R.W.Perks, C.T.Yerkes and private sector financing of urban transport infrastructure in London 1900-1907

Owen E.Covick

Paper presented to the 2001 Conference of the Association of Business Historians, Portsmouth (UK), “Responses to Innovation”

29 – 30 June 2001

CORRECTION
This paper is reproduced here “as presented to the 2001 conference”, except for corrections to identified spelling and punctuation errors and typos. That means no attempt has been made to correct errors of ‘a substantive nature’ identified since the paper was presented in June 2001. The most important such error relates to section C11 of the paper (at pages 67-70). The “Mr. Perks” referred to in this section was NOT Robert William Perks (1849-1934). The Pekin Syndicate Limited should not therefore be regarded as one of “R.W.Perks’s business projects”. See also the “addenda” section appended to the end of the paper below.

A. Introduction

This paper is concerned principally with Robert William Perks (1849-1934) and the question: What role did he play in the entrepreneurship behind the development of the London underground railway system during the period 1900-07? The principal accounts of these developments tend to stress the role of Charles Tyson Yerkes (1837-1905), who wound-up his urban transit interests in Chicago from the end of 1898 and focussed the last five years of his life on London passenger transport. Thus T.C.Barker and Michael Robbins, A History of London Transport, volume II (George Allen & Unwin, London, 1974) opened their chapter on this period: “London’s underground railway system was decisively modernized and expanded by the activities of one man: Charles Tyson Yerkes, a deft, not to say smart, financier from Chicago”, and then introduced Yerkes (from here abbreviated to CTY) to their readers under the heading “The Titan” (p.61). Alan A.Jackson and Desmond F.Croome, Rails Through the Clay (George Allen and Unwin, London, 1962) titled their chapters 4 and 5: “Titan Turns East: 1900-1901” and “Yerkes Takes Over: 1902-1905”, respectively. Oliver Green’s The London Underground (Ian Allan, London, 1987) has chapter titles “Yerkes and the District” and “The Yerkes Tubes”. Hugh Douglas in The Underground Story (Robert Hale, London, 1963) titles his chapter ten “The Transatlantic Tycoon”. This list could be significantly extended to demonstrate still further that CTY’s British partner in those London passenger transport developments, Perks (from here abbreviated to RWP), has received very little in the way of “headline billing” for his role in the process.

The purpose of this paper is not to argue that RWP played a more important part than CTY in that process. It is the more modest purpose of arguing that there seem to be reasonable grounds for suspecting that RWP played a more substantial role than has hitherto been recognized by Business and Transport historians. Much of the evidence put forward to support this argument is, it must be admitted, “circumstantial”. Barker and Robbins stated “No private papers have come to light concerning Charles Tyson Yerkes or his American associates” (p. xvi and see also note 8, p.371); and “Sir Robert Perks [son of RWP] assured us that no relevant papers have survived” (loc.cit.). Direct evidence on the relative contributions of CTY and RWP to the task of financial entrepreneurship required by their London passenger transport development projects of this period is, accordingly, not particularly abundant. RWP’s “authorized biography” published in 1909 makes not one single mention of the name Yerkes and devotes scarcely more than a page to “this enormous operation … [in which] capital amounting to sixteen million pounds sterling was involved” (Denis Crane, Sir Robert W.Perks, Bart., M.P.: The Story of His Life, Robert Culley, London, 1909). RWP’s posthumously published “notes for an autobiography” similarly makes no mention of Yerkes and is similarly reticent on the 1900-07 London underground project (Sir Robert Perks, Baronet, Epworth Press, 1936).

Perhaps RWP’s own reticence has been the principal factor behind his own name not being more prominently paired with that of CTY in the various accounts of the project? But there may be reasons for that “reticence” other than RWP having simply been a minor contributor. At the time RWP’s “authorized biography” was being written, the Underground company (UERL) which had been responsible for the ₤16 million of infrastructure spending was in severe financial difficulties (see section B10 below), with its directors suing CTY’s deceased estate for unpaid calls on a large bloc of its issued ordinary shares. RWP had not taken up any UERL ordinary shares. The 1900s saw publication of a good deal of “sensational” material about the life (and loves) of CTY, including Charles E.Russell, Lawless Wealth (B.W.Dodge & Co., New York, 1908). CTY had been imprisoned for bond fraud in Philadelphia in 1873, had left his first wife for a much younger second (who he then neglected for other women), and had sought to bolster his Chicago urban transit business interests through the support of corrupt politicians. In October 1912 Theodore Dreiser published a very successful novel The Financier, based closely on the early life of CTY and advertized as the first of a trilogy to cover the whole of its financier’s life. The second part, The Titan, published in May 1914 took the story of CTY’s life up to the end of 1898. RWP was a prominent layman in the Wesleyan Methodist Church. His father had been a minister in that church. When the three branches of British Methodism were brought together in 1932, RWP was elected the first vice-president of the Methodist Church. At the time RWP’s “authorized biography” was being written, RWP was a prominent member of the British Liberal party, and may still have harboured expectations of high office of state. Identification in the mind of the public with successful and ethically “respectable” private enterprises would be an advantage in that context. Identification as a close and important partner of CTY may not have been so advantageous.

“Denis Crane” was the pen-name of RWP’s 1909 biographer, Walter Thomas Cranfield. Under the same pen-name he had previously written biographies of two other then-living non-conformist activists: James Flanagan: The Story of A Remarkable Career (1906); and John Clifford: God’s Soldier And The People’s Tribune (1908). H. Simonis, The Street of Ink (Cassell and Company, London, 1917), in his section on the weekly newspaper The Methodist Recorder states: “A prominent member of the staff is W.T. Cranfield (“Denis Crane”), whose speciality is interviewing” (p.313). RWP’s father had been a founder-director of The Methodist Recorder (ibid p.312). RWP himself was chairman of the paper’s Board of Governors (John A Vickers (ed.), A Dictionary of Methodism in Britain and Ireland, Epworth Press, Peterborough, 2000, p.269). In 1930, Cranfield edited a volume Journalism as a Career (Pitman, London). In his own chapter, titled “The free-lance”, he states: “Space does not permit of lengthy reference to the function of the free-lance as publicist – as special pleader in public causes, as champion of individual interest, as opposer of Parliamentary bills, and the like. Here his work resembles that of the barrister, except that his forum is the printed sheet, not the law-court; and, like the barrister, he must look chiefly to his client for his fees” (p.73).

It has been possible to identify a number of factual errors in the Crane biography of RWP. Perhaps of most interest here is that on pp. 60-61. Crane reports of RWP: “His intimate knowledge of the London railways, and especially of the underground lines, raised him, in 1901, on the death of Mr J.S. Forbes, to the Chairmanship of the Metropolitan District Railway. …When the transformation [from steam to electric traction] was effected he retired in favour of the Chairman who was entrusted with the task of operating the line when ready for traffic”. When RWP took over the chairmanship of the MDR on 5 September 1901, J.S. Forbes was very much alive. He remained a director of the MDR until 1903. He died 5 April 1904. (John Marshall, A Biographical Dictionary of Railway Engineers, David and Charles, Newton Abbot, 1978, p.82). During the 1902 to 1904 period RWP fulfilled two roles in the MDR, both chairman and managing director. On 1 Nov 1904 Mr John Young, previously general manager of the Corporation of Glasgow Tramways, took over RWP’s managerial role in anticipation of electrical working across the MDR system upon the commissioning of the power station being build at Lots Road, Chelsea. (See A. Edmonds, History of the Metropolitan District Railway Company London Transport, London, 1973, p.224 et seq). In January 1906 George S. Gibb took over the chairmanship of the MDR, having been recruited by Edgar Speyer to the UERL group as a result of his experience with electrical working of railways on the NER system (see section B10 below). Crane perhaps “confused” these two handovers. The facts are that RWP relinquished the chairmanship in favour of CTY in February 1905, but remained as deputy-chairman until early 1907. In his Who’s Who entries for the years 1909 to 1912 inclusive, RWP made no mention of any involvement in the London Underground. The 1913 entry introduces credit for the Inner Circle Completion Project of the early 1880s (see section C4 below). The 1914 entry adds: “Chairman of the Metropolitan District Railway during conversion from steam to electricity 1902-06”. The actual circumstances associated with control over the MDR passing from Forbes to the CTY/RWP interest are considered in section B2 below.

The electrification of the “shallow” Underground railway system in London, the completion of the last three deep-level (or “tube”) lines to be built in London prior to the Victoria line of the 1960s, and the development of closer economic co-ordination between the shallow underground, the various tube lines and London’s trams and buses – all concentrated during the period 1900-1907 – represent the single biggest transport infrastructure project with which RWP was involved, which “got up”. RWP was involved in two projects which would have been bigger but which did not “get up” (at least in his lifetime): the Channel Tunnel and the Georgian Bay Ship Canal in Canada. Section B of this paper seeks to identify the key steps in the financial entrepreneurship of the London passenger transport project 1900-1907. Section C seeks to identify the types of entrepreneurial expertise which RWP’s various other business projects of his career suggest he had to offer in the case of this London project. Section D is titled “discussion and suggested conclusions”.

Before commencing with the body of the paper, however, the words of two writers on RWP’s political life should be noted. RWP was in the wing of the British Liberal party known as the “Liberal Imperialists”. Together with Grey, Haldane, Asquith and others he supported the cause of restoring Lord Rosebery to the leadership of the party and winning government from the Conservatives on a platform of Liberal Imperialism and “National Efficiency”. In April 1900 RWP presided at the inaugural meeting of the Imperial Liberal Council (ILC) and became its vice-president, (H.C.G. Matthew, The Liberal Imperialists, Oxford University Press, 1973, p.50). In February 1902, The Liberal League was formed as the ILC’s successor, with Rosebery as President; Asquith, Grey and Fowler as Vice-Presidents; and RWP as Treasurer. Matthew states of RWP: “During 1896 he built up a friendship with Rosebery in which he was quite prepared to play servant to Rosebery’s master in order to achieve his ends” (p.49). Stephen Koss, “Wesleyanism and Empire”, The Historical Journal, vol 18, 1975, pp.105-118 quotes Beatrice Webb’s diary entry of her meeting with RWP in March 1901. She described him as “a repulsive being – hard, pushing, commonplace, …a blank materialist.” and criticized Lord Rosebery for recruiting such a man as his “first-lieutenant”. Koss comments that Webb had: “missed the essential point. It was not Rosebery who recruited Perks as first-lieutenant, but Perks who recruited Rosebery as captain” (pp.108-109).

B. The R.W.Perks / C.T.Yerkes London Underground Project

This section does not attempt to provide a full summary of the development of the London Underground system 1900-1907. It attempts only to provide a summary of the key steps in the “financial” entrepreneurship of the project. The identified steps are as follows, with the dates intended to be mainly “indicative”.

CTY buys into Charing Cross-Hampstead Line Sept 1900
CTY and RWP take control of the District Railway March 1901
Metropolitan District Electric Traction (MDET) formed July 1901
MDET takes control of the “Piccadilly Line” Companies Sept. 1901
MDET takes over the (partly built) “Bakerloo” line March 1902
MDET is “backed-into” new company UERL April 1902
UERL takes control of London United Tramways Sept 1902
UERL raises additional funds for construction
and equipment Jan 1903 to March 1905
Exit of CTY and RWP late 1905 – June 1907
1908 Financial Reconstruction and Epilogue 1907 – 1913

B1 CTY buys into Charing Cross – Hampstead Line

In September 1912 RWP made a sworn statement before the United States Vice Consul General in London, to be used as a deposition in a dispute in Illinois concerning the estate of CTY. (I am grateful to Mr John Franch of Illinois for providing me with a copy of this deposition). One of the questions RWP was asked was whether 1900 “was the first year you had any connection with Mr Yerkes?” RWP answered “That was the first time”. This “connection” concerned the Charing Cross, Euston, and Hampstead Railway, which had been authorized by Parliament in 1893. According to T.C.Barker and M.Robbins, A History of London Transport Volume II, George Allen & Unwin, London 1974, RWP “had been associated with the promoters” of the CCE&H from its early days in 1893 (p. 63). In March 1894, subscriptions for 141,600 ₤10 shares in the company were invited “but the amount subscribed was insufficient to justify allotment and was returned” (A.A.Jackson and D.F.Croome, Rails Through The Clay, George Allen & Unwin, London, 1962, p. 36). In late 1897, RWP’s legal partner, fellow Wesleyan Methodist and fellow Liberal Imperialist M.P., H.H.Fowler joined the Board of the company and a contract for construction of the line (subject to sufficient finance being raised) was signed with Price and Reeves. John Price had been one of T.A.Walker’s trusted lieutenants (see section C9 below) and was contractor for the Marble Arch to Shepherds Bush section of the Central London Railway, then under construction. Thomas James Reeves was one of the three trustee/executors of the T.A.Walker deceased estate who, between 1889 and 1898, RWP was helping in the administration of the affairs of that estate.

Theodore Dreiser wrote a trilogy of novels based on the life of CTY and based on detailed research conducted within a decade of CTY’s death. The third of those novels The Stoic deals with the final phase of CTY’s life from 1898 onwards. It suggests that it was the efforts of Price and Reeves to help the CCE&H company obtain the funds needed for their contract that led CTY to become interested in the scheme. In The Stoic two English contractors Philip Henshaw and Montague Greaves, who had an option to construct the Hampstead – Charing Cross tube, had visited Chicago in early 1898 looking for the ₤1.6 million of finance required for the project. Cowperwood (the CTY character) sends an agent to London to gather information on the proposed scheme for him, then lures Greaves and Henshaw to New York to see him in March 1899. This leads Cowperwood to arrange to go to London in the middle of 1900 and enter into negotiations with the firm of lawyers who have control over the company responsible for the project. “The authoritative and financially ambitious member” of that firm of lawyers, Elverson Johnson, is a dedicated Methodist (The Stoic, pp. 67-68). In The Stoic, Cowperwood makes payment of ₤100,000 to take control of the Charing Cross – Hampstead company and immediately afterwards arranges with Johnson that they plus Johnson’s friends should collaborate in taking control of the District in order to convert it from steam to electrical power (ibid., pp. 120-150).

Returning from “fiction” to fact, on 28 September 1900 CTY paid ₤100,000 (being ₤60,000 to take over the parliamentary deposit plus ₤40,000 for expenditures already incurred by the contractors and promoters) to take full control of the CCE&H company. CTY became chairman and H.C.Davis vice-chairman, CTY returned to America on 6 October (Douglas, p. 143). “Perks, already a director, continued to serve but resigned on 28 November, because his firm was acting as the firm’s legal advisers” (Barker and Robbins, op.cit., p. 64). At the end of 1900 two Bills were presented to Parliament seeking extensions to the line to Victoria in the south and for forks to Golders Green and Highgate in the north.

B2 CTY and RWP take control of the District railway

The Metropolitan District Railway and the Metropolitan Railway shared responsibility for the operation of London’s shallow underground system (the Inner Circle plus certain lines and services extending beyond that “circle”). The relationship between the two companies was adversarial, boiling over into litigation from time to time. This adversarial relationship was personified in the combative approach of the powerful chairmen of the two companies: Edward Watkin of the Metropolitan (1872-1894), and J.S.Forbes of the District (1872-1901). The District was the financially weaker of the two, and suffered proportionately greater financial damage from its share of the Inner Circle completion link project in the early 1880s (see C4 below). The first half of 1882 “was the last occasion in the history of the railway on which a dividend was paid on the ordinary shares” (Alexander Edmonds, History of the Metropolitan District Railway to June 1908, London Transport, London, 1973, p. 134). Between the middle of 1887 and the end of 1889 only one half-yearly dividend was paid on the District’s five per cent preference shares, and that was at a rate of 3/4 of one per cent. From 1890 to 1898 the dividend on the five per cent prefs averaged 2.54 per cent per annum. The company did however continue during this period to service fully the third (and most-preferred) tier of its equity capital, the four per cent guaranteed stock issued to finance its share of the Inner Circle completion project.

From the mid 1880s onwards it was clear that the District would face major difficulties raising any substantial additional capital on terms that were acceptable to its existing shareholders. This was not the case with the Metropolitan. It would be understandable if Watkin felt irritated about the District, possibly seeing the situation as like having for a business partner a tiresome poor relation who cannot pay his way but who refuses to sell out to you on “reasonable” terms, so you can run the whole business “properly”. Watkin’s response seems to have been to encourage acquiescence to the latter course of action by taking steps to make things even more uncomfortable for the “poor relation”. The same type of situation was played out (together with “counter-irritations” from Forbes) across the surface railways from the south-east of London to the Kent coast where the Watkin-chaired South-Eastern Railway (with RWP’s father-in-law as its largest single shareholder) engaged in adversarial competition with the Forbes-chaired London Chatham & Dover Railway (see T.R.Gourvish “The Performance of British Railway Management after 1860: The Railways of Watkin and Forbes”, Business History, vol. 20, July 1978, pp.186-200).

Up to 1895, RWP was clearly identified with the Metropolitan in the struggles between the Metropolitan and the District. RWP’s legal firm were appointed solicitors to the Metropolitan in 1881 with “Perks acting as legal adviser to the railway company” (A.A.Jackson op.cit., p.340). From March 1893 this role was reduced to “part-time consulting solicitor, not involved in any parliamentary work” loc.cit.). RWP resigned from that role on 30 June 1895 “and returned his silver pass but was invited to keep it as a memento of his long service with the company” (Barker and Robbins, op.cit., p.56). In early August 1898, RWP revealed at a meeting of the District that he held ₤100,000 in ordinary shares in the company plus holdings of its other stocks. He had by that stage accumulated “the largest individual holding of MDR stock” (A.A.Jackson, op.cit., p.164).

