Cities, Railways, Modernities: London, Paris, and the Nineteenth Century 0367110873, 9780367110871

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Cities, Railways, Modernities

Cities, Railways, Modernities chronicles the transformation that ­London and Paris experienced during the nineteenth century through the lens of the London Underground and the Paris Métro. By highlighting the ­multiple ways in which the future of the two cities was imagined and the role that railways played in that process, it challenges and refines two of the most dominant myths of urban modernity: A planned Paris and an unplanned London. The book recovers a significant body of work around the ideas, the plans, the context and the building of metropolitan railways in the two cities to provide new insights into the relationship of transport technologies and urban change during the nineteenth century. Carlos López Galviz is a Lecturer in the Theories and Methods of Social Futures at Lancaster ­University, UK.

Routledge Advances in Urban History

Series Editors: Bert De Munck (Centre for Urban History, University of Antwerp) and Simon Gunn (Centre for Urban History, University of Leicester)

This series showcases original and exciting new work in urban history. It publishes books that challenge existing assumptions about the history of cities, apply new theoretical frames to the urban past, and open up new avenues of historical enquiry. The scope of the series is global, and it covers all time periods from the ancient to the modern worlds. 1 Cities and Creativity from the Renaissance to the Present Edited by Ilja Van Damme, Bert De Munck, and Andrew Miles 2 Migration Policies and Materialities of Identification in European Cities Papers and Gates, 1500–1930s Edited by Hilde Greefs and Anne Winter 3 Urbanizing Nature Actors and Agency (Dis)Connecting Cities and Nature Since 1500 Edited by Tim Soens, Dieter Schott, Michael Toyka-Seid and Bert De Munck 4 Cities, Railways, Modernities London, Paris, and the Nineteenth Century Carlos López Galviz

For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge. com/Routledge-Advances-in-Urban-History/book-series/RAUH

Cities, Railways, Modernities London, Paris, and the Nineteenth Century

Carlos López Galviz

First published 2019 by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2019 Taylor & Francis The right of Carlos López Galviz to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: López Galviz, Carlos, author. Title: Cities, Railways, Modernities: London, Paris, and the Nineteenth Century / By Carlos López Galviz. Description: First edition. | New York, NY: Routledge/ Taylor & Francis Group, 2019. | Series: Routledge advances in urban history; v. 4 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018046922 (print) | LCCN 2018047674 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Urban policy—England—London— History—19th century. | Urban policy—France—Paris— History—19th century. | London (England)—History— 19th century. | Paris (France)—History—19th century. | Subways—England—London—History—19th century. | Subways—France—Paris—History—19th century. Classification: LCC HT243.G7 (ebook) | LCC HT243.G7 G35 2019 (print) | DDC 307.1/160942109034—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018046922 ISBN: 978-0-367-11087-1 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-02473-3 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by codeMantra

To Mario Enrique López Galviz In Memoriam

Contents

List of Figures List of Tables Acknowledgements

ix xi xiii

1 Past Futures 1 2 Circulation and Improvement 47 3 Lines and Circles 107 4 Steam and Light 179 5 Modernities or Remembering Future Events 248 Bibliography Index

261 289

List of Figures

1.1 1.2 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 3.8 3.9 3.10 3.11 3.12

London 1830 Paris 1830 London 1860 Paris 1860 Giuseppe Canella, Les Halles et la Rue de la Tonnellerie, Paris circa 1828 Thomas Rowlandson, A Bird’s Eye View of Smithfield Market, London 1811 Fl. de Kérizouet, Projet d’Établissement d’un Chemin de Fer (Paris, 1845) Plan of Suburban Residences for London Mechanics, Mr. Charles Pearson (1846) Detail of Louis Le Hir, Réseau des Voies Ferrées sous Paris (1857) London 1880 Paris 1887 Limits of the area defined by the Royal Commission on Metropolitan Railway Termini of 1846 in London Limits of the area defined by the Select Committee on Metropolitan Railways of 1863 in London Section of a London street, La Nature, 1899 (a and b) Paddington, west London, built-up area in 1834 and 1910 (a and b) Asnières and Clichy, north Paris, built-up area in 1876 and 1900 Proposals for railway circuits and rings in London, 1864 New Cross Junction, London, as depicted in a handdrawn map, circa 1875 Flow map of the Inner Circle in London, 1884 Schematic view of L.- L. Vauthier’s Inner Circular Railway, Paris, 1865 Vauthier’s Inner Circular Railway, detail of proposed sections (Paris, 1865)

22 23 48 49 68 69 70 71 72 108 109 116 117 136 137 138 140 140 141 141 142

x  List of Figures 3.13 General Plan of the Chemin de Fer de Ceinture (Paris, c.1869) 143 3.14 Chemin de Fer Métropolitain de Paris circa 1887 144 4.1 London 1914 180 4.2 Paris 1908 181 4.3 A second tunnel under the Thames, London, 208 La Nature, 1873 4.4 Exterior of Stockwell Station, City and South London 209 Railway, 1899 4.5 Souvenir London Electrified 1908 210 4.6 Lots Road Chelsea power station, London, 2018 211 4.7 Transversal Section of the Métropolitain’s electric 211 substation, Paris, 1901 4.8 Jean Chrétien, Chemin de Fer Électrique à Paris (1881) 212 4.9 General Plan of the Métropolitain Network in Paris, 1899 213 4.10 ‘Ant galleries’ beneath the Place de l’Opéra, Paris, 1910 214 4.11 The underground station of the Nord-Sud Line, Place 215 du Havre, Paris, 1910 4.12 Public subways and station of the Central London 215 Railway, 1899 5.1 Crossrail, tunnelling machine breaks through into 253 Farringdon, London, 2015 5.2 Clichy-Batignolles, Martin Luther King park, Paris, 2018 253

List of Tables

1.1 Population and annual rate of increase in London and Paris, 1801–1911 17 1.2 Breakdown of London passenger traffic by operating company, 1864–1894 26 1.3 Breakdown of Paris passenger traffic by operating company, 1855–1890 26

Acknowledgements

Every book is a journey. As such it invites the help, support, friendship and care of many people, for which I am deeply grateful. The list that goes with my journey is long and will not be complete, and for any omissions I plead guilty. I would like to acknowledge the generous support of a Leverhulme Studentship in Comparative Metropolitan History, which launched me into history, over twelve years ago, with a doctorate at the Institute of Historical Research (IHR), University of London. My thanks to James Moore and Derek Keene, who supervised that p ­ roject, ­especially to Derek for his support and guidance, and for bringing me into contact with the unique breadth and insights of m ­ edieval urban history. My thanks to Elaine Walters, Olwen Myhill and colleagues from the Victoria County History, and others in the IHR, who g­ raciously ­listened to yet another railway story. For a stimulating and welcoming e­ nvironment, my thanks to the Social, Cultural and Historical G ­ eography Group at Royal Holloway, University of London, where I spent a year researching time networks and pneumatic clocks. My thanks to Mustafa Dikeç, Tim Cresswell, David Gilbert, Felix Driver, Innes M. Keighren, Harriet Hawkins and David Rooney. Since early 2016, I have benefited from invaluable discussions during workshops with colleagues from the international research network ‘Cultural Politics of ­Sustainable Urban Mobility, 1890-present’, especially Ruth Oldenziel, Frank Schipper, ­A rnaud Passalacqua, Matthieu Flonneau, Colin Divall, Colin Pooley, Gijs Mom, Peter Norton, Maria Louisa Sousa, Pieter van Wesemael, Martin ­Emanuel, Per Lundin, Tiina Männistö-Funk and A ­ lexandra Bekasova. Versions of chapters and of the book’s main argument have been the subject of discussion at many seminars and conferences, which often made me think of directions, connections and references that I would not have considered otherwise. Particularly helpful have been panels, plenaries and presentations at the Urban History Group conference in the University of York (2014); the European Association for Urban History conferences in Prague (2012) and Lisbon (2014); the seminars of the London Group of Historical Geographers; the annual conference of the Association of American Geographers in New York (2012); the New Directions in the History of Infrastructure conference at the Danish Post and Tele

xiv Acknowledgements Museum in Copenhagen (2015); and invitations to speak by the Higher School of Economics in St. ­Petersburg, the École ­Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne and the African Leadership University in Mauritius. My thanks too to Pieter Uyttenhove, Michael Dehaene and David Peleman for their invitation to discuss, at the ­Universiteit Gent, what nineteenth-­ century railways in London and Paris had to offer to the ­understanding ­ ullins, of the twentieth-century development of Belgian roads. To Sam M for supporting the idea of and contributing to the ­Going Underground conference in 2013, which marked 150 years from the opening of the first section of the Metropolitan Railway in London. Thanks to ­Professor Tu, Dr Deng, Dr Su and others at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences (SASS), who welcomed my ideas around ‘past futures’ and were willing to discuss if and how the experience of the urbanisation of nineteenth-century London and Paris had any lessons to offer to twenty-first-century Shanghai and other C ­ hinese cities. My visit to SASS was generously funded by a grant from the Urban Knowledge Network Asia (European Commission Framework 7). Several libraries and archives in London and Paris have been tremendously supportive, especially staff at the library of the London Transport Museum; the Médiathèque of the Régie Autonome des Transports ­Parisiens; the British Library (the Maps room, in particular); the ­London Metropolitan Archives; the archive of the Institution of Civil Engineers; the Archives de Paris; the Bibliothèque Historique de la Ville de Paris; and the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, including the wonderful Site Richelieu. Thanks are also due to the enthusiastic ­supporters of the ­Modernities reading group at the School of Advanced Study, University of London, especially Damian Catani, Katia Pizzi, Vivian ­Bickford-Smith, Dhan ­Zunino Singh, Samuel Merrill, Paul Dobraszczyk and the many presenters and participants whose engagement with the readings was inspiring and illuminating. For their insightful and critical commentary and suggestions, my thanks to Richard Dennis and Karen Bowie, especially to Richard, whose sharp, friendly and avid criticism has provided both guidance and support. Having had a chance to work with the late Peter Hall and the late John Urry, separately and however shortly, will continue to be one of life’s important lessons, when the generosity of intellect goes hand in hand with the warmth of character and spirit. For their patience in listening to an urban historian navigate his way amidst the stimulating waters of developing a new field, my thanks to colleagues from the Institute for Social Futures in Lancaster University, in particular to Linda Woodhead, Sandra Kemp, Nicola Spurling, Emily Spiers, Rebecca Braun, Nick Dunn and Richard Harper. Thanks to Miles Irving, who drew the maps with an acute sense of detail, essential to unravelling the development of built-up areas and railways in cities like London and Paris, and to Max Novick from Taylor and Francis for believing in this project from the outset as well as Simon Gunn and Bert De Munck, the series editors,

Acknowledgements  xv especially Simon for his valuable comments and generous discussion of the manuscript reviews. The cost of illustrations was met in part by a generous grant from the Scouloudi Foundation in association with the Institute of Historical Research. I would not be writing this without the constant and unconditional support of my parents, Ana and Mario. My thanks also to Bert for reading and sharing his views on very early drafts of the book and to his daughter, Mariëlle, my wife, who very wisely has avoided any reading and has, instead, granted me the privilege of sharing a life we both have crafted, together and apart. My heartfelt thanks to her for being the partner that anyone in any journey would find nourishing, surprising and loving. I dedicate this book to the memory of my brother, Mario, too young to have departed, too much of an idealist to fit anywhere. Versions of chapters and combined parts of the book have been ­published in: The futures that never were. Railway infrastructure and housing in mid-nineteenth century London and Paris, in A. Marklund and M. Rüdger (eds.), Historicizing Infrastructure (Aalborg: Aalborg ­University Press, 2017), 115–136. Past futures: Innovation and the Railways of Nineteenth-Century London and Paris, B. Umesh Rai (ed.), Handbook of Research on Emerging Innovations in Rail Transportation Engineering (IGI Global: Pennsylvania, 2016), 1–22. Metropolitan Railways: Urban Form and the Public Benefit in London and Paris c.1850–1880, The London Journal 38, 3 (2013), 184–202. Converging Lines Dissecting Circles: Railways and the Socialist Ideal in London and Paris at the Turn of the Twentieth Century, in M. ­Davies and J. Galloway (eds.), London and Beyond: Essays in honour of Derek Keene (London: Institute of Historical Research Series, 2012), 317–337.

1 Past Futures

In the sequel to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865), Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871), Lewis Carroll showed us the limits as well as the possibilities of mirroring worlds. In it, Alice steps through a mirror to discover a unique reflection of her own world, filled with new characters, notable among them the White Queen, who remembers future events. The mirror and the White Queen resonate with the reflection that I propose in this book. Images of the future of London and Paris – and cities worldwide, for that matter – function like mirrors: They project worlds, which are both a distortion and a promise of realities that are yet to come. This is a process that is as compelling today as it was over 150 years ago and before, and as it will be 10, 50 and 200 years into the future. By chronicling the transformation that London and Paris experienced during the nineteenth century through the lens of urban transport infrastructure, Cities, Railways, Modernities highlights the ways in which the future of the two cities was imagined and the role that railways played in that process. In doing so, it challenges and refines two of the most dominant myths of urban modernity: A planned Paris and an unplanned London. The debates, plans and decisions that are examined throughout the book reveal London’s inroads towards coordination and a view of the whole, both of which are comparable with how change was effected in Paris during the second half of the nineteenth century. Conversely, they contrast the reality of modern Paris with visions that were far more ambitious and far more comprehensive than the legacy of wide boulevards and monumental vistas, as conceived by Napoléon III and his Prefect, Georges-Eugène Haussmann. Cities, Railways, Modernities argues that when seen through the encounter between railways and the dynamics of growth, governance and change that have been intrinsic to the two cities throughout their history the transformation of London and Paris between c.1830 and 1910 looks different. It demonstrates that continuities mattered significantly more than the celebratory accounts of the Metropolitan Railway in ­London and the Métropolitain in Paris would have us believe, insisting as they did – and, indeed, still do – on the unprecedented, the new, the

2  Past Futures pioneering, the modern. Important changes did take place as a result of railway planning and building, of course. Railways became urban in cities, which meant, for example, considering taking trains beneath streets connecting to food markets, the post office and port facilities. At the same time, London and Paris expanded along railway lines that blurred the distinction between local, urban, suburban and regional traffic, which, in turn, opened up the country to (sub)urban residents. Ever since the building of their termini on the edges of the city centre, railways in London and Paris were perceived as one of the means of solving problems that were characteristically urban: Severe street congestion; overcrowding; sanitation that called for the opening of new and broader channels for the circulation of air, sun, water, waste, information (think of the telegraph), goods, people and even time pulses (‘pumped’ through pneumatic tubes). These are themes well known to and studied in great detail by historians.1 Equally important was innovation, exemplified by the application of technologies that would allow the operation of new means of transport by digging deeper into the city’s soil, not only adding layers but also containing and expanding the two capitals’ extension sideways; above streets; and, crucially, beneath them. Charting the collaborations, disputes and disagreements among private railway companies, institutions such as the City of London; the Metropolitan Board of Works; the London County Council; and, in the case of Paris, the Seine Prefect, the ministries, the corps of engineers and the national and municipal authorities, the book shows the various ways in which the imagining of future London and future Paris was implicated in a range of debates: From street improvements to enlarging food markets through to slum clearances; social reform induced by the ideal of suburban living; the possibilities but also the limitations of electricity; and, in the specific case of Paris, the coordinated redistribution of tax-collection points along the city walls. Something that was often called the ‘public benefit’ was central to each and every one of these debates. To paraphrase Gerard de Vries, in the context of railways, L ­ ondon, Paris and the nineteenth century, the public benefit was ‘neither an ideal to be realized, nor a set of preferences people ha[d] in mind when entering the political arena’. 2 It was first and foremost praxis: Contingent, unintended, provisional, a vehicle between a past that seemed outdated and a future that was both promising and uncertain. The vast number of plans for the future of the two cities encapsulated an idea in and of progress, aspects of which were implemented, transforming the spaces, the politics and the technologies of transport that would be made available to Londoners and Parisians. The plans became central to modernising the two cities in a way that resembles the plans that are expected to guide their futures today. The tunnelling of Crossrail in London was complete in 2015, with passenger services being introduced gradually from 2018. The métro automatique Grand

Past Futures  3 Paris Express is one of the key features of the visions of future Paris in the new incarnation of a long-standing tradition of grands travaux publics that features emperors, kings and the presidents of five republics. This was the launch, in 2007, of the ‘Grand Paris’ by former president Nicolas Sarkozy. London is building a line rather than a system, yet again. A system is being developed, somehow and who knows for how long, in Paris. In both cases, the public benefit is at the centre of how the two cities will be transformed: Providing some relief to overcrowded trains and cutting travelling times between the City and Heathrow by one-third in London, and striking a balance between Parisians and Franciliens (from the Île de France) at a time when divisions in French politics cut across cities and regions. The pursuit of the public benefit was neither deliberate nor conscious in the nineteenth century. Nor was there a clear idea of what the public benefit was or how best to articulate it. There were related concepts whose meaning, definition and precise relationship to how the two cities should be transformed depended upon whose interests were represented and what degree of influence each was able to exert. On the other hand, the several attempts to define the public benefit faced similar difficulties in the two cities, particularly when the issue of representation was at stake. Whose futures the visions of the London and Paris plans incorporated and which publics they represented are but two of the main questions guiding this book. The range of publics included railway entrepreneurs and their companies, railway engineers, civil engineers, architects, intellectuals, ­authorities – local, municipal, metropolitan, regional and national – and the rich mix of people affected by the opening of a new railway line: Shopkeepers whose business would be affected by the scale of the works; landlords who were forced to deal with the noise, the pollution and the viaducts across their properties; and tenants displaced without recourse to much else beyond their own means, the majority consisting of the poor. Imagining the future of London and Paris was an exercise that would include many publics in contrast with the many other publics excluded by what was built in the end. Paying close attention to this array of publics allows us to move beyond rather simplistic dichotomies, such as top-down and bottom-up developments, as well as approaches that concentrate on the cultural representations of railways and cities, on the one hand, and institutional studies that focus on those who plan, build and operate railways, on the other hand. 3 Three interrelated themes, each the focus of one chapter, will connect this wealth of publics to the precise relationship between the building and the planning of railways, and the envisioning of the future of L ­ ondon and Paris during the period that concerns us here. First, what I term the politics of circulation and its emphasis on improvements; second, the growth of the suburbs and, with them, ideas about the centrifugal forces

4  Past Futures of railways which contrasted with models of transport communication circumventing the centre and connecting the periphery; and, third, the urban dimensions of technological innovation, specifically electric traction, which connected a geography of traffic circuits to the interests of global capital and to the enterprises of Thomas A. Edison, the Belgian Baron Empin, William Thomson, the Siemens Brothers and others. A recent work by David Bownes, Oliver Green and Sam Mullins, Underground: How the Tube Shaped London (2012), has reminded us of the importance of seeing historical change in London through the lens of urban transport. The collection edited by Florence Bourillon and Annie Fourcaut, Agrandir Paris 1860–1970 (2012), in turn, draws important comparisons across space and over time, placing the expansion of Paris in 1860 – incidentally, the same administrative limits of the city today – in a broader context vis-à-vis cities such as Lyon, ­Brussels, Rome, London, Berlin and Madrid. Comparative histories of the two cities have covered their monuments, art, architecture and planning as well as their nightlife, drawing parallels with other cities, notably ­Vienna and Berlin. Donald Olsen in The City as a Work of Art (1986) has deployed the lens of the art historian to explore the ‘political forms, social institutions, economic practices, and ideological convictions’ that were intrinsic to the transformation of the built environment of London, Paris and Vienna during the century before 1914. Out of the extensive transformation that Paris experienced during the Second Empire and the Third ­Republic, fittingly qualified as ‘a program of deliberate self-­glorification’, Olsen identifies, for example, the significantly different patterns which that transformation created in the suburbs and the centre,4 a theme which this book develops with reference to transport connectivity and the role that railways did and did not play in that process. Joachim Schlör’s Nights in the Big City (2016, originally published in 1996) poses the question of what a study of the night in Berlin, London and Paris tells us about changes to the urban experience between 1840 and 1930. That experience includes a rich mixture of urban characters, including the night watch men, policemen, missionaries, criminals, prostitutes, the homeless, the fallen sisters and a whole assortment of commentators whose views circulated via newspapers, a key source of Schlör’s insightful study. As he concedes, his approach explores modernisation from the ‘other’ side, one that escapes the totalising vision of the planner or the reformer, and which, in the process, shows us the many social interactions, the human empathy, and their relation to values which were shared (or not) according to class, education and one’s role in society. Equally illuminating, if not strictly surprising, is the resilience, largely of the less privileged and poor, in the nights of the three European capitals during a time of profound demographic and social change.

Past Futures  5 In her contribution to the first volume of the Victorian City, edited by H. J. Dyos and M. Wolff (1973), Lynn Lees has outlined a brief and illuminating contrast of London and Paris during the nineteenth century in light of key factors such as migration, the position of the two capitals in their respective national economies, the characteristics of their working force – a topic explored later in this chapter – the significant differences concerning the two cities’ elites as well as their middle classes and more. Their uniqueness in the economic, political and cultural domains of Britain and France made the perception of London and Paris during this period profoundly ambivalent: ‘as if they possessed both the best and the worst that the nineteenth-century city had to offer’. 5 Claire Hancock’s fascinating study of travel guides and travel accounts (récits de voyage) takes us further into the realm of how nineteenth-century London and Paris were perceived by foreigners, including the ­English and British visitors to Paris as well as their French counterparts in London, through depictions that often made explicit reference to classical tropes highlighting imperial and democratic values in differing measure. Supplementing these accounts are the official and unofficial French missions to London, which sought to learn from the building of the first underground railways, and, similarly, the visits from national and metropolitan authorities as well as a range of English experts to events such as the Paris exhibitions in the interest of bringing lessons back to their capital. This regular exchange is examined in detail in subsequent chapters of this book. Focussing on the early decades of the nineteenth century, Dana Arnold has also explored the extent to which the legacy of the private squares of the West End and the royal parks in London (Hyde Park, St. James’ Park, Green Park and Regent’s Park) impressed visitors, including Napoléon III, contributing to the forms and mechanisms which their visions to modernise the city would take. More broadly, Arnold invites us to rethink the relationship between the urban and the rural, and what consequences this has for our understanding of urban modernity.6 In his Tales of Two Cities (2013), Jonathan Conlin has surveyed cemeteries, streets, apartments and the ‘nocturnal underworld’ to argue that it was in London and Paris that the scaffolding of modern urban living was erected. More closely aligned with the themes developed and the period covered in this book is Benson Bobrick’s study of subways in London, New York, Paris and Moscow, including a range of references to subways in several other cities and across continents, which, by the second half of the twentieth century, would amount to what Bobrick describes fittingly as ‘an international phenomenon’.7 Similarly pertinent are the influential works of Rosalind Williams, Notes on the Underground (originally published in 1990, with a new edition from 2008), and David Pike, Subterranean Cities (2005), which explore the representations and materialities of a wide range of subterranean worlds, real

6  Past Futures and imagined, and what each reveals of our relationship to nature, technology, society and the imagination. For Williams, the underground provides a focus to reflect on what it means to live in ‘a technological world’, a world ‘built rather than given’. Charting, first, key developments in science and technology largely, though not only, during the nineteenth century, Williams considers the ‘aesthetic sensibility’ of the vast literature that engaged with the underground as a field of inspiration, following the news of the excavation of lost cities; reports of the engineering feats of railway and other tunnels – for example, across the Alps; and contemporary developments in geology, including the circulation of theories about the earth’s hollowness as well as its convexity and the possibility of entering or descending into it through apertures somewhere in the poles. The underground also served as a vehicle for imagining different societies in and of the future, as much utopian as dystopian. In these, the significant constraints of life in Britain and France, an important part of which was directly concerned with London and Paris, were overcome, the limitations of a world dominated by technology recognised and taken to its logical extremes.8 Pike, in turn, focusses on the differing and often contrasting projections of modernity that were part of how the sewers, the catacombs and cemeteries, and the underground railways were represented in literature, film, maps and other media in the two capitals. To Pike, this imagery was reminiscent of segregation and elimination, on the one hand, and incorporation and recycling, on the other hand.9 While railway building displaced a significant number of people in London and Paris, segregating certain areas and incorporating and connecting others, it is the contrast between what was built and what was envisioned, and how each had a distinct version of their future that is at the centre of the story charted in this book. Shifting our focus from the underground in the manner that Williams and Pike have studied it, Cities, Railways, Modernities concentrates on the role that railways played in the imagining of future London and future Paris, and the extent to which such visions provide unique insights into urban change. The networks of lines in operation by the first decade of the twentieth century in the two cities and the numerous plans that preceded them were both underground and metropolitan. My concern is with the specifically metropolitan dimensions of these networks and how, when we consider the earliest plans which take us back to at least the 1840s, the many visions that circulated and the debates they generated became an important precedent for later developments, such as the garden suburbs and the garden cities that would inform much of the thinking and the practices shaping cities worldwide in the twentieth century. A focus on what role railways played in envisioning the future of London and Paris during the nineteenth century resonates, in this sense, with the cultural histories of transport proposed over a decade

