Stokers and pokers : $b or, The London and North-Western Railway, the electric telegraph, and the railway clearing-houseHead, Francis Bond, Sir
History
Stokers and pokers : $b or, The London and North-Western Railway, the electric telegraph, and the railway clearing-house
Head, Francis Bond, Sir
London and North-Western Railway; Railway Clearing House (London, England); Telegraph -- Great Britain
Before leaving Wolverton Station our readers will no doubt be
desirous to ascertain what arrangements, if any, are made by the
Company for the comfort, education, and religious instruction of the
number of artificers and other servants whom we have lately seen hard
at work. On the western boundary of the town we visited 130 plots of
ground, containing about 324 square yards each, which are let by the
Company at a very trifling rent to those who wish for a garden; and,
accordingly, whenever one of these plots is given up, it is leased to
him whose name stands first on the list of applicants. A reading-room
and library lighted by gas are also supplied free of charge by the
Company. In the latter there are about 700 volumes, which have
mostly been given; and the list of papers, &c. in the reading-room
was as follows:--Times, Daily News, Bell’s Life, Illustrated News,
Punch, Weekly Dispatch, Liverpool Albion, Glasgow Post, Railway
Record, Airs’ Birmingham Gazette, Bentley’s Miscellany, Chambers’
Information, Chambers’ Journal, Chambers’ Shilling Volume, Practical
Mechanic’s Journal, Mechanic’s Magazine.
Besides the above there is a flying library of about 600 volumes for
the clerks, porters, police, as also for their wives and families,
residing at the various stations, consisting of books of all kinds,
excepting on politics and on religious controversies. They are
despatched to the various stations, carriage free, in nineteen boxes
given by the Company, each of which can contain from twenty to fifty
volumes.
For the education of the children of the Company’s servants, a
school-house, which we had much pleasure in visiting, has been
constructed on an healthy eminence, surrounded by a small court and
garden. In the centre there is a room for girls, who, from nine till
five, are instructed by a governess in reading, writing, arithmetic,
geography, grammar, history, and needlework. Engaged at these
occupations we counted fifty-five clean, healthy faces. In the east
wing we found about ninety fine, stout, athletic boys, of various
ages, employed in the studies above mentioned (excepting the last),
and learning, moreover, mathematics and drawing. One boy we saw
solving a quadratic equation--another was engaged with Euclid--others
with studying land-surveying, levelling, trigonometry, and one had
reached conic sections.
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