Life of Robert Stephenson by William Pole: Chapter II

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CHAPTER II. Long Benton (age 1-9)

TOWARDS the close of 1804, George Stephenson moved to the West Moor colliery, and fixed himself and family in the little cottage where he resided, till he made rapid strides to opulence and fame. Long Benton, a wide straggling parish, comprising in its five townships numerous colonies of operatives, presents those contrasts of wealth and poverty for which mining and manufacturing districts are proverbial. The long irregular street of the village is not without beauty. The vicarage is a picturesque dwelling, and on either side of the road, surrounded by gardens, with paths of crushed slag and refuse coal, and plantations of a somewhat sooty hue, are the houses of prosperous agents and employers. The general aspect of the place, however, is humble, and the abodes of the poorer inhabitants are comfortless.

The road from Newcastle to Long Benton quits the town at the northern outskirt, and, leaving ‘the moor’ on the left, passes through the picturesque plantations of Jesmond Vale (watered by the brawling Dean that flows to Ouseburn), and, having ascended the bold and richly wooded sweep of Benton Banks, leads on over a bleak and unattractive level to Long Benton, where art and nature again combine to render the landscape attractive. Pursuing its course down the disjointed village, the road descends to the church, where it turns to the leftover a rustic stone bridge, curves round a corner of the churchyard, and bears away to Killingworth township and the West Moor colliery.

The cottage in which the young brakesman and his middle-aged wife settled, was a small two-roomed tenement. Even as it now stands, enlarged by George Stephenson to the dignity of a house with four apartments, it is a quaint little den — a toy-house rather than a habitation for a family. The upper rooms are very low, and one of them is merely a closet. The space of the lower floor is made the most of, and is divided into a vestibule and two apartments. Over the little entrance door, in the outer wall, is a sun-dial, of which mention will be made hereafter. The principal room of the house is on the left hand of the entrance, and in it stands to this day a piece of furniture which is now the property of Mr. Lancelot Gibson, the hospitable occupant of the cottage. This article of furniture is a high strong-built cheffonier, with a book-case surmounting it, and it was placed in the apartment by George Stephenson himself. Of this chattel mention will be made elsewhere in these pages.

The view from the little garden, in front of this cabin, is as fine as any in the neighbourhood of Newcastle. A roadway leading to the North Shields turnpike road runs along the garden rails; on the other side of the road is a small paddock, not a hundred yards in width, beyond the farther confine of which are the mud walls of the glebe farmhouse, of which George Stephenson’s friend Wigham was tenant. On the right hand, buried in trees, is Gosforth Hall, formerly the residence of the Mr. Brandling who fought George’s battle in the matter of the safety lamp, and whose name — though he has long been dead — is never mentioned by the inhabitants of the district without some expression of affectionate regard. Newcastle cannot be seen ; but clearly visible is the blue-hill ridge beyond it, on the farther decline of which rests the seat of the Liddells - Ravensworth Castle.

The excitement of moving to Killingworth was for a time beneficial to Mrs. Stephenson’s health. She became more cheerful; and, that she might have every chance of amendment, George Stephenson prevailed on her to visit her sister Elizabeth, who had married Thomas Pattison, a farmer of Black Callerton.

This apparent improvement in health, which her husband attributed altogether to the excitement of moving to a new home, was, however, little more than the ordinary consequence of pregnancy, which is well known to stay for a brief space the treacherous incursions of physical malady. In the July of 1805 she was put to bed, and Robert Stephenson had a sister who lived just three weeks - long enough to be named Frances after her mother, to be admitted into Christ’s Church, and to taste something of human suffering. Her little girl born, dead, and buried, the bereaved mother relapsed into her previous condition. The cold winter and spring, with its keen north-eastern winds sweeping over the country, completed the slow work of consumption, and before Benton banks and Jesmond vale had again put forth their green leaves, she was quiet in her last earthly rest in Benton churchyard.

