A visionary reformer recognizes the need for improved public transportation to and from London, and his relentless campaign to build a subterranean iron road beneath the teeming city finally becomes realized only a few months after his death.
With a population of more than 2.5 million, London by 1850s had developed into the world’s first megapolis, stretching out from its ancient core on the Thames to distant suburbs, the hub of a mighty, imperial empire. As the seat of international commerce, it was both the richest city on the globe and one of the most congested, its roadways clogged each day with more than a quarter million commuters and horses that left tons of droppings amid the puddles and grime. The traffic to and from was a nightmare.
A Londoner from birth, Charles Pearson (1793-1862) was a dutiful member of the middle class who had entered public service in 1816 and spent his whole life engaged in various social causes. Being old enough to remember what the city has been like before the industrial revolution, he sought a way to clear the streets. Although railroads were still relatively new – the first locomotive – driven railway between the cities, the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, had only begun operating in 1830 – by 1845 Pearson, now solicitor for the City of London began imagining a new kind of smokeless public rail transportation for the future.
In 1854, he authored a major research report that ascribed much of the city’s overcrowding to poor traffic control of the growing ‘migratory population’. Besides helping gain Royal Assent to the North Metropolitan Railway Act on 7 August 1854, he also devised the financing scheme for the construction of the Metropolitan Railway heading northwest from the city’s financial heart, at an estimated cost of one million pounds.
A variety of approaches were employed to build the railway underground. Some sections involved tunneling beneath the city; others were done by leveling the existing structures, digging a deep trench for the rail bed and later covering it to accommodate future buildings over the railway. Despite a number of accidents, collapses, floods, and other mishaps that occurred during the excavation, the engineering feat was largely accomplished by 1861, when the first of many trial runs were conducted. The first trial trip over the entire line was staged in MAy 1862 with a party of prominent passengers including William Gladstone, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, aboard.
After a grand opening ceremony on 9 January 1863, the Metropolitan Railway opened to the public the following day, when its steam locomotive hauled gas-lit wooden carriages carrying 38,000 passengers between Paddington and Farrington Street.
The world’s first underground railway was a resounding success, carrying 9.5 million passengers in its first 12 months and 12 million in its second year.
