Beschreibung:

STEPHENSON, George (1781-1848). Autograph letter signed ('Geo: Stephenson') to his son Robert, Alton Grange, 16 May 1833, 3 pages, 4to , integral address leaf, postmarked, with wax seal (seal tear with loss affecting one word).
STEPHENSON, George (1781-1848). Autograph letter signed ('Geo: Stephenson') to his son Robert, Alton Grange, 16 May 1833, 3 pages, 4to , integral address leaf, postmarked, with wax seal (seal tear with loss affecting one word). AN INSIGHT INTO THE PIONEERING WORKING PRACTICES OF THE 'FATHER OF THE RAILWAYS'. Stephenson writes to his son, Robert, in the year he began construction of the Grand Junction line connecting Birmingham with Liverpool and Manchester. His letter reveals problems over the pricing of coal and the local hewers, or coal-diggers, whose ideas, according to Stehpenson, 'are far too high ... they will not get the coals & put them to the shaft under 3/.' Stephenson resolves to solve the problem by sending his 'overman', Blackburn, to Newcastle 'to pick out about 40 of the steadiest hewers he can get, & one putter for every four men ... take charge of them & bring them by water to Gainsborough, from thence up the Canal to Loughborough.' His hope is then for Blackburn to explain the 'nature of the coal' to the men and then bind them to his prices. (The 'putters' were those who filled the corves (baskets) with coal and then pushed them on trams to the crane or shaft.) Stephenson writes to his son from Alton Grange, near Ashby-de-la-Zouch (where he had moved to following the completion of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway); in 1833 Robert Stephenson (1803-1859) had taken over the running of the famous locomotive building firm in Newcastle, Robert Stephenson & Co, which George had founded in 1823. From this point his own engineering skills and abilities meant that he established a reputation independent from that of his father, taking on the ambitious project of surveying the line of the proposed London and Birmingham railway.