Deprived of his mother, before he had completed his third year, Robert Stephenson was placed under the care of the women who were successively George’s housekeepers. Of the three housekeepers who lived in the West Moor cabin, the first and last were superior women. Soon after the death of his wife, George Stephenson went for a few months to Scotland, where he was employed as engineer in a large factory near Montrose. On making this journey, he left little Robert in the custody of his first housekeeper, at Killingworth. On his return he was surprised, and slightly angry, at finding his house shut up, and without inmates. In his absence, the housekeeper (who was in every respect an excellent woman) had become the wife of his brother Robert, in whose dwelling the little boy then was. Recovering possession of his child, George Stephenson again established himself at the West Moor, engaged a second housekeeper, and, having well-nigh emptied his pockets by paying some debts of his poor blind father, and by purchasing a substitute for service in the militia, once more set to work resolutely as brakesman, cobbler, and clock-cleaner. The burden of an invalid wife, of which he had been relieved, was replaced by the burden of a helpless father. Struck blind by an accident which has been already mentioned, ‘Old Robert’ was maintained in comfort by his sons until the time of his death.

George’s second selection of a housekeeper was not so fortunate as his first, but he soon dismissed her, and received into his cottage his sister Eleanor, or, as her name is spelt in the family register, Elender. This worthy and pious woman, born on April 16, 1784, was nearly three years the junior of her brother, and consequently was still young when she came to keep his house. But young as she was, she had made acquaintance with sorrow. A merry lass, she went up to London to fill a place of domestic service, having first plighted her troth to a young man in her own rank of life, under a promise to return and become his bride whenever he wished to marry her. A year or two passed, when, in accordance with this agreement, her lover summoned her back to Northumberland. Eleanor went on board a Newcastle vessel homeward bound. Ill-fortune sent adverse breezes. The passage from the Thames to the Tyne consumed three weeks, and when the poor girl placed her foot on the quay side o the Northumbrian capital, the first piece of intelligence she received was that her faithless lover was already the husband of another. George Stephenson invited his sister to his house, and she, seeing a field of usefulness before her, wisely accepted the invitation. Her sister Ann having already married, and migrated to the United States, Eleanor was to George as an only sister.

The record of one trifling but pathetic difference between George and Eleanor is still preserved by family gossip. When Eleanor first took up her abode at the West Moor colliery, she wore some cheap artificial flowers in her bonnet. The sad experiences of the four preceding years had made the young brakesman less gentle in his temper and more. practical in his views. Eude love of truth and dislike of shams caused him to conceive a dislike for these ‘ artificials,’ as he contemptuously termed them. He asked Eleanor to throw them away, but she, averring that they cost good money, declined to do so.

‘ Nay, then,’ said George, stretching out his hand, ‘ let me take them out and throw them away, and I ’ll give thee a shilling.’

But Eleanor, usually so meek and gentle, drew back., George saw her secret and blundered out an apology. The poor girl had put those flowers in her bonnet, in the vain hope that they would render her comely face more acceptable to her false lover. She had been rightly punished for what she called her worldly vanity; and in humble acknowledgment of her error, she determined to wear ‘ the artificials ’ as a memorial of her foolishness.

From her early days she had been seriously inclined ; and her recent disappointment gave a tone to her mind that was not to be outgrown. Joining the Wesleyan Methodists, she regularly attended their prayer-meetings; and all who remember her bear witness that her labours of unassuming charity aptly enforced the teaching of her lips. Her spare hours were employed in visiting the sick, and repeating long passages from the Bible to those who were themselves unable to spell out the secrets of ‘ the Word.’

It was a bright day for little Robert when this young woman entered the cottage at the West Moor, and took him into her affectionate keeping. The best and most pleasant glimpses that can be obtained of his childhood, show the healthiest relations to have subsisted between him and this good aunt.

Every few months Aunt Nelly used to take the child to visit his various relatives scattered about the country. Ann Henderson had become the wife of Joseph Burn of the Bed House farm, Wolsingham. She had done better had she been content with the poor 'young brakesman; but she was for a time the most important personage in the family. She had a strong feeling of kindliness for George, and when her sister Fanny was no more, she was constant in her hospitality to her nephew. A visit to Wolsingham was the child’s highest ideal of happiness ; and when he was there he used to repay his relations for their goodness by mimicking the peculiarities of his Killingworth acquaintance. Aunt Burn was in the habit of giving the little fellow, for his breakfast, fresh eggs with butter in them. This luxurious fare, so unlike what he was accustomed to in his father’s cottage, appeared to him in, the sight of a strange and important discovery. and it is still remembered how he gravely informed his Aunt Burn that ‘when he went home, he’d teach his Aunt Eleanor to eat eggs and butter.’