Past Futures  7 ago by Colin Divall and George Revill, namely the kind of history that considers technologies of transport ‘as mediation between the imaginable and the material’, and ‘as a creative producer of spaces’.10 Scholarship in three other fields has inspired reflection on and encouraged much-needed revision of this book’s main arguments. First, the railway histories by Terence R. Gourvish, Derek H. Aldcroft, Jack Simmons and Michael J. Freeman in Britain, and by François Caron in France, each deploying a mastery of the socio-economic as well as the cultural factors that shaped railway development on both sides of the Channel.11 The comparative work of Frank Dobbin and Allan Mitchell on the railways of Britain, France, Germany and the United States has been particularly illuminating.12 The transport histories of London and Paris have provided a wealth of references and valuable insights into the relationship between transport and the two cities, their spaces, their governance and politics, and the multiplicity of functions and practices related to where people lived and worked. Here, I would like to highlight the work of Theo C. Barker and Michael Robbins on London Transport (2 vols., 1963, 1974), and that of Dominique Larroque, Michel ­Margairaz and Pierre Zembri (2002) on Paris and ‘her’ transports.13 Part of the distinctiveness of comparative work is the realisation of the different angles that historiography takes, partly as a result of the different trajectories that transport has followed in each city and partly as a response to traditions that gravitate towards business and economic history or the histories of political ideas and debates. Following closely from this is the ever-growing record of histories of the London Underground and the Paris Métro. My approach here has been selective rather than exhaustive, drawing on the work of Alan J­ ackson (1986, 1993), Stephen Halliday (2001) and Christian Wolmar (2005) for London, and Roger Guerrand (1962), Jean Robert (1967), Sheila ­Hallsted-Baumert (1999) and François Gasnault (1997) for Paris.14 A particularly illuminating work has been Nicholas Papayanis’s Planning Paris before Haussmann (2004), which, among other things, draws a genealogy of ideas around underground railways in the context of modern urban planning, showing their firm roots in the eighteenth century. My debt to Papayanis’s work will be especially apparent in Chapter 2, where I also indicate how exactly our reading, often of the same material, differs, leading to different claims. Other important referents are studies of the relationship between cities and railways in Europe by Ralf Roth and Marie-Noëlle Polino (2003), of railways and Victorian cities by John Kellett (1979) and of Paris and its railways by Karen Bowie and Simon Texier (2005).15 The second field involves the significant body of scholarship on urban infrastructures. The rise of the telegraph and later telephony, developments in postal services and urban transport; the planning and construction of sewers; and the provision of public utilities such as gas, water and electricity have been central to studying the development

8  Past Futures of networks of infrastructure in cities.16 Urban networks were, and remain, visible and invisible; overground and underground; fixed yet growing; and privately funded and publicly operated – often a combination of both – giving comfort to city dwellers and making them vulnerable.17 Several studies have highlighted the role of regulation, whether this is in the form of directing public behaviour on streets and markets, encouraging coordination in the provision of public utilities frequently built by private companies or developing the regulatory frameworks that support the effective governance of infrastructure that is urban in principle but expands rapidly and further out into the suburbs and outlying districts of cities.18 The modernisation of cities; the building of new networks; and the upgrading, maintenance, reuse or closure of old infrastructure are all part of the same process. As Steve Graham and Simon Marvin suggest, ‘Networked infrastructure […] provides the technological links that make the very notion of a modern city possible’.19 London and Paris, in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, provided the quintessential arena for the consolidation of these networks. Arguably, technologies such as railways undergird the transformation of the two cities, but so did the two cities structure the conditions under which technological innovation and development, including that of railways, evolved. My approach resonates with the ‘urban histories of technology’ by Dierig, Lachmund, Mendelshon and others; the metropolitan cultures of technology as per Gandy’s work on nature and cities; and the more recent work of Härd and Misa, and their emphasis on the significant role that urban populations and urban commerce have had in the shaping of technologies in European cities. 20 A third field is that of urban modernities. The many myths that have surrounded Paris throughout its history are a significant part of what its historians face: The capital of the world, the capital of modernity, the capital of the nineteenth century are but three of the most well known, as are their advocates, Patrice Higonnet, David Harvey and Walter Benjamin, respectively. Higonnet defines myths as ‘spontaneous, universalising perceptions that help people to understand and make sense of the world they inhabit’. 21 There are many myths of Paris, perhaps more than we will ever know of from other cities. In his Paris: Capital of the World, Higonnet examines some of the most pervasive and enduring among them. At the same time, his definition of myth may also be seen as a discrete description of the attitude that seems inherent in a significant part of Paris’ historiography, namely, using ‘modernity’ in a manner that is as spontaneous as it is universalising, a notion that helps people (read: historians) understand and make sense of how Paris changed, especially during the nineteenth century. Of course, there are dissenters, who find accounts where modernity applies to everything and nothing, both puzzling and perplexing. The critical work of Marcel Roncayolo is particularly insightful in this respect. 22

Past Futures  9 To David Harvey, the crux of Paris’ myth of modernity is that of ‘a radical break with the past’. The key example is Haussmann’s Memoires, in which the Prefect claimed authorship of the modernity of his programme of public works and his departure from any former precedents. We now know well how misleading the Prefect’s statement was as this has been shown by the work of several historians, Harvey himself among them. 23 Somewhat characteristic of Paris studies that focus on this period is how that ‘rupture’ was experienced, a process that invites analysis of the work of key writers: Balzac and Flaubert in Harvey’s case and Baudelaire, in the influential work of Marshall Berman, to name but two.24 In this book, I am less concerned with the experience of modernity than I am with the visions of future cities, the contexts in which these visions were produced, the debates they generated and the extent to which they enable us to supplement our understanding of modernity. Rather than a ‘dialectic of the city and how the modern self might be constituted’, 25 I look at the tension of ideas that sought to transform London and Paris, using railways as a means of effecting that change, and reflect upon what these ideas and visions tell us about the modernisation of the two cities. 26 To an important degree, it is less a celebration of taking trains beneath and above streets than an assessment of chances that were missed, which, by and large, ignored the less privileged and poor. Resonating more closely with the spirit of this book is Harvey’s invitation to think of modernity as signalling ‘some decisive moments of creative destruction’. 27 Each chapter charts a significant body of ideas, plans and debates concerning the thinking behind the creative destruction for which, for instance, the Paris of the Second Empire is well known. ‘Behind’ here should be read as alternative: A body of work that ran parallel and often sought to intersect with Haussmann’s and Napoléon III’s vision but which in the end was sidelined and ignored. Moreover, what the contrast with London provides is a means of refining our understanding of the dynamics of destroying in order to create and creating in order to destroy, specifically in the context of nineteenth-century cities: Which railway plans sought to destroy and create what, using what language and fora in the process, and with what consequences for the future of the two cities are three of the questions developed throughout this book. Myths and myth-making in London – save perhaps the swinging 1960s – are different. One defining myth, however, is that London has been unplanned, the result of patchy efforts, fragmented and piecemeal: ‘more by fortune than design’, to use Michael Hebbert’s words (London: More by Fortune than Design, 1999). 28 The contrast between the historiography of the two cities allows us to see things differently in at least two ways. Whereas modernity seems unavoidable both in the history and historiography of Paris, historians of London face a rather different challenge. For Richard Dennis, modernity ‘may seem an inappropriate

10  Past Futures concept’ to account for the transformation that London experienced in the last two or three decades leading to 1900. To a large extent this is due to the narratives of ‘industrial decline’ and ‘faltering imperialism’, especially when compared to Germany and the United States – and in view of the rise of ‘managerial capitalism’ – which has, for some time, characterised a significant part of the historiography of Britain during the same period, itself a myth challenged and refined convincingly by David Edgerton, among others. 29 More inviting is Dennis’s assertion that modernity is a ‘method’, a way of seeing how cities like London, New York and Toronto have changed by recourse to the close reading of a range of sources. In his work, sources are quantitative and qualitative, including surveys and plans as well as novels and paintings, with the kind of analysis that highlights different dimensions of space (public and private) and the limitations and reach of networked technologies in the three cities.30 In a similar vein, in Victorian Babylon (2000) and other writings, Lynda Nead considers modernity to be ‘a process of historical fits and starts’, 31 developing in certain directions and producing a number of outcomes, some unintended, some planned: From incomplete slum clearances to the recording of change through portable Kodak cameras and the rather cumbersome equipment that early film-makers carried around with them when capturing the ebb and flow of London streets. The vitality that the traffic of Victorian London streets represented is also an indication of constant change, of wholesale destruction making way for new sewers; new streets; and, of course, new railways, underground and above. To Nead, the modernisation that London experienced during the nineteenth century ‘was circumscribed by conflicting urban visions and created as much in the relation to perceptions of the city’s past as it was in terms of the formation of the new and in the interests of the future’. Much in the same vein as in Paris, the past and the future of London stood in a dialogical relation to one another, often, though not only, as tableaux of the old against which the new and the modern were validated. Furthermore, Nead invites us to understand London’s modernity not ‘as a rupture with the past, or as a fresh start, but as a set of processes and representations that were engaged in an urgent and inventive dialogue with their own historical conditions of existence’. 32 Urgency and novelty are two of the characteristics that qualify a good number of the visions discussed in this book, whether they addressed overcrowded housing or the rising price of fuel, or suggested the use of electric traction, with new tube lines taking people from the City of London outwards into the country. So, where does the contrast between two different traditions of two different historiographies leave us when thinking about modernity in London and Paris, and doing so comparatively and critically? As the book title suggests, I use modernities, in the plural, partly as a means of

Past Futures  11 bringing together what can only be a modest part of the vast historiography on nineteenth-century London and Paris, and partly as a way of acknowledging how different and how similar the modernity of the two cities has been. Such an approach highlights the relationships across the administration of each city, the transformation of their urban form and the role that railways played in the process. The plurality of modernities builds upon the work of geographers like Peter Taylor, Miles Ogborn and Matthew Gandy. Gandy’s recent work, for example, ‘unsettle[s] teleological or synecdochal assumptions, so that the idea of a singular modernity is displaced by a more polyvalent set of developments that effectively decenters existing narratives of urban change’. 33 There is no and there cannot be a single narrative of change accounting for the transformation of London and Paris during the nineteenth century. Not only does the use of modernities (in the plural) stress ­Gandy’s polyvalent set of developments, but it also characterises a period of significant change in the two cities as one where the very use of the word modernity in the singular is limiting and can be indeed misleading. One way of reading the material discussed here is as ‘the empirical pursuit of pluralities’, a term that Carl Schorske used in his magisterial study of fin-de-siècle Vienna, warning us as it does about the dangers of using a priori categories to understand historical change, especially those that seem self-evident: ‘what Hegel called the Zeitgeist, and Mill “the characteristic of the age”’. 34 By focussing on the different ways in which the future of London and Paris was envisioned, this book places what was realised, in short what we now call the London Underground and the Paris Métro, against a background that reveals the tentativeness, the unintended consequences and the ambition of dozens if not hundreds of plans that sought to transform the two cities along lines that differed significantly from what was built in the end. Neither modernity nor modernité was a word that the multiplicity of plans proposing to take trains beneath and across the streets of London and Paris since the 1830s used. Similarly, the commentary in newspapers, pamphlets, official publications and a range of other outlets in both cities paid little attention to whether or not the change that railway building instigated was a sign of their modernity. This is not to suggest that there was no recognition of urban change, of the two cities becoming modern. Instead, it is to remind us of the limitations of what notions such as modernity have to offer, especially when we study the transformation that London and Paris experienced during the nineteenth century, the very century we tend to associate with ‘modernity’ at large. 35 Modernité was a term Charles Baudelaire used in relation to recovering the ancient in the ephemeral, ‘the eternal from the transitory’, which he thought should be an essential attitude of the modern artist in mid-nineteenth-century Paris. In Baudelaire’s view, the ‘very clever brutes, craftsmen pure and simple, village intellects, hamlet brains’

12  Past Futures crowding the Paris salons and galleries were not up to the task of capturing the vertiginous change that his beloved city was experiencing. But refuge could be found elsewhere: In the work of Constantin Guys, which breathed modernity, combining the nocturnal spirit of the artist’s craft with the genius of childhood, when everything is a novelty and one ‘is always intoxicated’. To Baudelaire, Guys had of his own will fulfilled a function which other artists neglected, and the fulfilment of which was essentially the task of a man of the world. He has searched everywhere for the transient, fleeting beauty of actual life, and for the character of what, with the reader’s permission, I have called modernity. Frequently whimsical, violent, extravagant, but always poetical, he knew how to concentrate in his drawings the bitter or heady flavour of the wine of Life. 36 Guys lived in London too, working as a visiting tutor of French and drawing. He was also a draughtsman for the Illustrated London News from 1848, covering events such as the Crimean War. 37 What was whimsical; violent; extravagant; or, indeed, poetical of the plans for the future of London and Paris is not a question that I wish to raise here. A more fitting question is what was ancient in the transitory change that railways instigated in the two cities for transitory it was, as the twentieth-century development of motorways and the motorcar has made all too apparent. 38 More importantly, this book is concerned with the extent to which that (nineteenth-century) change was plural rather than the reflection of one idea or one project, call it modernity or otherwise. From the first siting of their termini in the 1830s, railways would become part of the larger transformation of London and Paris, which involved their urban form as much as their administration and the technologies of transport that were available for goods and people to travel into, out of and across them – a transformation that takes us well into the twentieth century. Change became visible not only through the open trenches and viaducts that obliterated swathes of land and residential and commercial districts but also through plans that were never realised and which, nevertheless, fed into a significant body of work around the future of the two cities. That body of work, I argue, retains its relevance today. Recovering some of that thinking is the key aim of this book, arguing with, often against, modernity rather than using this notion as a way of accounting for, let alone explaining, the fundamental change that the two cities experienced. Doing so complicates and qualifies our understanding of Paris as one of the most iconic models of modern town planning and of London as the result of piecemeal visions, chance and patchwork. The picture is more nuanced – reversed even, if we care to look closely.

Past Futures  13 The debates around railway plans and the ideas that informed them, as well as the context in which they emerged, will present a picture of London where coordination and centralisation were not only discussed but deemed desirable and to an important degree achieved: For example, through the completion of what was called the Inner Circle joining the Metropolitan Railway and the Metropolitan District Railway. By contrast, a number of the plans produced in Paris were far more ambitious, often more in keeping with the reality of, for example, the price of fuel and food, more so than the realisation of the Second Empire’s vision, which placed Paris as one of the most iconic beacons of urban modernity ever since. A beacon for the few, not the many, we should add. Several of the plans and ideas produced in the interest of accommodating railways in the two cities are extraordinary examples of how the space of the city, including its future, was understood. The persuasiveness of the visions lay also in their challenge to existing practices. Only a handful of them were by people who ever thought of themselves as planners, and so we come across, for example, City solicitors; engineers of the Ponts et Chaussées; and the many lawyers, doctors, reverends, artists, railway promoters, businessmen and scientists who contributed to shaping debates in Parliament, municipal, regional and local councils as well as the circles of the more ‘usual suspects’, that is, the architects and the engineers. Their ideas contributed to a body of work that, as a whole, constitutes a unique vehicle for understanding change in London and Paris during the nineteenth century. Furthermore, they are also an important precedent for what in the early years of the twentieth century would become known as town planning, urbanisme, Städteplanung and city planning in Britain, France, Germany and the United States, respectively.39 When seen through the encounter between railways and cities, and more specifically through the corpus of ideas, plans and visions that such an encounter produced, modernity is neither a state the two cities accomplished or moved towards nor an instrument in the hands of the few or the many. It is neither a period that each city went through nor a uniform march of progress.40 True, the agency of railways prompted changes in the two cities that to the vast majority, historians ever since included, were unprecedented, both in kind and in scale. True, London and Paris changed substantially, not only adjusting their resources, their institutions, their space and their topography but also creating precedents, serving as models much in the same way that Crossrail and the Nouveau Grand Paris do today. There are elements of the plans that hint at their proponents’ recognition of and contribution to understanding change in light of, for example, the march of progress or the inevitability of replacing the old with the new. However, as a category of analysis modernity provides no real insight into what happened

14  Past Futures around the debates, plans and actual infrastructure built in relation to taking trains above, beneath and through the streets of nineteenth-­ century London and Paris. As will be shown, railways contributed to a new understanding of the city space, its functions and its future, regardless of whether or not that future was an expression of modernity. I suggest that we think of the modernities of London and Paris as a threshold joining their past, their present and their future. Standing on that threshold we see, hear and witness what forms change took in the past, affecting the very structure of the very place where we stand today, while, at the same time, seeing, hearing and witnessing what shape the future might take ahead of us, in spite of us, because of us. On first reading, this may sound like a challenge in acrobatics, and it may very well be that. But it is also an invitation to think of modernities as a way of reflecting on the nature of the relationship between past, present and future, specifically in the context of cities. Remember Alice and the White Queen, their encounter shaped by mirrors, time and the crafted rules of chess. Outline of Chapters The book follows a thematic structure that reflects the chronological development of the ideas and realities around railway building and planning in London and Paris. Each chapter has an introduction and a section on each city – one for London and one for Paris – followed by a conclusion.41 Perhaps inevitably, there are several important themes which are not covered here. The Great Exhibition and subsequent editions, both in London and Paris, seven in total, and up to 1900, are one of them. Arguably, World Fairs or World Exhibitions are important makers of modernity, of ‘latent fictions’, not least in their staging of new technologies and new developments in the arts, industries and sciences, combining instruction with entertainment, with several highlights since 1851 in Europe; the United States; Japan; and, more recently, China.42 Less a theme than a key source is the Royal Commission of London Traffic, which sat from 1903 to 1905 and produced a comprehensive report, running to eight volumes. A ‘gold mine’, as Jack Simmons put it, is simply too large and important, and deserves to be treated as such.43 In Paris and in London, there emerged too dozens of plans to transform the two cities by the turn of the twentieth century, not least the germane ideas of the garden city and the garden suburb. I have looked at some of the socialist variations of these plans elsewhere; however, the important work of someone like Eugène Henard, author of the series of studies Les transformations de Paris (1903–1906), as well as that of many others is not discussed here, partly because I wish to draw attention to less well-known but nonetheless significant works. In the specific case of Henard, I agree with Anthony Sutcliffe’s assessment that

Past Futures  15 his focus on the centre, ignoring the suburbs, is an important limitation, itself a trend concerning ‘the general indifference to the suburbs which pervaded much Parisian thought [during the nineteenth century], both official and unofficial’.44 The period the book covers is c.1830–1910. Starting in 1830 is informative in many respects: Notably it highlights the fact that connecting main-line railways involved the transport of goods as well as people. Similarly, ending in the first decade of the twentieth century takes us to the shape of the metropolitan railway network as they would be completed in London in 1907 and in Paris in 1912. This is the shape of the networks from which future developments in the twentieth and ­t wenty-first centuries would spring. Chapter 2, Circulation and Improvement, underlines the significance of understanding the context in which the ideas about taking trains right through the two cities – beneath streets and above them – first emerged. It connects railway plans to a range of metropolitan issues: From street improvements to enlarging food and cattle markets through to slum clearances and the provision of affordable housing and transport for the working and poorer classes. This chapter discusses striking new metropolitan visions, as, for example, Charles Pearson advocated when connecting the opening of suburban railway lines to new housing for mechanics and artisans in North London, an embryonic idea of the later garden cities, which it preceded by over fifty years. Also examined is what Fl. de Kérizouet proposed in Paris by reorganising the entire space of the city and its fiscal functions according to a comprehensive vision of new city docks, redistributed tax-collection points along the city wall and an underground line between two railway termini and the market area at Les Halles. Chapter 3, Lines and Circles, shows the divergent effects that railways had on the two cities. When the first section of the Metropolitan Railway opened in January 1863 in London, debates in Parliament emphasised the need to conceive of railways as a system of interconnected circles instead of the lines and termini that had been built since the 1830s. Similar debates took place in Paris around this time, though no plan was implemented before the opening of the Métropolitain’s first line in 1900. The use of geometric terms, such as rings, circuits and circles, proliferated throughout the process, illustrating new ways of connecting the railways and, more importantly, new ways in which the two cities could use transport technologies for shaping their own growth. This chapter argues that two models emerged in the process: One centrifugal, the other circumventing the centre and connecting the periphery. Significantly, the two models were not mutually exclusive, nor were they characteristic of one city only. Through a detailed discussion of these two models this chapter characterises a ‘public’ that comprised private companies encouraged through competition to provide the best service; transport monopolies granted in the interest of securing accessibility to all;

16  Past Futures and the actual users, especially those who travelled or might travel between work and home, and for whom the economy of time represented a tangible benefit. Chapter 4, Steam and Light, moves on to interrogate the role that innovation was to play in the shaping of railways that were exclusively metropolitan. It demonstrates that developments in electric traction – global in character and financing – enabled the conception of a unified network of otherwise separate and disjointed railway lines which produced two different outcomes in the two cities: By 1910, there would be in London four private companies operating seven different underground lines, with electric trains superseding and supplementing steam locomotion. An important part of the landscape of metropolitan railways in London consisted of main-line services, all, save but two new extensions built in the late 1890s, steam operated. In Paris, electric traction was a structural part of the metropolitan system built, the first line of which opened to passenger services in 1900. The system was devised as a network of six lines operated by one concessionaire, executed according to a plan agreed upon by the national and municipal authorities and entirely worked by electricity. This chapter further reveals the predominant role of global capital as illustrated by the connections between the Central London Railway (opened in 1900) and General Electric as well as the influence of figures such as Charles Yerkes in the ‘Tube’ lines of London and the reluctance of the municipal authorities to welcome foreign (Belgian) capital in Paris. The conclusion, Modernities or Remembering Future Events, takes us back to what the plurality of modernities means and what consequences such an understanding has on the future imaginaries of London; Paris; and cities, more broadly. It also invites us to consider new ways of characterising the relationship of past, present and future, especially in relation to what we can learn from the very practice of urban history. Let us now turn to some of the key conditions structuring change in nineteenth-century London and Paris.

Two Mirroring Capitals Population growth, in both cities largely fuelled by immigration; changes in administration; and a diverse and vast market of commodities, manufactures and services provide an important context for understanding how London and Paris changed. Between 1801 and 1911, the rate of London’s population growth was more consistent and generally higher than that of Paris (Table 1.1). At the same time, the population of both cities grew exponentially, over five times, during this period. This growth would have significant consequences for the provision of public utilities such as water, food, sanitation, housing and transport, and in terms of public order, education and health.

Past Futures  17 Table 1.1  Population and annual rate of increase in London and Paris, 1801–1911 London

Paris

Year Population Annual rate of increase (per cent)

Year Population Annual rate of increase (per cent)

1801 1811 1821 1831 1841 1851 1861 1871 1881 1891 1901 1911

1801 1807 1817 1831 1841 1851 1861 1872 1881 1891 1901 1911

959,130 1,139,355 1,379,543 1,655,582 1,949,277 2,363,341 2,808,494 3,261,396 3,830,297 4,227,954 4,536,267 4,522,961

18.8 21.1 20 17.7 21.2 18.8 16.1 17.4 10.4 7.3b −0.3b

547,756 580,609 713,966 785,862 936,261 1,053,261 1,696,141 1,851,792 2,269,023 2,477,957 2,714,068 2,888,110

6 23 10.1 19.1a 12.5a 61 9.2 22.5 9.2 9.5c 6.4c

a

The figures for 1841 and 1851, inclusive of the suburbs annexed in 1860, were 1,059,825 and 1,277,064, respectively (see L. Chevalier 1973, 182–183; M. Huber 1912, 145). b The population of Greater London was 6,581,000 in 1901 and 7,251,000 in 1911. Figures correspond to the Metropolitan Board of Works area as per the Census (see A Vision of Britain Through Time, Census Reports: www.visionofbritain.org.uk/census/ EW1911PRE/2?show=ALL, accessed 28 March 2018; H. Clout 2000, 88; M. Ball and D. Sunderland 2001, 42). c The population of the Département de la Seine (inclusive of the arrondissements of St. Denis and Sceaux) was 3,670,000 in 1901 and 4,154,000 in 1911. Chevalier adjusted the official figures from 1801 to 1851; the figures from 1861 to 1901 include the suburbs annexed in 1860. The comparability is based on population figures for the administrative area, which necessarily leaves out significant parts of Greater London and the Département de la Seine. The important consequences of the geography of demographic growth, and its relation to transport and railways, especially from 1880 to 1910, are discussed in full in Chapter 4.

