GNR 'Conditions of Admission to the Service' for new clerks- 1856 - Part 2

On Thursday I presented the first half of the Great Northern Railway's 'Conditions of Admission to the Service' for new clerks from 1856, which I found in a rule book for station masters. While that half dealt principally with wages, the second half was where potential clerks' conditions of service, qualifications and security were discussed, as follows:

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7. A candidate as a Clerk will undergo a strict examination as to his qualifications, in proportion to his age; he will be required to show a good hand-writing, suited for accounts and correspondence, and that he has a competent knowledge of mercantile arithmetic; and he must be in a good state of health.

The candidate must, on attending at the Secretary's office to be examined, produce testimonials of character.

In the case of an Experienced Clerk; and of a Junior Clerk who has been before employed - 

      1. From his last employer.
      2. One from each of two housekeepers of undoubted respectability.

In the case of a Lad Clerk; and of a Junior clerk who has NOT  been before employed -

      1. From the head master of the school at which he has been educated.
      2. One from each of his two housekeepers of undoubted respectability.

The nomination, with particulars of the examination and testimonials, will be submitted to the directors on the candidate appearing before them, and who will decide whether he be qualified and a proper person to be appointed.

The name of a Clerk, on appointment, will be added to a list, from which he will be summoned in turn for duty as a vacancy occurs, provided he has in the meantime, given security; but should he, on being summoned, refuse or neglect to join, his name will be struck out of the list, and he cannot afterwards be re-admitted to the service.

A Clerk must, immediately on appointment, give security to the amount of two years' salary, or in not less that £100, through the medium of one of the undermentioned Guarantee Societies; and he cannot subsequently, under any pretence whatever, be allowed to change from the society first selected, viz:-

The Guarantee Society, 19, Birchin Land City;
The British Guarantee Association, 9, Waterloo Place, Pall Mall;
The Times Life Assurance and Guarantee Company, 32, Ludgate Hill;
The United Guarantee and Life Assurance Company, 36, Old Jewery, City;
The United Service and General Life Assurance and Guarantee Association, 20,                                                   Cockspur Street, Charing Cross

The Railway Company pays the premium in the case of a Clerk whose salary does not exceed 21s. per week with, or 25s. per week without allowances.

GNR 'Conditions of Admission to the Service' for new clerks- 1856 - Part 1

As many of you are aware, I have a number of obsessions when it comes to railway history. Clerks are one, and rule books are another (Beer trains are also high on the list - naturally). Therefore, imagine the joy I had when flicking through my Great Northern Railway rule book from 1856, when I came a cross the 'Conditions of Admission to the Service' for all the company's new clerks. Two obsessions satisfied in one place - I couldn't ask for more. The first part of the 'conditions' were related to the clerks' pay, as follows:-

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1.Candidates for employment can join the service only in one of the following classes, viz
           Experienced Clerk Class. - Nominated by the General Manager
           Junior Clerk and Lad Clerk Class -Nominated by the Directors in turn

2. Experienced Clerks. - A candidate as an Experienced Clerk must posses railway experience, or experience in other traffic equivalent thereto.
          The salary not exceeding £80 per annum, is fixed on appointment.

3. Junior Clerks. - A candidate as a Junior Clerk must have attained 18, and must not exceed 23 years of age.
The salary on appointment, and -

For the 1st Year is ...               ...                21s per week
     "      2nd           ...               ...               22s       "
     "      3rd           ...               ...                23s       "
     "      4th           ...               ...                24s       "
     "      5th, and until promoted                   25s       "

If employed in London, but during such employment only, 4s a week are allowed in addition to the salary.

A Junior Clerk is eligible for promotion only on a vacancy occurring, and upon the head of the department in which he has been employed, and the General Manager, recommending him as qualified to fill the same.

4. Lad Clerks. - A candidate as Lad Clerk must have attained 15, and must not exceed 18, years of age.

The salary on appointment, and -


For the 1st Year is ...               ...                10s per week
     "      2nd           ...               ...               11s       "
     "      3rd           ...               ...                13s       "
     "      4th, and until promoted                   16s       "

A Lad clerk is ineligible for promotion to be a Junior Clerk until he is 18 years of age, and then only upon a vacancy occurring, and upon the head of the department in which he has been employed, and the General Manager, recommending him as qualified to fill the same.

5. All Clerks, without reference to their standing in the service, are allowed 4s a week, in addition to their pay, when employed wholly on night duty.