Another excursion made by the child was to Kyle, where his aunt Hannah Henderson had married Mr. Elliot, a small innkeeper. The time of the year was summer, and as the journey was made on foot, little Bobby and his aunt rested several times on the dusty road, and refreshed themselves at wayside houses of entertainment. A giU of mild ‘ yell ’ was the modest order, invariably made by the aunt, and the half pint of drink was always divided between herself and her charge. On reaching Eyle the child found his tongue and impudence, and astounded his relatives by asserting that his staid aunt could not pass an ale-house without entering it. ‘ Ah! he was a hempy lad,’ is the conclusion given amongst his humble relations to nearly all the stories of Robert Stephenson’s early life.

Midway in the stragghng street of Long Benton, on the right hand of the traveller going from Newcastle to Killingworth township, stands a stone cottage, composed of two rooms—one on the ground-floor, the other upstairs. For many years this has been the village school. At the present time the schoolmaster, in addition to his vocation of teacher, holds the office of postmaster—a fact set forth in bold characters on the exterior of the dwelling. On one side of the school-room, at a rude desk, sit eight or ten boys, whilst on the opposite side are ranged the same number of girls. At one end of the stone floor, between the two companies, sits the instructor, whose terms for instruction vary from threepence to sixpence per week for each pupil. When Robert Stephenson was a little boy, the master of this school was Thomas Rutter. Fifty years ago the village schoolmaster had in many districts a more lucrative business than he enjoys in the present generation. A majority of the surrounding men of business were dependent on a neighbour endowed with ‘learning ’ for the management of their accounts. By keeping the books of prosperous mechanics and petty traders, and by instructing adults bent on self-education, the village schoolmaster found the chief part of his work and payment, apart from his classes for the young. Tommy Rutter, as he is still familiarly called by the aged inhabitants of Long Benton, was both successful and well esteemed.

To Tommy Rutter’s school Robert Stephenson was sent, and there he learnt his letters, at the same desk and under the same master as another distinguished child of Long Benton - Dr. Addison, the eminent physician, whose death under mournful circumstances recently created wide and painful sensation. In Rutter’s time the girls were taught by Mrs. Rutter in the room upstairs, the ground floor apartment being filled with lads - the sons of workmen at the surrounding collieries, and of small dealers living in adjacent townships. Many of them had never worn shoe or boot; but, though bare-footed, they were canny, hardy youngsters, and several of them have raised themselves to conditions of prosperity.

The exact year of Robert’s entry into Rutter’s school cannot be ascertained, but he Was quite a little fellow when he first felt his master’s cane. The walk over the glebe farm and past the churchyard from the West Moor to Long Benton Street — a distance of about a mile, or a mile and a half — was a long way for him, and Aunt Nelly used to pity her bairn for having to trudge so far, to and fro. He had not been long at school when the season of harvest came, and Aunt Nelly went out gleaning.

Little Robert Stephenson petitioned his father for leave to accompany Aunt Eleanor and the gleaners. George by no means approved the request, as he argued that he did not pay fourpence, or possibly sixpence, a week for his son’s schooling, in the expectation that the young scholar should leave his books at the first temptation.

But the petition was granted in the following terms : — ‘ Weel, gan; but thou maun be oota’ day. Nae skulking, and nae shirking. And thou maun gan through fra the first t’ th’ end o’ gleaning.’

On this understanding Robert and Aunt Eleanor started for their vagrant toil, but long before sunset the boy was very tired. He kept up manfully, however, and as he trotted homewards at nightfall by the side of his aunt, he, like her, carried a full bag. At the gate of the West Moor cabin stood George Stephenson, ready to welcome them. Quickly discerning the effort Robert was making to appear gallant and fresh, the father enquired :

‘ Weel, Bobby, hoo did the’ come on ? ’

‘ Vara weel, father,’ answered Bobby stoutly.

The next day, bent on not giving in, the boy rose early, and for a second time accompanied the gleaners. The poor child slept for hours under the hedgerows; and when evening came he trotted home, bag in hand, but holding on to Aunt Nelly’s petticoats. Again at the garden wicket George received them, with amused look, and the same enquiry;

‘ Weel, Bobby, hoo did the’ come on?’

‘ Middlin, father,’ answered Bobby sulkily ; and, dropping his bag, he hastened into the cottage, and was asleep in a couple of minutes.

The third day came, and little Robert did his bravest amongst the gleaners: but the day was too much for him; his pride gave in, and on lagging home at nightfall, when he was once more asked by his father, ‘ Weel, Bobby, hoo did the’ come on ? ’ he burst into tears, and cried, ‘ Oh, father, warse and warse, warse and warse let me gan to school agyen.’