The contrast between the governance and administration of the two cities is a good place to start sketching a brief comparison. In London, the City retained full control of its jurisdiction, as it still does today, within what is often called the ‘old square-mile’, ruling side by side, often against, the newer metropolitan-wide authorities, the first of which was the Metropolitan Board of Works, created in 1855 and succeeded over three decades later by the London County Council. In Paris, metropolitan affairs were dealt with by a municipal council appointed by the Seine Prefect, in turn, accountable to the national authorities, which, during the nineteenth century, changed a number of times with three republics, two empires and an eighteen-year-long monarchy. Administration was in the two cities directly related to the limits of their built-up areas, in other words, up to

18  Past Futures which point did London and Paris extend. The contrast is again illuminating: Paris was a walled city until the end of the First World War; an area called intra-muros was contained for a period of nearly two decades in-between the late eighteenth-century wall of the Fermiers Généraux or Farmers Generals and the outer fortifications built in the 1840s. The wall, first the Fermiers Généraux and, since 1860, the Thiers fortifications, performed an important function for the finances of the French capital, notably, through the octroi or the tax levied on products entering the city. Walls had become something of a relic in London since at least the Great Fire in 1666, although the City of London retained oversight of the area within. Growth in and around the West End, Westminster, Southwark and eastwards by the river docks was largely the result of private initiative and was brought under one administration only gradually from the mid-nineteenth century onwards, following the creation of the Board of Works. While readings of ‘metropolitan’ London would proliferate in the works of ‘the cartographers, the statisticians, and the social reformers’, and through the jurisdictions of the Metropolitan Police (founded in 1829) and the General Post Office – whose building at St. Martin’s Le Grand was built between 1825 and 1829 – it was with the creation of the Metropolitan Board of Works that the conception of London as a whole would become the concern of a single authority.45 Following the Metropolis Management Act of 1855, which gave birth to the Board, the limits of London were set at 74,000 acres (29,947 ha), the administration of which fell to the City, Westminster, Southwark and a large number of parishes in four different counties (Essex, Middlesex, Surrey and Kent).46 Their interests remained distinct in principle and separate in practice. Public health, particularly the cholera epidemics of 1832 and 1848, was a main concern of the administration.47 Solutions needed to be metropolitan in character, which the Board would prove all too well, first through the planning and building of new sewers, a remit that would soon expand to include the improvement of streets, open spaces and public parks; the inspection of theatres and halls; and reports on railway and other improvement schemes for Parliament.48 The London County Council, founded in the midst of a debate between those who favoured centralisation and those who believed local administrations should remain sovereign, replaced the Board in 1889. The debate included the creation of several new organisations, such as the Metropolitan Municipalities Association, founded in 1865 and substantially less active by the mid-1880s, of which John Stuart Mill was a member, and the London Municipal Reform League, created in 1881 and adopting a more radical view, with members like J. F. B. Firth and Sidney Webb.49 The administration of Paris changed with a different coherence. By the late eighteenth century, the Mur des Fermiers Généraux, built between

Past Futures  19 1784 and 1790, replicated the progressive extension of the city limits by means of successive enceintes that dated back to the twelfth century. 50 Such continuity included important ruptures. Louis XIV, for example, abolished the enceintes of Charles V and Louis XIII, in line with his view of Paris as an open city. 51 Though defence was certainly important, the wall of the Fermiers Généraux was erected for fiscal reasons, setting up tax-collection points bordering the city. The tax was known as the octroi and was levied at custom gates, through which much of the fuel, food and building materials entered the capital. The wall helped the Farmers Generals protect their rights over the land adjoining the wall, control local pricing, prevent smuggling and maintain a tighter control over taxes such as the gabelle (salt tax).52 Between 1818 and 1859, the original area (3,370 ha) was enlarged to 3,402 ha. New outer fortifications were built under Adolphe Thiers between 1841 and 1844, with a new enceinte comprising a protected area 250 m wide; a large and highly elaborate fortified structure with ‘glacis, counterscarp, ditch, exterior talus, upper parapet slopes, interior talus, banquette, and terreplein’; and a road behind the rampart (rue de rampart), ‘which for a long time was reserved for military traffic’. 53 This fortified complex protected an area of 7,802 ha (19,279 acres), brought under the city’s jurisdiction in January 1860, when the communes de petite banlieue or the city’s near suburbs were annexed to central Paris. 54 Since the municipal act of 21 March 1831, the Paris administration was largely controlled by the Prefects of Police and of the Seine Department, which somewhat compensated for the fragmentary division of districts into communes and arrondissements. Among the duties of the Police were the surveillance of dangerous trades and industrial processes; the control of charlatans; the inspection of markets and slaughterhouses; animal diseases; the control of prostitution; the salubrity of public buildings and lodging houses; public lighting; the safety and circulation of public roadways; the stability of buildings and the cleanliness of their facades; the condition of stairways, corridors and areas of common use; the construction, maintenance, and disinfection of cesspits; and the drainage and removal of household wastes from courtyards and alleys. A number of these functions would be transferred to the Prefecture de la Seine in 1859 as revisions to legislation on salubrious housing were introduced.55 Supplementing the work of the two prefectures was the Director of Public Works (Travaux Publics), whose responsibilities were largely technical and went hand in hand with those of the national corps of engineers of Ponts et Chaussées (Roads and Bridges). 56

20  Past Futures Available space and land in the central districts became increasingly scarce in both cities as the nineteenth century progressed. Among the effects was the gradual depopulation of residents, largely the middle classes and the bourgeoisie, who sought healthier and less crowded homes in the suburbs. Similarly, there was a constant transformation of commerce and small-scale industries, and manufactures exploiting the opportunities of an important retail market. This was partly in response to the dearth of affordable spaces, which, nevertheless, did not outweigh the need for shops and businesses to remain near potential customers. 57 Artisans, clock- and watchmakers, tailors, printers and building contractors, among others, often adjusted their practices when dealing with the situation, leading to a process whereby their work was broken down into smaller units, each distributed across separate workshops and each, in turn, adding to the final product, whatever that product might be. Clusters of small workshops, very often very close to one another, allowed the finished product to be assembled between individual premises and without recourse to large spaces. 58 Small-scale businesses did not exclude large firms and industries, certainly not in London, where the political economy of the metropolis attracted large capital and ‘industrial militancy’ in equal measure. As David Green has shown London was a city of large firms no less than of small masters […] The small master system [based on the upward mobility of apprentices] may have reduced the degree of overt class conflict, but this was more than made up for by the frequency of workplace struggles involving large employers.59 In Paris, the labouring classes were often seen as the dangerous classes, as Louis Chevalier’s masterful work has made clear.60 Industries served a primarily local demand and, therefore, had a tendency to be of a small scale.61 As in London, financial and redistribution services, some later connected to railways, would gain importance, with commerce flourishing particularly in luxury products available in specialised boutiques and magasins de nouveautés. This became an important export sector in Paris and was more or less consolidated by the 1860s, when foreign competition would force readjustment. Not surprisingly, the display of luxury goods was connected to the influx of foreign visitors, who revelled in the nightlife and entertainment, some of which took hold in the newly completed boulevards.62 If there was a striking difference between the two capitals, that difference would be best captured precisely by foreign visitors, who reputed Paris as a cultural and intellectual centre and London as a city of trade and commerce. Paris reminded some of Athens, while London was decidedly more reminiscent of Rome.63

Past Futures  21 One final aspect of this brief characterisation merits our attention, namely, how the space of the two cities was shaped in response to what concerns and following which traditions. Defence was paramount in both cities but differently. While Paris was surrounded by its enceinte, London relied on coastal forts and heavily defended lower stretches of the Thames and the estuary. Growing density, especially in the central areas, was also a subject of concern. Overcrowded districts challenged both public health and public order. Major projects under the banner of improvements and embellishments transformed entire areas beyond recognition, often in the interest of circulation: Not only that of goods and people but also that of air, sun, waste and water. The planning of the Cité after 1833, the clearing of the area surrounding the Hôtel-deVille since 1836 and the opening of the Rue Rambuteau – for which powers had been obtained in 1838 to facilitate the connection between the central market at the Halles and the district of Le Marais – were among the most disruptive and ambitious projects that materialised in Paris prior to and coinciding with the arrival of the railways. 64 To a large extent, these were the outcomes of earlier plans and would become important precedents for the implementation of the comprehensive programme of public works during the Second Empire. Especially revealing is the fact that one of the earliest plans for an underground railway in the French capital would be drawn precisely in connection to Les Halles. The plans for Regent’s Park and Regent Street, and the extensive dock building along the river Thames east of London Bridge were among the major projects built in London by the 1830s.65 Contrary to the oversight of the Seine Prefect, projects of this nature were realised in London by the Crown (Regent’s Park and Regent Street); wealthy merchants and their companies (the East India and the West India Companies were the first to build their docks); the owners of large estates, often aristocratic families (the Bedfords, the Cavendishes, the Grosvenors and more); or the City of London, whose jurisdiction occasionally extended to and beyond the metropolis to places like Highgate or Epping Forest.66 The shaping of London was thus the result of largely independent visions not always – but by no means never – observant of and consequent with the whole.67 Grand architectural gestures were subordinated to practical requirements, privately and in government. One example is the reaction from members of Parliament who ‘objected to architectural embellishment of workshops for clerks manufacturing government documents’ during the mid-1850s competition for government offices in Westminster, which, to everyone’s surprise, included a master plan.68 Paris was then contained, controlled and largely planned according to the visions of a centralised authority. By contrast, London grew and

22  Past Futures

Figure 1.1  L  ondon 1830.

was transformed as a result of a range of interventions by multiple actors, each deploying its own vision. Yet the transformation that the two cities would experience during the nineteenth century raised very similar concerns and problems: More people (both alive and dead), thriving markets and changing politics and administrations, and with them shifts in how to understand growth and ways to potentially direct it. That growth could not go on unchecked would become an increasingly firm realisation taking hold of those who witnessed it: Doctors, lawyers, politicians, architects, engineers, priests and merchants, for whom directing growth was a question at once spatial, social, moral and political. Developments in new technologies of transport seemed to offer a fitting route.

Past Futures  23

Figure 1.2  Paris 1830.

The Future’s Visitor Ever since the opening in 1825 of the steam-operated rail line between Stockton and Darlington, railways gained prominence in the transport of goods and people, superseding but also building upon and complementing the infrastructure that roads and canals had created. Cities, ports and towns were to benefit, gradually, in fits and starts. Railway lines would reach the edges of London and Paris during the second quarter of the nineteenth century (Figures 1.1 and 1.2). Here, by the edges, they built their termini, prompting negotiations between railway companies, landlords and a range of businesses and authorities in relation to whether and how far into the city centre their tracks, trenches and

24  Past Futures viaducts would penetrate. Three elements were central to this process: First, negotiations with and often against existing means of transport, which was coupled with the increasing specialisation of goods and people entering, leaving and circulating through the two capitals; second, the political culture and the institutional context that characterised the enterprise of railways, with important differences between Britain and France, especially in terms of how railways were planned and financed, who was responsible for their design and operation, and the extent to which schemes or plans contributed to the public benefit; and third, the fiscal and land restrictions that determined how the space of the two cities was used, notably, through patterns of land ownership and the accommodation of key functions, such as the food markets, the post office, warehouses and the river docks. The Existing Transport Infrastructure When you send your Goods to London what is it you call London; is it the Door of your Customer, whoever he may be, on the Stones? – Yes, upon the Stones. Is it at the Door of your Customer? –Yes. That is London? –Yes. Jeremiah Wynne, wholesale ironmonger resident of Wolverhampton. Extract from the examinations of the London Grand Junction Railway Bill (May 1836), 201. Whether it was the stones or the customer’s door was an important question for someone like Jeremiah Wynne, the product of whose labour had a market in London. It didn’t help matters that he answered in the positive three different queries, each implying a different scale, location and geography. Like Wynne, there were hundreds if not thousands of wholesalers, shopkeepers and shop owners, dotted in, around and well beyond the city, often at a distance of over 15 miles, as Wolverhampton was. By the 1830s, the ‘stones’ was likely a reference to the seventeenth-­century area of the Bills of Mortality, largely the perimeter of the City of London.69 Moreover, the insistence on determining whether it was the ‘stones’ or the ‘door of your customer’ that mattered to wholesalers like Wynne was also a recognition of the extensive transformation of the City and of its nearby eastern districts, notably Shoreditch, Whitechapel, Shadwell and Limehouse, a transformation that was closely related to the traffic of the river docks.70 Distance from places like Wolverhampton to the stones or the door of one’s customer meant time and the added transport costs that ironmongers, timber-framers and others needed to account for when costing their products and weighing up their markets. The transport arrangements often included a combination of roads and canals, both subject to the fortunes of the British weather. These arrangements formed the background against which railways had a chance to compete, simplifying transport and, at least in principle, reducing times and costs. London and Paris were similar in that they attracted vast quantities of goods for local consumption, manufacturing and

Past Futures  25 redistribution. Products shipped in by regional and coastal trade and from overseas were transported by canal and via the rivers Seine and Thames, where they reached quays and docks. A system of bonded warehouses, in the case of London, from the dock companies, ensured the safe temporary storage of products that would reach their customers in the two cities.71 Up to the 1830s, the Thames, canals and roads handled the majority of goods traffic arriving at and distributed from London, an arrangement that railways would supplement. From the railway depots of the Great Western in Paddington (west) and the London and Birmingham in Camden Town (north-west), for example, ‘fly boats’ would take the loads to the city basins via the Regent’s Canal, complete in 1820, where wagons and carts would then deliver products separately to their final customers or, as wholesalers such as Wynne affirmed, ‘upon the stones’. Livestock, food, coal, building materials and a range of products for commercial and domestic use made up the shipments. The largest amounts and loads were handled at three canal basins where products were sorted and redistributed: Cumberland Market (adjoining the eastern side of Regent’s Park) serving the West End; City Road, which served the City markets and warehouses; and Limehouse, on the eastern side, connected by the river to the London docks.72 The relatively orchestrated movement of goods across means of transport – with railways, waterways and roads – would recede as railway operation proved more effective and efficient. Canal traffic would recede significantly during the second half of the nineteenth century across Britain in a process that encouraged both competition and specialisation: ‘Coastal shipping and canals were competitive for minerals, building materials, for industrial goods on very short distances, and for some categories of agricultural produce, but otherwise long distance transport virtually was railway transport’.73 In France, railways took over goods traffic from canals also by the second half of the nineteenth century: In 1863 railways transported 4,300 tonnes/km compared with 2,100 tonnes by canals; in 1913 the difference would be accentuated further with 25,200 tonnes/km by railways against 6,200 tonnes by canals.74 In Paris, however, the network of canals (de l’Ourcq, St. Denis and St. Martin) and basins (La Villette, Arsenal and on the river Seine) preserved their goods traffic against railway competition up to the 1870s.75 To a large extent the benefits that canals represented in the transport of goods outweighed the perceived advantages that railways first offered. ‘As for the merchandise’, a contemporary account would remark in the 1830s, the railway ‘would stop at the barrier inside or outside the enceinte or at the warehouse (entrepôt) to be then directed to their destinations by ordinary hauling’.76 The enceinte at this point was the wall of the Fermiers Généraux along which taxes were collected. Passenger traffic involved arrangements that were as diverse in the two cities. Stagecoaches; omnibuses; hackney cabs; and, to a lesser degree, riverboats flourished in their services, feeding into and only occasionally competing with the services that railways would later offer. Rather than forcing simplification the introduction of railways reinforced existing

26  Past Futures tendencies whereby choices of modes of transport were dependent upon the relationship between what means were available and how the distance, fares and times of each combined. The introduction of tramways, bicycles and later motorcars towards the end of the nineteenth century would add to the level of specialisation in modes of transport and what specific areas in and around the city each connected (see Tables 1.2 and 1.3). Table 1.2  B  reakdown of London passenger traffic by operating company, 1864–1894 1864 LGOCa Metropolitan District Tramways Road Car Co CSLb Total (T) Population (P) Ratio T to P

1874

1884

1894 133,132,000 88,514,000 42,097,000 231,522,000 44,610,000 6,959,000 546,834,000 5,900,000c 93 to 1

42,650,000 11,720,000

48,340,000 44,120,000 20,770,000 41,930,000

75,110,000 75,930,000 38,520,000 119,260,000 3,060,000

54,370,000 2,940,000 18 to 1

155,160,000 3,420,000 45 to 1

311,880,000 4,010,000 78 to 1

Source: J. Greathead 1896. Notes: The unity of measurement of both tables is the number of journeys as recorded by the operating companies. a London General Omnibus Company. b City and South London Railway. c Estimate for the Greater London area whose population in 1891 was 5,572,012 and in 1901 was 6,506,954.

Table 1.3  Breakdown of Paris passenger traffic by operating company, 1855–1890 1855

1865

1875

1885

1890

CGOa 40,000,000 107,358,111 125,061,957 191,218,501 198,228,364 Ceintureb 2,407,039 4,902,554 13,883,681 31,007,212 34,032,588 Riverboatsc 3,567,010 9,578,631 18,820,922 23,591,967 Mainline Cod 9,383,128 13,619,324 18,010,272 Tramways 5,723,882 50,578,734 51,858,179 Total (T) 42,407,039 115,827,675 163,631,279 305,244,693 325,721,370 Population (P) 1,174,346 1,825,274 1,988,800 2,344,550 2,477,957 Ratio T to P 36 to 1 63 to 1 82 to 1 130 to 1 131 to 1 Source: A. Martin 1894; population figures of the years immediately after (1856, 1866, 1876, 1886 and 1891). Notes: a Compagnie Générale des Omnibus; figures comprise urban and suburban omnibus routes, the railroad service to St. Cloud (including the service from the Louvre to Versailles since 1881) and tramway services since 1875. b The 1855 figure corresponds to 1856 and is only from the Auteuil line. c The 1865 figure corresponds to 1867, when riverboat services started operation on the occasion of the Exposition Universelle of the same year; as an indication of the substantial increase in passenger traffic during the exhibitions the figure of 1889 was 52,885,104. Figures incorporate suburban and urban passengers. d The figure of 1875 does not include the services of Paris-Charenton (Vincennes line).

Past Futures  27 What remained characteristic in the two cities was the sustained increase in personal travel. Unsurprisingly, the larger the offer of different means of transport the more people used them. In London, the number of travellers increased by tenfold between the first half of the nineteenth century and the mid-1890s. These estimates can only be indicative, however. Figures for cabs; private omnibus companies; and, more importantly, suburban main-line railway services (including the North London) are either missing or unreliable.77 With that in mind, we can nevertheless observe that there were ninety-three journeys per head in 1894, an increase of more than five times compared with the figures from 1864. The share of the total by the Metropolitan Railway was approximately one in every five journeys in 1864, a year after its opening, which would increase slightly to one in every four journeys thirty years later, in 1894, at that point also including the Metropolitan District Railway and the first ‘Tube’ line, the City and South London. In Paris, the number of passengers increased nearly eightfold between 1855 and 1890. While thirty-six journeys were made per head in 1855 (the vast majority of them by omnibus), there were 131 in 1890, distributed across omnibuses, tramways, riverboats, main-line railways and a suburban railway ring (Ceinture). It is important to remind ourselves that no city or metropolitan railway lines opened in the French capital before 1900. Goods and passenger transport in the two cities was both diverse and large. It drew not only upon existing infrastructure, notably that of roads and canals, but also upon the important demand that combined a growing population with a mixed economy. The plans that railway companies would produce engaged directly with these trends. They showed the scale, rapidity and level of simplification that the new technology enabled in the transport of the very goods and products that Londoners and Parisians traded on, consumed and manufactured. They also opened up new options for travel, not only long distance and further afield but also regularly, short distance, despite rain, wind or mud. How these plans were crafted – and revealing as they are of what the London and the Paris of the future might look like – was determined by how railways were designed, financed, built and operated, a process that, once more, would provide a telling contrast between the facing sides across the Channel. The Expertise of the Public Benefit Ever since their appearance in the second decade of the nineteenth century, railways would transform Britain and France spatially, politically, socially, economically and culturally.78 Unsurprisingly, such transformation took different forms in each country, especially in view of the institutional context behind railway design and building. At the same time, the transformation showed a similar process, whereby a large

28  Past Futures number of different publics would enter the very arenas where the public good was shaped and discussed: In whose interest should that new line be built? Should privileges go to capitalists, users, shop owners or residents affected by the plans that proposed to tear down their homes and shops in the interest of new and ‘better’ connectivity? Or should the line not be part of a coherent system that might cut the cost of perishables and fuel, clearly a benefit for many, not least the poor? What the public benefit and the public good meant was entangled in long-standing practices and the political cultures around them. No doubt railways were a new technology, seemingly boundless in possibilities, but who financed and built them, and how they did so were part of the wider and longer history of transport in the two countries. As Frank Dobbin remarks, parallels to canals and roads are an important part of the story: The early decision [in Britain] to leave transport development to private parties had given rise to a group of financially powerful canal and turnpike operators, and it spawned a group of private railway entrepreneurs in the 1820s with opposing interests. In France, by contrast, the early decision to build turnpikes and canals publicly gave rise to an interest group composed of public transport technocrats who tended to favour transport development of all sorts.79 Two important conditions emerged from this: The financial model for railway building and the engineering expertise behind it. In France, the engineers of the national corps of Ponts et Chaussées were largely responsible for works of infrastructure, including railways. Their involvement ranged from designing the overall vision of how railways might fulfil their function as a transport facility through to producing detailed schemes and supervising their construction. The corps was one of the two ‘applied schools’ of the École Polytechnique, the national institution devoted to the training of engineers and other technicians; the other was the School of Mines.80 Resorting to their own engineers gave national authorities the prerogative over how railways should be built, what and/ or whose plan they should conform to and whether or not a scheme was aligned with the interests of France. During his time as Minister of the Interior, Adolphe Thiers would make a compelling case in similar terms and as early as 1833: A crowd of capitalists directs their investments sometimes in one direction, sometimes in another, without any master plan. In this way, no coherent rail system would be developed that could serve the country in the main directions. We want to help you to remedy this situation … the Government, which employs a corps of competent

Past Futures  29 engineers, could itself prepare preliminary studies. It could study the routes, estimate the expenses and revenues, do preliminary surveys; with a national plan in mind it could direct the efforts of capitalists in order to prepare continuous and dependable transportation for the nation.81 Devising a master plan was also a matter of effective control and supervision by the state, which, as Jules Armand Dufaure – future Prime Minister and Acting President during the Third Republic – recognised, was a means to reassure ‘the action of central power, too frequently dissipated in an excessive preoccupation with local interests’.82 In 1838, Alexis Legrand, director of Ponts et Chaussées, devised a conceptual radial model later known as the Étoile Legrand.83 An Act of 1842 provided the legal grounds for the ‘star’ model and made Paris the centre of an emerging national railway network. Between 1842 and 1859, France was divided into ‘six large geographical regions’, each given in concession to consortia of railway companies; five of them would build their termini on the edges of central Paris, with the sixth taking in Bordeaux and Toulouse.84 The six regions became ‘administrative councils’ responsible for the railway policy across the country. Later this organisation would be known as the ‘fermiers généraux du rail’,85 given that it was private consortia that were able to exploit the state franchises and secure their own monopolistic profits. The involvement of several local and regional entities, each with its own interest, created some divergence from the overall policy behind the central plan. As Allan Mitchell observed: The period before 1870 [was largely] a virtual free-for-all dominated by regional and local rivalries. National considerations, despite repeated admonishments from the central administration, played a relatively minor part in the proceedings. Yet a certain rationale of unified standards was never totally ignored, and the pattern that was prefigured by the Legrand Star did emerge.86 Continuity in French railway policy was maintained too when the government intervened through ‘rate[s] of return on the capital invested’, which were allocated first in 1859 (after the Crimean War and the financial crisis of 1857) and, subsequently, in 1863; 1868; 1875; and, more importantly, in 1883, when a new policy shift redefined the existing terms and set larger financial responsibilities for the state.87 Despite the arduous negotiations around the many conventions between the French government and the railway companies, these actions were directed to prevent stagnation and non-compliance with the plans that had been devised by the Ponts et Chaussées engineers. With the Ètoile Legrand (1842) at its core, national policy after 1859 would make the

30  Past Futures national government responsible for works on ‘levelling (terrassement), viaducts [and similar works of infrastructure] and the stations’. Conversely, the Départements and the Communes assumed the cost of land, while the railway companies provided the tracks (voie), ballast and the rolling and related stock (matériel incombent). By 1883, the state’s guarantee on returns on capital was applied more widely, although returns were calculated together with the interests on loans. Moreover and as François Caron explains, ‘After the 1883 convention, with the exception of the rolling stock and the furnishing of stations, all the costs of the first establishment were covered by the State, including a contribution of 25,000 fr. per kilometre’.88 Things were different in Britain. From the outset, Parliament appraised railway plans in the same way that turnpike trusts and canals, and Fire and Marine Insurance and London Dock companies before them, had been. Key to the process was their public benefit – that of the schemes – and the degree to which, once proved, the powers for the compulsory purchase of lands and the privileges of joint-stock companies might be applied: Before recommending a project [Parliament] needed to be sure that the project was adequately capitalized (so that construction could be completed), that it would be profitable (so that its operation would continue) and that the public would benefit (so that charges must be capped to prevent the undue exploitation of monopoly power). As Mark Casson goes on to say, this was a process that ‘gave government considerable influence over railway investment decisions’.89 Parliament required all railway bills to include the ‘deposit [of] an amount equal to one-tenth of their estimated construction costs with the Exchequer’.90 This was largely to avoid speculators from acquiring bills for (re)sale and trade. At the same time, British railway policy encouraged competition with the aim of preventing the formation of monopolies and, therefore, opening the market to small firms. However, the availability of railway technology made this openness questionable as access to it was limited to a select group of investors.91 Often, state intervention was averted and laissez-faire championed, which is not to say that the problems inherent in this model were not identified and questioned. They were and frequently. A select committee chaired in 1844 by William Gladstone, at that time president of the Board of Trade, would examine the consequences of competition and its relationship to the private character of railway operation. While agreeing that private companies should manage their own businesses without interference, the committee recognised that there were significant problems around, for example, the ineffectual character