It should be noted that Watkin had retired as chairman of the Metropolitan (and from all his other railway chairmanships) in May 1894 following a stroke. O.S.Nock, The South Eastern and Chatham Railway, Ian Allan, London, 1961, states that “The shareholders of the South Eastern … were, by the year 1893, in open revolt, and when the time came for his retirement to be announced … the stocks concerned were sharply advanced in price on the London Stock Exchange” (p.91). The shareholders in the South-Eastern seem to have imposed on their company a less adversarial and more accommodating stance towards Forbes’ LC&D railway during the post-Watkin period, leading to a working agreement between the two companies being announced to the Stock Exchange on 29 June 1898 (with the joint profits divided 41 per cent to LC&D, 59 per cent to S.E.). It is possible that RWP’s resignation from legal work for the Metropolitan and his accumulation of a substantial shareholding in the District may have been originally motivated by a desire to promote a similar post-Watkin settlement between the Metropolitan and the District. In September 1897, RWP’s legal partner H.H.Fowler became a director of the Forbes-chaired National Telephone Company (Edith H.Fowler, The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler, First Viscount Wolverhampton, Hutchinson, London, 1912, p.425). In May 1898, at the initiative of Forbes, the Metropolitan and the District put ₤10,000 each into joint experimentation and testing re. electrification (Edmonds, op.cit., p.173, Jackson, op.cit., p.161). In November-December 1898 there were discussions of a possible amalgamation between the two companies, the general manager of the South-Eastern Railway “acting as intermediary” (Jackson, p.163). These talks broke down, Forbes apparently believing he could obtain superior takeover terms from one or more of the larger main-line railway companies (Barker and Robbins, op.cit., p.59).

By the time CTY visited London and met with RWP in the summer of 1900, it appears that these hopes of a “negotiated solution” to the position of the District (and hence of the shallow underground as a whole) had stalled. The Central London Railway opened to fare-paying passengers on 30 July 1900 (following its “official opening” on 27 June), providing a deep-level electric service on an east-west axis across the centre of London. This could be expected to depress District revenues and exacerbate the company’s difficulties in raising the capital funds required for its own electrification. The District’s ordinary shares reached a takeover-speculation-peak of 42¾ at the end of February 1899, but by October 1900 were down to 23¼, their lowest for seven years (Barker and Robbins, p.59).

Between their meeting in the summer of 1900 and March 1901, RWP and CTY accumulated control over sufficient of the District’s shares to have effective control of the company (CTY was back in London from January to 5 April 1901). This appears to have been achieved by three means: on-market purchases; cultivating the support of existing British shareholders; and subscribing for all the new stock issued to raise funds required by the District for two extension schemes. This third means represents a particularly cost-efficient approach to the securing of control over a company. The newly created equity dilutes the proportionate voting power of the pre-existing owners, the money paid to achieve this stays inside the company rather than going into the pockets of exiting shareholders, and the price paid for the new stock need not include the takeover-premium element normally required to induce existing share-owners to part with their shares and voting-power. Edmonds reports that RWP and his business friends in London and America “between them subscribed the whole of the stock of the Ealing and South Harrow Railway [which was then converted into ₤250,000 of District “rentcharge stock”] and the whole of the ₤330,000 of District Stock constituting that company’s’ moiety of the share capital of the Whitechapel and Bow Railway Company and this financial group led by Mr Perks had now a controlling vote in the decisions of the Company” (Edmonds, op.cit., p.184).

Jackson and Croome state that “by March 1901 Yerkes was in effective control. The change was publicly announced on June 6 1901, although there had been many earlier hints and rumours” (Rails Through the Clay, p.71). 6 June 1901 was the date of a specially convened shareholders meeting of the District at which Forbes stated “[Mr Perks and the gentlemen associated with him] had bought an enormous percentage of the ordinary share capital and they were now masters of the situation” (quoted in Barker and Robbins, op.cit., p.60). On 5 September RWP took over from Forbes as chairman of the District. The second new director who Forbes indicated in August he expected to join the board on that day was Murray Griffith. Griffith was “a member of the Stock Exchange …also well known as an owner of racehorses … not a director of any other company” (The Railway Times, 24 August 1901, p.306).

B3 Metropolitan District Electric Traction Co Ltd (MDET) established ^{(ref addendum a)}

As soon as CTY and RWP had secured effective control of the District, CTY returned to America to work on the arrangements for raising capital for a new company which would become the holding company for the CTY/RWP controlling interest in the District and which would at the same time commit itself to undertaking responsibility for conversion of the District from steam to electricity. CTY was in America from 5 April to 22 May 1901. On 6 June 1901 a special meeting of District shareholders approved the key elements of this scheme (Barker and Robbins, p.67). On 15 July 1901 the new company MDET Co., Ltd was registered as a British joint-stock company with authorized equity capital of ₤1 million (50,000 x ₤20 shares). On 18 July the agreement with the District was signed and then scheduled to and confirmed by the District Railway Act of August 1901.

Barker and Robbins (pp.67-69) provide a listing of MDET’s principal founder-shareholders. It appears that no more than 3,700 of the shares were allotted to British shareholders (including Murray Griffith with 550). CTY was allotted 11,950, with the remainder going to American individuals and American-based entities. CTY converted holdings of District scrip which had cost him over ₤150,000 into MDET scrip at cost plus five per cent per year holding costs. RWP, together with his partners in the C.H.Walker Construction Company, Charles Walker and Fanny Walker, transferred ₤170,000 (face value) District ordinaries to MDET, but appear to have taken cash (at the cost-plus-holding-costs rate) rather than MDET shares. RWP did obtain an important financial interest in MDET, however. If MDET were to achieve a level of profitability sufficient to allow payment of five per cent on its paid up capital, profits beyond that threshold would be divided in half, with one half going to the normal shareholders, and the other half going to CTY and RWP. In RWP’s 1912 Illinois Court deposition he indicates that the originally agreed division of their half was to be one-third for RWP, two-thirds for CTY (op.cit., RWP’s answer to question 14). RWP did not become a director of MDET. MDET’s only British director was Cecil Alfred Grenfell, member of the Stock Exchange, married to the sister of the 9th Duke of Marlborough, and later to be briefly Liberal M.P. for South-East Cornwall (between the two elections of 1910).

B4 MDET takes control of the “Piccadilly Line” companies

What became the Piccadilly line had originally been two separate schemes: the Brompton and Piccadilly Circus Railway authorized by Parliament in 1897; and the Great Northern and Strand Railway authorized in August 1899. Following an unsuccessful attempt at a public float of its shares in July 1898 the Brompton and Piccadilly company was taken over by the District in November 1898 and Forbes appointed chairman. The B&Ps board minutes of 12 September 1901 record “Mr Perks reported that the interest of the District Railway in the Brompton & Piccadilly Circus was to be transferred to Mr C.T.Yerkes as his nominee” (quoted in A.A.Jackson and D.F.Croome, op.cit., p.72). “Towards the end of September 1901, a draft agreement was drawn up … enabling the Brompton & Piccadilly to take over the Great Northern & Strand’s powers from just south of Finsbury Park station and to construct a connecting line between the two tubes” (Barker and Robbins, p.69). The Great Northern & Strand board approved this agreement on 6 November 1901, with the consideration set at ₤131,016 (loc.cit.). Barker and Robbins report that also in November 1901 MDET acquired from CTY control of the Charing Cross-Hampstead company (ibid., p.70). Parliamentary authorization was required to implement the agreement regarding the B&P and the Great Northern and Strand schemes. This required two Bills, one (for the merger) passed in August 1902, the other (for the connecting link) in November 1902.

B5 MDET takes over the (partly built) “Bakerloo” line

The Baker Street and Waterloo Railway had been authorized by Parliament in 1893. In November 1897 the company came under the control of Whitaker Wright, with his London and Globe Finance Corporation contracting to build and equip the line in return for shares and debentures in the BS&WR. Wright was born in England in 1845, had gone to the United States at the age of 21 and worked there until 1889 principally as a mining prospector, entrepreneur and financier. Back in London “he set himself up as a financier on an immense scale and within four years had floated four companies together capitalised at some ₤8,000,000. His projects flourished and he himself lived in great style” (R.A.Haldane, With Intent to Deceive, Blackwood, Edinburgh and London, 1970, p.89. For more detail on the company floats see Aylmer Vallance, Very Private Enterprise, Thames and Hudson, London, 1955, pp.55-63.) Wright’s projects were principally gold mining ventures, mainly in Western Australia. Construction work on the BS&WR commenced in August 1898. By August 1899 some ₤300,000 had been spent on the work (M.A.C.Horne, The Bakerloo Line: a short history, Douglas Rose, London, 1990, p.7). By late 1900 that figure had gone past ₤650,000 and Wright invited subscriptions for BS&WR capital of ₤1,725,000 in ordinary shares and ₤660,000 in four per cent prefs (Jackson and Croome, op.cit., p.38). The London and Globe’s December 17 1900 annual report stated that this issue “was not well subscribed”. On 28 December 1900 The London and Globe announced its insolvency (ibid., pp.37-38). Work by the subcontractors on construction of the Bakerloo line gradually wound down during 1901.

In Dreiser’s The Stoic the Whitaker Wright character is called Abington Scarr. Cowperwood meets him soon after arriving in England in 1900 at a weekend organized at the country house of a Lord Haddowfield who had visited Chicago five years previously (pp.99-100). Later, after Cowperwood has entered into the arrangement with the RWP character, Dreiser states “unknown to any of his present associates he proposed to buy from Abington Scarr the charter for the Baker Street and Waterloo …” (p.199). Horne states that “Prior to the Globe’s collapse at the end of 1900 negotiations had already been taking place with an American syndicate headed by Albert L.Johnson with a view to its taking over the Baker Street & Waterloo interests” (op.cit., p.10). Earlier, in 1896, there had been an association between Wright and Murray Griffith in the formation of “a Metropolitan District Shareholders Association to press for a deep-level tube running under the existing line” (Barker and Robbins, p.56).

The insolvency of the London and Globe meant that by the time MDET was functioning the fate of the partly built Bakerloo line was largely in the hands of the Official Receiver. “In November 1901 the BS&W board was asked by the Senior Official Receiver on what terms it would agree to the transfer of the London & Globe’s interest, and on 5 December it considered a draft agreement for transfer to the Traction Co.” (Barker and Robbins, p.70). Agreement was reached on 7 March 1902 with MDET paying ₤335,000 but this included its takeover of the ₤107,000 parliamentary deposit of consols standing against the company’s name (loc.cit.).

An interesting feature of subsequent developments might be worth noting at this point. In February 1903 the Opposition raised in Parliament the issue of what “the Law Officers of the Crown” were doing about irregularities discovered by the Official Receiver in the accounts of Wright’s companies. On 24 February 1903 Wright fled to France and then to the United States. On 15 March he was arrested there, extradited, and tried in London in January 1904 on charges of “publishing false statements in respect of the London & Globe Finance Corporation and other companies and making false entries in the books of those companies”. Found guilty he took cyanide and died on 25 January 1904 (A.Vallance, op.cit., Chapter 4). During his trial, Wright’s defence team was led by John Lawson Walton K.C. Lawson Walton (1852-1908) was a Wesleyan Methodist, and a Liberal Imperialist M.P. (for South Leeds 1892-1908). He had been “best man” at RWP’s wedding in 1878. He served as Attorney General from 1905 to his death in 1908.

B6 MDET is “backed-into” a new company UERL

MDET’s originally authorized share capital of ₤1 million may have been sufficient for its originally declared purposes of building a power station at Lots Road, Chelsea and arranging electrification of the District Railway. It was clearly likely to be insufficient to do that plus construct and equip two new deep-level underground railways and complete and equip a third, which was the task it faced as at March 1902.

In April 1902 a new company was formed: Underground Electric Railways Co. of London Ltd (UERL) with a share capital of ₤5 million (500,000 x ₤10 shares). 100,000 of these shares (credited as ₤5 paid up, ₤5 to be called) were issued to MDET’s shareholders in two-for-one exchange for their 50,000 ₤15 paid-up shares in MDET, together with ₤5 cash per MDET share. The remaining 400,000 UERL shares were issued to raise new money (₤5 each on subscription). As well as these ordinary shares, an issue of “certificates of interest in the contingent profit of the company” to the face value of ₤2,500,000 was created. If the profits of UERL should prove sufficient to cover a payment of five per cent per year to the ordinary shareholders (cumulative from their issue), then the next call on the profits above that threshold would be to pay up to three per cent on these certificates. Beyond that profits would be divided essentially into halves, one half distributed to the ordinary shareholders, one half to the certificate holders. ₤1.2 million of the certificates were allocated to the UERL’s ordinary shareholders (with ex-MDET shares receiving double the rate of “new-money” shareholders); ₤175,000 to Speyer Brothers, the Merchant Bank which had organized the UERL financing; and ₤1,125,000 to CTY (Barker and Robbins, pp.71-72).

In his 1912 Illinois Court deposition RWP claimed that one quarter of this allocation to CTY was in fact his allocation, and that the reduction from one third of CTY’s allocation in the MDET arrangement to one quarter in this allocation was agreed to because of RWP’s not reinvesting proceeds from his District shares into ordinary shares in the new holding companies (op.cit., RWP’s answers to questions 29 and 30). In November 1902 RWP received certificates (of ownership) for 281,250 of the UERL “contingent certificates” (loc.cit, RWP’s answer to question 32). Thus RWP continued to have an equity-type interest in UERL, which is contrary to the picture presented by Barker and Robbins (see p.72). Murray Griffith is recorded in the UERL’s December 1902 shareholder list as holding 1,000 shares (P.R.O., BT 31/31858/73376, Part 1). This is down a little from the 1,100 implied by two-for-one on his original MDET holding. Incidentally CTY’s mistress, Emilie Busbey Grigsby (“Spinster”) is also listed with 1,000 shares. Additional information on Emilie Grigsby is provided in Philip L.Gerber, “The Alabaster Protegé: Dreiser and Berenice Fleming”, American Literature, vol. 43, 1971-72, pp.216-230. The share register of UERL in 1902 was dominated by American addresses and by firms of “bankers” and “stockbrokers”. An exception was CTY with 48,400 ordinary shares, a London address and with occupation listed as “gentleman”. CTY became chairman of UERL.

B7 UERL takes control of London United Tramways

Between securing additional financial support through the formation of UERL and commitment to full-scale construction activity on the three tube lines, it was necessary for CTY and RWP to navigate a delicate course through British political/regulatory processes. It had been CTY’s failure on this front in Chicago in 1898 which had led to his winding up his involvement in urban transport business activities in that city. The objective in the Chicago case was legislation extending CTY’s franchises for his tramlines. The objective in this case was twofold: Parliamentary approval for a number of modifications to the three tube lines UERL proposed to construct, (apart from these modifications parliamentary authorization already existed, – the modifications included the extensions to the Hampstead line, and the link-up of the two Piccadilly line schemes); and secondly the blocking of any “new” underground lines schemes from receiving Parliamentary approval, where such schemes would pose a threat to the profitability of the CTY/RWP lines.

A number of “new” underground railway line proposals for London were promoted to the stage of lodgement of Parliamentary Bills during 1901, no doubt stimulated by the commercial success of the Central London Railway which opened for normal traffic in July 1900. The story of the path through parliamentary processes that unfolded regarding these various proposals is complex, and is described in Jackson and Croome, op.cit., pp.74-90 and Barker and Robbins, op.cit., pp.65-7 and pp.77-84. The climax to the process occurred in September 1902. By that stage the main threat to the commercial prospects of the CTY/RWP scheme had crystallized as a proposed tube system being promoted by J.P.Morgan’s London financial house (then managed by J.Pierpont Morgan junior) in collaboration with London United Tramways, a company controlled by Bristol-based George and Samuel White which was then in the process of developing a successful system of electric tramways from Hammersmith and Shepherds Bush westwards and south westwards (see Geoffrey Wilson, London United Tramways: A History 1894 to 1933, George Allen and Unwin, London, 1971, particularly Chapter 6). This scheme was for some 40 miles of underground railway, at an estimated cost of ₤11.4 million with London United Tramways to contribute ₤3.7 million and Morgans responsible for raising ₤7.7 million (loc.cit., p.86).

The Morgan scheme passed an important hurdle in the House of Commons in July 1902, but with an important “string” attached – the Commons instructed the Select Committee considering the Bill to ensure that conditions were inserted requiring that the whole of the proposed scheme be built (Barker and Robbins, p.82). Before the Commons Committee could meet after the summer recess to finalize this process for the Morgan scheme, UERL bought control of London United Tramways from George White and his associates. Wilson states “in September 1902 control of the London United passed to the Yerkes group and Yerkes himself took George White’s place in the chair” (op.cit., p.88). Without the active collaboration of London United Tramways, it was not possible for Morgan to construct the whole of the originally proposed scheme. The machinery of the parliamentary system did not allow a recommittal of the Bill so that the Commons requirement could be reconsidered, so the promoters had to allow their Bill to lapse. They could have started the process again the following year. But “the Morgan group did not again appear on the London underground scene” (Jackson and Croome, op.cit., p.84).

CTY and RWP came in for criticism in the press, and in Parliament for the manner in which the Morgan scheme had been blocked. In a 1½ hour House of Commons debate on the matter on 29 October 1902 it was described variously as “a very dishonourable transaction”, “a scandal which had probably no precedent in the annals of … committee work”, “a Stock Exchange ramp” etc. (see Jackson and Croome, loc.cit., and Barker and Robbins, p.83). Herapath’s Railway Journal editorialized on “The Tube Scandal” on 31 October 1902 referring to “Mr Yerkes and his jackal, Mr Perks …” (p.991). J.P.Morgan senior sent a wire sympathizing with his son on the matter, describing it as “Would seem to be greatest rascality and conspiracy I ever heard of” (quoted in Barker and Robbins, p.84). CTY had come in for strongly worded criticism from press and politicians during the 1898 Chicago struggle which he lost. One imagines he felt little distress on this occasion. With RWP one cannot be so confident. But that did not stop him claiming significant credit for the coup at the beginning of 1903. The friendly profile article “Mr R.W.Perks M.P.” published in The British Monthly, January 1903, stated “One of the latest achievements of this indefatigable man has been to pilot through Parliament four important Tube electric railways, and he recently negotiated on behalf of Messrs Speyer Brothers, the purchase of the controlling interest in the London United Tramways, which was followed by the withdrawal of Mr Pierpont Morgan’s tube railways” (p.83).

B8 UERL raises additional funds for construction and equipment^{(ref addendum b)}

Between early 1903 and mid 1905 UERL raised some ₤10½ million of additional money to fund the construction and equipment requirements of the various parts of the project. Three distinct mechanisms were used.

In January 1903, four per cent preference shares in the Piccadilly Line Company were put on the market in London and Amsterdam. Less than half of the offered 200,000 ₤10 shares were taken up, despite their being guaranteed by UERL (Jackson and Croome, p.90). Together with the general lack of buoyancy in equity markets during this period, this seems to have deterred further attempts to raise funds by issues of traditional equity instruments.

In October 1904 and March 1905, a combined total of some ₤3 million of four per cent debentures were issued, the first tranche secured on the Lots Road power station, the March 1905 issues secured on the assets of the three tube companies (Barker and Robbins, pp.112-113).