It was not the time then to point the moral of those last three days, but the next day (Sunday, when even gleaners rest) the young father took his child under his arm, and placing him on the knee where he had so often sat, told him to be a good boy over his book, to leave hard work of the body for a few years to his elders, and to thank God that he (unlike his father) was not in childhood required to toil hard all day for a few pence. It was a sermon fit for a day of rest, and from no lips could it have come more appropriately than from the lips of George Stephenson.

Aunt Eleanor sat by, and heard George’s paternal admonition, and was well pleased with its grave and serious tone. To tell the truth, the Sundays at the West Moor cottage were not altogether in accordance with Aunt Eleanor’s views. George resolutely declined to accompany his sister to the meetings of the Wesleyan Methodists; and, what to her seemed even worse, he was by no means a regular attendant at Long Benton church. Sunday was the day when, walking up and down the colliery railway, he pondered over the mechanical problems which were then vexing the brains of all the intelligent workmen of the neighbouring country. It was his day, too, for receiving friends.

Of George’s early associates Robert Hawthorn has been already specially mentioned - and the relations between them have been briefly stated. Whilst George Stephenson and William Locke worked under Hawthorn, they found him an exacting and tyrannical supervisor. They both resented his domination, believing that he was jealous of their mechanical genius, afraid of being supplanted or surpassed by them, and anxious to keep them under. George Stephenson retained for many years a grudge against Hawthorn, but he was too prudent openly to quarrel with the cleverest engine-wright of the district. Slowly advancing himself from the position of a brakesman, whose duty it is simply to regulate the action of a steam-engine, to the higher status of the smith, or wright, who mends and even constructs the machine itself, George stood in frequent need of the counsel and countenance of Hawthorn, then his superior in knowledge, as he was also in age. The practice of the engine-wrights of George Stephenson’s Killingworth days was very different from that of the educated engineers of a later date.

John Steele, another of George Stephenson’s early and most valued friends, was a man worthy of especial mention; as his relations with Trevithick, and his ascertained, influence on the history of the locomotive, give value to the few particulars that can be picked up with regard to him. The son of a poor North-countryman, who was originally a coachman and afterwards a brakesman on the Pontop Railway, John Steele in his early childhood displayed remarkable ingenuity in the construction of models of machines. His schoolfellows at Colliery Dykes used to marvel at the correctness of ‘his imitations of pit engines,’ and remember how in school ‘the master could never set him fast’ in figures. While he was still a school-lad, his leg was accidentally crushed on the Pontop tramway. After leaving the Newcastle infirmary, where the limb was amputated, he was apprenticed by the proprietary of the Pontop Railway to Mr. John Whinfield, the iron-founder and engineer of the Pipewellgate, Gateshead. Whilst serving his apprenticeship he attracted the attention, not only of his masters, but also of Trevithick, who in nothing displayed his consummate genius more forcibly than in the sagacity with which he selected his servants and apprentices.

In the autumn of 1860, the only sister of John Steele was still having, at a very advanced age, at Ovingham, under the benevolent protection of Mr. T. Y. Hall, of Newcastle, and could remember that Trevithick invited her brother to leave Whinfield’s factory during his apprenticeship and to join him. Steele, however, remained at Gateshead until he had ‘ served his time,’ and then joined Trevithick, during the manufacture of the locomotive constructed by that original mechanician in 1803 and 1801, in the latter of which years the engine won the memorable wager between Mr. Homfray, of Penydarren works, and Mr. Richard Crawshay, of the Cyfarthfa works, returning from Trevithick’s works to Gateshead, Steele, 1804, built the first locomotive which ever acted on the banks of the Tyne. This engine Was made in Whinfield’s factory for Mr. Blackett of the Wylam colliery; but owing to the imperfections in its structure, it was never put on the Wylam line, but was used as a fixed engine in a Newcastle iron-foundry.

Speaking of this engine, Mr. Nicholas Wood, whose book on Railroads has been copied by all writers on the subject, observes:—: ‘The engine erected by Mr. Trevithick had one cylinder only, with a fly-wheel to secure a rotatory motion in the crank at the end of each stroke. An engine of this kind was sent to the North for Mr. Blackett of Wylam, but was, for some cause or other, never used upon his railroad, but was applied to blow a cupola at the iron-foundry at Newcastle.’ In this statement Mr. Wood fell into a pardonable but not unimportant error. The engine was undoubtedly in all essential points a reproduction of the one already made by Trevithick, with whose name, even more than with those of Leopold, Cugnot, Oliver Evans, or William Murdock, will be associated the practical introduction of the steam -locomotive ; but it was made in Gateshead about the year 1804. It is equally certain that John Steele made it, and that when it was finished it ran on a temporary way laid down in Whinfield’s yard at Gateshead.