6. Written application at the end of year of service must be made to the directors through the medium of the superintendent of the line, or chief of the department in which the Clerk is engaged, for the authorised increase of salary, and failing such application at the proper time, increased pay will be allowed only from the date of which it is eventually made. This rule applies also to the Police and Porters.


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Part 2 to come on Saturday

Examinations for New Railway Clerks - 1850s and 60s

By the 1860s if you wanted to be clerk on Britain's railways, and stand a chance of eventually joining the ranks of management, you had to undergo an examination to prove your abilities. However, different railway companies introduced examinations at different times. The first known company to introduce such testing was the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway, who, under the General Manager, Edward Watkin, introduced them in 1854 as part of his management training scheme. The test was designed to train youths who were 'superior by education or birth.'[1] A year later the London and North Western Railway also introduced exams under the guidance of Richard Moon, one of the company's directors.[2] Furthermore, by 1861 all those in line for a clerical situation on the Great Western Railway also had to undertake a short arithmetic test.[3] Lastly, in 1860 the London and South Western Railway introduced exams for new clerks in ‘writing, spelling, copying and common arithmetic.'[4] The precise content of these examinations is unknown. However, I'd love to see one at some point to find out.


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[1] Hodgkins, David, The Second Railway King: The Life and Times of Sir Edward Watkin, (Landybie, 2002), p.124
[2] Braine, Peter, The Railway Moon - A Man and his Railway: Sir Richard Moon and the L&NWR, (Taunton, 2010), p.99
[3] Unknown Author, The Hand-Book Guide to Railway Situations, (London, 1961), p.8 
[4] The National Archives, RAIL 411/4, Court of Directors Minute Book, Minute 1191, 2 February 1860

'The Position of a Station-Master is not Arrived at in a Day.' - Promotion in 1889

The following short clipping is from an article entitled 'Station-Masters, by one of them', and was published in Chamber's Journal  in March 1889. Interestingly, it suggests that not only was advancement up the railway promotional tree more likley to be determined by who a railway worker knew, not on skill, but also that only a few were destined for the lofty position of General Manager. Personally, I find the latter point more plausible that the former, as while nepotism did go on, railway work by this time had become more professional than the author claims:

'The position of a station-master is not arrived at in a day. The average number of years for which a man has to work before he attains this post is about twelve. There are men, and many of them of great practical experience, who have been aiming at this position for twenty years or more, and have not reached it yet; and may never do so. It is the same on the railways as in the army, navy and the other professions : influence, to some extent, is almost indispensable; and though men of marked ability have risen in the railway service by virtue of their own merit, still these instances are few and far between. Soldiers and sailors cannot all be generals and admirals, neither can every railway servant become general manager. The French soldier is taught to believe he carries a marshal's baton in his knapsack; so might every railway man be taught that seal of a general manager is within his grasp. If honours are never attained, both services will profit by the energy displayed by the members in attempting to attain a position that is held by very few men within half a century.'

Retaining 'good' Clerks at the Cost of Innovation

I am always interested in why railway management in the late nineteenth century stagnated in terms of ideas. It should be remembered, that in the period the vast majority of companies' influential managers came from the clerical staff and from within the Traffic Department. Indeed, by the turn of the century, most senior managers had joined the companies as junior clerks in the 1870s and 1880s, had very fixed career paths and felt it was their right to advance up the promotional ladder. This meant that there were few new ideas coming into railway management as those below in the hierarchy simply filled the place of those who had left above them.

Yesterday, through the library, I acquired a copy of Michael Heller's new book London Clerical Workers 1880-1914. Heller quoted a memorandum from a Great Western Railway (GWR) manager, A.W. Solten, that explained why the company preferred new clerks and  managers to come from inside the company, rather than from externals sources; something they were considering but eventually dropped as an idea:

"Hitherto the practice has been to draw from the general staff to fill such positions, the men who, by their ability, zeal and assiduity, have singled themselves out for promotion outside the ordinary routine, and to whom the knowledge that the prizes of the service are open to all, has been an incentive to cultivate the good qualities they posses.
         The successful management and administration of a railway depend very largely on the zealous and capable discharge, by a contented staff, of duties, some of mere detail and routine, others involving in a greater or lesser degree the exercise of thought and judgement. To introduce into the service, however delicately, the mere suspicion that the chief positions are likley to be monopolized by a favoured few individuals, thereby arresting the natural flow of promotion through the service, would I feel convinced, causing a feeling of discontent which would operate to the detriment of the Company by reason of the removal to excel, which under existing circumstances tends to their benefit; and would also lead to the better men, who might leave the service for appointments outside such as would not otherwise attract them."

