried on the Clyde and in Wantage in the s, and in the s
the North London Tramway system tried it for several years as did the line
between Stamford Hill and Edmonton and that between Wortley and Kirkstall
in Leeds.
57
However, steam trams did not catch on as they were noisier, dirtier
and required a separate large power car which was a less efficient method. Gas
trams were tried in Lytham St Anne’s and Trafford Park, compressed air in
Stratford in east London, and cables were used at Streatham, Highgate Hill and
in Edinburgh.
58
However, each of these modes of propulsion was found inferior
to electricity, either because of clumsiness of operation, problems of carrying
John Armstrong
51
Buckley, History, pp. –.
52
For example, Glasgow electrified its network from : M. Simpson, ‘Urban transport and the
development of Glasgow’s West End’, Journal of Transport History, new series, (), .
53
G. C. Dickinson, ‘The development of suburban road passenger transport in Leeds, –’,
Journal of Transport History, (), .
54
J. H. Price, ‘London’s first electric tramway’, Journal of Transport History, (), .
55
Ochojna, ‘The influence’, .
56
Harvey and Press, ‘Sir George White’, pp. –.
57
Ibid., p. ; Dickinson, ‘The development’, ; Buckley, History, pp. –.
58
D. L. G. Hunter, ‘The Edinburgh cable tramways’, Journal of Transport History, (), –.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
fuel or some other complication. In addition, the tramway was not welcomed
everywhere. Although some authors have seen the trams as symbolically impor-
tant, tying the various districts of an urban area together with metal tracks and
reducing the difficulty and time required to travel from one neighbourhood to
another, they could also be divisive. There was a split almost on class grounds
between anti- and pro-tram lobbies. The workers saw them as cheap transit
systems allowing them more choice of location and an easier journey to work.
Middle-class individuals opposed them for the same reason. Thus Harrow
School objected to tramway proposals from to on the grounds of
noise, indiscipline and objection to the growth of ‘small houses’, that is working-
class housing.
59
Similarly, the university opposed tram tracks in University
Avenue, Glasgow, ostensibly because the vibration would upset their delicate
instruments, but really because they feared the intrusion of higher density
housing.
60
Ealing council resisted the extension into Ealing of the tramline
between Shepherds Bush and Acton, opened in . It was essentially on class
grounds that it would bring a working-class, jerry-built element into a middle-
class neighbourhood.
61
Its opposition was successful until when London
United Tramways extended their line to Southall. Clifton, a middle-class area of
Bristol, rejected an extension of the tram network into their area in and
.
62
Criticism is levelled at Britain for her slow adoption of electrified tramways
compared to other countries, especially the United States. This may be part of
the search for examples of Britain’s relative decline in the late nineteenth century,
but, objectively, there is something in the charge. David Ward, comparing
Boston, Massachusetts, and Leeds, demonstrated that they were roughly equal
sized in terms of population, yet in Leeds had miles ( km) of track
whereas Boston had over miles ( km). The former carried about
million passengers, the latter more than three times as many.
63
This experience
can be generalised. In the whole of England had miles ( km) of
electric tram tracks whereas Boston alone had miles ( km).
64
This slow
adoption of electric tramways is accepted; the causes are still a subject of debate.
Ward stressed that Boston experienced a greater growth of population than
Leeds in crucial decades when electrification was possible. Boston began
electrification in , whereas Leeds started in . Ward explained this by the
characteristics of the two markets. Boston enjoyed a large influx of Maritime
Canadians ‘who had the means and preference for suburban living’ from the late
s.
65
This gave a boost to Bostonian tramways. Leeds, on the other hand,
Transport and the urban environment
59
T. May, ‘Road passenger transport in Harrow in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries’,
Journal of Transport History, (), –.
60
Simpson, ‘Urban transport’, .
61
P. Hounsell, Ealing and Hanwell Past (London, ), p. .
62
Harvey and Press, ‘Sir George White’, p. .
63
Ward, ‘A comparative historical geography’, –.
64
Ibid., p. .
65
Ibid., pp. –.
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experienced emigration in some decades such as – and had insufficient
population with the means and taste for suburban living, terrace housing at high
density being their effective preference, whereas Bostonians preferred semi- or
detached houses at lower density.
John McKay agreed that Britain was slow to adopt electrification but blamed
it entirely on the act, already mentioned.
66
It had authorised twenty-one-
year leases, after which local authorities were allowed to buy the system at the
price of the assets, no consideration being given for goodwill. As there had been
a boom in tramway construction in the early s, these leases began expiring
in the mid-s. Thus the private companies operating the horse-drawn systems
were reluctant to electrify their tracks with no guarantee of a lease renewal to
allow them to recoup what would be very heavy capital expenditure. Thus
McKay suggests electrification had to await municipalisation and was aided by the
ability of city corporations to raise large sums at relatively low interest rates. In
this view McKay is supported by Vesey Knox writing in .