Between the preference share issue and the debenture issues, there occurred in May 1903 the biggest of the period’s capital raisings. This involved an issue not of securities of any traditional type but of instruments which embodied a mix of debt characteristics and equity characteristics. Today the same instrument would probably be marketed as a “stapled security” to allow its features to be more readily understood. The instruments were called “profit-sharing secured notes” and were issued at 96 per cent of par value. Their debt characteristics consisted of a fixed five per cent p.a. interest up to redemption on 1 June 1908 (i.e. a five year term), with security consisting of a portfolio of shares valued at just over ₤10 million and the London & Westminster Bank to be trustee. The equity characteristics arose from the fact that of that portfolio of shares comprising the security only ₤2.3 million of the ₤10 million was represented by shares for which there was a ready market and whose “value” could be assured against market prices (i.e. London United Tramways ordinaries, District ordinaries, and three different types of District prefs). The remainder comprised shares in the three UERL tube companies, valued at par. The plan was that as these shares were marketed by UERL, the proceeds raised in excess of 95 per cent of par would be divided into halves, with half distributed as the “profit-sharing” element in the “secured notes” (Barker and Robbins, pp.113-114). ₤5 million of these new instruments were offered pro rata to UERL shareholders. The finance houses Speyer Bros and the Old Colony Trust Co of Boston (both already shareholders of UERL) put together a syndicate which undertook placement of both the remaining ₤2 million and those from the ₤5 million not taken up by the initial offerees. “The notes were all sold by February 1905 and the syndicate dissolved” (Jackson and Croome, p.91). With the issue of these new financial instruments the board of directors of UERL was expanded from 7 to 15. It was at this stage that Edgar Speyer and his brother James both joined the board, together with six additional Americans and J.H.Teixeira de Mattos from the Amsterdam finance house of that name. (De Mattos was recorded as holding 4,900 ordinary shares in the UERL’s first shareholder list, BT 31/31858/73376 at P.R.O.).

During the construction phase of the three UERL tubes, Price and Reeves were the sub-contractors responsible for the tunnelling on the Hampstead line (Jackson and Croome, p.98). As was discussed in section B1 above, T.J.Reeves was one of the trustee-executors of the T.A.Walker deceased estate between 1889 and 1898, which involved managing the completion of various construction projects in which T.A.Walker and RWP had been connected (see section C below). RWP assisted the three trustee-executors in that process. John Price had been one of T.A.Walker’s trusted senior employees. The tunnelling on the Piccadilly line was shared between two firms of sub-contractors, one being “Walker Price & Reeves” (loc.cit.). The Walker here is probably Charles Hay Walker, son-in-law and nephew of T.A.Walker, also a trustee-executor of the T.A.Walker estate 1889-1898 and from 1898 in partnership with RWP in the public works contracting firm C.H.Walker and Co. Ltd. Charles Hay Walker had been one of the District shareholders to sell their shares into MDET at its formation as was Fanny Walker (see section B3 above). Fanny Walker was the name of Charles Hay Walker’s wife, T.A.Walker’s second oldest daughter. It was also the name of T.A.Walker’s wife. John Price was also the contractor for the construction of the Whitechapel and Bow railway (Edmonds, op.cit., p.175). This was an underground railway of just over two miles, half owned by the District and half by the London Tilbury & Southend Railway, built May 1899 to June 1902 at a cost of ₤1.2 million to connect the two systems (Charles E.Lee, The Metropolitan District Railway, Oakwood Press, London, 1956, p.20). It was worked by the District and electrified as part of the District electrification process (loc.cit.).

B9 Exit of CTY and RWP

In February 1905, CTY took over from RWP as chairman of the District and RWP became deputy chairman. The Lots Road power station started functioning in the same month and electrical working was introduced across the District system during 1905, commencing on its main lines in July (Jackson and Croome, p.105). By this stage CTY’s health had seriously deteriorated, and RWP chaired meetings in July and August (Barker and Robbins, p.117). CTY recovered sufficiently to chair meetings in October, but then returned to the United States where he died on 29 December 1905. The cause of death was Bright’s disease (Barker and Robbins, p.116), the same kidney degeneration condition which had caused the death of RWP’s chief business confederate of the 1880s, T.A.Walker in 1889 (see section C below). In January 1906 Edgar Speyer took over the chairmanship of the UERL and George Stegmann Gibb became deputy-chairman and managing director (Jackson and Croome, p.105). On 3 January 1906 Gibb had also been appointed chairman and managing director of the District (Edmonds, p.232). Speyer had recruited Gibb during December 1905. He had previously been general manager (since 1891) of the very successful North Eastern Railway (see Barker and Robbins, pp.137-139). RWP continued as deputy chairman of the District until June 1907 when he resigned, this being announced as “owing to the pressure of other business”.

At the time of CTY’s death, the District was in full electrical operation and its traffic levels were not living up to UERL expectations. By the time of RWP’s resignation from the District Board, two of the UERL tubes were in operation (the Bakerloo opened in three stages March 1906 to March 1907, the Piccadilly opened in December 1906) and the Hampstead line had just opened in the same month. From the evidence on the Bakerloo and the Piccadilly, it was clear the UERL’s tube traffic was not going to match up to expectations either.

Jackson and Croome state that: “early in 1906 Speyer had tried to obtain the help of the LCC, suggesting that they raise ₤5 million for the UERL on which he would pay four per cent. In return the County Council would be given a right to purchase in twenty-one or forty years” (p.127). LCC elections in March 1907 saw the Conservatives take power, however. “Although Speyer mooted the topic again at the Hampstead opening in June, it fell on deaf ears” (loc.cit.). If the result of the March 1907 LCC elections had been different, it is possible that the CTY/RWP London Underground project would have turned down the track which a previous RWP project had taken when it was in not-dissimilar financial difficulties – the Manchester Ship Canal Project discussed at C9 below. And in 1911 the result of a Canadian election appears to have dealt another RWP project a major blow (see section C13 below).

B10 1908 Financial Reconstruction and Epilogue

The unpaid ₤5 on the UERL ordinary shares was called up during late 1906-early 1907. (₤1.5s payable 15 August 1906, the same again on 13 September, and ₤2.10s on 14 Feb 1907, Jackson and Croome, pp.125-126). By late 1907 UERL was having difficulty servicing the interest on its profit-sharing secured notes. The financial crisis in the United States in October further diminished market confidence that there would be any profits to “share” on the notes, and in the ability of UERL to redeem them at maturity in June 1908. By the end of November 1907 the notes were trading at 35 per cent of their face value (Barker and Robbins, p.151). During early 1908 a scheme was developed for dealing with this situation. Its implementation required UERL to apply to go into voluntary liquidation (15 April) with a temporary receiver and manager (George Gibb) appointed pending the company’s creditors (most significantly the noteholders) and its shareholders giving approval to the arrangements. A series of meetings of these various stakeholder interests took place during May and June 1908, and the voluntary liquidation was closed on 21 July (Jackson and Croome, pp.128-129).

The essence of the reconstruction was that the noteholders accepted conversion of their paper into two new types of paper, one explicitly a debt instrument with an interest guarantee provided by Speyer Bros, the other more explicitly an equity instrument – but still somewhat confusingly described as a “bond”. Each ₤100 face value of the profit-sharing notes was converted into ₤40 face value of the former instrument (4½ per cent fixed interest bonds maturing 1 January 1933) and ₤70 face value of the latter instrument. Termed “6% income bonds”, the 6% referred to a maximum level of distribution which had to be satisfied before any dividend on UERL ordinaries was paid, with the actual level of distribution depending on the company’s earnings. These instruments carried voting rights and were to be redeemed at par on 1 January 1948. The issue of ₤1 million of a third new type of UERL capital instrument was also approved as part of the scheme: 5% prior lien bonds maturing 1 January 1920 in order to raise working capital. (See Jackson and Croome, p.128, and Barker and Robbins, p.152.)

From the time of this financial reconstruction to the first world war, the position of UERL gradually improved. The company was able to take control of London’s biggest bus operator, the London General Omnibus Co., in February 1912 through a mainly scrip-for-scrip offer involving a mix of its 6% “income bonds” described above plus two new instruments “6% first cumulative preference debentures” and “A” ordinaries (Barker and Robbins, pp.176-177). In December 1912 a second London tramway system (Metropolitan Electric Tramways) together with its bus-operating subsidiary was amalgamated with the UERL-controlled London United Tramways (ibid., pp.178-180, and The Economist, 7 December 1912, pp.1178-1179). In January 1913 UERL completed a take-over of the two other principal deep-level underground railways in London, the City and South London (which now forms the eastern “half” of the Northern line through central London) and the Central London Railway. These were scrip-for-scrip and involved the issue of stock in the UERL subsidiary established in 1910 to “house” the three tube railways it had itself constructed (London Electric Railways), see Barker and Robbins, pp 182-183, and The Economist, 1912, pp.1061-1062, pp.1119-1121, pp.1132-33. The Metropolitan Railway remained independent of the UERL group but there was significant “co-operation” between the two concerns, including a system of “interchangeable and through tickets between bus, rail and LUT trams” (Barker and Robbins, p.173) and joint marketing endeavours.

At the UERL half-yearly meeting of shareholders of 24 February 1913, Edgar Speyer announced that for the first time the company would pay the full six per cent on its “6 per cent income bonds” (The Economist, 1 March 1913, p.530. Note that Barker and Robbins appear to be in error when they state that the full six per cent was only paid in 1914, op.cit., p.186.) By July 1913 those “income bonds” were trading on the Stock Exchange at 90 per cent of their par value, although the UERL ordinaries were only at 35 per cent of par (The Economist, 5 July 1913, p.43). The UERL shareholders list at 12 March 1912 shows that both Murray Griffith and Emilie Grigsby must have paid the calls on their one thousand shares each. A company “The General Commercial Investment Trust” which had the same address as RWP’s London office, did likewise (BT 31/31858 at P.R.O. Barker and Robbins appear to be in error when citing this source as dated 7 March 1912, op.cit., p.380).

It was the legal duty of the UERL directors to pursue the estate of CTY for the calls on the UERL part-paid shares standing in his name at the time of his death. The ensuing litigation lasted for four years. The outcome prompted Edwin Lefèvre to write “What Availeth It?” published in Everybody’s Magazine, Vol 24, June 1911, pp.836-848 and self-described as a “sermon” with “dead Charles T.Yerkes” as its text (p.836). Lefèvre describes how in CTY’s will: “He left to New York City his home [and art collection] to be used as a gallery; he left millions to build a hospital for all the people, and amply endowed both with cash. He left large bequests to the Yerkes Observatory and other institutions” (p.846). Lefèvre goes on to describe how the litigation of creditors against the estate prevented all this, how “his house and his art treasures [were sold] at auction, in order to pay his debts. As he looted in life, so was his estate looted after life. And therefore his fellow-citizens will not see wonderful paintings in a Yerkes gallery, and will not be healed in a Yerkes hospital …” (p.847).

It would seem that the workings of the Edwardian-period free-enterprise capitalist system had contrived to produce a transfer of substantial welfare-value from the then and subsequent generations of citizens of (and visitors to) New York to the then and subsequent generations of citizens of (and visitors to) London. The CTY estate was not the sole means of providing for that transfer. The 1902 and 1912 shareholder lists of UERL held at the P.R.O provide the names, addresses and “occupations” of others who participated in the wealth-transfer process. These suggest that Boston at least may have shared with New York as being a significant “donor” to London in this wealth transfer.

C. Sir Robert Perks’s Business Projects Other than with C.T.Yerkes

This section attempts to provide a summary of the various “business” projects of RWP’s career, other than his ventures directly or indirectly associated with C.T.Yerkes outlined in Section B above. The projects are listed in chronological order of RWP’s time of initially becoming involved, as far as it has been possible to identify these. In each case the source of reference to RWP’s involvement is given first followed by a summary of such further information on the project as has been so far identified and which appears pertinent to the concerns of this paper. The projects are:

Appledore to Lydd Railway 1880-1895
Channel Tunnel c1880-1889 (?)
Severn Tunnel 1879-1886
London Inner Circle Completion 1882-1884
Blackpool Railway c1883-1895
Barry Docks c1884-1889
Preston Docks 1884-1892
Buenos Aires Harbour Works c1887-1898
Manchester Ship Canal 1887-1890
Lancs, Derbyshire & E.Coast Railway 1894-1906
Pekin Syndicate, Limited c1897-1913(?)
Paper Making c1898-1909(?)
Georgian Bay Canal c1899-1926
Royal Aquarium 1902-1912
Viatka-Vologda Railway c1902-1906
Rio de Janeiro Quays c1906-1908
Bermuda Docks c1906-1908
Transandine Railway c1908-1910
Montevideo Sea Wall c1911-1912
Havana Docks c1913-1916
North American Railways c1913-1920s

C1. Appledore to Lydd Railway

Ref: Crane (p.74) and Perks’s Notes for an autobiography (p.68) state that this Kent railway was “built” by RWP, with Thomas Andrew Walker “employed to construct”. T.A.Walker (born 1828, died 25 November 1889) was recommended to RWP by Edward Watkin in Spring 1880. This was the first project in which RWP combined with Walker.

Further Information

Peter A.Harding The New Romney branch line, Peter A.Harding, Woking, 1983 (ISBN 0952345889) contains the following. “The nominally-independent Lydd Railway Company was formed and on 8 April 1881 were authorized to build a standard gauge single track line from Appledore to Lydd … and on to a terminus at Dungeness” (p.4). Edward Watkin, through the South Eastern Railway was considering a scheme to build a port at Dungeness for a new cross-channel steamer service to Le Treport, 114 miles by rail from Paris. The chairman of the Lydd railway company was Alfred Mellor Watkin (son of Sir Edward). The company’s first ordinary half-yearly General Meeting of the shareholders was held 16th February 1882 at the Charing Cross Hotel in London with the following present: Alfred M.Watkin; Sir Edward Watkin (representing the South Eastern Railway); R.W.Perks; William Mewburn (RWP’s father-in-law and a director of the South Eastern Railway); and William Mewburn junior (p.6).

According to R.W.Kidner, The South Eastern Railway, Oakwood Press, 1953: “The Appledore-Lydd line [was] opened on 7 December 1881 … with a branch from Lydd to Dungeness opened the same day for goods and 1 April 1883 for passengers, and the Lydd-New Romney branch opened 19 June 1884.” (p.17). Harding reports that Parliamentary authorization for this latter extension had been given on 24 July 1882 at the same time as authorization to build north from Appledore through Tenterden to Headcorn. “On the 25 January 1883 a further Bill for a line from Headcorn to Loose near Maidstone was submitted to Parliament which would have given Sir Edward Watkin his through line from London and North Kent to Dungeness” (p.6).

Parliamentary approval for this final link (The Lydd Railway Extension Bill 1883) was not achieved. Construction north from Appledore was not undertaken. Work on a large port at Dungeness was never commenced, and the projected cross-channel steamer service from that port was therefore still-born. In January 1895 the Lydd Railway Company ceased to exist and was absorbed into the South Eastern Railway (from which Edward Watkin had retired in 1894). According to Crane, Watkin had told RWP in Spring 1880 that the South-Eastern Railway would “guarantee the stock” of a company established to build the Appledore to Lydd line (p.74). RWP’s seaside home at Littlestone, Kent was described by Crane as a “handsome residence … built through Sir Robert’s connexion with the Lydd railway. In the ample grounds stands a small hall …” (p.235).

C2. Channel Tunnel

Ref: Crane (pp.80-85) and Perks’s Notes for an autobiography (pp.84-85) state that RWP was lawyer for Edward Watkin’s Channel Tunnel project of the 1880s, and “took charge of it when it came before a joint committee of the two Houses [of Parliament, in 1883]” (Crane p.80).

Further Information

(Source: Donald Hunt’s The Tunnel, Images Publishing, Malvern 1994).

At the time RWP became lawyer for the railway companies controlled by Edward Watkin in 1880, there were two separate and rival British projects afoot seeking authorization to build the British section of a Channel Tunnel in cooperation with the French company Societe du Chemin de Fer Sous-marin entre la France et l’Angleterre (formed 1 February 1875, with half its capital subscribed by Chemin de Fer du Nord, and a quarter by de Rothschild Frères). One of the British schemes was the “Channel Tunnel Company Limited” registered 15 January 1872, chaired by Lord Grosvenor who had links with the London Chatham and Dover Railway (he was J.S.Forbes’ predecessor as its Chairman). This scheme had done some preliminary work (authorized by Parliament in 1875) at St Margaret’s Bay (north-east of Dover) but water-influx forced the works to be abandoned. In 1880 Watkin’s South-Eastern Railway started tunnelling work halfway between Dover and Folkestone. In December 1881 a new company was registered, “The Submarine Continental Railway Company” with a capital of ₤250,000 in ₤1 shares, which took over the South-Eastern Railway’s work in January 1882. The Submarine Continental Railway Company spent “about ₤100,000” (p.57) on tunnelling until stopped by Board of Trade legal action in July 1882 (for violating the Crown’s foreshore rights by unauthorized digging below the high-water line to three-mile limit area).

In late 1882 the two rival British tunnel companies both brought Bills before Parliament. A Joint Select Committee of the two Houses (five members each) met 14 times between 20 April 1883 and 21 June 1883 “to enquire whether it is expedient that Parliamentary sanction be given …”. The committee found by six to four that it was “not expedient” (Crane states five to four, p.80). The Chair of the committee, Lord Lansdowne, was one of the minority four. The Submarine Continental Railway Company tried again in 1884, its Bill being defeated 14 May. The rival company introduced Bills in 1885 and 1886. The first was defeated, the second withdrawn because of the election. In July 1886 the Watkin company bought out the rival company for ₤25,000 in Submarine Continental Railway Company ₤1 shares (newly issued for the purpose). In February 1887 the Watkin company was renamed the Channel Tunnel Company Limited. In August 1887 it introduced a new Bill into parliament “to enable it to continue its experimental works” (pp.61-62). As with similar Channel Tunnel (Experimental Works) Bills later Gladstone spoke in its favour but it was defeated.

In December 1906 the Liberal Government of Campbell Bannerman rejected a new Bill brought forward by the Channel Tunnel Company. RWP, no longer associated with the company, supported his party’s rejection of the Bill. Crane (p.85) states that RWP was concerned that the 1906 scheme was expected to cost ₤16 million whereas the Watkin scheme “involved a cost of only seven millions [which] Sir Robert succeeded in getting guaranteed in London and New York, without underwriting, in forty-eight hours”. It is not stated when that forty-eight hour period occurred.