Past Futures  31 of Parliamentary hearings and the ways in which railway companies tried to perpetuate their vested interests. Railway legislation, the committee recommended, ‘should henceforward be subjected to an habitual and effective supervision on the part of the Government’ in the interest of consolidating the adequate regulation.92 Their report also proposed regulating railway operation, given the centrality that railways had attained by the mid-1840s in the communication needs across Britain. One possible route was the experiment with a new railway department of the Board of Trade. The railway department reported only once, in 1845, the same year when the Prime Minister, Robert Peel, decided to ignore the Board’s report on one of the Great Western Railway bills, prompting all its members to resign without ever being reinstated. A new, more ambitious and in theory more autonomous Commissioners of Railways was created in 1846, but, like the short-lived railway department, its reports remained largely technical.93 The Board of Trade would continue to inspect and report on railways throughout the nineteenth century and beyond covering key aspects of their operation, notably safety. The recommendations of the 1844 committee, in turn, would be part of what a royal commission in 1867 investigated anew when inquiring into the costs, safety and punctuality of railways in Great Britain and Ireland, and the extent to which the model of competition was still fit for purpose.94 Despite, and arguably because of, opposition from the railway companies, grouped around what became a recognisable ‘railway interest’, there was, in the summer of 1844, ‘in Parliament a willingness to accept real, if indirect, responsibility for a tightened control of the growing railway system’. To Simmons, the Regulation of Railways Act of 1844, also known as Gladstone’s Act, carried further the principle, already established by the earlier Regulation Acts, that the State had a right, and a duty, to intervene directly in the companies’ management, if a broad public interest seemed to require it; and the provisions concerning cheaper travel represented the most meticulously detailed application of this principle that had yet been seen in Britain. Cheaper travel concerned the ‘workmen’s trains’, which, following the Act, every company was required to run, at least once a day, at a charge of one penny a mile. However affordable the fare seemed, the train services were far from ‘cheap’ when compared with the workers’ earnings.95 There were disadvantages to the Parliamentary process. First, the role of committees and commissions was advisory only, namely, they advised either in favour of or against individual schemes, not always considering

32  Past Futures the possibilities, let alone the existence, of an overarching plan. Though overall ignored, the plan did exist, drawn by the Railway Committee of the Board of Trade in 1845 and based on more than twenty regional plans.96 Second, there were conflicts of interest, for example, concerning how the committees were formed, often including chairmen of the proponent companies, landlords and persons with a direct interest in a particular scheme, which gave them de facto the capacity to debunk or support schemes at will. Closely related to the committee composition was the influence which railway companies were able to exercise in the day-to-day business of local authorities, ranging from bribery to directing the decision-making process, either as legislators or as members of local councils. Lastly but no less important was the amateurish character of the committees themselves, which, generally, lacked the expertise around the specific details of the very subjects they examined. This was a point that troubled The Economist, prompting a commentator to write: Five gentlemen are chosen who have been elected to the House of Commons for reasons altogether different from any that can possibly be suggested as connected to the duties of a Committee upon a private bill [and who] find themselves placed round a horse-shoe table; for the first time in their lives called upon to examine witnesses, to weight evidence, to hear of curves and inclines, and to listen to technical language as intelligible to them as Chinese, and to suffer under excruciating agony of counsel trained for years in the art of puzzling and mystifying committees so composed.97 Important differences aside, railway policy was generally constant and consequent with the political cultures of Britain and France. Understanding what the public benefit of a railway scheme or system might be was central to the legislating process. There were many more publics around the finance, design, building and operating of railways than can be covered in this brief introduction; their influence in the process and the extent to which they were able to perpetuate their interests is an important part of the story developed in this book. Moreover, there were structural constraints and possibilities related to which paths the politics of transport in the two countries had followed and the institutional practices that each replicated, whether through legislation, the passing of Acts, the dismissal of private bills or the successful gathering of the expertise required for what should be built. Articulating what the public benefit meant and recognising which publics were represented in the process were therefore the result of two different traditions: A set of collective goals, identified with relative clarity, to which individual efforts were subordinated, in the case of France

Past Futures  33 and the preservation of equal and fair grounds that were, in principle, open to all individuals in a manner which may or may not lead towards a recognisable collective goal in the case of Britain. Land, Property and Law Once built, the presence of railway termini on the edges of London and Paris raised an important question: Should a separate ‘trunk’ line connect the termini, or should the different railway lines converge into a central station? The difference between the riverbanks, especially concerning patterns of land ownership, and the more or less marked distinction between inside and outside the city, on the one hand, and the outer and central districts, on the other hand, will help to highlight some of the key issues around this question. Several plans for a central station at the Place de la Concorde were part of the large programme of embellissements of the early 1830s in Paris.98 One of them proposed connecting the Paris-St. Germain railway and the line to Versailles, joining the Étoile and the Place de la Concorde and including a station built on arches. The Ponts et Chaussées and the municipal council gave their initial approval in 1835, considering the plan a contribution ‘to the embellishment of the Champs Élysées’.99 However, the idea of a central station where further extensions of different lines would converge proved unpopular. The debate would be reopened later in the 1870s with the same result. In Caron’s view, not centralising the traffic of all main-line companies into one station would constitute ‘a severe handicap […] the Parisian transport system suffered from the outset’.100 Handicap or not, the decision of building a central station in places like the Place de la Concorde or the Hôtel de Ville was determined by conditions inherent in the broader spatial and political context of Paris, and how these changed during this period. Connecting to plans by the Birmingham, the Great Western, the Blackwall, the Croydon and the Greenwich railways was key to the majority of street improvements considered by a Parliamentary select committee in London in 1838. One of the schemes proposed a new street from the south side of St. Paul’s churchyard to London Bridge, continuing eastwards to Tower Hill, Aldgate and Commercial Road, where it would meet the planned terminus of the London and Blackwall railway.101 There was also the ‘Metropolitan Centripetal Depot Company’, whose facilities included, as the name of the company suggested, a terminus and warehouses as a response to the expediency of extending ‘a railway into the heart of the city’.102 The choice of the site ‘selected for this great enterprise, and more especially fixed upon from its peculiar convenience and central situation’, the prospectus in The Times asserted, ‘is that of St. Paul’s, which from the extent of the building may be easily

34  Past Futures converted into useful accommodation [due to] its being the most elevated spot in the metropolis’, with the subsequent advantages that such a location represented, and given ongoing experiments with gravity and ‘momentum’ in railway traction. ‘Auxiliary’ stations were suggested east at The East India House, the Bank of England, the London and Westminster Bank, the Stock Exchange and Guildhall; south at The Lunatic Hospital and Queen’s Bench Prison; west at The Fleet Prison, Temple, Somerset House, Northumberland House and Westminster Hall; and north-west at the Westminster Reform Club, ‘as a compliment to’, the spoof went on to add, ‘the interest that so many of its members take in railway projects’.103 If entirely unfounded, the allusion to St. Paul’s Cathedral is indicative of the widespread perception that railway viaducts, sidings, termini and stations were taking over London, including some of the city’s most iconic sites and buildings. As in Paris, real schemes for a central station would be revived in the 1850s and 1860s without any ever being implemented. Not joining different railway lines into a central station was therefore a decision and a route that London and Paris had in common, despite the many and important differences concerning property, finance, law and the role that private initiative and the state were to play. This provides a telling contrast with developments in other European and American cities, as well as cities elsewhere, where a ‘grand’, ‘union’, ‘central’ station or ‘Hauptbahnhof’ set important patterns for the future development of urban railways.104 Other characteristics concerning the patterns of land use, occupation and ownership, and how these differed across the riverbanks of the two cities highlight further commonalities and differences, which are essential to our story. In Paris, the enceintes had become a structuring element of the spatial organisation of the city, leaving clear imprints in the layout of streets and roads both within and without the areas that the walls divided. The clearest example was the wall of the Fermiers Généraux as no building was allowed within nearly 100 m on either side of the wall, with promenades designed and trees planted in what became the boulevards concentriques characterising the periphery of Paris during the first half of the nineteenth century.105 The appearance of the walls and the generous stretch of land immediately adjoining them combined to highlight aesthetic considerations as per the gardens and parks proposed by an 1853 commission, discussed in the following chapter, which were to welcome foreigners, giving them a fitting impression of the French government and its capital.106 Three interrelated elements became apparent as the negotiations around the siting of railway termini within Paris took place: The city’s ‘morphology, especially the density of land use and occupation’, which translated into the elevated cost of land; the fragmented character of land ownership that made expropriation a labour-intensive task; and the interest of local and national authorities in preserving existing roads and

Past Futures  35 thoroughfares approaching the metropolis.107 Railways tended to sit where conditions were most favourable and challenges and risks somewhat reduced. The Paris-St. Germain railway, for example, was able to reach deep inside into the second arrondissement thanks partly to a tunnel which passed under the built-up areas of the communes de Batignolles-Monceau but mainly to the existence of the spacious and entirely undeveloped Europe quarter whose two owners were anxious to sell the land the company needed. The location of the Gare d’Austerlitz on the left bank went through a similar process since the 5.52 hectares of city land needed for its station and access lines required the expropriation of a mere eighteen properties; most of these were either undeveloped land or workyards and the most ­important – seventy per cent of the total area – belonged to the ­Hospices and the City of Paris rather than to private owners.108 Despite the relative ease of negotiations, the city authorities were able to impose restrictions on the Chemin de Fer du Centre (whose terminus was Austerlitz) by setting the price of land and objecting to a section of nearly 1 km, as contemplated in the company’s preliminary plan. Land was also one of the most significant conditions governing railway accommodation in London. In much the same way as in Paris, patterns of ownership constituted a crucial factor, especially in terms of the leasehold system; tenancies; and, consequently, whose interests were involved. These patterns resembled ‘an inner suburban ring of large holdings’ to a large extent preserved against railway development. The situation was replicated on both riverbanks, although the specific negotiations between railway companies and landlords differed in relation to who the actors were: In other words, aristocratic families, the Crown, the Church and other ecclesiastical bodies, corporate bodies, charities or local councils. With each one of them came the leases and agreements they held on the land they owned, and with these the occupants, whether residential, commercial or otherwise.109 As Kellett has noted, ‘when they sought for closer approaches to the City and West End, or even for surface links with each other [railways on the southern bank] were able to deal with one or two major ecclesiastical proprietors only’, while to the eastern end of the northern bank negotiations involved the City and livery companies.110 In the case of the London and Blackwall railway (previously the Commercial Railway), for example, the expropriation of the properties involved in the building of their city terminus at Fenchurch Street – the only one in the City at the time it was built – accounted for a substantial

36  Past Futures part of the financial problems the company experienced years later. It was not only the price of land, inflated as it might have been, but also the legal services needed for the many individual negotiations that represented a high expenditure. Legal fees, though restricted to the costs the solicitors charged only in connection with the land that was transferred, were nearly ‘half as much as the total purchase price awarded’. This led the company to amalgamate with the Eastern Counties railway, also operating services in East London, a merger which, in turn, ended in 1848.111 The Midland railway faced a similar situation with their terminal at St. Pancras by the Euston Road. As was indicated in a circular to the company shareholders in 1867 the value of property required and the amount of compensations have been enormously in excess of what was anticipated, and it would seem that the cost of carrying the works of a railway into London is such as to defy all previous calculation.112 Conversely, the siting of their termini could represent important advantages for railway companies. The London and Greenwich, the first to open in December 1836, owned the land of its city terminus at London Bridge. This allowed the company to plan extensions and build new tracks for the lines of other companies, introducing tolls and other charges for the facility of having a direct connection to the City.113 The prospects of a city terminus would be exploited later by the Victoria Station and Pimlico Railway Company (1857), and ‘the twin Charing Cross and Cannon Street extension’ (1859–1861), both of which were devised as terminal accommodation serving different railway lines across the two riverbanks and with a separate administration.114 Land was a major condition in the building of the lines and stations of railway companies in the two cities. Often the expense developed into a burden, as was the case for the Compagnie d’Orléans in Paris and the Blackwall and Eastern Counties in London. Expenses included not only the cost of the land itself but also the costs attached to the expropriation of buildings that needed demolishing or repurposing, not least compensation, as well as the negotiation with leaseholders, tenants and residents, an important part of which incurred hefty legal fees. What Philip Booth calls fittingly ‘the nature of difference’ between Britain and France constrained the directions that railway development would take in London and Paris during the nineteenth century but also subsequently. Central to this were the different attitudes towards property; what role national, regional, municipal and local government played; and how the decision-making process was shaped.115 These are aspects to which we shall return as the encounter between railways and the two cities unfolds.

Past Futures  37 The existing transport infrastructure and provision; the political cultures implicit in railway design and finance; and the ways in which land use and ownership, property and legislation interacted with one another combined to produce different outcomes in London and Paris as the nineteenth century progressed. The debates in Parliament, municipal and regional councils, and several specialist circles stressed the need to surmount issues such as severe street congestion as well as the need to consolidate a more orchestrated growth through which social, economic and political objectives could be met. The framing of that growth prompted unique visions of the future of the two cities. The visions included technology in that a mechanical means of transport, namely the railway, was to enter the city where horse traction and pedestrians reigned. The visions proposed to transform the two cities in the interest of the many by helping to reduce the overcrowding of the central and inner districts, providing sufficient and adequate housing in the outskirts in combination with affordable means of transport. The visions also urged institutional reform in that land rights and tax collection required adjustment if the inclusive improvement of the two metropolises was to be achieved. An important part of the proposals that will be examined here recovers the voice of past hopes for a better future. ‘Hope, wrote Balzac, is a memory that desires’.116 The desire was one of both urgency and promise. Its scope was constrained by the conditions that contemporaries experienced: In other words, conditions of their (historical) present, which themselves remained dependent upon their past. It is that most historical relationship that weaves its way across thresholds, taking us forwards and backwards throughout this book.

Notes Excerpts from this chapter were published in an earlier shorter version in ‘Past futures: Innovation and the Railways of Nineteenth-­C entury ­L ondon and Paris’, B. Umesh Rai (ed.), Handbook of Research on Emerging Innovations in Rail Transportation Engineering (IGI Global: Pennsylvania, 2016), 1–22. 1 For a recent and succinct account of the European experience see A. Lees and L. H. Lees, Europe: 1800–2000, in P. Clark (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Cities in World History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 464–482. 2 G. de Vries, What Is Political in Sub-Politics? How Aristotle Might Help STS, Social Studies of Science 37, 5 (2007), 781–809. 3 Recent work engaging with the question of ‘publics’ and the public benefit, specifically in the context of cities and in relation to transport, includes B. Schmucki, The Machine in the City: Public Appropriation of the Tramway in Britain and Germany, 1870–1915, Journal of Urban

38  Past Futures History 38, 6 (2012), 1060–1093, and D. Schley, Tracks in the Streets: Railroads, Infrastructure, and Urban Space in Baltimore, 1828–1840, Journal of Urban History 39, 6 (2013), 1062–1084. The list of relevant cultural and institutional histories of railways is extensive. On the cultural representations of railways see, for example, I. Carter, Railways and Culture in Britain. The Epitome of Modernity (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2001) and M. Beaumont and M. Freeman (eds.), The Railway and Modernity: Time, Space and the Machine Ensemble (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2007). The institutional and business approach, in turn, is typical of most histories of railway companies on both sides of the channel; see the separate histories of ‘Tube’ lines by Ch. E. Lee, for example, The Northern Line. A Brief History (London: London Transport, 1973); in France, see, for example, B. Carrière, Les Trains de Banlieue, Tome 1. De 1837 à 1938 (Paris: La vie du Rail, 1998). 4 D. Olsen, The City as a Work of Art (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1986), 56–57. 5 L. Lees, Metropolitan Types London and Paris Compared, in H. J. Dyos and M. Wolff (eds.), The Victorian City Images and Realities Vol. 1 (­London and Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973), 414. 6 C. Hancock, Paris et Londres au XIXe siècle. Représentations dans les Guides et Récits de Voyage (Paris: CNRS Éditions, 2003); D. Arnold, ­Modernity in Early C19th London (and Paris), Synergies Royaume-Uni et Irlande 3 (2010), 25–36. Another important comparative work is Vanessa Harding’s exploration of ‘the constant fact of death and the presence of the dead’ in the lives of the citizens of London and Paris in the early modern period, not least the parish communities and authorities who were responsible for dealing with the harsh realities of plague and other epidemics while, at the same time, ‘trying to think strategically about the future’. V. Harding, The Dead and the Living in Paris and London, 1500 –1670 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 13. 7 B. Bobrick, Labyrinths of Iron A History of the World’s Subways (New York: Newsweek Books, 1981), 270. A recent issue of Japan Forum invites us to ‘think about Tokyo from the perspective of movement’, that of the Yamanote line in particular; see M. Pendleton and J. Coates, Thinking from the Yamanote: Space, Place, and Mobility in Tokyo’s Past and Present, Japan Forum 30, 2 (2018), 149–162. 8 R. Williams, Notes on the Underground. An Essay on Technology, Society, and the Imagination (Cambridge, MA and London: The MIT Press, 2008 [1990]); see particularly the introductory chapter, 1–21. The afterword of the 2008 edition speaks to more recent developments around environmental consciousness, which Williams claims is subterranean consciousness: The fact that, in a very real experiential sense, we are in the earth rather than on it. 9 D. Pike, Subterranean Cities. The World Beneath Paris and London, 1800–1945 (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2005), 8. 10 C. Divall and G. Revill, Cultures of transport. Representation, Practice, and Technology, Journal of Transport History 26, 1 (2005), 99–111. 11 T. R. Gourvish, Railways and the British Economy 1830–1914 (London: Macmillan, 1980); M. J. Freeman and D. Aldcroft, The Atlas of British Railway History (London: Croom Helm, 1985); M. J. Freeman, Railways and the Victorian Imagination (New Haven and London: Yale University

Past Futures  39 Press, 1999); J. Simmons, The Railway in England and Wales 1830–1914, vol. 1 The System and its Working (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1978); F. Caron, Histoire de Chemins de Fer en France Tome I, 1740– 1883 (Paris: Fayard, 1997); Les Grandes Compagnies de Chemin de Fer en France 1823–1937 (Genève: Archives Économiques du Crédit Lyonnais, 2005). 12 F. Dobbin, Forging Industrial Policy. The United States, Britain, and France in the Railway Age (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); A. Mitchell, The Great Train Race. Railways and the Franco-­German ­Rivalry, 1815–1914 (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2000). 13 T. C. Barker and M. Robbins, A History of London Transport. Passenger Travel and the Development of the Metropolis. 2 Vols (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1963, 1974); D. Larroque, M. Margairaz, and P. Zembri, Paris et ses Transports XIXe–XXe siècles. Deux Siècles de Décisions Pour la Ville et sa Région (Paris: Éditions Recherches, 2002). 14 A. A. Jackson, London’s Metropolitan Railway (Newton Abbot: David & Charles, 1986); S. Halliday, Underground to Everywhere. London’s Underground Railway in the Life of the Capital (Stroud: Sutton Publishing London’s Transport Museum, 2001); Ch. Wolmar, The Subterranean Railway. How the London Underground Railway Was Built and How It Changed the City Forever (London: Atlantic Books, 2004); R. Guerrand, Le Métro (Paris: Éditions du Temps, 1962); J. Robert, Notre Métro (Paris, 1967); S. Hallsted-Baumert, The Métropolitain: Technology, Space and the Creation of Urban Identities in Fin-de-Siècle Paris, PhD dissertation, New York University, 1999; S. Hallsted-Baumert and F. Gasnault (eds.), MétroCité: Le Chemin de Fer Métropolitain à la Conquête de Paris 1871–1945 (Paris: Paris Musées, 1997). 15 R. Roth and M.-N. Polino (eds.), The City and the Railway in Europe (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003); J. R. Kellett, Railways and Victorian Cities. (London: Routledge, 1979 [1969]); K. Bowie and S. Texier (sous la direction de), Paris et ses Chemins de Fer (Paris: Action Artistique de la Ville de Paris, 2003). 16 Th. P. Hughes, Networks of Power: Electrification in Western Society, 1880–1930 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983); F. Caron et al. (sous la direction de), Paris et ses Réseaux: Naissance d’un Mode de Vie Urbain XIXe–XXe siècles (Paris: Bibliothèque Historique de la Ville de Paris, 1990); S. Guy, S. Marvin, and T. Moss (eds.), Urban Infrastructure in Transition: Networks, Buildings, Plans (London: Earthscan, 2001); P. Dobraszczyk, Into the Belly of the Beast: Exploring London’s Victorian Sewers (Reading: Spire Books, 2009). 17 J. A. Tarr and G. Dupuy (eds.), Technology and the Rise of the Networked City in Europe and America (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988); see especially the Preface xiii–xvii. 18 On the regulation of markets see, for example, C. Otter, Cleansing and Clarifying: Technology and Perception in Nineteenth-Century London, Journal of British Studies 43, 1 (2004), 40–64; on water see M. Gandy, The Paris Sewers and the Rationalization of Urban Space, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 24 (1999), 23–44; also Concrete and Clay: Reworking Nature in New York City (Cambridge, MA and ­London: The MIT Press, 2002); on traffic see C. López Galviz, Mobilities at a Standstill: Regulating Circulation in London c.1863–1870, Journal of Historical Geography 42 (2013), 62–76; J. Winter, London’s Teeming Streets 1830–1914 (London and New York: Routledge, 1993).

40  Past Futures 19 S. Graham and S. Marvin, Splintering Urbanism: Network Infrastructures, Technological Mobilities and the Urban Condition (London and New York: Routledge, 2001), 13. 20 S. Dierig, J. Lachmund, and A. Mendelsohn, Toward an Urban History of Science, Osiris 18 (2003), 1–19; M. Hård and Th. J. Misa (eds.), Urban Machinery Inside Modern European Cities (Cambridge, MA and London: The MIT Press, 2008); M. Gandy, The Fabric of Space (Cambridge, MA and London: The MIT Press, 2014); see also A. Gullberg and A. Kaijser, City-Building Regimes in Post-War Stockholm, Journal of Urban Technology 11, 2 (2004), 13–39. 21 P. Higonnet, Paris: Capital of the World (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002). 22 M. Roncayolo, La Modernité? Approche des conceptions de la ville et de Paris capitale … avant Baudelaire, in K. Bowie (textes réunis par), La ­Modernité avant Haussmann. Formes de l’espace urbain à Paris 1801– 1853 (Paris: Éditions Recherches, 2001), 27–38. 23 Bowie, La Modernité avant Haussman, N. Papayanis, Planning Paris before Haussmann (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004); Fl. Bourillon and A. Fourcaut (eds.), Agrandir Paris 1860– 1970 (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2012); P. Pinon, Atlas du Paris Haussmannien. La Ville en Heritage du Second Empire à Nos Jours (Paris: Parigramme, 2016). 24 M. Berman, All That Is Solid Melts Into Air. The Experience of Modernity (Simon and Schuster: New York, 1982); see also Ch. Prendergast, Paris and the Nineteenth Century (Oxford and Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1992). 25 D. Harvey, Paris: Capital of Modernity (New York and London: ­Routledge, 2003), 25. 26 No doubt, there were flanêurs enjoying journeys in the metropolitan railways of the two cities; the likes of George Augustus Sala in London (and Paris) and Victor Fournel in Paris. Or, indeed, Arthur Rimbaud (see Chapter 3). Excellent critiques of our fascination with the flanêur and its female version, the flanêuse, include those by J. Schlör, Nights in the Big City, Paris, Berlin, London 1840–1930 (London and New York: ­Reaktion Books, 2016 [1996]); L. Nead, Victorian Babylon: People, Streets and ­Images in Nineteenth-Century London (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2000); C. Otter, The Victorian Eye: A Political History of Light and Vision in Britain, 1800–1910 (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2008). 27 Harvey, Paris, 1. The notion of creative destruction builds on the work of Schumpeter, who used the example of the Illinois Central Railroad to develop his ideas on long-term economic growth in Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (London: G. Allen & Unwin, 1943). 28 See, for example, A. Sutcliffe, London and Paris: Capitals of the Nineteenth Century, The Fifth H.J. Dyos Memorial Lecture (Victorian Studies Centre, University of Leicester, 1983), and, more recently, Otter, The ­Victorian Eye. 29 D. Edgerton, Science, Technology, and the British Industrial ‘Decline’, 1870–1970 (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996). 30 R. Dennis, Cities in Modernity Representations and Productions of ­Metropolitan Space, 1840–1930 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 25–26.