Therefore, Heller argued that the GWR was reluctant hire managers and clerks from outside the company because it would tie the individuals into it, mean low labour turnover and would motivate staff to improve themselves to advance up the hierarchy.[1] Yet, in a managerial sense, these things contributed to managerial innovation drying up within the late Victorian Railway, as the new managerial 'blood' simply replicated the practices of those who had gone before.

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[1] The National Archives, RAIL 258/400, Letter of A.W. Solten to G.K. Mills, 11 November 1900, in Heller, Michael, London Clerical Workers, 1880-1914, (London, 2011) p,52

The False Memory of a Railway Clerk

As a historian one of the perils of the profession is that I have too often come across individuals or groups of individuals who consider memories a more useful source of historical information than the material found in archives. Yet, my philosophy is that  recollections from memory should only be used as a guide when starting research, and then only to supplement archival material. This seems quite harsh, but I have come across too many instances where memories have been plain wrong to change my opinion, and personally I would rather not take the risk of being in error when writing.

The stark reality of the inaccuracy of memory was brought home to me today when examining the personal recollections of William Buckmaster, a London and South Western Railway (L&SWR) clerk between 1875 and 1925 (when it was the Southern Railway). Buckmaster recalled that 'I joined the service...in 1875 as a junior clerk at my "home" station when I was 11 years 7 months of age.'[1] Unfortunately, Buckmaster's memory was in error. According to his staff record, which was written at the time, he did indeed join the company in October1875 at Fareham Station as a Junior Goods Clerk. Yet, this was at the the age of fifteen.[2]  But this wasn't the only problem I found in his writings. Later, in the book he said that after seven years he 'applied for and obtained a transfer to a busy goods depot.'[3] Yet, his staff record again proves him wrong and it was after six years, in November 1881, that he moved to be goods clerk to Reading.[4]

Thus, while I would accept that many of the stories Buckmaster recalled have some truth in them, either in part or in their entirety, the actual dates he recalls and the finer details of his book are open to questioning. Therefore, while I do believe that recollections are the historian's friend, they're just not the best man at the wedding.

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[1] Buckmaster, William, Railway Reminiscences, (Unknown, 1937), p.1
[2] The National Archives [TNA], RAIL 411/497, Clerical staff character book Weekly Paid Clerks, p.54
[3] Buckmaster, Railway Reminiscences, p.3
[4]  TNA, RAIL 411/497, Clerical staff character book Weekly Paid Clerks, p.54

'Supremely Ignorant' - LSE Management Courses and Clerical Experience

I am interested in all areas of railway history from the pre-World War One period. Indeed, as my PhD covers so many of them, I have research questions consistently popping out of my head. One of my areas of interest is management training from the 1890s onwards. Indeed, from 1904 the London School of Economics operated a Railway Department to train future traffic managers, predominantly clerks, as the employment structure of companies meant that the vast majority of senior executives had only had working experiences on one promotional tree, and within one department. This was explained in 1911 by one of the LSE's lecturers, Mr W. Stephenson:-

'Students come from a variety of departments and offices. In many cases their knowledge of railway work is confined strictly to the limits of work done in their own departments, and often to only a small section of such work. Of the rest of the work of the railway they are supremely ignorant.'[1]

A small section of my PhD is about whether these courses actually improved management quality for the London and South Western Railway before 1914.

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[1] London School of Economics Archive [LSE], Minutes, 14/2/1, 1904-1911, Memorandum by Mr Stephenson to the Advisory Committee on Railway Subjects, 13th February 1911

A Very Bad Railway Clerk, Mr Agnew

I always find looking at railway staff records weirdly interesting. Not because of the career paths individuals took, but because of the things that railway workers did wrong. I suppose I just like a bit of deviance in my life. I was having a look at some London and South Western Railway (L&SWR) clerical staff records and I found the interesting case of Mr Agnew. Agnew joined the L&SWR in October 1874 at the age of  sixteen as a Junior Clerk at Bournemouth. Yet, after eleven and a half years of employment, at the age of twenty-seven, he was dismissed. Throughout his short career with the company he committed a number of minor offences, such as delaying telegrams and re-issuing tickets improperly. Thus, for each occasion of rule-breaking he was fined a small amount. However, in his later years his offences got worse, and in January 1884 he was fined £1 by the company for picking up and attempting to keep a sovereign which had fallen from another clerk's cash. Then, in April 1886, he was finally dismissed for attempting to embezzle the company out of £28 15/-.

Clearly, not all railway workers had a 'job for life' if they got up to such antics.