The 1883 Directory of Directors entry for RWP’s father-in-law William Mewburn records him as a director of the Submarine Continental Railway Company Limited, as well as of the South-Eastern Railway and the Star Life Insurance Company. The 1888 and 1889 Directory of Directors entries report “Channel Tunnel Company (ex officio)” in place of the “Submarine” Company. In the Journal of the Royal Society of Arts 19 December 1913, there is a report of RWP’s contribution to the Society’s discussion of a paper by Arthur Fell titled “The Channel Tunnel”. This report includes the passage: “Of the twenty original subscribers to the scheme for the construction of the Tunnel, only two or three were now living, Sir Ernest Cassel and the speaker being among them. The speaker had been concerned in getting together the evidence for the Parliamentary Committee ….” (p.96).

C3. Severn Tunnel

Ref: RWP’s Who’s Who entries for 1900 and 1901 state: “was interested with late T.A.Walker in … Severn Tunnel”. No subsequent RWP Who’s Who entry mentions the Severn Tunnel. Crane does not mention the Severn Tunnel among the projects RWP and T.A.Walker were connected together in. RWP’s notes for an autobiography devotes pp.94-95 to T.A.Walker’s work on the Severn Tunnel and states that RWP was present at the site on the day of a major flooding of the tunnel workings.

Further Information

T.A.Walker entered into a contract to complete the Severn Tunnel around October-November 1879 – before his first meeting with RWP (see C1 above). Walker’s own account of his work on the project: The Severn Tunnel: Its Construction and Difficulties, Richard Bentley, London, 1888 begins: “I was engaged for seven years in the construction of the Severn Tunnel” (p.9). The Great Western Railway Company had begun construction of the tunnel in March 1873, using a directly employed workforce and with John Hawkshaw as consultant engineer (L.T.C.Rolt, Victorian Engineering, Allen Lane, London, 1970, p.253). Following slow progress to 1877, two contractors were commissioned. The pace of progress lifted but on 16 October 1879 the tunnellers broke into a powerful underground stream and the entire workings were flooded. “It was at this juncture that Richardson [the GWR engineer-in-charge] retired from the scene and Sir John Hawkshaw assumed full control on the understanding that Thomas Walker be given the contract for the whole works” (ibid. p.256). Walker took over the site on 18 December 1879. After numerous difficulties, described in Walker’s book, the tunnel itself was completed in 1885. After further work on a permanent pumping station and ventilation fans, the 4½ mile tunnel was opened to goods traffic on 1 December 1886, and passenger traffic in 1887.

According to Hamilton Ellis British Railway History, 1877-1947, George Allen and Unwin, London, 1958, T.A.Walker had put in a tender for the work (for ₤948,959) in 1877 and had been turned down (p.35). It would seem that the eventual cost to the Great Western Railway of his “rescuing” the project was significantly greater. Ellis states: “It cannot be said that the Severn Tunnel has been a joy for ever to its owner. To this day, the expense of keeping it dry and properly ventilated is immense” (p.39). In June 1890 John Hawkshaw wrote an “introductory note” for the 1891 third edition of Walker’s The Severn Tunnel. In this he praises: “his great anxiety always to fulfil his engagements [and] the very great interest he took in all the constructive details of his work”, and goes on “This led him to disregard considerations of expense when difficulties were met with which had to be overcome. If more plant was required it was procured at once, if more temporary work was necessary it was ordered to be done forthwith; and so questions of loss or gain to himself never caused delay.”(p.16) This would seem to make T.A.Walker a somewhat unattractive prospect to be in a full-scale financial partnership with, under a framework unprotected by a limited liability company structure – unless contracts on a “cost-plus” basis could be secured. This may explain why the words “partner” and “partnership” are entirely absent from the descriptions by Crane and RWP himself of the business “connexion” between RWP and T.A.Walker.

C4. London Inner Circle Completion

Ref: RWP’s Who’s Who entries from 1913 onwards state: “was associated with late T.A.Walker in building … Inner Circle Railway”. Crane does not mention this among the projects RWP and T.A.Walker were “connected” together in. Nor does RWP’s notes for an autobiography. Nor do any of RWP’s Who’s Who entries prior to 1913.

Further Information

At the time RWP and T.A.Walker met and entered on their first project together (the Appledore-Lydd railway) in 1880 (see above), the shallow level London Underground which had been intended to provide a “circle” route, had a gap between the Metropolitan District Railway’s terminus at Mansion House and the Metropolitan Railway’s terminus then at Aldgate. Between 1865 and 1871, T.A.Walker had undertaken “management” of the construction of the initial sections of the Inner Circle but this was not work “on his own account”, and the timing means it clearly cannot be the work RWP’s Who’s Who entries refer to. Those entries seem therefore to refer to the construction of the completion link. A tender process for the completion link occurred in September-October 1882 “with Sir John Hawkshaw and J.Wolfe Barry as engineers, and the contract was placed with T.A.Walker” (Charles E.Lee, The Metropolitan District Railway, The Oakwood Press, 1956, p.12). The link went into public use on 6 October 1884. Lee states that “The traffic results of the City Lines proved a bitter disappointment to the District, and, so far from proving the salvation of the system, their opening marked the beginning of a period of depression which grew steadily worse. Moreover, it was one of constant litigation [with the Metropolitan]” (pp.13-14). A.A.Jackson, London’s Metropolitan Railway, David and Charles, Newton Abbot, 1986 states: “Contrary to the apparent high expectations of all concerned, the circle completion proved a financial disaster, producing much less new traffic than was necessary to service the ₤1.25m capital raised by each company at the agreed four per cent” (p.114).

Crane notes that “During Sir Robert’s legal connexion with the [Metropolitan], the Inner Circle … was completed” (p.60) but there is no mention of RWP having a financial interest in the construction contract. Crane also reports that prior to this period, when RWP had been during 1872-76 articled to a firm of solicitors which “had no railway business, neither did they practice in the Parliamentary Committees” (p.59), he had nevertheless given up “all his leisure” to a study of the issues surrounding the completion link: “He made himself master of all the interests involved, and waded patiently through all the Acts of Parliament, as well as the contracts made with the public bodies whose rights, real or imaginary, were protected…. He drew sketches of what appeared to him to be improvements of the route, and devoted whole Saturday afternoons to surveying the affected properties” (pp.58-59). The construction of a shallow-level underground line through a highly built-up area devoid of any convenient wide straight through roads required the purchase of all property required for the “cut and cover”, plus the payment of compensation for damages to adjacent properties disturbed by the workings. And at the end of the process any “surplus lands” acquired by a railway company normally had to be disposed of within 10 years under a process which gave highly preferential terms first to the owners from whom the properties had been purchased and then to adjoining property owners (see A.A.Jackson, op.cit., p.136).

Shortly after describing RWP’s Saturday afternoons devoted to surveys along possible routes for the Inner Circle Completion link, Crane reports that during this same period of his life RWP took an interest in property development schemes in London: “Sir Robert, like many other wide-awake men, interested himself to advantage in some of the more promising schemes. He also made some judicious deals in house property, occasionally reselling his purchases at a profit without having so much as seen the deeds” (p.62). Between 1885 and 1887, RWP “successfully piloted through Parliament” a scheme which allowed the Metropolitan Railway to partially spin-off its surplus lands into a semi-separate entity, with Metropolitan Railway ordinary shareholders allocated shares in the new entity’s capital on a pro rata basis. (See A.A.Jackson, op.cit., pp.138-140.) Further powers to deal with the surplus lands were obtained in the Metropolitan Railways Acts of 1889 and 1898 (loc.cit). This work is briefly referred to in RWP’s notes for an autobiography (p.82).

C5 Blackpool Railway

Ref: no references in Crane, RWP’s notes for an autobiography, or RWP’s Who’s Who entries.

Further Information

In January 1883, a Blackpool delegation headed by the Mayor, met the Board of Edward Watkin’s Manchester, Sheffield & Lincolnshire Railway seeking that company’s support for an independent railway to be constructed from Blackpool to Preston, where it would link up with another small independent railway (the West Lancashire) which was negotiating with the MS&L to link with the latter via Longton to Wigan junction (George Dow, Great Central volume 2, p.175). The goal of the Blackpool delegation was improved railway communication with Manchester. “The MS&L had already decided to apply for powers to extend the Wigan Junction [line] to Longton … Now it promised to support the Blackpool Railway on the premise that the cooperation of the West Lancashire, the Preston Corporation (whose contemplated dock works would alter the route of the line), the Ribble Navigation Company and the local authorities and landowners concerned was forthcoming” (loc.cit).

The Wigan-Longton extension received Parliamentary authorization under the MS&L (Additional Powers) Act of August 1883. At a meeting on 21 September 1883 between the MS&L Board and twenty-eight representatives from the Blackpool-Preston-Lytham area, Dow reports that R.W.Perks was present as “Solicitor to the promoters of the Blackpool Railway”. A Bill for the railway was lodged in the 1883 Session but withdrawn “in deference to the Ribble Navigation Company and after having made amicable arrangements with the Preston Corporation” (ibid p.177). The Bill was lodged again in 1884 and passed by Parliament. The Blackpool Railway Company was incorporated 7 August 1884 and started to buy land needed for the line.

RWP wrote to Watkin in July 1887 stating: “What we want to do is to issue a prospectus inviting subscriptions of ₤400,000. Your company have power to subscribe ₤100,000, and we believe that if you will exercise that power (you have already subscribed nearly ₤50,000) we can do the rest.” (quoted by Dow, p.179). The ₤400,000 estimated cost of the line was for ₤115,000 on land, ₤285,000 on works etc.). The prospectus does not appear to have been issued. In August 1889, Parliament authorized an extension of the original five years provided for completion of the line to 1892. In 1892 a further three-year extension of time was secured. During this time deputations from Blackpool and Preston pressed the MS&L Board to start construction. In July 1892 “the Town Clerk of Blackpool was assured that the MS&L Directors were anxious to see the line completed; but they were not the promoters, nor did they possess powers to raise the whole of the capital … Later that year the MS&L and Blackpool Railway Solicitors were instructed to issue and advertise a prospectus” (Dow, p.180). Dow expresses doubts, however, as to whether Watkin had any “real intention” by then of constructing the line. Powers to construct lapsed on 7th August 1895. The land which the Company had bought was sold and the company wound-up.

One of the founder directors of the Blackpool railway was “John Cremer Clarke of Abingdon” (Dow, p.177). In the Who’s Who in Methodism (1933) entry for RWP’s brother-in-law and former school-friend William Mewburn junior, his wife is cited as “Margaret E.Clarke of Abingdon”. William Mewburn junior was a stockbroker in the Manchester firm of Mewburn and Barker (David J.Jeremy, Capitalists and Christians, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1990, p.302).

C6 Barry Docks

Ref: RWP’s 1900 to 1912 Who’s Who entries state: “was interested, with late T.A.Walker, in Barry Docks”. The 1913 to 1918 entries read: “was associated with late T.A.Walker in building Barry Docks”. Crane states that: “The friendship [with T.A.Walker] was fruitful in connecting Sir Robert with a number of public works of considerable magnitude, both at home and abroad. The first of these was the Barry Docks and Railways in South Wales” (p.76). In RWP’s notes for an autobiography, he states “In South Wales, especially at Barry, I was brought into very close relations with Mr Walker” (p.99). He then describes assisting the Barry Co. to place an issue of ₤500,000 of five per cent Preference Stock, at par, during its construction phase (pp.99-102).

Further Information

The Barry Dock is seven miles south-west of Cardiff. It occupies the eastern portion of the channel which formerly separated Barry Island from the mainland. D.S.M.Barrie, A Regional History of The Railways of Great Britain Volume XII, South Wales, David St John Thomas, Nairn, 1994, states: “in the 1880s, when coal shipments from Cardiff had risen to over eight million tons a year and when only the opening of the Penarth Dock had afforded any interim relief to congestion, the coal traders and shippers combined under the leadership of David Davies of the Ocean Colleries to make a modern port at Barry, with rail connections to the coalfield” (p.125). The principal docks in the Cardiff area at this time were the Bute dock system, owned by the third Marquess of Bute (1847-1900) described as “one of the most remarkable figures of the nineteenth century British peerage” in John Davies, Cardiff and the Marquesses of Bute, University of Wales Press, Cardiff, 1981, pp.21-22. He succeeded to the title at the age of six months, was the subject of a major legal battle over his guardianship in 1861, abandoned the Presbyterianism of his father for the Roman Catholic Church three months after his twenty-first birthday, was famed as “the hero of the most successful of Disraeli’s novels [Lothair] …., was prominent among the lay Catholics at the Vatican Council … led the Scottish delegation to Pope Leo XIII’s ordination jubilee celebrations in 1888, … entertained Cardinal Manning at Cardiff Castle, … contributed substantial sums to Conservative party funds, … he redecorated Cardiff Castle in a style of overwhelming splendour, while at Castell Coch he created what is perhaps the most delightful landmark in Wales” (Davies pp.22-29).

In 1876 the Marquess informed the Cardiff Chamber of Commerce that he did not see that it would be “advantageous to me” to invest in expansion of the docks as they sought (M.J.Daunton, Coal Metropolis: Cardiff 1870-1914, Leicester University Press, 1977, p.32). This led to an approach by the Chamber of Commerce and the Corporation to take over the docks. While the Marquess in 1880 indicated he was in favour, in 1881 he “announced he would retain control of the docks and provide the required extensions” (loc.cit). In his Bute Docks Bill of 1882, however, he sought to impose a new one-penny-per-ton levy on coal loaded at the docks, and to provide the dock authorities with the sole control of labour at the docks. These features were opposed by the coalowners and the shippers. The Penarth dock was not part of the Bute dock system. From 1863 it was operated by the Taff Vale Railway, but Parliamentary authorization of this had required that the Bute rates not be undercut (ibid, p.21), “in fact there was no real competition and the Penarth Dock was treated mainly as an overflow”.

David Davies (1818-1890) had worked as a railway contractor between 1855 and the late 1860s mainly on lines in North and mid-Wales (see R.S.Joby, The Railway Builders: Lives and Works of Victorian Railway Contractors, David & Charles, Newton Abbot and London, 1983, pp.98-106). In 1865 he branched out into the development of coal mines in the Rhondda Valley and by 1870 that was his major focus, with his Ocean Collieries Group the second most productive in South Wales (ibid p.159). He was a non-conformist and a temperance advocate. From 1874 to 1886 he was Liberal MP for Cardigan. In 1886 he was one of those Liberals who broke with Gladstone over Home Rule for Ireland, and lost his seat to a Gladstonian Liberal by nine votes. Daunton points out that “In Cardiff the commercial elite of shipowners and coal shippers was not the ‘natural’ leaders of the town … and this was most strikingly apparent over the issue of dock extension … [there] was a conflict between the Chamber of Commerce on the one hand, concerned for dock provision but not necessarily at Cardiff, and the council on the other hand, concerned that the docks should be extended only at Cardiff … [and] a conflict between those wishing to provide for coal and those wishing to diversify the local economy” (op.cit. p.155).

In this context it is hardly surprising that the passage of the Barry Dock Bill involved “a titanic struggle in parliament” (Joby, p.160). Despite the Marquess’s actions in 1881 (see above), the Cardiff council voted 22 to 8 to support the Bute Dock Bill of 1882. The Chamber of Commerce voted 59 to 1 to oppose the Bill (Daunton, p.156). A House of Lords Committee rejected the first Bill for the Barry Scheme in July 1883. Its promoters then offered to buy the Bute docks but were turned down (Barrie, op.cit. p.125). A second Barry Docks and Railway Bill was more successfully promoted in 1884 and received Royal Assent on 14 August 1884. By then the total costs incurred in obtaining the Act were ₤70,000 (loc.cit). Joby reports that “within a few weeks” of the Royal Assent, the contract to construct the dock scheme was let to T.A.Walker. It would appear that this was on the commendation of the chief engineer of the dock works, John Wolfe Barry (1836-1918), himself a pupil of John Hawkshaw (1811-1891). Wolfe Barry had direct experience of T.A.Walker’s work from the Inner Circle completion project, and would have known of Hawkshaw’s high opinion of T.A.Walker’s work on the Severn Tunnel project (q.v.) then still in progress.

The “first sod” was cut on 14 November 1884 by Lord Windsor, the Chairman of the company and owner of Barry Island. It might be noted that according to Hamilton Ellis, British Railway History 1877-1947, George Allen and Unwin, London 1958 (p.95), the terms for the land were “₤1.15s per acre per annum, with a royalty of half a ton (sic) on minerals and one of ten per cent on gross passenger, livestock and general goods receipts”. The construction work was carried on without interruption. On June 29 1889 the water was let into the dock and on 18 July 1889 both dock and railway were opened for traffic. A detailed paper on the Barry Dock Works was presented to the Institution of Civil Engineers meeting of 1 April 1890 by the Resident Engineer of the project, John Robinson. In the ensuing discussion Wolfe Barry provided some additional information including the cost: ₤620,000 for the dock works; ₤320,000 for the dock equipment; the railways ₤760,000 (Minutes of Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers, Volume 101, 1890, pp.167-70).

Financially, the Barry scheme was an immediate and lasting success. Hamilton Ellis states that it “proved to be something of a goldmine, as railways went” (p.96). William J.Stevens, Investment and Speculation in British Railways, Effingham Wilson, London, 1902 was no less positive: “The Barry has been a wonderfully successful company, having paid large dividends right from the beginnings of its career, and its Ordinary stock enjoys the distinction of being quoted the highest of any Home Railway stock” (p.202). For the half-year of 1889 that the dock and railway were in operation a dividend on the ordinary shares of 5 ½ per cent was paid. From 1890 to 1897 the annual dividends were 10 per cent, 10 per cent, 9.5 per cent, 9.5 per cent, 10 per cent, 10 per cent, 10 per cent and 10 per cent respectively. 1898 was affected by a major coal strike in South Wales and the dividend was cut to 3 per cent. In 1899 it was back up to 9 per cent (loc.cit). Stevens made another interesting comment: “The Barry Company has not been satisfied with its present phenomenal success, but is always trying to improve its position at the expense of its neighbours, as may be gathered from the fact that it spent nearly ₤67,000 between 1892 and 1898 inclusive on parliamentary matters … it is probably the strongest of the South Wales railways” (p.204).