Past Futures  41 31 L. Nead, Animating the Everyday: London on Camera circa 1900, Journal of British Studies 43, 1 (2004), 68; see also Victorian Babylon, and The Haunted Gallery Painting, Photography, Film c.1900 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2007). 32 Nead, Victorian Babylon, 4, 8. 33 Gandy, Fabric of Space, 23; M. Ogborn, Spaces of Modernity: London’s Geographies, 1680–1780 (New York and London: Guilford Press, 1998) – see especially the introduction; P. J. Taylor, Modernities: A Geohistorical Interpretation (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1999). 34 C. Schorske, Fin-de-Siècle Vienna Politics and Culture (New York: ­Vintage Books, 1981), xxii; Williams adopts a similar position by examining the ‘structural congruence of plotlines’ across science, technology and literature. Notes on the Underground, 16. 35 One recent illustration of the persistence of the nineteenth century as ‘the’ period of modernity and modernism is the collection of essays, H. Clayson and A. Dombrowski (eds.), Is Paris Still the Capital of the Nineteenth Century? Essays on Art and Modernity, 1850–1900 (London and New York: Routledge, 2016). 36 C. Geoffrey Holme (ed.), The Painter of Victorian Life. A Study of Constantin Guys with an Introduction and a Translation of Baudelaire’s ­Peintre de la Vie Moderne by P.G. Konody (London: The Studio Ltd., 1930), 172. 37 Holme, The Painter of Victorian Life, 7–8, 11–13. 38 Pike also recognises the ‘dialectic of antiquity and novelty’ to highlight the persistent presence of evil imaginaries and the devil himself to describe and make sense of the modern experience of the city; Pike, Subterranean Cities, 12–14. 39 See, for example, A. Sutcliffe, Towards the Planned City Germany, B ­ ritain, the United States and France 1780–1914 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1981); also P. Hall, Cities of Tomorrow. An Intellectual History of Urban Planning and Design Since 1880, fourth edition (Malden: Wiley Blackwell, 2014). 40 Two examples that illustrate the tendency to characterise periods are F. Choay, The Modern City: Planning in the Nineteenth Century (London: Studio Vista, 1969); B. I. Coleman, The Idea of the City in Nineteenth-­ Century Britain (London: Routledge, 1973). 41 Alan Mitchell adopted a similar format for his comparative study of railways in Germany and France, which, as he explains, was the result of three different trials. See Mitchell, The Great Train Race, xiii–xv. 42 C. López Galviz, N. Dunn and A. Nordin, Latent Fictions: The Anticipation of World Fairs, in R. Poli (ed.), Handbook of Anticipation. Theoretical and Applied Aspects of the Use of Future in Decision Making (­Switzerland: Springer), 1–22; M. R. Levin, Urban Modernity Cultural Innovation in the Second Industrial Revolution (Cambridge, MA and London: The MIT Press, 2010). 43 Simmons, Railway in England and Wales, 135–136; Barker and Robbins, History of London Transport vol. 2, 103–104. In his excellent article ­Russell Haywood devotes several passages to discussing the work of the royal commission in light of the relationship between railways and early developments of town planning; see R. Haywood, Railways, Urban Form and Town Planning in London: 1900–1947, Planning Perspectives 12 (1997), 37–69. 44 Sutcliffe, Towards the Planned City, 141; C. López Galviz, Converging Lines Dissecting Circles: Railways and the Socialist Ideal in London and

42  Past Futures Paris at the Turn of the Twentieth Century, in M. Davies and J. Galloway (eds.), London and Beyond: Essays in Honour of Derek Keene (London: Institute of Historical Research Series, 2012), 317–337. 45 R. L. Pinkus, quoted in K. Young and P. Garside, Metropolitan London. Politics and Urban Change 1837–1981 (London: Edward Arnold, 1982), 16–17. For a discussion of the uses of the term ‘metropolis’ in a broader context, both historically and geographically, see D. Keene, Metropolitan Comparisons: London as a City-State, Historical Research 77, 198 (2004), 459–480. 46 F. Sheppard, London 1808–1970: The Infernal Wen (London: Secker & Warburg, 1971), 279. 47 See D. Owen, The Government of Victorian London, 1855–1889: The Metropolitan Board of Works, the Vestries, and the City Corporation, R. MacLeod (ed.) (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1982); see particularly F. Shepard’s contribution ‘The Crisis of London’s Government’, 23–30. 48 For Parliamentary Bills in connection with the Board, see P. Cockton, Subject Catalogue of the House of Commons Parliamentary Papers, ­1801–1900, Vol. III (Cambridge: Chadwyck-Healey, 1988), 407–409; see also Dobrasczyzck, Into the Belly. 49 Young and Garside, Metropolitan London, 28–38. 50 The enceintes were first built during the reign of Philippe Auguste (1190– 1220) and subsequently during the reign of Charles V (1358–1383), Charles IX and Louis XIII (1566–1635); see A. Fierro, Histoire et Dictionnaire de Paris (Paris: Robert Laffont, 1996), 844–849. According to Lavedan the Mur des Fermiers Généraux was finished in June 1790; see P. Lavedan, Nouvelle Histoire de Paris. Histoire de l’Urbanisme à Paris (Paris: ­Diffusion Hachette, 1975), 193. 51 Lavedan, Histoire de l’Urbanisme, 186–189; for a concise account of the city fortifications see A. Picon, Les Fortifications de Paris, in B. Belhoste, F. Masson and A. Picon (eds.), Le Paris des Polytechniciens. Des ingénieurs dans la ville 1794–1994 (Paris: Délégation à l’action artistique de la ville de Paris, 1994), 213–221. 52 See, for example, Lavedan, Histoire de l’Urbanisme, 193. 53 The description is from a 1867 guide, quoted in F. Maspero, Roissy Express: A Journey Through the Paris Suburbs (London: Verso, 1994), 170. A similar description is given in the explanatory note of Stanford’s map, published at the time of the Franco-Prussian War (1870), ‘A short description of the fortifications of Paris’, reproduced in P. Whitfield, The Mapmakers. A History of Stanfords (London: Edward Stanford, 2003), 52; see also Picon, Les Fortifications de Paris, 220. 54 Fierro, Histoire et Dictionnaire, 278; see also L. Girard, La Deuxième République et le Second Empire 1848–1870. Nouvelle Histoire de Paris (Paris: Diffusion Hachette, 1981). The annexation of the suburbs is discussed in detail in Chapter 3. 55 A.-L. Shapiro, Housing the Poor of Paris, 1850–1902 (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), 18. 56 The post was created in 1811; see Picon, Les Fortifications de Paris, 139. 57 For general trends in London see Sheppard, London 1808–1970; for Paris see B. Marchand, Paris, Histoire d’Une Ville XIXe–XXe siècles (Paris: Éditions du Seil, 1993); For a breakdown of general employment sectors in London and their share of the entire labour market see the tables ‘Industrial sector shares, 1851–1911’ and ‘Employment by industrial

Past Futures  43 sector, 1851–1911’, M. Ball and D. Sunderland, An economic history of London, 1800 –1914 (New York: Routledge, 2001), 61, 64; for a similar (though not comparable) description in Paris see ‘L’Économie Parisienne’, Girard, La Deuxième République, 205–237, particularly the 1865 figures, 224. 58 For Paris see Girard, La Deuxième République, 206–207; for London see G. Stedman Jones, Working-class culture and working-class politics in London, 1870–1900: notes on the remaking of a working class, Journal of Social History 7, 4 (1974), 460–508. Interestingly, this is a phenomenon that was characteristic of London and Paris workshops since the middle ages; personal communication by Derek Keene. 59 ‘London as a hotbed of industrial militancy, the focus of large capital and the scene of economic instability’, Green goes on to assert, ‘may offend those for whom the traditional images still holds true’. D. Green, The Nineteenth-­Century Metropolitan Economy: A Revisionist Interpretation, The London Journal 21, 1 (1996), 24. 60 L. Chevalier, Labouring Classes and Dangerous Classes in Paris during the First Half of the Nineteenth Century (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973). 61 A. Sutcliffe, The Autumn of Central Paris: The Defeat of Town Planning, 1850–1970 (London: Edward Arnold, 1970), 147–148. 62 Girard, La Deuxième République, 232–233, 307–329. 63 Hancock, Paris et Londres. 64 Chevalier, Labouring Classes, 189; Sutcliffe, Autumn of Central Paris, 15. The Rue Rambuteau did not represent the improvement needed for the connection of the northern area with the market, see ibid., 22–23. 65 For a discussion of the plans for Regent Street see, for example, D. ­Olsen, Town Planning in London: The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (London and New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982); for a general history of the docks see J. Broodbank, History of the Port of London, Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 (London: Daniel O’Connor, 1921). 66 See Olsen, Town Planning in London. 67 As will be discussed, a succession of parliamentary committees and royal commissions encouraged a comprehensive view of the whole, often by reference to ‘metropolitan improvements’, notably in 1846, 1855 and 1863. 68 M. H. Port, Government and the Metropolitan Image: Ministers, Parliament and the Concept of a Capital City, 1840–1915, in D. Arnold (ed.), The Metropolis and its Image (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1999), 109. 69 On the Bills of Mortality, see, for example, R. Porter, London A Social History (London et al.: Penguin Books, 2000), 158. 70 G. Stedman Jones, Outcast London A Study in the Relationship Between Classes in Victorian Society (London et al.: Penguin Books, 1992 [1971]), 164–165. 71 For London see Broodbank, Port of London; for Paris see Girard, La Deuxième République. 72 Another important basin was in the Grosvenor estate in Pimlico, linked to the Chelsea Water Works Company, dating back to the early eighteenth century; see F. H. W. Sheppard (ed.), Survey of London: Volume 39, the Grosvenor Estate in Mayfair, Part 1 (General History) (London: A ­ thlone Press, University of London, 1977), 29–30 (British History Online www. british-history.ac.uk/survey-london/vol39/pt1/pp29-30, accessed 13 March 2018). The Grand Surrey Canal linked to the docks and other areas on the

44  Past Futures southern bank of the Thames is also worth noting; see Broodbank, Port of London, and A Street Map of London 1843 by B. R. Davies. 73 Kellett, Railways and Victorian Cities, 351. 74 J. C. Toutain, Les Transports en France de 1830 à 1965, Économies et sociétés, série AF, No. 9. (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1967). 75 Girard, La Deuxième République, 230–231. 76 Quoted in M. Lambert-Bresson, Les premiers projets d’implantation de chemin de fer dans Paris (1830–1840), in K. Bowie (textes réunis par), La Modernité avant Haussmann. Formes de l’espace urbain à Paris ­1801–1853 (Paris: Éditions Recherches, 2001), 267. 77 For a discussion of figures during the period see, for example, Barker and Robbins, History of London Transport, vol. 1; see also J. H. Greathead, The City and South London Railway; with some Remarks upon Subaqueous Tunnelling by Shield and Compressed Air (London: The Institution of Civil Engineers, 1896), 3. 78 For the importance of railways in Britain see, for example, Freeman, Railways and the Victorian Imagination; in the case of France see Caron, ­Histoire de chemins de fer. 79 Dobbin, Forging Industrial Policy, 171. 80 See B. Belhoste, Les Polytechniciens dans la Vie Intellectuelle Parisienne au XIXe siècle, in B. Belhoste, F. Masson, and A. Picon (eds.), Le Paris des Polytechniciens. Des Ingénieurs Dans la Ville 1794–1994 (Paris: ­Délégation à l’Action Artistique de la Ville de Paris, 1994), 53–54; see also B. Belhoste and K. Chatzis, From Technical Corps to Technocratic Power: French State Engineers and their Professional and Cultural Universe in the First Half of the 19th Century, History and Technology 23, 3 (2007), 209–225. 81 Moniteur Universel 1833, v. 86, n. 120, p. 1206; quoted in Dobbin Forging Industrial Policy, 109; see also Mitchell, The Great Train Race, 5. 82 The statement is from 1837; quoted in F. Caron, Railway Development in the Capital City: The Case of Paris, in R. Roth and M.-N. Polino (eds.), The City and the Railway in Europe (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), 140. 83 Mitchell, The Great Train Race, 6–7; Caron, Railway Development; see also N. Papayanis, Horse-Drawn Cabs and Omnibuses in Paris. The Idea of Circulation and the Business of Public Transit (Baton Rouge and ­London: Louisiana State University Press, 1996), 91. 84 Caron, Railway Development, 140. 85 D. Larroque, L’ère des monopoles incontestés 1855–1880, in J. Payen (sous la direction de) Analyse Historique de l’Évolution des Transports en Commun dans la Région Parisienne de 1855 à 1939 (Paris: Conservatoire ­National des Arts et Métiers, 1977), 12. 86 Mitchell, The Great Train Race, 8. 87 The terms of negotiation between the state and the railway companies differed according to ‘conventions’, the first of which was issued in 1859. For details on the arrangements made between the State and the different railway companies, see Caron, Histoire de chemins de fer, 235 –243. For the subsequent conventions see the historical studies per company compiled and discussed also by Caron, Les grandes compagnies, 23–35; for the 1883 conventions see ibid., 89–114; see also Dobbin, Forging Industrial Policy, 147–148, 150–151. 88 Caron, Les grandes compagnies, 114–115. 89 M. Casson, The World’s First Railway System. Enterprise, Competition, and Regulation on the Railway Network in Victorian Britain (Oxford:

Past Futures  45 Oxford University Press, 2009), 27, 314. For a different discussion of the joint stock companies see, for example, J. Taylor, Business in Pictures: Representations of Railway Enterprise in the Satirical Press in Britain ­1845–1870, Past & Present 189 (2005), 111–145; see also Kellett, Railways and Victorian Cities, 26. 90 Dobbin, Forging Industrial Policy, 177; Simmons, Railway in England and Wales, 37. 91 Dobbin, Forging Industrial Policy, 199–200. 92 Fifth Report from the Select Committee on Railways (London, 1844); see particularly the introductory part of the report. 93 See Kellett, Railways and Victorian Cities, 103–107; see also Dobbin, Forging Industrial Policy, 173–174, 181–182, 186. 94 Royal Commission on Railways. Report of the Commissioners (London, 1867). 95 Simmons, Railway in England and Wales, 37–38. 96 In his fascinating counterfactual study, Casson claims that ‘equivalent social benefits could have been obtained with only 13,000 miles of track’ instead of the 20,000 that served the railway systems of England, Wales and Scotland by 1914; Casson, The World’s First Railway, 2. 97 The Economist, 17 July 1858 quoted in Kellett, Railways and Victorian Cities, 104–105; see also 107–109. 98 See, for example, Lambert-Bresson, Les premiers projets, 265, 267. 99 Quoted in P. Merlin, Les Transports Parisiens (Étude de Géographie Économique et Sociale) (Paris: Masson & Cie. Éditeurs, 1967), 69. 100 Caron, Railway development, 146; paraphrased. 101 Second Report from the Select Committee on Metropolis Improvements; with the Minutes of Evidence, Appendix, Index, and Plans (London: 1838), see plan no. 36, and the evidence by Thomas Marsh Nelson, 55–59. 102 See ‘Metropolitan Centripetal Depot Company’, The Times, 9 July 1839, 5. 103 The Times, 9 July 1839, 5. 104 See, for example, M. Nilsen, Railways and the Western European Capitals. Studies of Implantation in London, Paris, Berlin, and Brussels (New York: Palgrave, 2008); Roth and Polino, City and Railway. A brief discussion of the contrast between London and Paris is also in M. Hebbert, Crossrail: The Slow Route to London’s Regional Express Railway, Town Planning Review 85, 2 (2014), 171–190. 105 M. Garden, Paris, in J.-L. Pinol (sous la direction de), Atlas Historique des Villes de France (Paris: Hachette, 1996), 42; for a detailed discussion of street development and its functions see B. Rouleau, Le Tracé des Rues de Paris (Paris: CNRS, 1988). 106 F. Bourillon, A Propos de la Commission des Embellissements, in K. Bowie (textes réunis par), La Modernité Avant Haussmann. Formes de l’Espace Urbain à Paris 1801–1853 (Paris: Éditions Recherches, 2001), 143. 107 B. Ratcliffe, Urban Space and the Siting of the Parisian Railroad Stations, 1830–1847, Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Western Society for French History, 15 (1988), 228. 108 Ratcliffe, Urban Space, 229. 109 For the differences related to the geographical divide between the northwest and south-east in London see Kellett, Railways and Victorian Cities, 246–262; also figure in p. 246. 110 Kellett, Railways and Victorian Cities, 258–259. 111 Kellett, Railways and Victorian Cities, 270–271. 112 Quoted in Kellett, Railways and Victorian Cities, 277.

46  Past Futures 13 Barker and Robbins, History of London Transport vol. 1, 46, 48. 1 114 The Victoria Station and Pimlico Railway was supported by the London Brighton and South Coast railway, and a consortium of building contractors (Betts, Peto and Kelk). The Charing Cross and Cannon Street extension was financed entirely by the South Eastern, Kellett, Railways and Victorian Cities, 273, 275. 115 P. Booth, The Nature of Difference: Traditions of Law and Government and Their Effects on Planning in Britain and France, in Bishwapriya Sanyal (ed.), Comparative Planning Cultures (New York and London: Routledge, 2005), 259–283. 116 In Un Prince de la Bohème (1840); also quoted in Harvey, Paris, 50.

2 Circulation and Improvement

It was market-morning. The ground was covered, nearly ankle-deep, with filth and mire; a thick steam, perpetually rising from the reeking bodies of the cattle, and mingling with the fog, which seemed to rest upon the chimney-tops, hung heavily above. All the pens in the centre of the large area, and as many temporary pens as could be crowded into the vacant space, were filled with sheep; tied up to posts by the gutter side were long lines of beasts and oxen, three or four deep. Countrymen, butchers, drovers, hawkers, boys, thieves, idlers, and vagabonds of every low grade, were mingled together in a mass; the whistling of drovers, the barking dogs, the bellowing and plunging of the oxen, the bleating of sheep, the grunting and squeaking of pigs, the cries of hawkers, the shouts, oaths, and quarrelling on all sides; the ringing of bells and roar of voices, that issued from every public-house; the crowding, pushing, driving, beating, whooping and yelling; the hideous and discordant dim that resounded from every corner of the market; and the unwashed, unshaven, squalid, and dirty figures constantly running to and fro, and bursting in and out of the throng; rendered it a stunning and bewildering scene, which quite confounded the senses. —Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist (1837–1839) Au milieu du grand silence, et dans le désert de l’avenue, les voitures de maraîchers montaient vers Paris, avec les cahots rhythmés de leurs roues, dont les échos battaient les façades des maisons, endormies aux deux bords, derrière les lignes confuses des ormes […] Et, sur la route, sur les routes voisines, en avant et en arrière, des ronflements lointains de charrois annonçaient des convois pareils, tout un arrivage traversant les ténèbres et le gros sommeil de deux heures du matin, berçant la ville noire du bruit de cette nourriture qui passait. —Emile Zola, Le Ventre de Paris (1873)

Figure 2.1  L  ondon 1860.

Figure 2.2  Paris 1860.

50  Circulation and Improvement In Des embellissements de Paris (1749) Voltaire suggested that the design of new public markets, fountains, squares and theatres would bring about the hygiene, monumentality, beauty and comfort required to turn Paris into the ‘most convenient’ and ‘most magnificent’ of Europe’s capitals.1 Despite their ambition, Voltaire’s ideas were for individual buildings and spaces, one-off acts, somewhat isolated, a potential illustration of what historian Emmanuel Leroy-Ladurie has called an ‘urbanisme frôleur’, namely, localised interventions with little suggesting a concern for the whole. 2 A similar sense of localised improvements could be observed at around the same time in London with reference to the laying out of new pavements in the City of Westminster which involved convenience around traffic and ease of movement on streets. Commenting on the benefits of the poles that indicated the difference between footway and carriageway in John Spranger’s Proposal […] for the better Paving, Cleansing and Lighting of the Streets, Lanes, Courts and Alleys (1754), traveller and philanthropist Jonas Hanway would remark that It is true they occupy a considerable space, but if we compare the streets of London with those of Paris, this distinction seems, upon the comparison, to carry with it a kind of proof, that we are a free people, and that the French are not so. The Gentleman, as well as the Mechanic, who walks the streets of Paris, is continually in danger of being run over, by every careless or imperious coachman, of whom there are many; and in fact these accidents frequently happened in that city, in so much that few people of distinction ever walk in the streets.3 Contrary to what Hanway might have believed, aristocrats and ‘people of distinction’ did walk along the Paris streets and did so frequently, however divergent the meanings around the right to circulate freely in the two capitals. There were, of course, ideas and plans in London that were as ambitious in their scale as Voltaire’s, such as those by Christopher Wren, John Evelyn and others in the aftermath of the Great Fire of 1666.4 What the contrast between the Westminster pavements and Voltaire’s embellishments tells us is that to embellish the city was a pragmatic affair: Through the building of pavements and fountains as well as markets, theatres and squares. The contrast also highlights the centrality of circulating: In other words, the ease of moving often in the midst of crowded streets which required the constant negotiation between – and the subsequent regulation of – the different publics who used them, whether travelling inside of a hackney carriage; mounted on a horse; or, like most people, on foot. Circulating involved a social dimension too, namely, different means of transport might be construed as a function of class differences and as a sign of changing trends of residence and work. The twin forces of circulation and improvement have a longer history than the references to Voltaire and Hanway might suggest, not only in London and Paris but also in other cities. 5 Improving the English and

Circulation and Improvement   51 French capitals by the early 1830s was a question that was closely related to patterns of movement, along existing roads and canals, as well as clusters of distribution, notably markets and abattoirs. Equally important were the issues of health and sanitation which in the work of reformers on both sides of the channel would draw direct parallels between the health of the body and the health of the city. By the 1830s, Thomas Southwood Smith, for example, was developing his ideas around the ‘sanitary economy of the town’, which resembled that of the human body, and ‘consisted in the dynamic interchange between living organisms and their physical environment […] sustained by the constant circulation of fluids and the continuous replenishment of vital functions’.6 References to hearts, arteries, bodies, limbs, lungs and other organs were part of how a range of people thought about the city, its future and the directions which that future might take. Railways prompted the transit of a higher volume of goods and people circulating through the two capitals. The problem was one of quantity, more people and more goods, but it was also one of quality: What should be moved where and how. In Paris, the city walls – especially the octroi – and the predominance of the central market were key to characterising the extent and the kind of traffic flows that there existed and those that were to emerge anew. In London, conceptual boundaries became a means of regulating what seemed like an environment where railways could develop with little restraints; an environment that was, in principle, open to all. Two significant decisions were common to the two cities: The rejection of a central terminus where different railway lines would converge and the possibility of taking trains beneath existing streets. Like pavements, new thoroughfares and canals before them, railways were to contribute to more circulation and instigate ever-newer improvements. A key difference was the railways’ capacity to simplify the existing transport arrangements by handling larger volumes at lower costs and in shorter times. But this was circulation into and out of London and Paris, not within or across them. The consumption, manufacture and redistribution of goods, produce and raw materials, on the one hand, and the growing demand for travel, on the other hand, would have an important effect on how the space of the two cities was increasingly and unevenly coupled to railway connectivity and transport. Three aspects were central to that process: Structuring a coherent plan for railway development that was consequent with the differences between the banks of the rivers Seine and Thames, the relationship between railway transport and new housing, and whether or not railway building should be connected to street improvements. The ideas around, and the actual infrastructure built as a response to, railway circulation and metropolitan improvement were at once spatial, social and political throughout the nineteenth century. At times, the interests behind new transport technologies, including railways, clashed with the interest of the different authorities involved. But they could also become complementary, however mounting their differences.