67
He argued the
act was ‘the most disastrous legislative experiment...duringthelast half
century’. Being published in the Economic Journal, his views must command some
respect, but the article is high on assertion and invective and low on evidence.
How can these two views be reconciled? Did the legal framework in Britain slow
down electrification or was it the different nature of the market in the UK com-
pared to the USA? It is tempting to weld the two together and suggest that lower
income levels in Britain, a tradition of living in city centres, and the institutional
framework combined to retard electrification. In the USA, however, higher real
wages, a more individualistic tradition, and lack of constraining legislation, com-
bined with the ability to garner economic rent by speculating in land purchase
and property development to encourage rapid electrification and an extensive
rather than an intensive network. What is needed is more research into the
circumstances of particular cities, in both Great Britain and the United States, to
determine the relative importance of the various factors mentioned above.
Alternatively perhaps a cliometrician can devise an economic model to demon-
strate that Britain’s apparent lag was completely rational and efficient.
In London there were also the underground railways. The size of London’s
geographic spread and its population go a long way to explaining why London
was the first city in the world to have such systems and why few cities followed
London’s lead and that at some remove in time. The first underground railway,
the Metropolitan, built on the cut and cover basis and using steam locomotives,
was opened in from Paddington to Farringdon.
68
The Metropolitan
John Armstrong
66
J. P. McKay, Tramways and Trolleys (Princeton, ), pp. –.
67
V. Knox, ‘The economic effects of the Tramways Act of ’, Economic Journal, (),
–.
68
This paragraph relies on: Barker and Robbins, London Transport, ; T. C. Barker, ‘Tube centenary:
years of underground electric railways’, LJ, (), –; M. D. Reilly, ‘Urban electric
railway management and operation in Britain and America, –’, UHY (), –.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
District Railway soon followed this lead and work on the Inner Circle began.
However, steam locomotives meant smoke, soot and black spots and were a lim-
itation to this mode of transport. Two breakthroughs were made in the last
decades of the nineteenth century. The first was the discovery that London clay
facilitated the driving of deep level tubes built of steel rings bolted together. This
had the benefit of avoiding the disruption to buried sewers, gas mains, etc., and
minimising subsidence risk to existing properties. The other innovation was the
use of electric traction. Initially, the first tube, the City and South London as it
became known, intended to use cable traction. However, by when it
opened, the directors had been convinced of the efficiency of electric locomo-
tion. The Joint Select Committee of , as Jack Simmons has pointed out,
validated this decision and imposed it on the plethora of schemes which rapidly
followed. These lines made up the basic underground system until the s.
69
However, these schemes took some time to move from paper plans to iron reality
for they required large amounts of capital which were not easily raised. By about
the vast majority had been constructed. The tubes had a great impact on
the capital. From the start the Paddington to Farringdon line offered cheap, early
morning workmen’s trains and the tubes were required by the LCC to ‘furnish
an adequate number of cheap and convenient trains’
70
so that mass urban transit
in London became a reality before the First World War. In addition, the tube
network shrank the size of the city and served as a symbol of the holism of the
metropolis, a point we shall return to later. The effect of electrification on the
original cut and cover lines, which soon followed suit, was to allow them to
improve and expand the service offered, for they were more sales maximisers
than profit maximisers and perceived this as a way of combating electric tramway
competition.
71
These policies may not have aided shareholder returns but they
did facilitate urban development.
The financing of British urban transport improvements was a curious mixture
of private and public, domestic and foreign. Given the prevailing government
philosophy and the abundance of capital in the first country to industrialise, the
railways and canals were virtually wholly privately financed in the UK whereas
many other nations relied to a much greater extent on government expertise,
finance or land. So it was with horse buses, horse trams and the early cut and
cover underground railways. The British government put no money into them;
private entrepreneurs found the capital and took the risk, following the tradi-
tion established with turnpike roads. However, the act empowered local
authorities to purchase tramcar systems after twenty-one-years’ operation in
private hands, and many availed themselves of this opportunity. Even earlier
some councils, like Bristol, built their own tramways and then hired them out
to private operators. In the s there was much municipalisation, so that by
Transport and the urban environment
69
J. Simmons, ‘The pattern of tube railways in London. A note on the joint select committee of
’, Journal of Transport History, (), –.
70
Ibid., .
71
Reilly, ‘Urban electric’, –.
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there were more towns with municipally owned tramways than in private
hands.
72
The logic of municipalisation sprang from a combination of factors. Some
local councillors espoused Fabian views on public ownership, some saw the pro-
vision of services to ratepayers as a legitimate role of local government.