The ₤500,000 issue of preference shares in the Barry Company which RWP refers to in his notes for an autobiography appears to have taken place during 1887, and appears to have involved a significant role for the Star Life Assurance Society. RWP’s father-in-law, William Mewburn senior was deputy chairman of that company at that stage (and was subsequently chairman from January 1888 to October 1897, from which time W.Mewburn junior took over his board seat). RWP’s legal partner Henry Hartley Fowler (1830-1911), fellow Wesleyan-Methodist, fellow Liberal Imperialist MP and from 1897 to 1900 a director of the Hampstead-Charing Cross Tube Company, was also a director of the Star Life Assurance Society through the 1880s and 1890s.

Records of the Barry Docks and Railway Company at the PRO state that RWP attended a meeting of the board of directors held on 27 April 1887. RWP was informed that the Board had decided to offer his client (sic) “only” ₤300,000 of the preference shares at par. RWP said he would consult his client and that he expected to be able to provide a favourable response by the following Friday. The minutes of the meeting then record a process by which some ₤280,000 of the preference issue was subscribed to “in the room”, with ₤140,000 of this by “David Davies and friends” and the remainder by nine other named individuals (some with “friends”). At the next Barry directors meeting, 13 May 1887, it was reported that RWP had agreed to accept ₤220,000 of the prefs “on behalf of Mr Mewburn and others”.

Records of the Star Life Assurance Society, now held as part of the Eagle Star Company’s archives in Cheltenham, provide the following information. A board of directors meeting of 25 May 1887 considered an application from RWP for an advance to David Davies of ₤90,000 at an interest rate of 4½ per cent, with Davies to pledge various nominated stocks as security. On 3 November 1887 RWP wrote to David Davies indicating that the “Star” had agreed to the loan and requesting that the securities for the loan (including ₤30,000 of Barry shares) should be transferred into the joint names of four nominated trustees for the Star. On 13 January 1888 RWP wrote to Mr G.C.Downing of the Barry Docks and Railway Company altering the first of the four nominated Star trustees from Sir William McArthur K.C.M.G. to “William Mewburn J.P.”.

It would appear that the Star Life Assurance Society directors had agreed to lend David Davies ₤90,000 to enable him (and possibly his friends) to take up that amount of the Barry Company’s 1887 prefs issue, at approximately the same time as William Mewburn and friends had sought (through RWP) to subscribe to more than ₤300,000 of the proposed ₤500,000 issue. In notes for an autobiography, RWP states that until he became involved in the process, David Davies had been working on the basis that the issue would need to be placed at three per cent under par (p.101). He goes on to say: “As soon as it became known in Cardiff that I and my friends had purchased the Stock at par, it rose rapidly to a very high premium, at which my relatives and I, later on, sold our Stock”. The Directory of Directors entries for 1888 to 1890 state that RWP was a director of the Barry Docks and Railways Company. He retired from the board on 24 July 1890.

C7 Preston Docks

Ref: RWP’s 1900 to 1903 Who’s Who entries state “was interested, with late T.A.Walker, in … Preston Docks”. The 1913 to 1918 entries state “was associated with late T.A.Walker in building …”. Crane states “The Preston Docks and the Manchester Ship Canal were other big concerns with which Sir Robert and his friend were connected” (pp.76-77). The project is not mentioned in RWP’s notes for an autobiography.

Further Information

This was a large project. “The dock itself, approximately 3,000 ft by 600 ft, was opened in 1892 and was for some years the largest in the British Isles” (Owen Ashmore, The Industrial Archaeology of Lancashire, David & Charles, Newton Abbott, 1969, p.220). It also involved a significant realignment of the river and its deepening between the dock and the open seas (16 miles) to allow vessels of 20 feet draught to sail up to Preston and use the dock. Jack M.Dackres, The Last Tide. A History of the Port of Preston, Carnegie Press, Preston, 1986, provides further information: The Ribble Navigation and Preston Dock Act, 1883 passed through parliament quickly and received Royal Assent on 16 July 1883. Dackres makes no mention of any involvement by RWP at this stage but it appears that by this time he had had contact with the Ribble Navigation Company and the Preston Corporation through his role as solicitor to the promoters of the Blackpool Railway (q.v.).

The 1883 Act provided for the Preston Corporation to take over the Ribble Navigation Company for ₤782,500, and to redevelop the dock at an estimated construction cost of ₤558,150. The Corporation was empowered to borrow ₤650,000 to be repaid over 60 years – plus sums to cover the costs of obtaining the Act and to cover interest costs whilst the construction was in progress (see Dackres, p.115 and p.145). Edward Garlick, who was Mayor of Preston during the promotion of the Act, resigned his position as an Alderman in November 1883 and was appointed by the Corporation as Engineer for the new works. Prior to its takeover by the Corporation he had been Treasurer of the Ribble Navigation Company and his firm Messrs Garlick Park and Sykes were that company’s engineers (Dackres, p.100). On 28 February 1884, Garlick recommended and the Corporation approved a more elaborate project than that which had been designed by Sir John Coode and submitted to Parliament in support of the Bill. On 3rd September 1884, Garlick recommended the acceptance of a tender by T.A.Walker for ₤439,359 for the construction of the major part of the project. Against significant minority opposition this was approved (see Dackres pp.125-6). Construction work commenced 11 October 1884. Edward Watkin attended the “first-sod” cutting ceremony, representing the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincoln Railway Company. The Prince of Wales, later Edward VII, laid the project’s Foundation Stone on 17 July 1885.

During 1886 there were disagreements between T.A.Walker and Garlick. Although the Corporation expressed confidence in Garlick in October 1886, in July 1887 it accepted his resignation and appointed his partner Benjamin Sykes as engineer. In September 1887 Sykes reported to the Corporation that the total cost of the project was now estimated to be ₤1,171,105. At that stage the Corporation had already spent ₤723,627 which was itself in excess of the ₤662,244 borrowing powers authorized by the 1883 Act (Dackres p.138 and p.145). Dackres points out that Sykes, like Garlick before him, was not a salaried employee of the Corporation “but was paid by way of 2¾ % commission on the amount of money expended” (p.146).

In April 1888 the Preston Corporation’s Bill seeking additional borrowing powers and retrospective approval of the modifications to and extensions of the original project went before a House of Lords Committee. The Committee’s report was scathing, stating “The promoters … set to work to execute works, admitted to be ultra vires, and now, five years afterwards, they come to parliament and ask us to indemnify them, and to add very largely to their borrowing powers. That is a request, which, as far as I know, is quite unprecedented” (quoted by Dackres at p.150). The Lords Committee indicated it would be willing to sanction additional borrowing powers to “enable the Corporation to discharge the liabilities already incurred by them”, and referred the Bill back to be amended by the promoters to provide for that. In July 1888 the Bill went before a House of Commons Committee. That committee heard evidence from T.A.Walker about the money then owed to him by Preston Corporation. The Commons Committee “severely censured” the Preston Corporation and authorized only such additional borrowing powers (₤71,000) as to enable the payment of the money then owing to T.A.Walker. Preston Corporation were instructed to return to parliament “next year with a full and complete scheme”. From 28 July 1888 all construction work stopped. Walker withdrew his men and equipment and transferred them to work on the Manchester Ship Canal project (Dackres p.156).

A new Bill went before a Committee of the House of Lords in April-May 1889. This committee’s decision required the Corporation to apply to the Board of Trade for the appointment of a commission to report on the whole scheme. The Commission was appointed 31 July 1889 and issued an interim report on 5 October 1889. Its recommendations led to the passing of the Ribble Navigation Act in 1890 which provided for the additional borrowing powers necessary to complete the scheme, and for this work to be supervised by a salaried Resident Engineer appointed by the Corporation. Construction work resumed on 10 July 1890. As T.A.Walker had died on 25 November, the contractor was now his “deceased estate”, under the control of three trustees, Louis Philip Nott, Thomas James Reeves, and Charles Hay Walker (the first and third were the husbands of two of Walker`s four daughters). The Dock was finally completed in March 1892 at a total cost of ₤1,064,028 which included ₤36,565 for costs of obtaining the Acts of Parliament, and ₤59,055 of capitalized interest during the period since 1883 (Dackres p.170). A further Parliamentary Act authorized Preston Corporation to borrow an additional ₤61,000 in order to provide equipment. The first vessels to use the new dock appear to have done so in June or July 1892.

Dackres reports that: “In July, 1889, the solicitor employed by the Dock Contractor, Mr Perks, offered to raise ₤500,000 for the purpose of transferring the whole of the Ribble Works … to a Trust of 15 Members. Seven were to be nominated by the Corporation, three by the Railway Companies and five by the subscription (sic) to Bonds … The Corporation’s part was to take responsibility for the promotion of a Bill in Parliament for the formation of a Dock and Harbour Trust” (p.196). This is the only time RWP’s name is mentioned by Dackres. Preston Corporation’s decision to maintain full ownership and control of the project does not seem to have served to benefit the interests of the broad base of Preston rate-payers. Up to 1901 the dock made a loss every year, which was chargeable upon the rates, as was the ongoing interest-servicing costs on the capital outlay. In July 1902 Benjamin Sykes made a proposal to form a syndicate to take over the whole dock venture. Dackres does not report what consideration he was offering. The offer was refused.

C8 Buenos Aires Harbour Works^{(ref addendum c)}

Ref: RWP’s 1900-1911 Who’s Who entries state: “was interested, with late T.A.Walker, in … Buenos Ayres (sic) Harbour Works”. RWP’s 1912 Who’s Who entry states “his firm are now constructing the Buenos Aires Port Extension for the Argentine government”. The 1913-1918 entries state “was associated … with Mr C.Walker … the Buenos Aires Port Extension for the Argentine Government”. Crane states, following his reference to Preston Docks and the Manchester Ship Canal, “Their largest and most successful undertaking, however, was the great Harbour works at Buenos Ayres (sic) for the Argentine Government … started in 1887 and completed only five years ago” [implying 1904] (p.77). RWP’s notes for an autobiography states “The largest and most profitable contract which my friend Mr Walker ever undertook was the construction of the extensive Port Works for the Argentine Government at Buenos Aires” (pp.102-3).

Further Information

RWP’s notes for an autobiography states “The concession for the construction of the Port was granted by Presidents Roca and Pelligrine (sic) to Senor Eduardo Madero … On the advice of Sir John Hawkshaw, and with the consent of Messrs Barings, the Bankers of the Argentine Government, the construction of the works was entrusted to Mr Walker … The effect of this arrangement was that while, nominally, Senor Madero was the concessionaire and contractor for the work, the real contractor was Mr Walker, to whom the works were, with the sanction of the Government, sub-let” (p.103).

Additional information is provided in James R.Scobie, Buenos Aires: Plaza to Suburb 1870-1910, Oxford University Press, New York, 1974. Eduardo Madero (1832-1894) came from a powerful landowning family of Buenos Aires, and was a merchant and politician (p.73). From the 1870s there was debate over alternative proposals for providing Buenos Aires with good port facilities. In 1881 Madero travelled to London “where he secured the services of Sir John Hawkshaw, one of Britain’s leading port experts, as technical adviser, along with the promise of funds from Baring Brothers” (p.80). Despite controversy over the nature of the port facilities proposed and Madero’s “role as middleman between the Argentine government and the English companies” (p.82), President Roca signed a final contract with Madero at the end of 1884. In 1885 Hawkshaw’s son spent three months in Buenos Aires and in March 1886 the Argentine council of ministers headed by the Vice President (Eduardo Madero’s uncle) approved final plans for construction. In 1891, the twenty-million gold peso credit authorized for the project had been exhausted and work on the port was suspended. “New and bitter accusations flowed, especially from the pens of La Prensa’s editors” (p.85). The Argentine government approved further credits. The final fourth basin and the northern harbour were completed in 1897 and the channel providing a northern entrance to the complex was opened in 1898. The completed port then started to display various operating difficulties which led to various engineering studies 1902-1906 and debate as to how to improve conditions. In 1907-08 the Argentine parliament authorized a further twenty-seven million gold pesos to “modernize” the port (p.88).

Scobie dates the completion of the original project at 1898 (p.75 and again at p.85) which is not compatible with the date implied by Crane (see above). RWP’s notes for an autobiography states that the project “took twelve years to complete” (p 103), which appears more compatible with Scobie’s completion date. T.A.Walker went to Argentina “to start the work of the Government Docks at Buenos Ayres” (T.A.Walker, The Severn Tunnel, Its Construction and Difficulties, Richard Bentley, London, 1888, p.11). All this suggests there is a lapse of memory by RWP in his notes for an autobiography at p.105 when he speaks of the project “from its commencement in 1890 until its completion in 1905”. On the preceding page T.A.Walker’s death is dated at “November 1879” instead of November 1889 – though this is probably simply an uncorrected typographical error.

There does not seem to be any doubt, however, that T.A.Walker’s nephew and son-in-law Mr Charles Hay Walker had gone to Buenos Aires to supervise the project and was there at the time T.A.Walker died (ibid p.105). From then until 1898 the work was continued with the T.A.Walker deceased estate as the contractor. For the estate to continue to operate in business in this way required Private Acts of Parliament in 1891 and 1894. In 1898 a third Walker Estate Private Act was obtained. This finally wound up the estate dividing it into four equal parts for T.A.Walker’s four daughters as provided for in his will (he had no sons). According to RWP’s notes for an autobiography “The Act of 1898 also provided for the sale of the benefit and the burden of the Buenos Aires Contract to a company entitled ‘C.H.Walker, Limited’. The Share capital of this Company was subscribed by Mr C.H.Walker and by me”. RWP continued to have interests with C.H.Walker on construction projects in South America through this company until 1912 when he “retired” from the firm. (RWP’s Who’s Who entries for 1913 to 1918).

House of Lords Records Office information on the three Walker Estate Private Acts indicates that of T.A.Walker’s three executor/trustees, two were his sons-in-law: Louis Philip Nott, who married Mary Elizabeth Walker on 1 February 1883; and Charles Hay Walker (T.A.Walker’s nephew) who married Fanny Walker on 15 August 1883. The third executor/trustee was Thomas James Reeves, described by RWP as having been “Mr Walker’s chief office clerk” (notes for an autobiography, p.105). The youngest of T.A.Walker’s daughters, Alice Maud, married W.F.Abbot on 7 March 1894. There is no reference to any marriage by the third daughter Ann Ellen (born 9 February 1862). Both of the oldest daughters had been born in Canada.

C9 Manchester Ship Canal

Ref: RWP’s 1900 to 1912 Who’s Who entries state: “was interested, with late T.A.Walker in … Manchester Ship Canal”. The 1913 to 1918 entries state: “was associated with late T.A.Walker in building …”. Crane states “The Preston Docks and the Manchester Ship Canal were other big concerns with which Sir Robert and his friend [T.A.Walker] were connected” (pp.76-77). The section in RWP’s notes for an autobiography on the Manchester Ship Canal (pp.104-5) states that RWP represented the Trustees of Mr Walker’s estate in negotiations with the Canal Company about the project following T.A.Walker’s death on 25 November 1889.

Further Information

Like the Barry Dock and Railway project, the Manchester Ship Canal project was the subject of a major struggle in parliament, before being granted authorization to proceed. The first Bill was defeated in 1883. A modified second Bill was defeated in 1884. Revised again and modified to take account of the various engineering problems raised during the 1884 process, the third Bill passed the House of Lords committee in March 1885, the House of Commons committee (after a further struggle) in June 1885, and received Royal Assent in August 1885. For more detail see David Owen, The Manchester Ship Canal, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1983, chapter 4. According to Owen: “The three Bills had spent a total of ninety-four days in the Commons and eighty-one in the House of Lords during the sessions 1883-85. They had cost the promoters something in excess of ₤150,000 and the opposition a similar sum” (p.37). Edward Pember QC, who represented the Manchester Ship Canal’s promoters through their final triumph in the Parliamentary committees had also represented the promoters of the Barry project in its passage through the Parliamentary process (Hamilton Ellis, op.cit., pp.94-95).

Also like the Barry project was the fact that the principal opposition to the Manchester Ship Canal project came from Conservative party aligned interests associated with the pre-existing railway and dock facilities whose profitability stood to be undermined by the project (in this case the Liverpool dock interests and the major railways that were providing Greater Manchester with its transport communications hitherto). But whereas in the Barry case the interests of the promoters were not seen to be necessarily in harmony with the interests of the broad middle-class citizenry and labour within Cardiff (see section C6 above), the Manchester Ship Canal case saw the coming together of a major wave of Lib-Lab support for the project against the Tory monopoly interests perceived as being its foes. This is the theme of Ian Harford’s book Manchester and its Ship Canal Movement: Class, Work and Politics in late Victorian England, Keele University Press, 1994. Significant financial contributions to the proposal, during the “Parliamentary agitation” phase of 1882-85, came from trade unions and co-operative societies. The promoters sought to persuade working people in the greater Manchester area to subscribe to shares in the company by systems of one-shilling coupons paid in regular instalments by those subscribing to the arrangements (pp.132-140). The original promoters of the scheme clearly believed that by means such as this, combined with tapping the resources of “progressive” business and commercial interests in the Greater Manchester area, the project could be financed without resort to reliance on the then orthodox mechanisms for large-scale raisings involving London-based banks, merchant banks and stockbrokers.

The 1885 Act authorized the Manchester Ship Canal Company to raise ₤10 million for the project, of which ₤1.7 million was the anticipated cost of taking over ownership of the pre-existing Bridgewater Canal Company. The Act stipulated that the Company should not issue shares of less value than ₤10. The desire to raise such a large amount of capital without depending on the then-standard financial institutional framework for doing so led to delays and difficulties. Out of this period of delays and difficulties, T.A.Walker emerged as the contractor responsible for construction of the canal, with ₤5.75 million the agreed “consideration” (see below). The original directors of the company issued a first prospectus in October 1885. Brokers were not employed, nor was there any underwriting. “The issue was a complete failure [and was] … withdrawn” (Owen, p.40). Help from Rothschilds was then sought. The selection of Rothschilds, and their willingness to help with the “unorthodox” financing, may have been influenced by the fact that Lord Rosebery was married to Hannah, the heir to Baron Meyer de Rothschild. At the recommendation of Rothschilds, the Company promoted a new Bill through Parliament, enabling it to pay interest out of its capital during its construction phase. At this stage John Aird’s firm Lucas and Aird was the agreed contractor (for ₤5.75 million) and Lord James Rothschild, in his evidence before the Lords on the Bill “said that the scheme must be sound ‘if the greatest contractors in England are prepared to undertake it on such terms’” (Robert K.Middlemas, The Master Builders, Hutchinson, London, 1963, p.140).