52  Circulation and Improvement

Paris In a study published in 1837, the Ponts et Chaussées engineer Louis Léger Vallée proposed a series of railway lines connecting England, Belgium and France. The trunk line was to run between Paris and Lille via Amiens. The proposed station at Lille created a direct connection between the French capital and the Belgian border, and facilitated communications with England via three alternative routes: Boulogne, Calais or Dunkerque.7 The trunk section reached Paris from the north and was to extend into the city centre, with seven different locations as the potential site for a railway terminal, one of them proposed at the Hôtel de Ville; all of them were on the right bank of the Seine. As Vallée explained, the city section of the line was to run along viaducts and trenches and might easily extend to the left bank by the erection of two new bridges.8 The scheme simplified thus railway communication across northern and central France, along the lines of the Étoile Legrand, improving the transport arrangements for the provisioning and redistribution of goods and produce to and from Paris. Vallée highlighted the importance of existing features such as the city’s inner and outer boulevards and, more importantly, the canals St. Denis and St. Martin as well as the basin at La Villette. To Vallée the impact of railways on the city was one of utility and usefulness ‘not only for salubriousness, embellishment, facility of circulation, but what is more as a construction necessary for lowering the prices of perishables (ouvrage nécessaire au bas prix des denrées) and for the economy of expenditure in public works’.9 The reformist spirit was the guiding force behind the plans of the engineer for whom masonry viaducts, iron rails and efficient steam locomotives all contributed to the improvement, efficiency and embellishment of the French capital.10 The debates around the extent of the transformation of the city as a result of railway building, and the necessary means that would support it, attracted engineers, architects, lawyers, artists and doctors, whose views contributed to the growing literature on the physical and moral challenges that modern Paris faced. A number of them were influenced by the ideas of Henri de Saint Simon and Charles Fourier, prompting debates that were diffused through a number of publications, including César Daly’s Revue Générale de l’Architecture et des Travaux Publics. Often the contrast between the ‘city of vice’ and the ‘city of virtue’ introduced among others by Claude-Nicolas Ledoux,11 framed the discussions, whether these encouraged a retreat to the country or embracing the opportunities that modern industry seemed to offer. While Fourierists considered the rural commune (phalange or phalanstère) as the monad for the restructuring of society, Saint Simonians believed society was to be engineered, improved, by the systematic use of public works. This is not to suggest that Fourierists didn't think ‘spatially’. Considérant and Perreymond, whose work is discussed later, for example, proposed in 1841 a ‘Grand National, Commercial and Strategic

Circulation and Improvement   53 Network’ based on a north-south trunk main railway line from Lille via Paris and Versailles to Châteauroux, Cahors and Toulouse, with branch lines radiating from it, and the whole system integrated with France’s waterways.12 What both Fourierists and Saint Simonians shared was a concern for, which was also a reaction to, transforming society and turning it into an ‘egalitarian fraternity’ through a combination of plans, writing and social experiments. The trinity of truth (le vrai), beauty (le beau) and right-doing (le bien) framed much of the thinking that underpinned their schemes, including those for railways.13 Visions differed according to the scope of the changes proposed: Schemes could be selective and focus on specific structures, such as the central market; others, like Vallée’s, prompted debates concerning the entire reorganisation of the space of the city, its buildings, public spaces, monuments and railways. How should people, vehicles and goods circulate was an essential aspect of most, if not all, schemes. The market area of Les Halles posed some of the most interesting and challenging questions in this respect. The Capital’s Belly By the mid-1830s, the Quartier des Marchés consisted of four different buildings: The Marché aux Poissons, the Halle à la Viande, the Marché aux Oeufs and the Halle aux Draps, catering for fish, meat, eggs and drapery, respectively (see Figure 2.3).14 Between 1839 and 1842, the municipal councillor J. S. Lanquetin became one of the key figures of the debates around the location and connectivity of the market.15 In 1842, a commission decided to preserve the location on the right bank of the Seine, after considering plans for its transfer to a site next to the Halles aux Vins on the left bank. Provisions for the improvement of the Les Halles district had been made after a decree of 14 February 1811 for the general embellishment of Paris.16 But at this point, the situation was significantly different, as the necessity for an effective provisioning of the markets was one of connectivity between urban centres, itself coupled to changes in the population and shifting patterns of residence and work.17 The market was therefore a concern in its own right, encapsulating circulation, improvements and embellishments. Moreover, its conversion was the beginning of the larger transformation that Paris would experience as a result of the ‘politics of airing’, a key aim of which was to sanitise the centre.18 On the occasion of the 1842 commission, Hippolyte Meynadier, head of the Office of Theatres, and Beaux Arts member, proposed to position the market building in the immediate surroundings, between the Place du Châtelet and the Rue Aubry-le-Boucher, an area that in his view was ‘the most obstructed, the most diffused, and probably one of the unhealthiest’.19 Meynadier’s scheme preserved to a large extent the location of the existing buildings as each represented important advantages for

54  Circulation and Improvement the residents of the city centre and eastern districts. The scheme would become part of a larger and more ambitious ‘general plan of grand circulation’, consisting of the opening of wide thoroughfares and parks; the redistribution of public buildings both for the State and the city; and the sale of those properties owned by the city, with little or no artistic and historic value. 20 Interestingly, the basis for his proposal was Meynadier’s own exposure to the details, rhythms and movements of different spaces across the city: It is by journeying Paris in every sense; travelling its sites at different times of the day; observing the oscillations of the plebeian masses on the public road; penetrating the corners and nooks of all the old streets […] that one can estimate the need for large thoroughfares in Paris and that one can indicate assuredly the points that [people] use most’ whether it is ‘for their departures, destinations [or] crossings. 21 Contemporaneous with Meynadier’s ideas were those of another engineer, Perreymond, who ‘maintained that the key to a solution’, concerning the general reorganisation of the city space, ‘lay in the Paris circulatory system’. 22 In his series of nine Études sur la ville de Paris, published in the Revue Générale in 1842 and 1843, commerce and cultural life in the city centre, on the one hand, and a more even pattern of growth of the population of both riverbanks, on the other hand, were key to devising the right solutions to the numerous problems that had been identified so far. 23 Perreymond’s ideas incorporated infrastructure, buildings and monuments providing in that sense a large and comprehensive view of Paris. His programme consisted of projects built by the state and by the city, and those that were ‘demanded by public opinion and the press’. The location of the railway termini was particularly important given the increasingly prominent role that railways played in the transport needs of the capital. Perreymond believed ‘that the siting of railway stations could determine the shape of major parts of Paris’ and would help alleviate the uneven development of the riverbanks. 24 The balance of public works on both sides of the Seine was also the main theme of an address to the residents of the tenth arrondissement in 1844 by the newly elected councillor Victor Considérant, a Fourierist like Perreymond, and his collaborator. The tenth was the third-largest and the only one to lose residents (around 3,000) between 1831 and 1841, while in other Paris districts, notably north-west of the city there was a marked and sustained increase of the population. The first arrondissement, for example, counted 23,000 new residents in 1841. 25 Changes of population contributed to the thinning out or the growth of traffic flows – for both passengers and goods – and the extent to which railways might be desirable in certain areas but not in others.

Circulation and Improvement   55 People and goods were set apart in Perreymond’s understanding of traffic: he conceived building two sorts of landing stages for Paris, each linked to the railway – one for people and the second for merchandise. Railways were to deliver people to the centre of Paris at different points along the Seine embankment. Light merchandise and food were to arrive at [a proposed] Bazar National, from which distribution throughout Paris could radiate. Heavy merchandise, on the other hand, was to be routed to depots at the periphery [wherefrom] it would enter the city. 26 The connectivity between the periphery and the city centre was an important element of Perreymond’s design allowing ‘people and goods [to be moved] efficiently throughout’. Moreover, their movement was conceived as an orchestrated development of road network, public square and railway terminal.27 As was typical of Fourierists and Saint Simonians alike, Perreymond would later write about labour, poverty and social reform in France.28 Meanwhile, the pressing need for a new central market prompted new ideas; some including railways, others neglecting them. A new public inquiry took place in May and June 1845 focussing on the new building of the Halles Centrales.29 The project conceived by V ­ ictor Baltard and Félix Callet received a direct commission, first by an Act of the same year, which was confirmed eighteen months later by a Royal Order (ordonnance royale) and passed by deliberation of the ­municipal council in June 1851. This is illustrative both of the deliberation of the different authorities involved in the process and of the significant turmoil of 1848 in France and Europe.30 In response to the decision, the architect Hector Horeau who had submitted his designs to the commission, published an Examen critique du projet d’agrandissement et de construction des Halles Centrales d’Approvisionnement pour la Ville de Paris. In it, Horeau outlined the disadvantages of the commissioned project contrasting these with the benefits of his own scheme.31 The publication was followed soon after by a new pamphlet Nouvelles Observations (1846), which focussed on how other European markets functioned. This was also a critique of the report of the official visit to markets in England, ­Belgium, Holland and Prussia, which included Baltard as one of the members of the official mission.32 Of interest to Baltard were the ­markets at Liverpool and Birkenhead, the full enclosure of the market area and the use of cellars for the preservation of foodstuffs, in particular.33 The latent importance of the Halles Centrales lay in the provisioning of Paris, which meant connecting the market area with the immediate region and the country effectively and regularly. Baltard’s project was primarily concerned with the functional apparatus that would concentrate all the market activities in one building complex. His account of the conception

56  Circulation and Improvement and construction of the building paid little attention to the urban or regional contexts, focussing instead on the engineering, architectural and decorative features of the structure. Horeau’s ideas were different, as he devised connections to the main streets of the immediate surroundings and the river so as to consolidate an effective movement within and without the market.34 His scheme consisted of six different pavilions and was served by railways connecting to the centre and the eastern and western districts. The site was adjacent to the area that Meynadier had initially proposed.35 Connection to the main-line railways was underground, using the cellars not only for storage but also for the circulation of classified produce, occupying the entire area beneath the pavilions. Although it incorporated one of the features that Baltard had recognised in the English markets, Horeau’s conception of this underground space was clearly different. His concern was how the waste and produce would circulate through the building complex without interfering with the acute traffic of the streets above. After a renewed attempt in 1849, Horeau’s vision for the Halles Centrales was deferred and Baltard’s plans prepared for their execution.36 Construction works started in 1851. Two large wings, east and west, accommodating six pavilions were complete in 1858. 37 Access to the market remained dependent on existing roads. In 1869, Le Figaro accused Baltard of plagiarising Horeau’s design. Despite their support to Horeau’s plans, the Revue Générale gave ­Baltard the chance to publish a letter dismissing the claims and reasserting the originality of his building.38 Differences between the two architects aside, what was characteristic of Horeau’s vision, and not Baltard’s, is the way in which he subordinated the idea of improving an existing building to the related problems of accommodating a special function, namely, the reception, storage and distribution of foodstuffs into, across and out of the city. The circulatory needs of the capital became central to his project as a result of this. If, as Papayanis suggests, no provision for a transport system could be obtained from Horeau’s plan, he did identify one of the most important aspects of railway development in Paris in the years to come, namely, the centrality of effective connections to the market which railways rather than streets and boulevards were well placed to support. Moreover, Horeau’s ideas provided new elements in the elaborate visions and discourses around how best to articulate the communication needs of the French capital, some of which proposed to transform the city in its entirety. A distinctively comprehensive version of these visions would emerge in the work of another engineer, Fl. de Kérizouet. Railways, Walls and Taxes Central to de Kérizouet’s ideas was the relationship between economic growth, transport, and the spatial transformation of the city. Two aspects of his ‘Project for establishing a railway within the city of Paris’,

Circulation and Improvement   57 published in 1845, elicited the interest of the municipal and departmental authorities, namely, the technical specifications of the line proposed, and a detailed tabular account of the merchandise that was levied at the octroi, including an overview of exports.39 According to official estimates, one out of the 18 million tonnes of goods that were needed for the annual provision of the capital came by the river Seine.40 A network of roads and canals connected specific points along the river to central and peripheral districts wherefrom carts, wagons and other vehicles distributed goods to the final customers. De Kérizouet’s concern was not whether or not this arrangement should be superseded but when this ‘mode of circulation [might] be simplified by a more perfected transport system, in harmony with the main railways’. Rather than replacing the existing arrangement of different means of transport his question was how to transform it, making it ‘less expensive, easier, and less obstructive’.41 De Kérizouet’s approach to urban circulation was based upon selectivity and specialisation. At the railway termini, for example, merchandise might be sorted either for ‘transit’ or ‘consumption’ and be housed separately, multiplying the ‘advantages of the central stations’. Large warehouses might be built near the termini and become the ‘equivalent of the docks of London’ (see Figure 2.5).42 The same approach could be applied to streets. The space beneath the ‘side-lanes’ (contre-allées) of the main boulevards might be used in a way analogous to the cellars that de Kérizouet observed also in London, turning ‘what [was] an inconvenience for the circulation of vehicles [into] an advantage for the establishment of a way of transportation (voie de transport) more economic and more rapid’.43 The use of the term ‘voie de transport’ is indicative of de Kérizouet’s insistence on different uses for different spaces, even in the generally indiscriminate public realm of streets. The term differed from that of roads or streets (rues, allées and boulevards), highlighting the fact that one function only, transport, would determine its use. The importance of this distinction became clearer and, perhaps, more categorical in the conclusion of a later pamphlet, published in 1847, whose ambition was to create ‘a new way of communication, independent of the ordinary roads’.44 Such a ‘way’, or ‘means’, was to prompt the creation of a new space and, with that space, a new system: ‘The capital of France’, in de Kérizouet’s words, whose narrow streets do not suffice for its immense population, will then have a double system of circulation, each independent of the other, one at the level of the public roads, the other below ground, and thus the railroads will cross and run along the busiest streets.45 A fundamental characteristic of the system was therefore its conception as a means of accommodating a higher and differentiated volume of circulation.

58  Circulation and Improvement De Kérizouet’s initial proposal consisted of a main inner line (­intra-muros) and other sections, about which he offered fewer details. The route of the ‘intra-muros railway’ was to link the termini (embarcadères) of the Nord and Lyon railways. The line started from a new ‘gare concentrique’ situated on the external boulevards where railways coming from the west, north and east would be joined. From this junction station the line went southwards ‘parallel to the Rue Hauteville’, reaching the internal boulevards where it moved eastwards partly on a trench (à ciel ouvert) and partly underground. The line connected to the Canal St. Martin at the Entrepôt des Douanes and continued south crossing the canal right below La Bastille by the city basin. The proposed crossing was a bridge connecting to the Lyon railway. A branch line continued straight down from the first north-south section to Les Halles, to be built at street level and designed ‘in a way that [would] permit the crossing of ordinary vehicles’ without causing any accidents. This branch rounded the market area which de Kérizouet called the ‘horizontal basin of Paris centre’, somewhat circumventing a very densely populated and expensive area, avoiding in that way the expropriation and other related costs that a more direct route would incur.46 De Kérizouet understood that the success of his plan was dependent upon existing infrastructure, and so key to his proposal was a direct connection among canals, railway termini and the market area of Les Halles. As a complement to the intra-muros line, he suggested connecting the existing railways with a different circuitous line, two characteristics of which are worth mentioning: The connection between the Gare de Lyon and the Gare d’Orléans was via a junction that crossed the Seine, while another junction between the Rouen and Nord railways was underground, following part of the chemin de ronde and the external boulevards (both the property of the city), thus avoiding the crossing of Montmartre.47 Together, the circuitous and the transversal lines would enable the city authorities to profit from railway traffic coming from the outskirts, with the railway termini connected by ‘the shortest, least expensive, and most productive route’.48 As for financing, de Kérizouet invited the city and the national authorities to agree upon a ‘voluntary capital without subvention’. For the city authorities, the (local) benefit consisted in the scheme’s provision of a ‘cheap, fast, and regular transport line’ that would become part of Parisian life and commerce. For the national authorities, there were (general) benefits too: ‘the docks, the warehouses’, which thanks to railway connectivity could be made ‘accessible all year round [and therefore] protected from unemployment (à l’abri de tout chômage)’. Similarly, the scheme would help avoid the constant ‘interruption in the entrées (imports) and sorties (exports)’, contributing to the creation of a stable labour market, giving Paris a competitive edge among other European capitals.49 In sum, the project was to help ‘simplify the means of provisioning the capital’ and ‘diminish the obstruction of the public roads’, rationalising both the

Circulation and Improvement   59 expenses of, and the number of different modes of transport involved in, the handling of goods within, into and out of the French capital. In 1847, de Kérizouet targeted a wider audience. In a new pamphlet, Rues de Fer ou Examen de la question suivante: Supprimer les Octrois de Paris, sans surtaxer l’impôt et sans réduire les recettes municipales, he looked further into the social consequences of his project and extended his analysis of transport and urban economics. By the mid-1840s, there were, in de Kérizouet’s count, 29,000 vehicles carrying 201,000 travellers within Paris per day (a total of 73,380,000 per annum), while 32,000 carts carried nearly 5 million tonnes of goods per year. The direct consequence of this vast traffic was not only severe street congestion in certain areas but an increase in the rate of mortality due to accidents in densely occupied districts such as the immediate vicinity of the central market at Les Halles.50 De Kérizouet also stressed the effects of traffic on the final cost of prime goods such as coal, finding that the public in general and the poorer classes in particular endured a sharp increase in the price of essentials due to the cumbersome nature of existing transport arrangements. Things might be improved if docks were strategically placed following the model he had identified in Britain. Furthermore, de Kérizouet described a series of ‘obstacles to the economy of transport’, such as the inconsistency in the arrival times of railways; the difficulty in obtaining consolidated information per kilometre from main-line companies concerning times, quantities, the distribution of merchandise and its respective care in handling delicate products (soins convenables); ‘the disparity of useful effect’ that employing horses produced in terms of ‘the seasons and the difficulties in traction’; ‘the disparity of delays by the inspections at the barriers’; and ‘the impossibility of carters (camionneur) to increase their personnel and equipment’ whenever extra labour, for example of porters, was required.51 De Kérizouet’s concern with systematic information was in line with his dual aim of rationalising the way in which the octroi was collected and reducing the effects of existing arrangements on the final cost of products and materials. This concerned times and the handling of goods, largely through canals, as well as the distribution of tax-­collection points around the city. ‘The cost of distribution of merchandise per tonne in Paris’ gave the following estimates: ‘from La Villete, 2 fr.; for crossing bridges, 2,25 fr.; from the Gare de Batignolles, 5 fr.; from the Gare d’Ivry, 5 fr.’.52 This showed that urban routes were half as expensive as that of Paris to Rouen, and almost as expensive as that of Paris to Orléans, both covering a distance of around 130 km (81 miles). The estimates were the combined result of tolls; crossings; changes between means of transport, notably porterage; and other related costs. Detailed studies such as de Kérizouet’s had made their appearance in the specialist press from early on, discussing, for example, the difference between the transport of goods and people, often drawing parallels to the situation in Britain and the United States. 53

60  Circulation and Improvement To de Kérizouet the functioning of the maisons de roulage (haulage houses) and the railway stations was a significant problem given the different interests involved and the fact that they worked independently of one another. Only the Gare de Strasbourg was well placed to deal with the situation effectively. The city of Paris, the engineer remarked, ‘could centralise this large movement of distribution’ in a way that was consequent with the tax wall and the railway termini ‘appropriating in that way a new return, equivalent to the product of its octrois’. New means of transport, and of locomotion in particular, would facilitate the coming together of changes to the city space and its fiscal functions: ‘the ­urban population which can engender opposing interests will enjoy sooner or later, within large cities, the benefit of new modes of transport’. 54 One final issue of his analysis will help to bring the significance of de Kérizouet’s ideas into a sharper focus. Besides the transport of goods, evident through the proposed connections between the city centre, the market, the railway termini, the canals and the projected docks, de Kérizouet’s plan also stressed the importance of passenger traffic, in particular that of the working and poorer classes. By establishing a good and reliable transport service, ‘the radius of residence and occupation’ (rayon habitable) of the population might be extended, influencing existing patterns of residence and work: The rising extension of the city of Paris will find in this way a sort of compensation in the establishment of a true omnibus, circulating from the centre to the circumference, very cheaply, with a regular speed, and with an unlimited number of places. 55 Together the extension of the metropolitan area and his proposal for a new and better transport service placed de Kérizouet in a position to criticise the official plans that would be introduced by the Second Republic, after the elections of April 1848, which were largely a plan for the construction of new housing in the central and inner districts designed to inject life into the labour market. De Kérizouet considered the measures to be insufficient, ‘anti-economic’, and subject to speculation. Rather than focussing on one side of the problem, namely, housing, measures should incorporate a coherent system of transport: A locomotion system that will permit [us] to imitate London’s workers’ trains (billets de matin) and that will render accessible to the poor and destitute both the market of the Halles Centrales and the promenades at the Bois de Boulogne and Vincennes. The system, de Kérizouet continued, ‘will be, for the material and moral life of the workers, of unique importance’ and significantly more so ‘than the extension of the Rue de Rivoli, and will not cost the fifth part of it.

Circulation and Improvement   61 The extension of roads will not cease to be a traditional and extravagant work (oeuvre séculaire et dispendieuse)’ the planning and implementation of which greatly benefited the owners of property in central Paris.56 Admittedly, the engineer’s confidence amplified the benefits of the workmen’s trains introduced in Britain following Gladstone’s Regulation of Railways Act of 1844. The Act required railway companies to run at least one train a day and charge no more than one penny a mile, but however affordable the fare seemed, when compared with the workers’ earnings, the trains were far from ‘cheap’. 57 By 1848, de Kérizouet had ‘distributed five brochures and exhibited a model’ before the municipal and departmental councils. The model was destroyed when the Hôtel de Ville was burnt down during the turmoil of the February events. 58 As one of the councillors explained at the time, his ideas required a competent examination without which the project would be dismissed as simply utopian. Securing the capital to finance his project was as big a challenge, especially in view of the political instability of France during these years. 59 Linked to a growing string of compelling and ambitious ideas that sought to transform Paris on a grand scale, de Kérizouet’s plan was never realised. It was the widening of streets and the opening of new wider boulevards that had gained momentum, not least through Napoléon’s Rue de Rivoli and its future extensions. As Papayanis suggests, de Kérizouet might have been the ‘first engineer to fully work out a new vision of [Paris] with reference to an underground railroad’.60 But there was much more behind that vision, both underground and above. De Kérizouet recognised structural and long-standing factors around transport and travel in the capital, such as the octroi, the interdependence of different modes of transport, the differentiation and specialisation of goods and passenger traffic, and the persistent model of centre and periphery accentuated by the city walls and the central market. Interestingly, London often served as a model. The engineer’s reading of London as a fluvial port with its Blackwall railway and its ‘Tamise de fer’, a term he used on several occasions, showed that railways could be used to simplify and expedite transport arrangements in Paris. The Blackwall reference is to the London and Blackwall railway, the only line with a City terminus up to the early 1850s, and whose traffic was mostly connected to the river docks, especially those of the East India Company, which had a dockyard in Blackwall since 1614.61 Initiatives such as the cheaper early morning trains added other parallels between London and de Kérizouet’s thinking. The possibility of adding an extra layer to Paris, beneath its streets and boulevards, was therefore only one of the many dimensions of a vision that was far more ambitious and far more reaching. De Kérizouet’s ideas might have not been realised, but his conceptualisation of how the city space and its administration should change would resonate with others as the nineteenth century progressed.

