EARLY VICTORIAN RAILWAY EXCURSIONS: The Million Go Forth

Railway excursions are often thought to have been invented by Thomas Cook, but in this brilliantly researched book the author shows that as soon as railways started to spread quickly in the 1830s, large numbers of organisations started organising trips, including the railway companies themselves, Sunday Schools, Mechanics' Institutes, and Temperance Societies. The working classes went on trips, the middle classes took excursions, and the higher reaches of society signed up for tours. First and second class carriages had roofs, but the third class was in open wagons, where travellers might get rained on and particular indignation was felt by people who had purchased covered tickets but found themselves without seats and herded into Third. The monster excursion train was always a big local spectacle, and in 1840 a train travelling from Nottingham to Leicester to visit the Leicester Mechanics Exhibition had four engines, 67 carriages and nearly 3000 passengers, "like a moving street" according to a contemporary report. There were similar huge trains bringing 3000 people for a week's holiday in Scarborough, but with shorter excursions there were complaints that some people stayed on the train as it went back and forth rather than alight at the destination. Handbills giving information about the trips inaugurated the art of the copywriter with an excursion from Lincoln to Matlock being described as "The Greatest Railway Treat of the Season!". Although many trips were intended to be educational, and Sunday schools hired a classroom at the destination for instruction, the tripping industry was vigorously opposed by Sunday observance societies. Problems of rail travel included people bringing full meals onto the train, women receiving unwanted attention from men, and passengers who climbed on to the roofs suffering injury or fatalities. 17.8 x 24.7cm, 195pp, maps, colour and mono illustrations.