This second Act having succeeded, a second prospectus for the company was issued in July 1886 offering 725,000 shares at ₤10 each, with ₤1 payable on application. Although Rothschilds issued the prospectus, the arrangement still contained major concessions to the new small-holder capitalism of the original Ship Canal “movement”. The directors would organize placement of ₤2 million of the shares themselves and Rothschilds would be paid only a modest commission of one per cent on the remainder. This second capital raising attempt did not succeed. The application monies were refunded. “[This] marked a nadir in the fortunes of the promoters but quickly led to a regrouping over the question of financing the scheme” (Harford, op.cit., p.139). On 1 February 1887 the erstwhile chairman of the company, Daniel Adamson who had led the Ship Canal movement for five years, resigned and was replaced by Lord Egerton of Talton (1832-1909), a major landowner and “[one] of Lancashire’s most prominent Tories” (ibid., p.140). The new deputy chairman, Charles Moseley, was “a leading Tory manufacturer” (loc.cit.).

The restructured Board appear to have more thoroughly embraced the recommendations of London merchant banks regarding capital raising. A third Act of Parliament was obtained allowing ₤4 million of capital to be raised in preference shares bearing 4 per cent during the anticipated four year construction phase of the project and 5 per cent thereafter. The Board successfully obtained subscriptions to ₤3 million of ordinary shares “through dint of hard canvassing and much arm-twisting … from big merchants and manufacturers [in Lancashire]” (ibid. p.141). On 15 July 1887 a third prospectus was issued, this time in the joint names of Rothschilds and Barings, offering the ₤4 million of preference shares on a fully underwritten basis. This process secured the capital to allow the “first sod” to be cut on 11 November 1887. But it also led to a change in the contractor. John Aird declined Lord Egerton’s approach to subscribe to ordinary shares in the Ship Canal Company. He also refused to accept ₤500,000 in paid-up shares as part payment for the work. The Rothschilds and Barings demanded that before issuing the 1887 prospectus, the company should have a “trusted contractor” appointed for the construction work. T.A.Walker agreed to match Aird’s price of ₤5.75 million, to accept ₤500,000 of that in ordinary shares, and to cover from that figure the 3½ per cent underwriters’ fees charged on the preference stock issue. (Middlemas, op.cit., p.140; and Harford p.131).

By 1890 the project was in difficulties. T.A.Walker died in November 1889 from Bright’s disease, having been seriously ill for a year prior to that. The trustees of his estate continued with the work for a further year before reaching a settlement with the Ship Canal Company on 24 November 1890. This agreement involved the Company taking over directly the role of contractor, “writing off half the capital which Walker was to have put into the project” (Harford p.147) and taking over direct ownership of all the various equipment in use at the site (Owen, p.53). With the construction work only something of the order of half-completed, but with some ₤4 million spent on that work, the Company’s directors recognized the need for additional capital. In May 1891 a fourth Ship Canal Bill was deposited to permit Manchester Corporation to put up to ₤3 million into the company via a debentures issue. This also provided for five Corporation representatives on the company’s Board (out of a total 15). At the end of 1892 a further Bill provided for an additional ₤2 million in loans from the Corporation and for the company’s directorate to be expanded to 21, with 11 being Corporation representatives (Owen, pp.44-45). The canal was completed and opened to traffic on 1 January 1894. There was an official opening by Queen Victoria on 21 May 1894. By December 1904 the Company owed Manchester Corporation ₤1.8 million in accumulated arrears of interest on the debentures, and its shareholders had yet to see any prospect of dividend repayments. There was a “reorganization” of the debenture debt arrangements in 1904. (See D.A.Farnie, The Manchester Ship Canal and the rise of the Port of Manchester 1894-1975, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1980, pp.11-14). In the words of Harford: “Returning no profit in the first twenty years of its existence – and only modest ones thereafter – the Ship Canal itself owed its continued existence to the support of the local State and the levy imposed on Mancunians through the rates to pay for the Loan” (p.167).

R.J.Rimell, History of the Barry Railway Company 1884-1921, Western Mail, Cardiff, 1923, states that R.W.Perks “initiated and carried through Parliament the financial scheme which secured the issue of ₤4,000,000 preference shares for the Manchester Ship Canal, and achieved the starting of those great works” (p.113).

C10 Lancashire, Derbyshire & East Coast Railway

Ref: RWP’s Who’s Who entries for 1902 to 1908 cite him as “Director of Lancashire Derbyshire Railway” (sic). This role is not mentioned in either Crane or Perks’s notes for an autobiography. George Dow, Great Central, volume 3, Ian Allen, London 1965 gives a full listing of the LD&ECR’s directors at Appendix VIII, p.373. RWP is listed as a director from 1894 to 1906 (when the Company was taken over by the Great Central).

Further Information

The company’s act of incorporation was sanctioned 5 August 1891 after “an exhaustive inquiry of 14 days before the House of Commons committee and 6 before that of the House of Lords” (Dow, p.153). Watkin’s Manchester, Sheffield and Lancashire Railway (later the Great Central) opposed the scheme in those committees – which suggests that RWP may have been involved in the legal case for that opposition. The original purpose of the scheme was to provide transport to two outlets for coal from the Nottinghamshire coalfields then being developed: a proposed new port at Sutton-on-Sea on the East Coast; and at Warrington on the Manchester Ship Canal in Lancashire. “The driving force was William Arkwright, who wanted to develop the coal reserves on his estates east of Chesterfield. Other coal-owners were enthusiastic and the Dukes of Eastern Nottinghamshire lent their support” (Robin Leleux, A Regional History of The Railways of Great Britain, volume IX, The East Midlands, David and Charles, 1984, p.152). At the close of 1891 the company accepted S.Pearson and Son’s tender for ₤1,394,608 to construct the Chesterfield to Warsop section at the centre of the proposed line (Dow p.155). Leleux states that of the capital “actually subscribed” to the company at this stage, three-quarters was from the Great Eastern Railway (loc.cit.).

A series of Board changes then occurred. On 23 March 1892 Emerson Bainbridge (1845-1911), a Wesleyan Methodist from Newcastle, joined the board. Dow states that because of his interests in the Bolsover, Nunnery and Blackwell collieries he was “potentially the biggest customer of the company” (p.156). In October 1892 Arkwright stood down from the chairmanship (he left the board in 1896) and was succeeded by Bainbridge. In 1893 the company issued a writ against one of its directors Lord Francis Pelham-Clinton Hope who had not paid for the 16,000 shares allotted to him. Dow states: “The default put the LD&EC in some difficulty until a group headed by R.W.Perks … came on the scene. Hope was declared bankrupt in August 1894 and was succeeded by Mark Oldroyd, MP. Perks joined the Board shortly afterwards” (pp.156-7). Dow does not mention that Mark Oldroyd was RWP’s brother-in-law, having married Maria Tew Mewburn, the third daughter of William Mewburn (senior), in 1871. During 1894 the company raised more capital including ₤250,000 from “Perks and his associates” (Dow, p.157). The additional injection of capital from the Great Eastern required that the unbuilt “Lincoln to East Coast” part of the railway be divorced from the LD&EC [and moved under G.E. control].

In autumn 1892 the LD&EC gave a further construction contract to Pearson and Son (for the Beighton branch); in May 1893 one to Baldry and Yerburgh (Warsop to Tuxford); and in October 1894 one to Price and Wills for the section Tuxford to Lincoln for ₤140,477. John Price and Mr C.J.Wills were described by Perks in notes for an autobiography (p.105) as among “Mr T.A.Walker’s old agents who had previously worked with him [and] started business for themselves [after his death]”. John Price in his “formal partnership” with Mr T.J.Reeves was importantly concerned with the 1897 contract for the construction of the Charing Cross and Hampstead Tube (see Section B1 above). Price and Wills were given further contracts for extensions work etc by the LD&EC in 1897 amounting to ₤19,811 (p.167).

The LD&EC opened what was originally intended to be its central section on 8 March 1897. “Dividends on the ₤10 ordinary shares were paid out of capital at the rate of 3 per cent until 1896. Thereafter there was no distribution” (Dow p.184, footnote). On 7 April 1905 C.G.Hyde joined the Board as a nominee of Sir Weetman Pearson. This suggests that Pearson and Son had been paid for their work “in paper” which they had not yet sold. At its board meeting of 7 November 1905 at the Westminster Palace Hotel, the company “resolved to offer the concern to the Great Northern” (Dow, p.184) with Pearson’s nominee and the two Great Eastern nominated directors dissenting. This seems to suggest that RWP supported the proposal. On 9 November 1905 the Great Northern rejected all three proposed sets of arrangements for purchase. On 10 November the board met at the Midland Grand Hotel St Pancras and agreed to a takeover by the Great Central, with this time only the two Great Eastern directors (Lord Claud Hamilton and Gooday) dissenting. The consideration was a mix of four types of Great Central scrip and the agreement involved the Great Central paying the costs of promoting a parliamentary Bill to effect the takeover from 1 January 1907.

Lord Rosebery’s 16 December 1901 Chesterfield speech – a landmark in the Liberal Imperialists’ push – was given in the new goods and carriage shed of the LD&EC Railway, to an audience of 5,000. RWP organized a special train to transport reporters and MPs from London. According to H.C.G.Matthews, The Liberal Imperialists, Oxford University Press, 1973: “Rosebery received advice on what to say from ‘the whole human race …’, but the only advice he solicited was that of Perks … [which he ignored]” (p.78). Emerson Bainbridge, the chairman of the LD&EC Railway was Liberal MP for the Gainsborough division of Lincolnshire from July 1895 until losing his seat in the 1900 election. It might be of interest to note that he “was involved with the proposals for providing a ship canal to Sheffield, lecturing in 1889 in Sheffield on that subject” (David Jeremy (ed.), Dictionary of Business Biography, entry on Emerson Muschamp Bainbridge by John Goodchild, volume 1, pp.103-5).

Sir Weetman D.Pearson (1856-1927, from June 1910 First Viscount Cowdray), the principal of S.Pearson & Son, was Liberal MP for Colchester from February 1895 to January 1910, having contested the seat unsuccessfully in 1892. His biographer J.A.Spender (Weetman Pearson, First Viscount Cowdray, Cassell and Company, London, 1930) describes him in his first years in parliament as “frankly a Liberal Imperialist and follower of Lord Rosebery” (p.35). His son (and from 1927 to 1933 the Second Viscount Cowdray), Harold Miller Weetman Pearson unsuccessfully contested the seat of Rutland for the Liberal Party in January 1906, and was listed by RWP in his memorandum to Lord Rosebery of 27 January 1906 as one of the Liberal League members (i.e. Liberal Imperialists) standing in the election (Matthew, op.cit., p.300). In April 1906 he won the seat of Eye at a bye-election and held it until stepping down at the 1918 election. S.Pearson & Son constructed (1898-1906), and then for three years operated, one of the few parts of the deep-level London Underground network which never came under the control of the “Underground Group” established by Yerkes and Perks – The Great Northern and City Railway from Finsbury Park to the Bank (see T.C.Barker and M.Robbins, A History of London Transport, Volume 2, George Allen & Unwin, London, pp.47-50 and p.183).

C11 Pekin Syndicate, Limited ^{(cf correction at head of document)}

Ref: There is no reference to this company in Crane, RWP’s notes for an autobiography, or any of RWP’s Who’s Who entries.

Further Information

Evidence that RWP had interests in this company is provided by The Economist, 21 December 1912, which devoted somewhat more than a full page to a report of the company’s annual general meeting held at the Cannon Street Hotel, London, on 19 December 1912. Approximately one half of The Economist report is coverage of the remarks and criticisms of “a shareholder … Mr Perks”. The criticism was that the shareholders were being “kept absolutely in the dark” about the affairs of the company by the directors; that the chairman’s indication of the imminent payment of a dividend eighteen months previously had pushed the share price to ₤2, while the non appearance of any dividend had caused the price to slump to the then current 17 shillings; that the 10 directors should not continue to draw fees of ₤400 per year each in the absence of any distributions to shareholders. Mr Perks sought to move motions for the issuance of regular three-monthly reports on the company’s activities to its shareholders; and for the reduction in the rate of directors’ fees to ₤50 per year each. The company’s solicitor, Sir Frank Crisp, blocked the latter motion from being put, arguing that it involved an alteration to the company’s articles which required notice prior to the meeting.

Further information on the Pekin Syndicate is provided in E-tu Zen Sun, Chinese Railways and British Interests, 1898-1911, Russell and Russell, New York, 1954. The company was “founded in London in 1897, initiated by an Italian named Luzatti. This Syndicate obtained the Honan and Shansi [coal] mining rights and the right to construct a railway for the transportation of mineral products to the Yangtse” (p.9). The original intention of the company was to build a 450 mile railway from the mining centre at Tsechow in Shansi to Pukou opposite Nanking, crossing the territory of four Chinese provinces. This plan ran into political difficulties in the face of opposition from other railway interests (mainly French and Belgian). Eventually all that was built was a 90 mile railway during 1902-1905 from Chinghua in the mining area to Taokou. This satisfied the relevant clause in the original Chinese government concession by allowing “water navigation” access to the Yangtse via the Wei river and the Grand Canal, “the waterway with the illustrious name, but of uncertain value for transportation at that date” (ibid pp.125-8). Moreover, this railway was not permitted to carry traffic other than the company’s minerals. While the railway was under construction the British Minister in Peking proposed to the Chinese government that the line be converted to “a loan basis”, meaning the company would construct it under the legal ownership of the government which would pay back the costs of construction under an amortization scheme. Until the loan was repaid the company “retained virtual control over the entire railway” (p.129). The Chinese government was not enthusiastic, but this was agreed to. The Economist report of the company’s 1912 meeting indicates that this had involved the issuance to the company of ₤800,000 Chinese Government Gold Bonds bearing interest at 5 per cent.

Sir Frank Crisp, the Pekin Syndicate’s solicitor in 1912, was a partner in Ashurst, Morris, Crisp and Company and was described in glowing terms in the final chapter of H.Osborne O’Hagan’s Leaves From My Life, John Lane Bodley Head, London, 1929: “looked up to by the members of his profession as well as by the financial and commercial men of the City – ‘a king among men’” (volume 2, p.461). A principal focus of Ashurst, Morris, Crisp activity was British companies operating in Argentina and Uruguay. The firm “acted as solicitors for 18 Anglo-Argentine companies in London while the [River Plate] Trust Company were managing agents for several in Buenos Aires” (Charles A.Jones, International Business in the Nineteenth Century, The Rise and Fall of a Commercial Bourgeoisie, Wheatsheaf Books, Brighton, 1987, p.173). The Morris in the firm was John Morris (1823-1905), chairman of the River Plate Trust Company, and a significant shareholder in many of the companies (see Charles A.Jones, “Who Invested in Argentina and Uruguay?”, Business Archives, volume 48, November 1982, pp.1-24). John Morris had worked with Edward Watkin on the financial reconstruction of the Grand Trunk Railway Company of Canada in 1863 and later did some work for other Watkin railway companies (Dictionary of Business Biography entry on John Morris, by Charles A.Jones, volume 4, pp.328-331). According to T.C.Barker and M.Robbins, History of London Transport, volume 11, George Allen & Unwin, London, 1974, the initial 1890 attempt to obtain parliamentary approval for a deep-level London tube line along a route similar to that of the later Central London Railway was promoted by “a group of financiers and others operating from the office of Ashurst, Morris, Crisp and Co.” (p.38). O’Hagan states that Crisp was “the legal adviser to the Liberal Party” (op.cit. p.463). He is not mentioned by Matthew. Matthew does report though that one of the prominent Liberal Imperialists, Joseph Walton (1849-1923), MP for Barnsley 1897 to 1923 was an “Old China Hand” (p.299) who pressed for an aggressive British policy in China to capitalize on its better possibilities for trade expansion than India (pp.155-156). Matthew also reports Perks advocating to Rosebery in July 1898 a rather more cautious approach on China: “We are likely to do an enormous trade with Russia – it seems madness indeed to quarrel” (p.157).

In The Economist, 27 December 1913, pp.1399-1400, it was stated that “The Pekin Syndicate’s annual report does not make very cheerful reading for the shareholders … This year the revenue is even smaller than it was last year and the reports upon the collieries … are dismal in the extreme.” The Economist went on to suggest that “the directors might remove the illusion of the huge balance at credit of profit and loss by writing down the assets on the other side to a figure on which a fair return may be expected”.

C12 Paper Making

Ref: RWP’s Who’s Who entries for 1902 to 1909 cite him as “Chairman of T.Owen and Co., paper makers”. Crane makes no mention of T.Owen and Co. but does state that “the New Brunswick Pulp and Paper Mills at Millerton, on the Miramichi River … are owned by Sir Robert” (pp.85-86). RWP’s notes for an autobiography makes no mention of either concern.

Further Information

Thomas Owen (15 September 1840 – 10 July 1898) was Liberal MP for the Launceston division of Cornwall from 1892 to his death. He was found drowned in a stream near a waterfall. The inquest found that he drowned while stunned as a result of a fall. At the time of his death he was Chairman of Thomas Owen and Co., paper manufacturers at Cardiff. The Dictionary of Business Biography has an entry for Thomas Owen’s brother Owen Owen whose principal business was department stores (with a Liverpool base). The brothers were educated at Wesleyan College, Taunton. Owen Owen is reported in the Dictionary of Business Biography as having made significant investments into railways in the 1880s, and also to have put ₤5,000 into Thomas’ drapery business when that firm was put onto a limited liability company basis in 1889.

RWP’s Directory of Directors entry for 1899 cites him as chairman of Thomas Owen and Company. From August 1898 to his retirement from Parliament in 1906, the Launceston seat in Parliament was occupied by James Fletcher Moulton (1844-1921). Moulton was a Wesleyan Methodist, born in Madeley Shropshire (as was RWP’s father) and a contemporary of RWP’s at the New Kingwood School. He was also a member of the Liberal Imperialist group and was described in the British Monthly’s January 1903 article “Mr R.W.Perks M.P.” (unsigned) as “one of [RWP’s] closest friends” (p.78). He retired from Parliament to become a Judge of the Court of Appeal.