62  Circulation and Improvement Regulation, Embellishment, Improvement In September 1853, de Kérizouet endeavoured to persuade a new commission to consider his project. ‘In two letters [he] outlined the expropriations that would be needed for such a railway, recognizing that’, as he asserted in his correspondence, ‘today the difficulty is purely financial’.62 The Commission des embellissements de Paris, appointed by the new emperor Napoléon III, was concerned largely with street improvements and the regulation and embellishment that they might prompt. The obstacle facing de Kérizouet’s ideas might have been financial, but it was also a question of the kind of transformation that Paris was to experience. As had been made clear in an address to the Chamber of Commerce in 1843 by the Comte Rambuteau, then Seine Prefect, the official line for at least ten years was that broad straight thoroughfares not railways were the means to effect urban change. In his address and to give Parisians ‘air, water and shade’, Rambuteau – after whom the iconic street in Le Marais is named – mentioned several improvements to existing buildings such as the Hôtel de Ville; the building of a new church (at Belle-Chasse) and a new hospital (in the quartier Poissonnière); new primary and secondary schools, fountains, markets and the upgrading of the river docks.63 Railways appeared not to be part of Rambuteau’s concerns. Things were to change with the new commission, though only marginally. Henri Siméon, who had served as prefect of Vosges, Loiret and Somme, become senator in 1852, and since 1853 was also president of the Conseil de surveillance de la Caisse générale des chemins de fer, was appointed director of the Commission des Embellissements. In his report, Siméon remarked upon the direct benefits of urban improvements, particularly when viewed against the threats to public order for which ‘immediate repression’ was needed.64 One of the central interventions proposed by the commission was ‘the extension of the new Boulevard de Strasbourg between the Rues Saint-Denis and Saint-Martin up to the Place du Châtelet’. As Siméon wrote in the manuscript prior to the official report, this extension drew ‘all the advantages together’. Aside from the conventional sanitation and embellishment of particular districts, two perceived outcomes of this intervention are noteworthy: Connectivity between the planned thoroughfares and the existing railway termini, giving ‘to the heart of Paris easy access to the Nord and Strasbourg termini’ and control and security, with ‘a strategic road of the greatest importance [as] it crosse[d] the theatre of all the insurrections’.65 Siméon’s manuscript, more emphatically than the report, gives us a good sense of the extent to which the ideas behind these improvements were informed by concerns about public order and the subsequent accommodation that the newly planned streets and open spaces should provide for the unobstructed movement of military forces. These concerns

Circulation and Improvement   63 were made explicit by reference to the location where insurrections had any chance to occur, notably the area of Le Marais between the Rue St. Denis and the Rue St. Martin, but also in terms of specifying the relation between the width and the height of streets, all in the interest of security. An important precedent of the latter was a royal edict from 1783, when similar measures or ‘embellishments’ were introduced which regulated the dimension of streets, contemplating the difference between wood and stone buildings.66 What became apparent at this point was that security, transport connectivity, embellishments highlighting the virtues of the French capital and the sanitation of the districts that were deemed unhealthy and derelict were all assessed and justified together through a composite of socio-spatial regulation and metropolitan improvement. Defence concerns had also been a central part of the plans and construction of the termini of main-line railway companies. As Karen Bowie suggests in the case of the Gare du Nord, for example, an important part of the terminal’s design was ‘a logic of military efficacy for the rapid movement of troops, which favoured the vision of a network constituted by the most direct connections’. The other important factor was ‘economic development, which privileged the conception of a transport service connecting [as many] points of commercial exchange’.67 The effective circulation of goods and people was in the best interest of business, but it was also a means of regulating and controlling the population in particular districts. The two logics, one strategic and the other commercial, influenced the plans that railway companies produced and considered during this period. Through them, commissions such as Siméon’s could bring together or keep separate the interests of main-line railways, and those behind the transformation of Paris as a whole. The commission conceived of improvements as a dual function of améliorations and embellissements, meant to be inclusive in scope and kind. The ‘eminently popular’ plans addressing primarily the working classes and according to which entire districts were to be transformed by the opening of wide thoroughfares bringing ‘air, health, sun and life’ constituted a benefit to society at large.68 Accommodating new means of transport was to supplement this. One specific demand that Napoléon III passed on to the commissioners was: ‘That all the railway termini [should] debouch upon large arteries’.69 The use of the term artères rather than rues shows how important the connection of the railway termini to the main roads and thoroughfares was for an imperial view of Paris which resembled a circulatory system. The decision, reached during the July Monarchy, of not allowing the main-line companies to further extend their lines into a central station had made the joining of their termini a difficult task. There were seven termini by the time the commission was reporting: St. Lazare, Nord, Est and Lyon on the right bank and Austerlitz, d’Enfer and Maine (now Montparnasse) on the left.70 About their location, ‘Siméon observed that access […] was

64  Circulation and Improvement cumbersome and difficult because of their placement outside the center’,71 that is, in the area beyond the wall of the Fermiers Généraux. Connectivity of two of the termini to main roads existed, with the Rue du Havre, opened in 1840, and the Rue de Lyon, opened in 1847, serving the Gare St. Lazare and the Gare de Lyon, respectively.72 But connectivity between them, and across both riverbanks, was a growing concern. Next on the emperor’s list of seven actions was a stipulation ‘to ensure that the height of houses in new streets would never exceed the width [and] to preserve, when possible, the same width of large roads’. The list also recommended the diffusion of the plans, namely, ‘to make public a map containing all the projects to be implemented’. It specified the extent, timing and connections created by new streets: to have the plan extended up to the fortifications; to include both river banks; and that [the works] commence by prolonging the Rue de Rivoli up to the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Antoine, by prolonging the Boulevard de Strasbourg up to the Quai, at the Boulevard de Malesherbes, and by extending the Rue des Écoles as far as the Place Sainte-Marguerite and the (Quay of) the Orléans railway.73 Plans for the extension of the three streets had been drawn during the previous administration, though, admittedly, Napoléon played a key role in their eventual realisation. The extension of the Rue de Rivoli was 22 m wide, and the Boulevard de Strasbourg was 30 m, both giving ample gauge to traffic of all sorts. The map, in turn, was published only in 1867 and never diffused.74 ‘The seven railway termini’, the commission’s report continued, ‘have replaced the fifty-four turnpikes of Paris as the main channels [or] gateways (débouchés) of circulation’. Similar observations had been made before, but the official character of the report and the role it played in the profound transformation soon to be effected by the new Seine Prefect Haussmann are important for understanding the part that railways did not play in this context. The commission’s plans did not include new urban or metropolitan railways. Instead, its report highlighted the need for effective communication across the region, crucial to which was facilitating access to the main-line termini; the provision of équipements communs or public infrastructure, principally parks and gardens, which would help regain the balance between the two riverbanks; and a clearer and simpler administrative division that would include the traditional centre and its periphery, namely, the area between the wall of the Fermiers Généraux and the Thiers fortifications known as the intra-muros.75 Integration of all districts would follow, and with them, connectivity to the central market. Or, so was the theory. The transport of livestock was a central aspect of how to ensure that urban circulation was both effective and sufficient. By the 1820s, cattle, sheep and calves were handled in five abattoirs situated in the peripheral

Circulation and Improvement   65 districts of Grenelle, Ménilmontant, Montmartre, Roule and Villejuif. Of these, only Montmartre and Ménilmontant were used considerably.76 Although the 1853 commission favoured an even distribution of abattoirs per district,77 its suggestion was to replace the existing arrangement with a building complex incorporating market and slaughterhouse. It would be placed near the fortifications and served by the suburban railway ring (chemin de fer de ceinture) which would take the livestock departing from the railway termini without ever being permitted to circulate in any of the Parisian districts, as is seen today.78 Works on the Ceinture had started by State initiative in 1851. Separate concessions were granted to different railway companies. A syndicate (consisting of five companies) would build the entire circuit, which ran for the most part along the Thiers wall.79 A branch line to La Villette, specialising in transporting livestock, opened in November 1852, over six years before the authorisation for the construction of a new cattle market and abattoir was issued in April 1859. The other abattoirs were to be transformed into barracks, each accommodating 2,000 men.80 Two further proposals illustrate whether and how effective connections to the market, both new and old, converged with Haussmann’s extensive programme of public works. The first scheme, put forward by Édouard Brame and Eugène Flachat in 1854, proposed to connect the Halles aux Blés, the Gare de l’Est and the Ceinture, with an underground line via the boulevards Napoléon (later Sébastopol) and Strasbourg.81 Their plan was to use ‘already existing underground tunnels, established by city engineers for sewers, to facilitate the removal of waste’ and connect to public buildings other than the market wherever this was needed.82 The connectivity that the scheme proposed, between the market area and the Ceinture, allowed Brame and Flachat to specify what should be moved when: the line, which during the night shall be used for the provisioning of Les Halles, could, during the day, receive cumbersome merchandise originating from the warehouses and stations beyond the fortifications. The line could [also] be used for the transport of passengers, especially workers who, as a result of the transformation going on in the central quartiers, will be obliged to travel to the outskirts of the city.83 The purpose of the line was threefold: It eased the transport of produce and foodstuffs to the market; it provided a new route for the transport of heavy goods between Paris and the region, circumventing rather than going through the city by using the Ceinture; and it provided a potential source of remedy to some of the effects of redesigning Paris as a circulatory system, in accord with Napoléon III’s vision. The latter forced a major segment of the population living in the inner and central districts to relocate outside the walls, as was reported widely in newspapers and

66  Circulation and Improvement as documented by Honoré Daumier, Charles Marville and others.84 As Sutcliffe has noted, this resulted ‘in the overcrowding of surviving areas of cheap accommodation in the centre and the creation of slums on the outskirts’, itself a result of the dearth of a consistent ‘public housing programme’, a situation that both London and Paris shared.85 Brame and Flachat’s line might in this sense become a means of facilitating access to the market, using railways to accommodate growing numbers of goods and people, as well as an opportunity to lighten the effects of the transformation that Paris was experiencing, with the depopulation of the centre by the opening of wide boulevards. The line was never built. New versions were produced in and after 1854, before it was written off by the Ponts et Chaussées in 1871.86 However, the socio-spatial transformation of the city at the time had important repercussions on the population and so it gave a second proponent a renewed opportunity to engage with the trend of modernisation. It was a lawyer this time, Jean Louis Le Hir, who acted as a representative of several honourable men (hommes de coeur). Their plan was wider in scope and more ambitious in its aims: Creating a network of underground railways. In a way that was reminiscent of de Kérizouet’s ideas, Le Hir’s project proposed to link up the Halles, the main commercial centres, the river docks, canals and railway termini. The network consisted initially of six lines amounting to 25 km, all single-track, except for the sidings at the twenty-two (goods) termini and twenty-five (passenger) stations proposed. The lines followed wide boulevards and thoroughfares avoiding the purchase of expensive property. The network was to use ‘galleries’, effectively tunnels, with a useful area 2.50 m wide and 3 m high, accommodating trains operated by twenty-two stationary steam engines, using cables and tambours. The trains were closely fitted to the gallery so that their movement would push out the smoke of the engines through blowholes (bouches d’aérage) distributed every 80 m. An addendum included at the end of their prospectus proposed five lines, instead of six, and minor changes to the other lines, in response to reservations and objections raised by the city engineers, particularly the potential disruptions that might be caused to the sewers both existing and planned.87 The benefits of the scheme were many, including diminishing street overcrowding and, therefore, accidents and deaths, as well as reducing the maintenance costs of paving. Two additional benefits merit our attention. One was the possibility of building better affordable housing in the outlying districts coupled to the provision of cheap travelling between these and the city centre. To Le Hir ‘good order in the city’ was linked to the ‘well-being of workers’.88 The other benefit resonated again with de Kérizouet’s ideas as it encouraged the entire reorganisation of goods and passenger traffic within Paris, introducing a new way of further specifying what circulated where and how: The underground railway network was to transport passengers and their luggage and would, equally, handle the delivery of parcels, light and heavy goods, and waste.

Circulation and Improvement   67 The consortium didn't lack confidence: All the works were at their risk and expense. In return, they requested a ninety-nine-year concession according to a schedule of fares, which specified first- and second-class passengers (ten and five centimes, respectively), their luggage, as well as letters and parcels (messagerie, factage), light goods (articles de commission), heavy goods (articles de camionnage), domestic waste (boues ménagères) and other waste (vidange/eaux ménagères).89 Once expired, the concession, with the entire infrastructure, would revert to the city. Concessions had been granted to build the national railway network, a model that was extended to omnibus services by the creation of the Compagnie Générale des Omnibus de Paris in 1855. Both the Police and the Seine Prefect, Haussmann, seemed to be in favour, as was claimed in a second pamphlet published a year later (1857) with the exact same title. It was the council of the Ponts et Chaussées that had the strongest reservations, particularly in relation to the topography of the city, the different depths of the tunnels that were proposed and the disruptions that these might cause to the sewers. Despite significant revisions in its second version, which included the increase to over 32 km in length (compared to the twenty-five first proposed), the network of underground iron roads was not to be. Like the other plans by de Kérizouet, Brame and Flachat, and many others, Le Hir’s became part of the extensive body of work that used railways not boulevards to envision future Paris without ever being realised. A key characteristic of the plans that were produced between the 1840s and 1860s was the centrality of circulation in the transformation, real and imagined, that the capital of the July Monarchy (1830–1848), a short-lived Second Republic (1848–1852), and a nascent Second Empire (1852–1870), was to experience both within and beyond the city walls. The transport of merchandise was important, particularly that related directly to the market. It was the building of Les Halles Centrales that prompted striking visions of trains running beneath the Paris streets. The reorganisation of the existing arrangement – based on several separate buildings and including the relocation of the cattle market and abattoirs to La Villette – was to respond to a more direct and rapid exchange of incoming and outgoing animals, meat, foodstuffs, produce and waste. Railways were better suited for this new kind of exchange. The extensive programme of public works for which the Paris of the Second Empire would become known privileged street improvements rather than railway connectivity. Opening new boulevards, or widening existing ones, connecting to the railway termini was an important part of the plans, but without the railway lines themselves, either main line or metropolitan, ever becoming central to the overall vision. This was as true of Haussmann’s programme, a story we know well through the work of several historians, as it was of its predecessor the Commission des embellissements led by Siméon. Regulation and control of the accessibility to specific districts were paramount to the transformation that the opening of new boulevards effected. By contrast, several of the plans

68  Circulation and Improvement produced during this same period saw railways as agents that could be used not only to improve the movement of goods, with the fiscal benefits that this represented, but also to alleviate the impact of street clearances that would displace hundreds of thousands with little or no provision, largely the poor. There were experiments with working-class housing such as Napoléon III’s cité ouvrière west of the Gare du Nord on the Rue de Rochechouart, and in other areas, but these were isolated interventions and, overall, insufficient.90 The official line followed the route of new handsome streets, not that of the many schemes that proposed railways either above or beneath them. What became increasingly apparent in the process were the difficulties of joining the interests of railway companies, the state and the municipal authorities. The future of Paris hung on their disputes.

Figure 2.3  G  iuseppe Canella, Les Halles et la Rue de la Tonnellerie, Paris c.1828, oil on wood. This is one of the three paintings (at the Musée Carnavalet) which Canella made of the immediate surroundings of Les Halles dated 1828. The Rue de la Tonnellerie (the street of cooperage or barrel makers) was the western limit of the market area with pavilions for meat, fish and eggs. It ran north-south connecting the Rue Tirechape and the Église St. Eustache. Note the almost rural character of the scene: In the foreground (left to right) a fish seller, a woman driving her carrier horse and a porter. Source: Musée Carnavalet. © Roger-Viollet/Topfoto.

Figure 2.4  T  homas Rowlandson, a bird’s-eye view of Smithfield market, ­London 1811, coloured aquatint. Rowlandson’s drawing, signed together with A. C. Pugin (father of the architect Augustus W. N. Pugin), was published by Rudolph Ackermann. The view shows a very ordered livestock market, despite its vast scale; all dealings, on sheep, pigs and cattle, are largely a men’s affair. The morning winter light gives the scene a kind of serenity contrasting with the cacophony of sounds, impressions and happenings that, two decades later, Dickens would use to describe Smithfield market. Source: © Museum of London.

Figure 2.5  P  roject for the establishment of a new railway in Paris by Fl. de Kérizouet. Note the emphasis on the right bank (only the Entrepôt des Liquides and the Gare d’Orléans are shown on the left bank) and on the shaded area up to the wall of the Fermiers Généraux which, incidentally, leaves the area between it and the outer fortifications for the sitting of railway termini only, all three, and including his ‘gare concentrique’, west of the basin of La Villette (centre top). Source: Fl. de Kérizouet, Projet d’Établissement d’un Chemin de Fer dans l’Intérieur de la Ville de Paris (Paris: Librairie Scientifique-Industrielle de L. Mathias, 1845). © Régie Autonome des Transports Parisiens (RATP).

Figure 2.6  P  lan of Suburban Residences for London Mechanics, by Mr Charles Pearson. The key on the top left lists: Roads; rows of houses; spaces behind houses, gardens and backyards; and sites for schools, churches, railroad station, shops and planted enclosure. Both the size, 10,000 new houses, and the radial model are striking precedents of later developments, notably, Ebenezer Howard’s garden city. Source: Plan of Suburban Residences for London Mechanics, Mr. Charles Pearson, Metropolitan Railway Commission. Minutes of Evidence (London, 1846), plate 21a. © Parliamentary Archives, London.

Figure 2.7  Detail of Le Hir’s plan for a network of railways beneath Paris. Le Hir’s plan presented a more balanced provision of new transport routes on both riverbanks. Connectivity of the railway termini was key to the plan, increasing capacity too by suggesting to insert additional tracks along existing railway lines. The proposed east to west lines, partly along the River Seine and partly along the boulevards intérieurs, somewhat prefigured the route of future Métropolitain lines, clearest with Line 1 as it opened in 1900 between the Porte Maillot and the Porte de Vincennes (contrast with Figure 4.9). Source: Louis Le Hir, Réseau des Voies Ferrées sous Paris (1857). © The British Library Board, shelfmark 8235.c.93.(11.).

Circulation and Improvement   73

London Two main-line railway companies, the London and Birmingham (the London and North Western since 1846) and the Great Western, were behind one of the early schemes that proposed to connect the City of London with their urban termini north of the river Thames. The name of the scheme was the London Grand Junction Railway (LGJR). Major objections were raised against the first plans, produced by the architect George Remington, particularly the north-south orientation and the ‘trench system’ resembling a canal with which the line was to be built.91 The plan was changed accordingly, following the advice of George Rennie, consultant engineer to the Liverpool and Manchester railway’s successful scheme in 1826 and who would later be involved in early proposals for the Midland Counties Railway (1833–1836) and the Central Kent Railway (1837).92 In an address to the directors of the company, Rennie listed the inconveniences that would be avoided by carrying the trains on arches, as in the line to Greenwich and Deptford for which an Act had been passed in May 1833.93 The proposed line, Rennie said during the examination of the bill, ‘commences at Skinner Street, about twenty-one feet above the surface of the ground, and terminates at the London and Birmingham Railway’.94 Skinner Street was the westward continuation of Newgate Street, facilitating the access of produce to the market behind St. Paul’s, the delivery of parcels to the General Post Office in St. Martin’s-Le-Grand and the further transport of other products to City customers.95 From Skinner Street a straight line running north-westwards was to reach Camden Town, where the terminal and storage facilities of the London and Birmingham were located. A junction between the company’s warehouse and the LGJR was to facilitate the delivery of goods directly into and around the City, avoiding in this way the use of other means of transport. The junction, as Rennie explained, was ‘made by passing over the Regent’s Canal […] by a small embankment, level, or nearly so, with the depot’.96 The Great Western, the other main-line company potentially using the connection, had its terminus further west, near the same canal in Paddington, but at this point no actual link to Rennie’s line was considered. The LGJR was also seen as an opportunity to sanitise the areas that the line would traverse, notably Saffron Hill a short distance north-west of St. Paul’s. In the words of the City surveyor, George Smith, this particular area was ‘a great sink of depravity and vice. I have seen gangs of thieves of boys, twelve and thirteen in number, collected in a room together’. The wretched state of the houses and their inhabitants, mostly Irish, was confirmed by Joseph Martin, inspector of the City Police, and other residents of nearby districts.97 Opponents to the plan, in turn, argued against the damages to private property. In the opinion of the architects William Inwood and his son Charles, the line would lessen the value and appeal of the land it traversed and of any houses built along it. Only third-rate

74  Circulation and Improvement residences could be designed in the section immediately adjacent to the viaduct, reducing the potential interest of wealthier clients.98 Reactions to the scheme differed according to whose view was consulted, whose interests were at stake and to whom sanitation or the easier and speedier circulation of goods represented a real benefit or, indeed, a nuisance. The LGJR was never built. According to Rennie, the ‘Euston Square Plane’ was the only similar project conceived around this time that represented any competition. This was an extension of the London and Birmingham via an inclined plane from their depot at Camden Town to Euston Grove for the exclusive use of passengers. It opened in 1840 and was 1 mile in length (1.6 km), contrasting with the 2 miles and 66 ft. (3.24 km) of the London Grand Junction.99 Both schemes were part of the dozens of plans that railway companies put forward in the interest of having a direct connection to the City and to London’s central and inner districts. Often plans were drawn for speculative purposes only, aiming to gain quick returns on capital or to obstruct new competing lines and their extensions. The number of schemes increased exponentially in the mid-1840s, in London and throughout Britain. What became known as the ‘railway mania’ collapsed in 1846, at which point the fortunes of businessmen and laymen alike had bulged, shrunk and evaporated in vast numbers.100 The legacy was personal – family fortunes gone – as well as general given the social costs associated with the ‘failure of Parliament to establish an integrated national [railway] system’, as Mark Casson has shown.101 Capital subscribers were attracted by often unrealistic but, none the less, imaginative visions. Ideas for a direct link between the main-line railways contemplated not only junctions of the kind the LGJR proposed but also ambitious concentric models for grand central termini: ‘There is a talk of some great central terminus for all railways’, a commentary in The Times would remark. It does not, however, need any vast effort of imagination to look beyond even that scheme, to the day when the metropolis will be converted into one immense terminus, by means of a special system of metropolitan railways, traversing the whole space […] dispensing with the preliminary obstruction of cab or omnibus.102 A significant element of the proposals was the use of buildings that had fallen into disrepair or moved elsewhere such as the Fleet Street Prison, ‘carted away in 1846’.103 The scale and scope of the transformation were interdependent with the possibilities that railways generated, not only in relation to the new transport system that might be created but also concerning the extent to which distance was becoming a function of time, not space: You may find it takes you as long to go from Kensington to the Londonbridge terminus of the Brighton Railway, as from London-bridge to

Circulation and Improvement   75 Brighton. Nay, of two friends taking leave at London-bridge, one for Brighton by rail, and one for Kensington by omnibus, the traveler to Brighton might reach his destination first. London, the commentator went on to assert, ‘will speedily find the means of balancing these disparities; and when that has been done by an internal system of railways, the long-lined railways will obtain the means of using the internal system as an extension of their own’.104 At the core of these disparities was the difference between long-­ distance and short-distance traffic as well as that between the transport of goods and passengers: On the one hand, the ‘internal system of railways’ might allow the reduction of travel times within the city, and, on the other hand, main-line railways consolidated their services to outlying districts and beyond. The distinction between the two was a question of what was circulating where, when and how, which concerned not only railways, of course, but also omnibuses, cabs and riverboats. Moreover, working and residential patterns across the capital were in flux. What would become increasingly apparent was that the plans to join the mainline railways in London were compatible with the growing circulatory needs of the capital and the subsequent requirement to regulate them. The Public Benefit and the Agency of Railways Plans for London railways before Parliament had soared by 1846. A royal commission was appointed in response to the situation. Its remit: Assessing the role that railways should play in metropolitan communications. Nineteen different schemes were examined: Fifteen north of the Thames, four in the south. With the exception of two schemes, namely, the South Western extension to its terminal at Waterloo Bridge (complete in 1846) and the extension of either the North Kent (with its terminus at Union Street) or the South Eastern to Waterloo Bridge, both south of the river, the commission advised against all the schemes.105 The commission’s report was to provide an assessment of the benefits and problems of crossing the city centre, which was defined in the terms of reference as the area within ‘Edgeware-road from Oxford-street to the intersection of the New-road; the New-road and City-road to Finsbury-square; Bishopsgate-street; London Bridge; High-street, Borough; Blackman-street; Borough-road; Lambeth-road; Vauxhall-road; Vauxhall Bridge, Vauxhall Bridge-road; Grosvenor Place; and Parklane’.106 Moreover, the commissioners recommended connecting the existing railway termini by means of ‘branches skirting the Town, and terminating at points without the line described in our Instructions [rather] than by penetrating within it’.107 The commission introduced thus a new geography of the city in an attempt to limit the further extension of railway lines into London’s central and inner districts (­Figure 3.3).

