Ticket to Ride was the title of the Frome Family History Group April talk, by husband and wife team Chris and Judy Rouse.
Judy began the talk by explaining that the coming of the railway had a bigger effect on the country than technology in the twentieth century.
To start with, railway travel was limited to goods, particularly coal, but the wagons would often come back empty and gradually people started climbing aboard the empty wagons. This led to the introduction of passenger carriages and a three-tier system was introduced. For the very wealthy there was the option of taking your own horse drawn carriage on to the train or travelling in comfort in first class compartments. Middle class people would travel second class, if not in comfort at least with a roof on their carriage. Third class consisted of open wagons without seats. In fact Brunel thought that there was no reason why poor people should have a need to travel.
William Gladstone, a member of Robert Peel’s government, who thought that it was necessary to enable poor people to travel in order to find employment, introduced the Parliamentary Train. This was a passenger service operated to comply with the Railway Regulation Act 1844 that required train companies to provide inexpensive and basic rail transport for less affluent passengers. It had a wide ranging effect on the mobility of people looking for employment and later, the beginning of tourism.
Gradually, rail travel improved with the introduction of timetables and, in 1862, The Railway Travellers Handbook gave instructions on how to cope with a journey. Timetables were of limited use however as they gave a start time but no guarantee of when you would arrive. This was compounded by the fact that the railway worked on London Time. For example the time in Bristol and Bath was eleven minutes earlier.
Accidents were frequent, meaning that a passenger chose a seat as far from the engine as possible. People were able to insure their journey through the Railway Passengers Assurance Company. In the period 1874 to 1878, on average 35 passengers and 687 railway employees were killed per year on Britain’s railways. High profile accidents such as Abergele in 1868, in which 32 people died, put fear into the heart of the travelling public. How could the passenger avoid leaving their family destitute if they had the misfortune to be in an accident? The answer was railway passenger’s insurance.
By the 1880s, travel was much more comfortable with the introduction of toilets, ladies only compartments and refreshments, first in the stations then on the trains in the form of dining cars and trolleys. Travelling by train was getting safer and more pleasurable for all.
Chris and Judy were thanked for a very interesting and informative presentation.
Our next event will be on Tuesday May 28th when Tony Painter will look at old Ordnance Survey maps and what they can tell us about the area our ancestors lived in. Brian Marshall will be available in the library for family history advice on the first Saturday in the month from 9.30am to 11.30am.