C13 The Georgian Bay Canal

Ref: RWP’s 1912-1918 Who’s Who entries state “is interested in the Georgian Bay Canal, which will provide a deep waterway for large steamers from the Great Lakes of Canada to the Ocean”. Crane states “He is now taking an active part in the scheme for the construction of a great ship canal in the Dominion [of Canada], to which scheme Sir Wilfrid Laurier has pledged his Government. It will cost at least twenty million pounds, and will connect the big Canadian lakes with the St Lawrence by a deep waterway, utilizing for this purpose the French, Mattawa, and Ottawa Rivers” (p.86). RWP’s notes for an autobiography states: “I had also, most unfortunately, become interested in the promotion of a ship canal in Canada called the Montreal, Ottawa and Georgian Bay Canal…. A British Company, in which I have taken the deepest interest, has struggled manfully to secure the construction of this waterway but hitherto without success” (pp.107-8).

Further Information

This is not the project that eventually became the St Lawrence Seaway (opened in 1959). That project involved rendering the upper St Lawrence from Montreal to Lake Ontario navigable by large ocean-going ships, and improving the canal links between Lake Ontario and Lake Erie (i.e. the Welland Canal) and between Lake Erie and the upper Great Lakes so that they were also thus navigable. The fundamental purpose of the Georgian Bay scheme was the same – deep water navigation between Montreal and the upper Great Lakes (Superior, Michigan and Huron). But the route proposed was quite different, linking Georgian Bay on Lake Huron to Montreal more directly via Ottawa and the Ottawa river, “bypassing” the two lower Great Lakes (and Toronto) in the process.

The Encyclopedia Canadiana, Grolier, Toronto, 1972 states: “In 1898 a company was organized in Great Britain by Robert W. Perks for the construction of the canal. In 1906 the company, called the New Dominion Syndicate, obtained from the Canadian Parliament authority to increase its capital to $50,000,000 and its borrowing powers to $100,000,000 – the estimated cost of construction …. But the Canadian Government steadfastly refused to guarantee the bonds of the company, despite an energetic campaign carried out on behalf of the construction of the canal” (volume 4, pp.351-2).

It is possible that RWP’s “interest” in the project predated 1898. He presented a paper to the Royal Society for the Arts in London on 13 February 1914 outlining the scheme. In this he states that in 1894 a charter was granted to a group of Canadians to build a 10 feet deep barge canal from Montreal to the Georgian Bay. “The Charter was allowed to lapse; but in 1898, after a special committee of the Senate had reported favourably on … the canal, the Dominion Parliament … renewed the Charter. The Company then reincorporated [and commissioned engineers] … to make complete surveys plans and estimates” (pp.255-6 of RWP, “The Montreal, Ottawa, and Georgian Bay Canal”, Journal of the Royal Society of the Arts, volume 62, 1913-1914, pp.254-261). The engineers’ report was submitted in 1903 costing the project for a 22 feet deep ship canal at slightly below $107 million. The full scheme was for a “navigation” 449 miles long, incorporating 332 miles of natural waterway, and 23 locks – each 850 feet long. The highest section was to be 70 feet above the level of Lake Huron, requiring 3 locks to rise to that level, with the remaining twenty locks for the 633 feet descent to the St Lawrence. RWP’s paper provided financial projections indicating the scheme was expected to provide “a net return of 4½ per cent upon an outside cost of ₤30,000,000” (ibid p.261). Note that this is not far short of double the cost of the Yerkes – Perks London Underground work of 1900-07 (see section B). But in the case of this project, RWP was adamant “The Georgian Bay waterway cannot be built without the financial aid of the Dominion” (ibid p.260).

It seems that the probabilities of the project receiving such aid would have been greater if the Canadian election of September 1911 had extended Sir Wilfrid Laurier’s 15 years in power, rather than ending it. RWP’s 1914 paper quotes Laurier as having said in 1908 “[if] the Canadian people leave me and my friends at the head of affairs, it will be our duty to take up the Georgian Bay Canal as soon as the resources of the country permit”, and in 1910 “I shall be very happy if I can see this national enterprise accomplished under my administration as Prime Minister of Canada” (ibid p.257). The new Conservative Canadian government of 1911 was more cautious about major commitments of taxpayers’ money to large “nation-building” projects than its predecessor, and possibly more attuned to the economic interests of the Toronto – Hamilton area than to those directly furthered by the Georgian Bay route. T.L.Hills, The St Lawrence Seaway, Methuen, London, 1959 states “the new Conservative government decided on the construction of a new Welland canal to a depth of 25 feet. Accordingly work commenced in 1913. It appears that the Welland proposal was chosen in preference to the Ottawa River – Georgian Bay route because of an estimate of five years for the construction of the former as against ten years for the latter. As it turned out it was not until 1932 that the Welland was completed” (p.44).

Other factors weighing against RWP’s Georgian Bay Canal project may have been the plan for construction and operation by an English company rather than Canadian government ownership and management, and the issue of tolls on the Canal. S.J.McLean raised these points in his article “The Georgian Bay Canal”, North American Review, volume CXC, 1909, pp.642-651. He concluded: “The fact that the canal would be, if in private hands, a toll canal gives point to the desire for Government ownership and management. For since 1903 there have been no tolls on the through traffic of the Canadian canals” (p.651). In a two-part article in The Engineering Magazine in 1909 (vol XXXVI, pp.581-591 and 792-799), J.G.G.Kerry declared himself “a profound believer in the wisdom of constructing a Georgian Bay Canal” but stressed that this was “even though I do not think that the grain traffic from Western Canada will be a predominating item in the traffic returns of the canal” (p.798). Kerry pointed out that “The engineers in their report cannot find that the Georgian Bay Canal offers any advantages for grain shipments that cannot be obtained at a lesser cost by improving the St Lawrence canals between Lake Erie and Montreal” (p.797) and that Canada’s second transcontinental railway, which at that time was under construction with financial help committed by the Laurier Government “will take some share of the grain traffic” (p.798). Kerry’s view was that “there is little reason today why the West should advocate the construction of this waterway …. The work is necessary to the development of the region through which the canal is projected” (loc.cit.).

Of the four points with which RWP summarized the case for the project at the conclusion of his 1914 paper, two concerned this matter of the region directly bordering the proposed waterway: “[It] will convert the valleys of the Ottawa and the Mattawa Rivers into one vast industrial centre [and] will … increase the trade, the population and the wealth of the cities of Quebec and Montreal” (op.cit. p.261). One catered to Canadian nationalism: “[it] follows an All-Canadian route … interfering with no international waters”; and one noted that the route provided a shorter Upper Lakes to Atlantic link than the Lake Ontario/Lake Erie alternative (loc.cit.). And finally he sought to appeal to the vanity of Laurier’s successor as Prime Minister: “The Georgian Bay Canal may possibly be the great national work associated in years to come with the name of the present Prime Minister of Canada, Mr Borden” (loc.cit.).

The New Dominion Syndicate was wound up on 22 March 1926. Its Company records (BT31/16185/61632 at PRO) indicate that RWP then personally held roughly one third of its issued preference shares (7707 out of 22342) plus 10 out of 842 issued ordinary shares (all ₤1) and had had these holdings since at least early 1915. His total pecuniary loss on the project was almost certainly greater. In notes for an autobiography he wrote: “In order to carry through this great enterprise, I have paid twelve visits at my own expense to the Dominion” (p.108). And in summary of his involvement in this project, he wrote: “I may say, however, that this was the greatest business mistake of my life” (p.112).

C14 Royal Aquarium/Westminster Hall

Ref: Crane (pp.160-164) states that ₤335,000 from the Wesleyan Methodists “Million Fund” (or Twentieth Century Fund) was used in 1902-1903 to purchase the Royal Aquarium site, Westminster (110,000 square feet) in order to build new Connexional Buildings for the Church. Crane reports that portions of the plot had been sold for “over ₤200,000 – with further surplus lands still for sale”. His book contains an architect’s drawing of “The New Central Buildings, Westminster” (opposite p.162) which were under construction at the time he was writing.

Further Information

David J.Jeremy Capitalists and Christians, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1990, provides more information (pp.314-324). RWP had launched the Twentieth Century Fund at the Wesleyans’ annual Conference of 1898. The target was to raise one million guineas from individual donations of one guinea per person by 1 January 1901. One of the objectives of the Fund was, in Perks’s words, to build “within a reasonable distance of Charing Cross … a building of monumental character”. Jeremy described it as “a central hall-cum-headquarters for Wesleyan Methodism”. RWP’s Who’s Who entries for 1902 to 1918 cite him as “Treasurer of Wesleyan Methodist Twentieth Century Million Fund”, though by 1907 he shared the task with three others. One of those three was Thomas Hudson Bainbridge “the very wealthy and generous Newcastle department store owner” (Jeremy p.323) – who was also the brother of Emerson Bainbridge, chairman of the Lancashire, Derbyshire and East Coast Railway (q.v).

Jeremy quotes Perks stating in 1907 that the cost of the site had been ₤360,000, and that 75,000 square feet of the 110,000 square feet site had been sold for ₤200,000, to purchasers who had contracted to buy ₤100,000 more land in two years` time. Those purchasers were Messrs Holloway Bros: Henry and Thomas, two Wesleyan Methodists who donated ₤5000 to the Twentieth Century Fund in August 1900 when the one guinea – one person principle was waived, in order to secure the last fifth of the target amount by the set deadline. The Holloways were at this time completing their transformation from being small-scale house-builders to a major building contractor. Jeremy states their “first big job, the Chatham Naval Barracks (worth ₤340,000), was completed in 1903” (p.301). By 1907 the Holloways were building a property on their part of the Aquarium site. Work on the Central Hall and Connexional Buildings was commenced in 1907 (by a non-Methodist contractor and non-Methodist architects) and completed 1912. I have not yet found a figure for the construction costs. It should be noted that while it would be simple to subtract the ₤300,000 proceeds from surplus land sales from the ₤360,000 site purchase price, and conclude that the site cost the Wesleyan Methodists ₤60,000, that would be erroneous since it ignores the time value of money (or the interest earnings forgone by having the funds tied up in the site). It is not clear when the Holloway Bros contract required the ₤200,000 (or the subsequent ₤100,000) to be handed over to the Twentieth Century Fund. As the early 1900s were a period of high yields on consols, this factor should not be overlooked.

It is also possible that the Fund may have incurred some costs in terminating leases on parts of the site. The Imperial Theatre occupied part of the site. “In 1900 the lease at ₤3000 a year was bought by Mrs [Lillie] Langtry who completely rebuilt the interior on a grand scale. She was financed by Edgar Cohen … said to have spent some ₤40,000 on the building. The new Imperial opened on 22 April 1901” (Raymond Mander and Joe Mitchenson, The Lost Theatres of London, Rupert Hart-Davis, London, 1968, p.214). Mrs Langtry ceased to be lessee in 1903. While the Aquarium itself closed on 2 January 1903 and was demolished soon after, the Imperial Theatre: “remained open until 16 June 1906, after which it too was demolished and the interior removed and rebuilt as the Royal Albert Music Hall, Canning Town” (ibid p.205). This was renamed the Imperial Palace, later became a cinema, and was destroyed by fire in 1931. Noel B.Gerson, in his biography of Lillie Langtry, Because I Loved Him, William Morrow and Company, New York, 1971, states that from August 1903 Mrs Langtry and her brother Clement on several occasions met with “the business managers and solicitors [of the Wesleyan Methodists] … Negotiations dragged on, but Lillie and Clement finally persuaded the new owners of the property to make a cash settlement … only a fraction of what she had spent” (p.207).

RWP’s Who’s Who entries for 1909 to 1912 give his business address as 15 Great George Street, Westminster, SW. From 1913 onwards the business address given is 2 Central Buildings, Princes Street, Westminster. This appears to be offices in one of the buildings erected on the ex-Aquarium site.

C15 Viatka – Vologda railway

Ref: Crane states that “some years ago, on his way to St Petersburg where his firm were busy in a survey of a railway from Viatka to Vologda, [RWP attended an Anglican Sunday service] in one of the capitals en route” (p.237). There is no reference to this project in any of RWP’s Who’s Who entries or in notes for an autobiography.

Further Information

Viatka seems to have been more frequently spelt Vyatka, and was renamed Kirov in honour of the Communist leader of that name who was killed in 1934. J.N.Westwood, The History of Russian Railways (G.Allen and Unwin, London, 1964) states “The St Petersburg – Vologda – Vyatka line at last made it economic to ship Siberian grain through north-western ports” (p.140) and names the line as one of the four “most important new lines” of the 1900-1913 period (loc.cit). The line appears to have been completed in 1906 (Edward Ames, “A Century of Russian Railroad Construction: 1837-1936”, American Slavic and East European Review, Vol. 6, 1947, p.71).

The Viatka-Vologda line was opened in 1906 (Westwood, p.302). The St Petersburg to Viatka line was built as a State-owned railway. In 1906 (or soon after?) it was amalgamated with another State-owned railway (Moscow-Yaroslavl-Archangel) to form the Northern Railway, with 2800 km of track altogether (Westwood, loc.cit). The article “Mr R.W.Perks M.P.” (unsigned) in The British Monthly of January 1903 states “Mr Perks was engaged with Mr Walker on the survey of the great Russian railway, 1400 miles long, from St Petersburg to Viatka and Vologda, and upon this business he met M.Witte, the most powerful of the Czar’s ministers” (p.83). No date for this meeting is given, nor any further details of the project.

C16 Rio de Janeiro Quays

Ref: RWP’s 1906 to 1912 Who’s Who entries state “his firm are now constructing the Rio Janeiro (sic) quays and harbour works for the Brazilian government”. RWP’s 1913 to 1918 Who’s Who entries state “was associated … with Mr C.Walker [in building] the Rio Janeiro (sic) quays and harbour works for the Brazilian government”. Crane states “Messrs Walker & Co. … are now constructing a magnificent quay wall, several miles long, round Rio Bay, for the Brazilian Government” (p.78). RWP’s notes for an autobiography states: “Another large contract … was with the Brazilian government for the construction of a sea wall and port works in the front of the City of the Rio de Janeiro” (p.106).

Further Information

RWP’s notes for an autobiography states that “This great work was, on the advice of Lord Rothschild, entrusted to my firm … no other contractors were asked to tender” (pp.106-7). José Maria Bello’s A History of Modern Brazil 1889-1964, Stanford University Press edition (in English), 1966, states that under the government of Rodrigues Alves, 1902-1906: “The port works of Rio de Janeiro were entrusted to the engineer [Francisco de Paula] Bicalho”. No additional information on the project yet obtained.

C17 Bermuda Docks

Ref: RWP’s 1906 to 1908 Who’s Who entries state: “his firm are now constructing … Bermuda Docks for the British Government”. This project is not mentioned either in Crane or in RWP’s notes for an autobiography.

C18 Transandine Railway

Ref: RWP’s 1909 to 1911 Who’s Who entries state “his firm are now constructing … The Argentine and Chili [sic] Transandine Railway”. Crane states: “Messrs Walker & Co. … are also piercing the Andes between Argentina and Chile, so that soon these two neighbouring Republics will be connected by railway and passengers will be able to travel through from Buenos Ayres [sic] to Valparaiso without change of car” (p.78). The project is not mentioned in RWP’s notes for an autobiography. RWP’s 1914 to 1918 Who’s Who entries state “was associated … with Mr C.Walker [in building] the Transandine Railway between Chili [sic] and Argentina”.

Further Information

The Transandine railway was built to link the British owned Buenos Aires Pacific Railway’s terminus at Mendoza (altitude 2518 feet) with the Chilean system at Los Andes (altitude 2669 feet) via a railway with, at its highest point, the Cumbre Tunnel (3,463 yards long at an altitude of 10,452 feet). After some early work commencing in the late 1880s was halted because of financial difficulties, construction “recommenced with much celebration in 1903 after a lapse of twelve years” (Brian Fawcett, Railways of the Andes, George Allen & Unwin, London, 1963, pp.89-91). From then to completion in 1910 the construction was the responsibility of the Transandine Construction Company, controlled by W.R.Grace & Co. of New York which had secured the agreement of the London house of Morgan to subscribe half the anticipated required capital. Fawcett states that Messrs Walker took over the contract for the tunnelling work after a firm previously employed by the Transandine Construction Company had spent some three years making only slow progress (p.93). Fawcett does not report when this occurred but does state that under Messrs Walker the speed of progress improved substantially. Fawcett states that when the railway was opened to traffic “the optimistic estimates of the freight available turned out to be sadly exaggerated” (p.91).

The disappointing outcome of the project for those who had put capital into it is highlighted in Vincent P.Carosso, The Morgans, Private International Bankers 1854-1913, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1987. “In March 1909 Morgan’s London house cabled Jack Morgan that it had issued ₤100,000 of new credits to cover the unanticipated cost of constructing a tunnel at the top of the Andes. Two months later … Grace & Co. advised the firm of the need for an additional ₤200,000. Still other demands for immediate funds were made and met …” (p.583). In 1911, Vivian Smith, the Morgan partner charged with this project wrote to one of the partners in Paris “[the company] will not be paying a dividend till you and I are a good deal older than we are at present; in fact I should think this investment would be of greater interest to our sons than it will ever be to us” (quoted ibid p.584).

The Argentine Transandine Railway Company, Limited (the owner of the line) held its annual general meeting for the year to 30 June 1912 on 12 December 1912 in London. The meeting is reported in The Economist, 14 December 1912, pp.1233-1234, the company’s printed report having been summarized in The Economist, 7 December 1912, p.1192. The poor performance for the year is attributed to a strike of engine-drivers, “which lasted for some time” … and to severe snow storms which prevented through traffic from mid-May until 7 October: “traffic was carried on from August 1st by means of a mule service over the blocked portion of the line”. The Chairman of the company who presided at this meeting was the Hon Arthur Stanley M.P. Stanley (1869-1947) was the Conservative M.P. for the Ormskirk division of S.W.Lanchashire from 1898 to 1918, the third son of the Earl of Derby, and a supporter of A.J.Balfour.

C19 Montevideo Sea Wall

Ref: RWP’s 1912 Who’s Who entry states: “his firm are now constructing … the Montevideo Sea Wall for the Uruguayan government”. This project is not mentioned in Crane, which suggests the contract emerged after 1909. The project is not mentioned in RWP’s notes for an autobiography, nor in any of RWP’s Who’s Who entries from 1914 onwards. The 1913 Who’s Who entry states “was associated … with Mr C.Walker … the Montevideo Sea Wall for the Uruguayan Government”.