John Turnbull, of Eighton Banks, living in 1858, remembered the engine being made, whilst he was serving his apprenticeship at Whinfield’s factory. When it was completed, it ran, according to Turnbull’s account, backwards and forwards quite well, much to the gratification of ‘ the quality ’ who came ‘ to see her run. are referred for farther information the Gateshead Observer for August to the Mining Journal for October 2, 28, September 18, October 2, and 1858, and October 16, 1858, and to October 9, in the same year, 1868.

The subsequent career of John Steele was adventurous. He was employed by the British Government to raise sunken ships ; and, according to his sister’s account, received a medal for his efforts to raise the ‘Royal George.’ Subsequently he went abroad, and having established a foundry and machine factory at La Gare, near Paris, was commissioned to make some engines for several boat companies. His death. occurred under painful but characteristic circumstances. Whilst engaged at Lyons in fitting engines on board a boat, he met with Mr. Charles Manby, a gentleman since well known as the Secretary of the Institution of Civil Engineers, but who at that time (1824-5) was engaged in engineering pursuits in Prance. On the day when Steele’s vessel was tried, Mr. Manby took his workmen on board to assist his countryman. On going below, he perceived that the engineman had fastened down the safety-valve, with the avowed intention of ‘making her go or bursting her.’ Seeing the danger, Mr. Manby and his men hastily quitted the ill-starred vessel. A few minutes later the boiler burst, and by the explosion Steele was killed, together with several important persons of Lyons and many of the spectators on the quays.

Anthony Wigham, another of George’s intimate associates, was the farmer occupying the glebe farm of Long Benton, the cottage-house on which small holding stands within sight of the West Moor cabin. He was a bad farmer, and, as bad farmers usually are, a poor one ; but he had mastered the principal rules of arithmetic, and had a smattering of natural philosophy. George cultivated the farmer’s acquaintance, and gained from him all the little knowledge he could impart. The teacher was in after life amply repaid for his lessons. Bad farming was in due course followed by commercial failure, and when the farmer was at a loss where to look for daily bread, George Stephenson—then grown a rich man— took him to Tapton House, and, having made him the superintendent of his stables, treated him kindly to the last.

Another of George Stephenson’s early friends was Captain Robson, a hale, hearty, manly sailor. His early life had been passed on board a man-of-war, and he afterwards became captain of a Newcastle trading vessel, built for him by his father. Marrying the only daughter of a prosperous farmer. Captain Eobson gave up sea-life, and became a farmer in Killingworth township. It was in his house that George discussed his schemes for the construction of the famous safety-lamp. After again turning sailor and again relinquishing the sea, the captain still lives to tell his version of the way in which the secret of the invention of the lamp was foolishly blabbed by Dr. Burnet, the colliery-doctor, to his brother-in-law, Mr. Buddle, the viewer, who, he alleges, speedily conveyed the information to Sir Humphry Davy. The captain’s story, thoroughly believed as it is by the veteran, is, of course, not to be relied upon; but it forms an amusing counterpart to the angry accusations preferred by Sir Humphry’s friends against George Stephenson, of having surreptitiously possessed himself of the philosopher’s secret.

Hawthorn and Steele, living at a distance, were comparatively rare visitors at Killingworth. George saw more of them on pay-nights at Newcastle, when he and all the clever mechanics of the country round met together, and exchanged views on the difficult ‘jobs’ then engaging the attention of the local engine-wrights; the simple workmen thus unconsciously creating the earliest and the finest school of practical engineering. When, however, either Hawthorn or Steele did make an appearance at the West Moor, the favourite topic was the possibility of employing steam for purposes of locomotion. Every word that came' from Steele—Trevithick’s pupil and workman, who had himself within six miles of Killingworth built a machine which, with aU its defects, had actually travelled under the influence of steam—George Stephenson stored up in his memory. Steele was never weary of prophesying, that ‘the day would come when the locomotive engine would be fairly tried, and would then be found to answer.’ No wonder that George Stephenson caught enthusiasm from such a teacher.

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