73
The
apparent profitability of tramways encouraged some to believe that any surpluses
could be employed to reduce the rate burden, while others saw it as an oppor-
tunity to improve the conditions of the employees, and yet others to provide the
passengers with a better service. One of the benefits of municipalisation was that
when electrification became available in the s the capital expenditure
involved was raised more cheaply and easily by local authorities than private
companies.
Once having become involved in tram provision, it was logical for councils to
provide trolley bus services too, to feed their tramway system, and then later bus
services, if for no other reason than to fend off private interlopers. Thus ratepay-
ers’ money went into the improvement of local transport. Earlier, local author-
ities had spent a large portion of their income on maintaining transport
provision. For, as Robert Millward and Sally Sheard have shown, throughout the
last thirty years before the First World War, local authorities in aggregate spent
more on road provision than they did on education, public health or the police.
Road building accounted for about per cent of total expenditure.
74
In part
this may reflect the expansion in urban areas and the concomitant need for more
road infrastructure, but it also suggests intensive use of existing roads so that they
required repair, or widening and strengthening. The cycle lobby pressed in this
direction, forming the Road Improvement Association in and the Cyclists’
Touring Club, which had a membership of , in .
75
Foreign involvement in British urban transport provision is surprising. It
might have been anticipated that the ‘workshop of the world’ which was also the
world’s capital market would lead rather than follow in urban transit systems. As
it was, horse bus operations received a fillip in the mid-s when the
Compagnie Générale des Omnibus de Londres, established with French capital,
endeavoured to monopolise London bus traffic. It met with indifferent success,
to the extent that in it was transformed into a British company.
76
The
French seem to have perceived earlier than the British that network industries
were most efficient as local monopolies and that competition could lead to a
deterioration in services and some public danger.
John Armstrong
72
Harvey and Press, ‘Sir George White’, p. .
73
J. R. Kellett, ‘Municipal socialism, enterprise and trading in the Victorian city’, UHY (),
–.
74
R. Millward and S. Sheard, ‘The urban fiscal problem, –: government expenditure and
finance in England and Wales’, Ec.HR, nd series, (), –.
75
J. B. F. Earle, Black Top:A History of the British Flexible Roads Industry (Oxford, ), p. .
76
Barker and Robbins, London Transport, , p. .
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The importance of foreign capital and enterprise reasserted itself in the s
when horse tramways began to be constructed. In this case it was Americans, led
by G. F. Train, who mounted the incursion. Although his extravagant claims
have been largely discounted and his preference for the raised step rail was a
mistake, he introduced some American capital into the undertaking.
77
The
Americans had already introduced horse trams in Philadelphia and saw no reason
why it should not be as successful and profitable in the UK. This lead of the
Americans in urban rapid transit systems was further demonstrated in the s
when electrification was undertaken, for the method adopted was essentially that
introduced in Richmond, Virginia, by F. J. Sprague.
78
In a similar vein, although the early cut and cover underground lines were
entirely British financed, when it came to the true tubes – the deep-level under-
ground railways – American finance and enterprise were crucial to their con-
struction and success.
79
Chief among the financiers was C. T. Yerkes from
Chicago. The explanation of American involvement lies essentially in the earlier
adoption of electrification for street railways in the USA and the profits to be
made from promotion more than operation. It was thought that these profits
could be replicated in Britain using similar methods, which were not free from
criticism of bribery and corruption. Thus America encountered and solved
problems of urban transport a little earlier than Britain, perhaps because her pop-
ulation and economy were growing even faster than Britain’s, and then tried to
repeat the financial gains by bringing the new technologies to Europe.
(iv)
If the late nineteenth century saw the beginnings of mass urban transit allow-
ing the skilled workers to live further away from their workplace, they were
only emulating the previous practice of the middle classes. The precise timing
depended on the size of the city, but the middle classes began the move out of
the city centres to the suburbs. Michael Simpson dates this in Glasgow from the
s
80
while Barke suggests the process began in Newcastle in the s.
81
The
difference in timing is probably explained by differences in absolute size. There
are a number of common causal factors. On the push side the city centres were
becoming increasingly noisy, dirty and dangerous. The perception of cities as
unhealthy was reinforced by comparative death rates. The growth of horse-
drawn traffic added to noise pollution. Horses also soiled the roadway, making
work for the ‘crossing sweeper’.
82
There were some forces working in the
Transport and the urban environment
77
Ibid., pp. –.
78
Buckley, History, pp. –.
79
T. C. Barker and M. Robbins, A History of London Transport, vol. : The Twentieth Century to
(London, ) pp. –.
80
Simpson, ‘Urban transport’, .
81
Barke, ‘Middle-class journey’.
82
Jane Jacobs quotes an excellent description of the noise and mess of horse transport in London
in : Jacobs, Death and Life, pp. –.
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