Further Information

This appears to be the Rambla Sur shore road and sea wall project described in Milton I Vanger, The Model Country: José Batlle Y Ordonez of Uruguay 1907-1915, Brandeis University Press, Hanover, 1980. “The project, a two-and-a-half mile road from the port to the beach, which dated from Batlle’s first administration, had been taken over by Williman who considered it a monument to his own administration” (p.244). Claudio Williman was President of Uruguay 1907-1911 and the contract for the project appears to have been signed in 1910 with a syndicate organized by Lord Grimthorpe. This contract involved the issue of up to seven million pesos of bonds with interest guaranteed by the Uruguayan government once construction representing a value “to be agreed upon” had been completed (p.399). The project was expected to generate profits from the sale of lands created and made valuable by the sea wall.

Before succeeding his uncle to the peerage in 1905, Lord Grimthorpe (1856-1917) had been Ernest William Beckett, a partner in the private banking firm Messrs Becketts of Leeds, York etc., and Conservative M.P. for the Whitby division of the North Riding of Yorkshire 1885-1905. Grimthorpe was unable to raise sufficient funds to start construction on the project. In November 1911 his City of Montevideo Public Works Company Limited was declared bankrupt, with liabilities of ₤943,386 and assets of ₤68 (Vanger, p.245). During 1912 there were further negotiations between Grimthorpe and the Uruguayan government, now once more with Batlle at the presidency. The latter “rejected the plans already submitted for the Rambla seawall and required a much stronger seawall and asphalted pavement on the road. Grimthorpe claimed the Uruguayan government, by exorbitantly increasing construction costs, was forcing him to give up the contract” (loc.cit). Grimthorpe campaigned for and obtained diplomatic assistance in seeking compensation from the Uruguayan government. In June 1913 the Uruguayan government proposed that Woodrow Wilson arbitrate on whether damages were due (ibid p.262).

C20 Havana Docks^{(see addendum d)}

Ref: RWP’s Who’s Who entries for 1913 to 1916 state “member of the firm of Macarthur, Perks, and Co., Ltd, of Ottawa, Canada and New York, now constructing docks at Havana”. The 1917 and 1918 entries have the word “constructed” in place of “now constructing”. This project is not mentioned in Crane which suggests the contract emerged after 1909. RWP’s notes for an autobiography states: “I entered into an arrangement with a well-known firm of public contractors, Messrs. MacArthur [sic] Brothers of Chicago, to construct some large works … These works were the Havana Docks in Cuba and a lengthy railway upwards of 1,000 miles long for the Pacific Railway Company” (p.107).

Further Information

RWP’s entry in H.H.Barrett’s 1912 publication Business Men at Home and Abroad 1912-13 suggests that this project involved work at other Cuban ports in addition to Havana stating “… is constructing the new docks in Havana and dredging the ports of Cuba”.

Histories of Cuba during the first two decades of the twentieth century often describe the sequence of political events surrounding this piece of engineering work. Harry F.Guggenheim’s The United States and Cuba, Macmillan, New York 1934, states: “One of the notorious scandals of the early history of the Cuban Republic was the Ports Company project” (p.220). Russell H.Fitzgibbon’s Cuba and the United States 1900-1935, Russell and Russell, New York, 1935 (reissued 1964), states: “One of the most famous and prolonged pieces of graft during the Gomez and Menocal administration was the Cuban Ports Company Concession” (p.154). During the second half of 1913 The Economist published a number of pieces on the affair including an article under the headline “The Cuban Ports Scandal” (6 September 1913, pp.449-450) in which The Economist called upon the Committee of the London Stock Exchange to inquire into why: “not only the bonds, but also the paper common stock (on which the directors were audacious enough to pay a dividend of 1 per cent last April) were granted the hall-mark of quotations in the Stock Exchange Official List” (see also pp.495-6, 532-3, 550-52, 609, 663-4, 705 of The Economist vol. LXXVII, July to December 1913).

The story begins in early 1911 shortly after the re-establishment of the Cuban government in 1909 following the period of United States’ “intervention” 1906-09. “A bill authorizing the improvement of Habana (sic) and several other ports was introduced in the Cuban Congress in January 1911. The improvement was needed … but it was to be paid for by increasing the port dues … The money collected would be turned over to the company for a period of thirty years” (Dana G.Munro, Intervention and Dollar Diplomacy in the Caribbean 1900-1921, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1964, p.471). The Cuban Congress passed the law on 20 February, although criticism had led to the new rate for port dues being pruned back by 12 per cent. The financial projections of the scheme put the cost of the work at $10 to $12 million, and the dollar value of thirty years` worth of port dues (without discounting) at five times that. Funds to cover the cost of the work were to be raised by the issue by the Ports Company of 30 year “5 per cent mortgage bonds”, principally overseas. Little new money appears to have been raised by the issue of equity in the Company. According to The Economist “the original capital of the Ports Company … on March 4 1911, was, by a stroke of the pen increased … and the four owners of the original $100,000 of capital had their shareholdings increased one hundred-fold without their having to pay a dollar into the company’s treasury. Mr Huston in addition took $850,000 of the first mortgage bonds as consideration for his services” (6 September 1913, p.449). With such a high ratio of gearing between debt capital and actually-subscribed equity capital the financial risks of the project were essentially to be borne by the bond-holders while the financial benefits of revenues in excess of debt-servicing requirements would flow to the equity holders. In the words of Munro “the Cuban politicians who held the stock in the company could expect to make a large profit with little or no investment of their own money” (loc.cit). The Ports Company later admitted that even “the $100,000 of original capital represented not cash but promoters’ services” (The Economist 20 September 1913, p.532).

The arrangements providing for the ending of United States military occupation of Cuba following the Spanish-American war and the establishment of an independent Cuban republic required that the constitution of the latter should not allow the Cuban government to contract debts beyond its capacity to pay “from the ordinary revenues of the island”. As well as appearing in the constitution this same requirement appeared as a commitment in the permanent treaty between Cuba and the United States. It is usually referred to as Article II of the Platt Amendment. The Cuban Ports scheme had been structured so that the issue of 30 year bonds was to be an issue of private-sector debt not Cuban government debt, but nevertheless concerns arose in Washington as to whether the alienation by the Cuban government of a significant flow of port-dues revenue for 30 years did not represent the equivalent of the type of financial improvidence which Article II of the Platt Amendment sought to guard against.

On 12 May 1911 the English merchant bank Kleinwort Sons and Co. wrote to the U.S.Secretary of State asking whether the issuing of Cuban Ports Company bonds on the London capital market would cause the American government to raise any objections under the Platt Amendment. On 9 June, the Department of State responded: “That the contract is on its face so manifestly improvident and one-sided, that it so lacks in equity and reasonableness, that it imposes such burdensome and excessive taxes on Cuban commerce, and that it so vitally affects the ordinary revenues of Cuba which are already scarcely adequate to defray the expenses of the Government, as to raise grave doubts regarding its ultimate validity and legality” (quoted in H.F.Guggenheim op.cit. pp.220-221). Nevertheless, in May 1911 $6 million of the Ports Company’s bonds were sold in London by the City House Sperling and Co., acting through Kleinwort Sons and Co. (The Economist, Letter to the Editor from Sperling and Co., 20 September 1913, p.550). “The contract for the entire work had been let to the T.L.Huston Contracting Company. Subcontracts were awarded to Michael J.Dady, Snare and Triest, Macarthur Perks and Company and Bowers Southern Dredging Company” (L.B.Jenks, Our Cuban Colony, Vanguard, New York, 1928, p.122). Work on the project commenced.

During late 1911 through to early 1913 there were negotiations between the ports project’s promoters, the U.S.State Department and the Cuban government. The Ports Company’s concession underpinning the scheme was amended to provide the Cuban government with a right to terminate the concession with compensation to the owners, and “the company agreed to an arrangement by which the United States government would appoint three appraisers to fix the amount of compensation if the concession were cancelled and would have the right to approve or disapprove their decision” (Munro, op.cit. p.474). President Gomez agreed to those arrangements, but in May 1913 was succeeded by President Menocal. “On August 4th a further presidential decree invalidated the concession and cancelled all rights of the Cuban Ports Company … The port dues were to be collected thenceforth, and the improvements made, by the government. Menocal’s action was sustained by the Cuban supreme court late in 1915 after prolonged litigation” (R.H.Fitzgibbon, op.cit p.155).

According to Jenks the amount of ports improvement work carried out up until August 1913 was about $5 million and from then on “the work of harbor improvement was left largely incomplete”. Once the Cuban government resumed collection of the port dues, the Ports Company was unable to service its bonds. The London bondholders met and formed a committee to pursue means of relieving their plight. One of the members of the Committee was the actuary of the Star Life Assurance Company, which suggests that that company had taken a significant holding of the bonds in the 1911 issue. Among those who spoke at the 30 September meeting was a “Mr Reeves”. It is not clear if this was Thomas James Reeves, formerly one of the three trustees of the T.A.Walker estate from 1889 to 1898 and contractor for portions of the London Underground construction work. (The 30 September meeting is reported in The Economist, 4 October 1913 pp.663-4). The plight of the Cuban Ports bondholders was not resolved until mid-1917, by which stage the British ambassador to the United States had appealed on behalf of the bondholders for the U.S.government to use its good offices to persuade the Cuban government to act. The entry of the United States into the World War seems to have led to Washington becoming keener on reducing diplomatic friction between Britain and Cuba. On 24 July 1917 the Cuban Congress passed an indemnification bill and in October “the Cuban government purchased at par with government bonds the outstanding bonds of the Ports Company” (R.H.Fitzgibbon, op.cit., p.155). The Cuban government bonds thus issued had a coupon rate of 5 per cent (Munro op.cit., p.489).

C21 North American Railways

Ref: RWP’s Who’s Who entries for 1913-1916 state “member of the firm of Macarthur, Perks, and Co. Ltd of Ottawa and New York, now … building railway works for Southern Pacific Railway Company in Oregon”. In the entries for 1917 and 1918 “now … building” is replaced by “constructed”. The project is not mentioned in Crane which suggests the contract(s) emerged after 1909. RWP’s notes for an autobiography states “These works were … a lengthy railway upwards of 1,000 miles long for the Pacific Railway Company” (p.107).

Discussion and Suggested Conclusions

Section C has made it clear that the London passenger transport developments of 1900-1907 together represent one among a number of transport infrastructure development projects with which RWP was associated over the course of his business career, although in most cases it is difficult to discern the precise nature of that association. Asa Briggs, in his foreword to R.K. Middlemas, The Master Builders (Hutchinson, London, 1963), identified four types of skills required for success in the field of Middlemas’s subjects, namely that of a major construction contractor. The list was: “first, financial manipulation; second, knowledge of bricks and mortar, iron and steel; third, ability to handle a heterogeneous and often foreign labour force; and fourth, political capacity, measured not only by the winning of contracts but by the orderly and profitable completion of them” (p.15). Within the category “financial manipulation” Briggs included the ability “to raise huge initial sums of capital” (p.16), and he expanded on his fourth category stating: “Political manipulation included not only the ability to deal effectively with politicians but with bankers and bureaucrats” (loc.cit).

In the projects RWP and T.A. Walker collaborated together on, Walker seems to have taken responsibility for numbers two and three from the Asa Briggs list, and RWP for one and four. This is particularly clear in the case of their first project together, the Appledore to Lydd railway. RWP brought to bear his legal and political skills in navigating the project through the regulatory authorization processes. His network of kin and business associates were key in providing the finance for construction, and financial security re. the operation of the railway when completed. Walker organized the actual physical construction (see Section C1 above). RWP had been elected an Associate of the [British] Institution of Civil Engineers in March 1878 (Minutes of Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers, vol. 53, meeting of 5 March), but it is not clear on what basis. There is no record of his having been a “student” of the I.C.E., as was the case with some (but not all) others elected Associates. The biographical information on RWP makes no mention of any formal training in engineering or any early employment therein. What RWP “picked up” through his association with Walker and the Walker trustees/executors after Walker’s death probably bolstered his capacities in navigating the political and bureaucratic processes associated with large and complex civil engineering projects, and in negotiations regarding the securing of partners and finance for such. But it would be hard to argue that RWP could be regarded as likely to have made a substantial contribution to the London transport project of 1900-1907 in terms of skills two and three from the Asa Briggs list. It was CTY who had direct experience (from Chicago) of converting an urban passenger transport system to electric traction, and in managing profitably a major urban passenger transport system. It was CTY who selected (mainly on the basis of their experience in the United States) the team of engineers and managers responsible for putting in place the electrical infrastructure and equipment, and preparing the operating systems (See J.P. Thomas, “The Seven From Chicago”, Journal of the London Underground Railway Society, Volume 9, August 1970, pp.115-134). The organization of the civil engineering work other than the electrical equipment aspects (e.g. tunnelling, constructions of stations etc) would appear to have been a responsibility borne by RWP rather than CTY, however. Certainly a significant proportion of that work was undertaken by contractors RWP had been associated with through the Walker and Walker trustees/executors projects (see Sections B1, B8, and C6 to C9 above).

It was RWP’s capacity to contribute under the item four heading from the Asa Briggs list, “political manipulation”, that probably caused CTY to be attracted into combining with him for the London project. Dreiser’s account in The Stoic suggests that although CTY had looked at the London urban transit situation sometime earlier, it was only in the immediate wake of his own dramatic failure on the “political manipulation” front in Chicago at the end of 1898 that he began to take a more serious interest (see Section B1). Under such circumstances, and with the prospect of operating in a regulatory environment in which he had no previous direct experience, (and might, indeed, be regarded with some suspicion) one would expect CTY to have required, before committing to a major new business project in Britain, a strong sense of security that the political front was not going to undermine things once more. RWP had by 1900 almost a quarter of a century’s experience in navigating transport projects through the British regulatory system, in impeding and/or blocking rival projects via that system, and in the workings of British law concerning railway matters and transport infrastructure matters more generally. He sat in Parliament and was a leading player in what might be termed the “pro-Rosebery faction” of the British Liberal party. In 1900 there seemed a reasonable prospect that Lord Rosebery might become prime minister before the decade was over. And whereas CTY’s “political friends” in Chicago had themselves been targets of reformists campaigners against political corruption, RWP’s public image was that of devout Methodist layman, major fundraiser for worthy Methodist causes, and supporter of the ideals of middle-class nonconformist democracy against Tory monopoly privileges (see Sections C6, C9, and C14 above).

RWP in 1900 did not have a 100 per cent success record on the “political manipulation” front. The Appledore to Lydd railway became a little-used backwater when a key portion of the connecting link to London failed to get regulatory authorization (see Section C1). The Channel Tunnel project of the 1880s was halted by problems in the political-legal arena (see Section C2). Subsequent to the London transport project, there were some other notable failures of “political manipulation” – see Sections C13, C19 and C 20). But to CTY in 1900, RWP must have seemed a good risk in terms of securing the political-bureaucratic-legal approvals necessary for the London transport project and in impeding/blocking any serious rivals via such processes. And CTY’s confidence appears to have been vindicated (see Section B, particularly B7).

The first of the necessary skills in the Asa Briggs list represents an area where the record of RWP’s other business projects suggest he may have played a more significant role than accounts of the London Transport development of 1900 – 1907 have hitherto indicated. The Barry Docks and Railway project seems to have been by far the most financially successful of the various transport infrastructure projects in which RWP was associated, in terms of the returns to those who put capital into the project. Section C6 has provided evidence that RWP was involved in organizing finance for that project, through a network of associates along the lines discussed in Ranald C Michie “The Social Web of Investment in the Nineteenth Century”, International Review of the History of Banking, vol 18, 1979, pp.158-175. RWP also appears to have played a role in designing the type of capital structure which allowed sufficient funds to be raised to commence construction work on the Manchester Ship Canal project (see C9). Both this and other projects involved him in liaising with major merchant-banking houses over large capital raisings (see C8 in particular). The available evidence suggests that RWP did make a substantial contribution to the financial entrepreneurship involved in taking control over the Metropolitan District Railway Company in the first stages of the London transport project (see Section B2). The available evidence does not allow us to discern a major role by RWP in the later stages of capital raising and capital re-structuring. But this would not seem to provide a sound basis for simply assuming that he made no such contribution, and that it was all the work of CTY and Edgar Speyer. It seems to be a fact that RWP abstained from any direct holding of ordinary shares in the core company in the London project, UERL, and also its predecessor MDET. But RWP did have a major “equity interest” in UERL (and its predecessor MDET) via special categories of financial instruments described above which have much in common with modern executive share-options schemes. At first CTY and RWP held two-thirds and one-third respectively of these instruments – later altered to three-quarters and one-quarter respectively (see Section B). It is hard to see CTY agreeing to proportions of this order if UERL/MDET really had been the “one-man-show” it has so frequently been painted to be.

It would be premature to conclude from the material discussed in this paper that RWP did make a contribution such as to deserve “equal headline billing” (or something close thereto) in accounts of the development of London passenger transport facilities in the important 1900-1907 period. But it would seem reasonable to argue that the case should not be regarded as closed, and that reasonable grounds for doubt exist regarding the validity of the now standard account that “London’s underground railway system was decisively modernized and expanded by the activities of one man: Charles Tyson Yerkes” (Barker and Robbins, see Section A above). If further information on the RWP/CTY collaboration can be brought to light, it might turn out that the London evening newspaper The Globe got the balance about right when on a front page in September 1901 it carried the verse:

Said Mr. Perks to Mr. Yerks (sic)

‘A fortune in “the sewer” lurks’

Said Mr. Yerkes to Mr. Perks

‘I’ll boss the job then in those circs’

So Mr. Perks and Mr. Yerkes

Cornered the District and its works.

(Quoted in Alexander Edmonds, op.cit p.198)

Some brief addenda

Section B3. In 2001, I was not aware that Murray Griffith was a first cousin of R.W.Perks. I am grateful to Paul Hadley for alerting me to this. Murray Griffith`s mother was the only sister of George Thomas Perks (1819-1877), the father of R.W.Perks.
Section B8. The Walker in the firm “Walker, Price & Reeves” WAS Charles Hay Walker (1860-1942), as is surmised here.
Section C8. Anne Ellen Walker married John Cropper (1864-1916) at Caerwent on 6 February 1895.
Section C20. I have found no evidence as to the identity of the “Mr. Reeves” who spoke at the 30 September 1913 meeting referred to here. There is no reason to believe that this was Thomas James Reeves (1840-1927), who had been one of the three trustees of the T.A.Walker Estate.