Read Amazing & Extraordinary Facts: London for Free Online Page A

TICKET TO SUICIDE VIA BANKRUPTCY PLEASE
    Leopold Redpath wasn’t the only criminal associated with the London Underground. Whitaker Wright (1845-1904) began to build the Bakerloo Line in 1897, went bankrupt and fled to the USA. Extradited back to Britain, he was sentenced to seven years’ hard labour and committed suicide in the Law Courts. When searched, his clothing was found to contain a revolver which evidently he had been carrying throughout the trial!

    Whitaker Wright
    The Underground railway was successful from the start, despite the problems caused by steam trains operating underground. Amazingly, no accidents appear to have resulted from the dangerous practice of illuminating the carriages with gas lamps fed from gas held in tarpaulin bags on the roofs of the carriages, surrounded by flying sparks from the steam locomotives! The Metropolitan Line was built by the ‘cut and cover’ method: dig a trench along a road; build the railway; fill in what remains of the trench. Later lines swiftly followed, most of them being the ‘Tubes’ constructed far beneath the streets using tunnelling shields. The first of these, the City and South London Railway, opened in 1890 between Stockwell and the City. It is now the southern part of the Northern Line. It was the first to use electric locomotives.

    An electric locomotive

    Marc Brunels tunnel shield
    MARC BRUNEL MAKES THE EARTH MOVE FOR PEDESTRIANS
    Sir Marc Brunel (1769-1849), father of Isambard, devised the tunnelling shield to build the world’s first tunnel beneath a river which opened between Wapping and Rotherhithe in 1843. Its iron frame protected the workmen, known as miners, from falling debris. Designed for pedestrians, the tunnel he built by this method now accommodates the East London line of the Underground. All subsequent tunnelling shields, including that used to build the Channel Tunnel, are developments of Marc Brunel’s design.
    The original map icon
    Under the guidance of Frank Pick (1878-1941) the Underground also became known for modern, innovative design. Many of the stations on the system, notably the northern section of the Piccadilly Line, are listed buildings. Posters promoting travel were commissioned from artists who later became famous like Paul Nash and Mabel Lucie Attwell. A new typeface for station signs was commissioned from the artist Edward Johnston, sculpture from Eric Gill and Jacob Epstein and, of course, the famous Underground Map. Devised by electrical draughtsman Harry Beck (1901-74) during a period of unemployment, it was at first rejected as too revolutionary but is now an icon of industrial design, often imitated but never equalled.

    Arnos Grove station
    COMRADE PICK, CAPITALIST SOVIET HERO
    By the 1930s London’s Underground railway was the model for other urban transport systems. Nikita Khruschev sent a delegation to London to study the network while he was building the Moscow Metro (with forced labour). The managing director of the Underground, Frank Pick, was awarded the Honorary Badge of Merit of the Soviet Union by Stalin – an unusual distinction for a director of what was then a private enterprise!

An ambling horse
The origin of the Hackney carriage
    T he Underground railway was not, of course, London’s first public transport. That was the brainchild of a retired sailor called Captain Baily who, from about 1640, was hiring out from the Maypole Inn in the Strand
coches haquenée
, a French term for a coach pulled by an ambling horse (abbreviated to ‘hack’ in English). The service was so successful that the coaches were soon blocking London’s narrow streets but in 1654 Oliver Cromwell licensed the Fellowship of Master Hackney Coachmen. In return for an annual licence fee of £5 the Hackneys enjoyed a monopoly of four-wheeled transport north of the Thames as far as the New Road, which is now the line of the Marylebone Road-Euston Road-Pentonville Road. Is this, perhaps, the origin of the legendary London