76  Circulation and Improvement The area thus defined extended to both riverbanks, though important differences remained in place. South of the river, the terminals at Waterloo Bridge (complete in 1846) and London Bridge gave railway companies a direct connection to the West End and the City, and with far less disruption than a similarly advantageous location north of the Thames. Property and thoroughfares were ‘less valuable’ and ‘less important’ south of the river: The ordinary traffic of the streets on the South side is not so great as on the North; it is less concentrated, and it runs through wider and more convenient channels; so that the additional traffic created by Railway Termini could be more easily accommodated.108 Four aspects were central to the commission’s report: The choice of a central terminus, the handling of goods traffic outside the central districts, the perceived and real impact of railway plans on property and the relationship between new railway lines and street improvements. As the names of a good number of the proposals before the commission indicated, Farringdon Street was the site that companies favoured for the sitting of their termini in the City, whether this was to concentrate several lines in one grand central terminus or to accommodate the individual buildings of separate companies. Two of the schemes, the Tottenham and Farringdon Street Terminus and the District London and Manchester, incorporated underground sections. The commissioners’ objections were less about the feasibility of building subways or tunnels than about the proposed extensions of railway lines further into the city, which represented an advantage only to main-line railway users. The average distance travelled by passengers arriving at Euston Square (by the London and North Western, formerly London and Birmingham) was 64 miles (103 km), and so the additional distance proposed in the extensions represented benefits that ‘ha[d] been much exaggerated’. While this might have been true for the Euston terminal the situation was different for the Great Western with its terminal at Paddington and for the Eastern Counties’ terminal in Shoreditch. Whatever the differences, the commissioners reported: If the convenience of passengers does not call for the prolongation of railways into the heart of the Metropolis, still less does it require the establishment of any one Central Terminus, at which the railways from different parts of the country should unite. The evidence proved sufficiently just how complicated the arrangements were when several different competing companies shared the use of a central terminal.109

Circulation and Improvement   77 In terms of goods traffic the commission recommended a line which should pass outside the Metropolis on the North, at such a distance as to avoid interference with populous districts and the thronged thoroughfares, and so connect the goods’ stations of the various railways from West to East with each other, terminating at some convenient point on the Thames or within the Docks. A junction crossing the river west of Vauxhall Bridge would connect the northern and southern lines avoiding concentrating traffic at a central station. A different yet related benefit of this ‘circuitous communication’ was the need ‘to establish an unbroken connection between the railways of the North, South, and West’ in the interest of strengthening national defence.110 As for property the commissioners affirmed that they were not disposed to attach any weight to the assumption which [they] found to be a common one, that districts thickly inhabited by a population of the lowest class, and where vice and destitution prevail, are sensibly improved by the passage of a railway through them. Often the evidence suggested the opposite, for the railway does not open the streets to any new traffic, nor does it lead to the improvement of dwellings on either side of the line; and where the improvements which such districts most require, viz., the formation of new streets, with better built houses, better ventilation, and better drainage, are in contemplation, or are likely to be effected, it tends in most cases to obstruct, rather than to facilitate them. Examples of these were the viaducts of the London and Blackwall and the Eastern Counties railways on the eastern end of the City.111 The claims about the perceived improvements that railways might bring into an area were likely based on the model of the London and Greenwich, whose viaduct featured arches which the company was then able to let as warehouses, workshops, residences and at least one pub.112 But this was an area consisting of market gardens when the railway was built, except for the terminus at London Bridge, and so comparisons with other parts of London weren’t strictly pertinent. The disruption to public works prompted most proponents ‘to combine, more or less with their own works, and at their own expense, the improvement of existing, or the formation of new Thoroughfares for the benefit of the public’. But as the commissioners explained, the situation, though specific to every scheme, had developed into equating railway

78  Circulation and Improvement building to works that were planned and carried out in the public interest, with important differences in terms of who absorbed the costs and did so under which conditions. Any collaboration between railway companies and public authorities, their report advised, should be planned and prescribed to the companies [that agreed to these conditions], and finally carried out under the authority of some Department of Your Majesty’s Government, in conjunction with the Corporation of the City of London, or with the local Authorities of the District in which the works are to take place. The commissioners justified this arrangement by arguing that the merit of the Street improvements of London, in regard as well to their utility and beauty as to the economy and convenience with which they can be carried out, must greatly depend upon their being executed with one intention, and as part of one well-considered scheme; and because we see no security for this, if they are left to originate with different Railway Companies, according as these may spring up, and without any other supervision than that supplied by Parliamentary Committees.113 One key to joining railway schemes and street improvements, to bring together private and public money, was in the detail. To that effect the report suggested that every plan should provide details of precisely how the proposed railway schemes affected city streets, buildings and open spaces, both in their current state and as planned. The detail was to include ‘the elevation at which and the point to which [Railways entering the Metropolis] should be carried, and the degree and manner in which they should be required to adapt themselves to works of public improvement’. Moreover, it was the public authorities that were better placed to assume the responsibilities behind such request.114 The commissioners’ advice resonated with ideas and debates around the degree of unity and coordination that was needed for the successful planning of the metropolis. W. E. Hickson, member of the Metropolitan Improvement Society, suggested earlier in November 1845, that linking railway provision to city improvements was also a matter of recognising new forces, habits and practices: The opportunity of improvement now offered is scarcely inferior to that of the Fire of London in 1666, when unhappily the enlightened views of Sir Christopher Wren were not seconded by the authorities of the day. The progress of railway extension, whether upon a sound or upon an injudicious system, is certain. Whole districts of the metropolis have inevitably to be remodelled, to adapt them to the new modes of transit which have effected a revolution in the habits of the

Circulation and Improvement   79 people. It remains with the government to discountenance ill-judged and abortive expedients, and to encourage works of lasting utility, by giving unity of purpose, and a wise direction to discordant aims.115 To Hickson, the scope of the interventions that could be pursued through railway building was vast and rich in possibilities. But these were largely dependent upon the ways in which railway companies exploited deliberately, and not always successfully, their opportunities to become an active player in transforming the metropolis. Intrinsic to the process was the extent and manner in which the public benefit was articulated as a result of whether or not the construction of railway lines facilitated the remodelling of entire districts and whether or not that prompted the production of a plan to counterbalance the discordant efforts of railway companies. The debates around and the evidence provided in favour of or against a central railway terminus, the bypassing of goods traffic around the city, the effects of railways on property and the challenges of connecting railway plans to street improvements contributed to characterising the public benefit in London. Their significance lay in their providing the arena where the question of metropolitan communication and the key dimensions that should become a part of it were addressed. Through the work of commissions such as that of 1846, ideas about the public rendered the benefits of railways in a light that subordinated the disjointed and conflicting efforts behind railway operation to the goals that were shared by citizens: ‘under no circumstances should the Thoroughfares of the Metropolis, and the property and comfort of its inhabitants, be surrendered to separate schemes, brought forward at different times, and without reference to each other’.116 That was a measured and noble principle, however discordant were the sounds in practice. True the business of railways at this point might have been based upon a laissez-faire policy, but an important part of that policy concerned the responsibilities that companies had before the public. The boundaries of those responsibilities were characteristically problematic in London due to the institutional structure that brought together – and often kept separate practices in Parliament, in the City and in the local councils. The way in which railway plans were produced presented an added challenge increasing the complexity of legislative practices around commissions and committees. A railway project could be divided according to who was to build specific sections of a line or terminus, who was to provide the rolling stock and who was to operate and own the tracks or the works of infrastructure. The management might be divided further into several companies or, as a result of particular arrangements between them, into different groups responsible for financing, administering and executing certain sections of the plan. Reports were a reflection of such arrangements, with results that at times appeared inconsistent.117

80  Circulation and Improvement The existing infrastructure of canals and roads and the various means of transport that used them were also important conditions in the process. Without a doubt, the siting of railway termini on the edges of the centre introduced new traffic and contributed significantly to the growth of existing flows. Railways accentuated the necessity of change. By contrast, the new geography that the royal commission established, notably along limits such as the City Road and the New Road, succeeded in preserving at least some of the arrangements that had been in place which involved different modes of transport. Change in the form of growing railway traffic went hand in hand with the continuation of existing practices. One aspect of that close interdependence was reform: If streets remained clogged and decay increased in several districts across the capital, should railways not serve as agents of reform, spatially and socially? And if so, what were the right means so that the right kind of transformation followed? Reform and Metropolitan Improvement One of the proposals before the 1846 commission was as ambitious as it was reformist. The proponent was Charles Pearson; his idea: ‘a ­Railway in connexion with a suburban village’.118 The plan consisted of an ­‘Arcade Railway and Central City Terminus’, a model of which was at the Court House in Westminster during the examinations of the royal commission. Pearson had contributed to the debates on public health and social reform in London. He was a City solicitor from 1839 until his death in 1862, a period during which he was to become a keen advocate of reform on taxes, religious legislation, ‘reformation of juvenile offenders’ and the ‘opposition to capital punishment’. He was also interested in metropolitan improvements such as the embankment of the river Thames, the transformation of the Smithfield market from livestock into a meat market and the formation of the Great Central Gas Consumers Company.119 Pearson’s scheme combined a paved road, houses and a railway under arches, between the City terminus at Farringdon and King’s Cross, connecting to the proposed extension of the Great Northern railway. The Great Northern would open its terminus at King’s Cross years later, in 1852. Pearson’s proposed line was in a trench on the same level as the basement of the houses; it was covered by a continuous line of arches, on top of which there was the pavement of ‘a spacious and handsome street, 80 feet in width and 8,506 feet in length’ (24.38 m by 2.6 km) between two rows of houses. By way of illustration, Regent Street was 120 ft. wide and roughly a mile long (36.57 m by 1.55 km). Light and ventilation to the railway was by means of ‘openings in the carriage-way and foot-path’. The City Terminus, in turn, comprised two separate buildings placed on either side of Farringdon Street.120 The year before, in 1845, Pearson had tried to connect his railway plan to the plans for New Street, a thoroughfare ‘from the end of

Circulation and Improvement   81 ­ arringdon-street, northwards, along the valley of the [river] Fleet as F far as the Sessions House, Clerkenwell’.121 A commission was appointed for the execution of the new street without success; subsequently, ‘the powers of the New Street Commissioners [were transferred] to the Corporation of London’ with the same results. As the evidence of the royal commission had shown, combining street improvement and railway plans was desirable but infused with the difficulties of reconciling the interests that were at stake. On the one hand, the extension and widening of existing streets or the opening up of new ones concerned the specific needs of the places they traversed, often related to sanitation and congestion. On the other hand, railways connected places in relation to the network they sustained beyond the city, outbound and inbound traffic was their main concern. At the same time, the difficulty of connecting his proposal to the plans for New Street led Pearson to identify some of the most defining trends of transport and communication in mid-­ nineteenth-century London. For a start, reliable information concerning traffic figures was scattered and hard to get. Following his own experimental approach – what we might call today in situ traffic counts – Pearson was able to conclude that the ‘distant railroad termini’, notably those of the London and North Western and the Great Western, attracted the highest concentration of street traffic. His calculations were based on the number of passengers who travelled into the City from London Bridge, Euston Square and Paddington. In order to draw ‘correct conclusions from the returns’, Pearson affirmed, the information collected had to be ‘taken for several days and at different periods of the year’, an exercise that eluded the railway companies themselves.122 Pearson observed that railway passengers had a tendency to use omnibuses when covering longer distances, but the time gained by horse-drawn vehicles was diminished substantially by the street congestion at points such as Fleet Street, Holborn and Ludgate Hill. As important was the conveyance of railway goods to and fro ‘receiving houses’ where parcels, goods and other types of merchandise were sorted and distributed across the city, in much the same way as past practices around inns and coaches: In consequence of the desertion of the old inn-yards by the coaches and waggons which are now superseded by railroads, many of them have been taken as receiving houses by the great railway concerns […] These establishments are being magnified and multiplied in our narrow streets, and the leviathan waggons and vans of the proprietors are daily to be seen in all directions canvassing for business, sometimes creeping about the streets, having a few articles at the bottom of the waggons with their names as “carriers by railway” displayed upon the vehicle, as if by way of advertisement; at other times they may be seen with loads overhanging on each side the foot-pavement of the narrow streets and lanes through which they pass.123

82  Circulation and Improvement If the constant shift in the flows of vehicles across London was difficult to map, the mounting effect of railway traffic provided a sense of possible solutions. Based on his traffic counts and observations, Pearson suggested that what was needed was the reorganisation of ‘all railroad traffic, both passengers and goods, at their respective stations’.124 His Grand Central Terminus at Farringdon Street, ‘the heart’s core of the metropolis’, could play an important part in that reorganisation, especially with regard to the circulation of goods and people connected to the Smithfield market. The terminal and the scheme at large were to facilitate the transport of livestock, of goods related to the warehouses of the river dock companies and of local residents and workers who were starting to leave Smithfield and fix their residence elsewhere in the suburbs. Livestock posed the biggest challenge to orderly transport: Over 210,000 heads of cattle, more than 1.5 million sheep and around 250,000 pigs were sold in 1846 at Smithfield. Pearson himself had called for more restriction of the Bartholomew Fair, a summer fest dating back to the twelfth century held originally within the precincts of the Priory of St. Bartholomew, West Smithfield. Walter Thornbury in his Old and New London would later speculate that it was Pearson’s call which encouraged the exodus of the theatre shows, likely across the river or further north to Islington, gradually leading to the closure of the fair in 1855.125 Centralising movement into a big terminus was therefore a vehicle that could serve multiple purposes. But the 1846 commission was against the idea of a central terminus as this was a model which, arguably, railway companies could not afford. Significantly large and diverse operations had been accommodated in their termini, usually separating goods from passengers, often in distant buildings; separating traffic flows not centralising them was the pattern. Growing street congestion was to a large extent a consequence of the influence of railways and the siting of their termini on the city edges. Flows of goods and people increased in numbers, which, in turn, drew in more vehicles to feed demand. Intrinsic to this movement was a transformation that was real and disconcerting: The extraordinary wealth that circulated everywhere across the capital sat side by side with equally extraordinary want and hardship. Henry Mayhew was among the commentators and critics of the situation, most eloquent in his depiction of the London docks: If the incomprehensibility of the wealth rises to sublimity, assuredly the want that co-exists with it is equally incomprehensible and equally sublime. Pass from the quay and warehouses to the courts and alleys that surround them, and the mind is as bewildered with the destitution of the one place as it is with the superabundance of the other.126

Circulation and Improvement   83 The docks might have been the area where the contrast between wealth and poverty was at its starkest, but this was a reality that contemporaries found in and commented on several districts across London.127 One of Pearson’s main concerns was how to devise the means both of improving circulation and introducing much-needed reform. Relieving the streets of their obstructions and releasing the working classes from their ‘miserable courts and alleys’ were the two key problems that railways might help to overcome. Pearson termed these ‘overcrowding’ and ‘overcramming’, two notions which he introduced in a pamphlet published in 1852, entitled City Central Terminus. Address to the Citizens.128 His ideas resonated with much of the current thinking about urban social questions and their connections to metropolitan improvements. Based on the account of the Officer of Health, John Simon, Pearson described London as, ‘revolting to decency, subversive to morality, injurious to health, and destructive to life’.129 Loss of time, trade, health and life were consequences of how ill-defined was the city’s growth. In a way that is reminiscent of de Kérizouet in Paris, Pearson argued that neither street improvements nor ‘intramural model-lodging houses’ gave proper and sufficient answer to the evils he described. The enlargement, widening or opening of new thoroughfares was merely a ‘palliative’, which offered no long-term solution to the overcrowding problem. King William Street and Gresham Street, both in the City, were clear illustrations of his point.130 Two main issues are of interest for our discussion: (1) The contrast and the relationship between housing and street congestion, or, to use Pearson’s terms, overcramming and overcrowding, and (2) the issue of freehold land, that is, the use of the land that railway companies acquired through compulsory purchase beyond what was allowed and stipulated by government. In Pearson’s account, the overcrowding of the streets was driving out, ‘slowly perhaps, but certainly’ the city’s trade, which was accentuated by London’s position, being ‘the precise centre of a widely-extending circle’ reaching to the region, the country and overseas: universi orbis terrarum emporium, as he put it with flair and modesty. The provisioning and food markets as well as the shifts in travelling patterns associated with the possibilities that railways offered also contributed to street congestion. The new possibilities of travel, Pearson explained, had changed the urban population from ‘vegetative’ to ‘locomotive’ and correspondingly had turned ‘stationary’ men into ‘migratory’, which alluded mainly to tradesmen who could ‘oscillate between their businesses and their country-houses’. As he had observed during the hearings of the 1846 commission, the distance between the centre and the railway termini intensified passenger traffic, while the railway receiving houses at places such as Gresham Street put in their share of parcels and other goods.131 Obstructions were most visible in the main thoroughfares, which had

84  Circulation and Improvement ‘serious consequences to all classes of the community’. By contrast, insufficient affordable housing in the central districts forced, mostly the poor, into shared accommodation with growing numbers, a phenomenon Pearson called overcramming. Overcramming was clearly apparent in places like Saffron Hill or in the slums on the edges of wealthy estates, where not only the poor but also ‘respectable and industrious persons’ lived. For Pearson, these were not ‘crowded or crammed’ but ‘crushed’ places which were ‘highly dangerous to the inhabitants of the surrounding districts’ for they represented serious threats to health as the cradles of disease he, health officers and City surveyors confirmed they were. In order to make a consistent case for overcramming, Pearson used census figures to show that while the population had increased about 12 per cent between 1831 and 1851, the houses built represented an increase of only 6 per cent between 1811 and 1851. This concerned the inner districts only, excluding the City and the outlying districts. As a direct consequence of this, the number of families and individuals sharing a single habitation was as much as 30 per cent higher in these districts than the average of the metropolis considered as a whole and 80 per cent higher than in England and Wales.132 The wretched state of large swathes of housing was part of the changes in the use, occupation and specialisation of several districts across the capital, including new patterns of commuting between workplace and home. By 1837, according to John Hargrave Stevens, surveyor to the western division of the City, the residential pattern in the centre, ‘was getting thinner, and the buildings were altering their character from residences into warehouses and offices; and the population […] surrounding it, which represents the City without the Walls, was becoming of a poorer description’. This change promoted the enlargement of residential districts outside the City and beyond as ‘the wealthier class of persons engaged in trade and in commercial operation in the City were gradually ceasing their custom of residing in the City, and were going to live at considerable distances from it’. By contrast, ‘persons occupied in the inferior descriptions of employment were compelled to reside within a walking distance of their labour, and the occupations became more densely crowded in the neighbourhood immediately surrounding the City’.133 Stevens collaborated with Pearson in his railway scheme. To both, railways had played a major part in the transformation that London was undergoing, somewhat aggravated by the concentration of increasing volumes of goods and passenger traffic arriving at and distributed from their urban termini. The question was whether and how railways could also be a part of the solution. Pearson claimed that if the railway companies situated north of the river, ‘would do their duty to the public and complete the last link in the chain that ought to unite the great commercial and manufacturing

Circulation and Improvement   85 provincial Towns [of the north] with the centre of the capital of the empire’, the situation of the inner districts, hence of their population, would improve.134 Railways, he believed, could help relieve the city of both the overcrowding that everyone experienced on the streets and the overcramming that a distinct part of the population suffered. Overcrowding and overcramming were thus part of one and the same thing. Together they obstructed: One obstructed the streets, thus affecting the entire community; the other concentrated in certain districts, affecting largely though not only the working class and the poor. While the former deterred the free movement of goods and people, the latter obstructed the passage of air and sun. Both rendered areas clogged, unhealthy. Both were a reminder of the limits of progress and improvement. The tendency that Stevens had identified nearly two decades earlier would also be an opportunity for a wider segment of the population by 1850, as a commentary of the Railway Times claimed: If house rent, twenty miles from the City, and travelling by rail, could be made to be not more than equivalent to house rent in crowded streets, is it not clear that the same motives which prompted the citizen to fix his habitation within an hour’s walk of his place of business, would at once induce him to exchange the dirty suburb for the pure and invigorating atmosphere of the country? Who, for instance, would prefer living at Paddington, Islington, Kingsland or Walworth, if they could for the same cost reside at Kingston, Banstead Downs, Stanmore Common, Bushey Heath, Northfleet, Slough, Epsom, Hainault Forest, Barnet or Reigate? These pleasant salubrious sites are all accessible by railway and are within half an hour’s ride of the metropolis.135 Half an hour’s ride was too optimistic a view on railway transport, but the perception that the dirty centre was extending into the dirty suburbs did ring true across a range of commentators. By the 1850s, an important part of Pearson’s ‘widely-extending circle’ incorporated districts that might have been polluted, but the real question was whether and how to open up the benefits of country living to those overcrowded and overcrammed in the centre of that circle. Numbers were important, but so was the composition of who might enjoy (and pay for) any improvements: ‘20,000 of the clerks, agents, small tradesmen, warehouse porters, artisans, mechanics, and others who resort daily to the City for the purpose of trade may be conveyed every morning and every evening to and from the country’.136 The link between Pearson’s city railway and the Great Northern Railway was to bring relief on the housing of the respectable and industrious classes

86  Circulation and Improvement and thus produce a circulation between the heart of London and the body of the country, as vigorous, as regular, as efficient, and as healthful as that which pervades our physical organization from the action of the human organs of vitality.137 Circulation was, in this sense, a function of railway development in direct relation to housing provision, precisely the kind of connection that legislation generally obstructed. One main objection that Pearson’s plan encountered was ‘the apprehension that so magnitudinous and magnificent a project, as it was denominated, could hardly find money and means to carry it into execution’. Besides apprehension, there was the government’s reluctance to intervene in projects of such a scale, with the subsequent difficulties associated with the ways in which capital was raised. In reference to this Pearson wrote: the practice of effecting all these great works by means of private companies has prevailed so long, and so extensively, in this country, that it seems impossible to accomplish any great object of this nature otherwise than by the ordinary means. Pearson used the example of how the gas provision was administered in Manchester and compared the London docks to those in Liverpool, both giving precedent of the role that, in his view, the City should assume in the capital.138 A central task in the process was therefore overcoming the resistance of institutionalised practices and the political culture they represented. New means had to be devised for a project of this nature to secure support. The ambition was clear: The rewriting of ‘new principles in the railroad legislation of this country’ and with them creating the ‘land and railway company’ that could build his project.139 Legislation required railway companies to release any land they purchased apart from that used exclusively for the service of their lines and stations. The companies were often forced to buy larger sections from landowners’ estates, the unused parts of which they were ‘compelled to sell […] within a stated time after the completion of their works’.140 Pearson demanded a new set of rules facilitating the implementation of his plans arguing that this practice was inherited from ‘the old feudal law’, in relation to which he wrote: On behalf of the citizens of London, I ask for the establishment of a company absolved from this restriction – a company expressly endowed by the legislature with powers (not compulsory powers) to purchase a quantity of land, at such spots as they may think proper to establish stations along the line.141 The company might in this way diversify the use of the land it owned and become involved in the building of new housing. The enlargement of

Circulation and Improvement   87 the metropolitan circle by incorporating new areas connected to railway lines was an opportunity private interests could use: [a] domestic line from the northern suburbs to the centre of the City, with cheap, rapid, and frequent trains, combined with the possession of building land in immediate connexion with it, will yield a larger immediate and prospective return than any other railroad undertaking.142 The combination between housing developments and new transport would be one of the strategies that railway companies used later for attracting customers to new developments in Middlesex, where passes for free railway travel were ‘offered as an inducement to those purchasing villas with a rent of over £50 per annum’.143 Connecting railway building to new housing was a way of extending the net of subscribers to both enterprises. To Pearson railways were both a means of transport and a means of encouraging the creation of new residential districts in areas that had become nearer by virtue of the time it took to reach them. The two functions, kept separate by legislation, were, in his view, complementary. With his project and by addressing two distinct and yet related issues – ­overcrowding and overcramming – Pearson brought rights over rural land closer to urban circulation and metropolitan improvement. His vision of future London was one where city and country, railways and housing, were joined; both essential elements of the garden social city of Ebenezer Howard, which it preceded by five decades. This is one of the most central aspects of Pearson’s vision and one that we ought to remember.144 Unsurprisingly, the problem was how to translate his ‘grand’ ideas into practice. Variations on the Politics of Metropolitan Transport In December 1851, a committee appointed by the City Corporation had given a positive assessment of and subsequent approval to Pearson’s scheme, which prompted the creation of the company that would execute the plans. The City Railway Terminus Company was thus founded in January 1852. It was to promote this enterprise that Pearson wrote his pamphlet (City Central Terminus). The company received no financial or any other type of support either from government or from the railway companies.145 The difficulty of having railway companies support the plan related to the problems of the construction and operation of a central terminus as well as to the type of service that the line was to offer. Short-distance journeys were not one of the interests of main-line companies. At the same time, the Great Northern could readily benefit from the connection to the City that Pearson’s scheme provided (see Figure 2.6), giving the company a better position in light of competition with the London and North Western,

88  Circulation and Improvement whose North London line provided passenger services to/from Fenchurch Street and goods traffic running to/from Haydon Square.146 Soon after the publication of the pamphlet, the subscribers of the City Railway Terminus Company were invited to take shares on ‘advantageous terms’ in a new company, the North Metropolitan Railway, previously the Bayswater, Paddington and Holborn Bridge Railway Co., which proposed to lay the railway beneath the New (Euston) Road, between Edgware Road and King’s Cross. The new scheme received Parliamentary sanction in 1853 on the grounds of being less disruptive than Pearson’s scheme. As Kevin Bradley has observed, the bill of Pearson’s company ‘was presented in the 1853 session […] but it was never given a second reading’.147 Pearson’s line was nevertheless included as an extension of the new North Metropolitan. Instead of a central city terminus, stations were distributed evenly along the line, introducing a distinctive feature that would become characteristic of metropolitan lines in contrast with main-line railway services. By 1854 the North Metropolitan contemplated extensions both eastwards (into the City) and westwards, after the Great Western’s contribution in capital on the condition of having a connection between their terminus in Paddington and the Post Office in the City. Indeed, providing a mail service directly to the Post Office’s main building at St. Martin’s le Grand was a significant characteristic of the plan.148 The link line, now called ‘Metropolitan’, was to provide the Great Western with a more direct route into the City and intermediate stations for the storage and supply of coal (Clerkenwell) and foodstuffs and other goods related to the market (Farringdon Street). The same facility of communication was open to the London and North Western and the Great Northern, as ‘over this line must travel all communications between the Post-­office and the northern and western districts of England, as well as the enormous bulk of merchandise between those districts and the city of London’.149 As had been identified by the royal commission of 1846, the relatively uncoordinated efforts of railway companies had created an evolving network with marked differences between the riverbanks. In this arrangement, the Great Western was the company whose terminal remained farthest from the city centre. To W. A. Wilkinson, deputy-chairman of the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway by 1846 and member of the board of directors of the Metropolitan by 1858, the location of the Great Western terminal was highly disadvantageous for the company. He provided evidence of this by analysing and comparing the Great Western’s receipts for passengers and goods traffic from 1847, 1852 and 1857 with those of all the ‘other Metropolitan railway companies’.150 As Wilkinson explained, since the 1840s all the other companies had succeeded not only in differentiating between the traffic of goods and people by building specialised termini but also by getting closer to the

Circulation and Improvement   89 central districts. By contrast, the Great Western depended on other means of transport for their goods and passenger traffic to reach key areas in and around the City, not least the Smithfield market. Within this context, the Metropolitan created a link between the main-line termini north of the Thames which, as the company’s chief engineer John Fowler affirmed, was also a response to ‘the greater necessity the Great Western had to get further into the City’.151 ‘There can be no question’, Wilkinson asserted too, ‘that this railway [the Metropolitan] would convert the Great Western from the least convenient to the most convenient railway for the London passengers’.152 Furthermore, the benefits associated with the line extended beyond the interests of one company and became part of a broader public: The Metropolitan will not only afford ready and cheap access between the north-­ western and south-eastern parts of the metropolis, but it will relieve the streets of London from a large portion of that goods traffic which has of late years become so great a nuisance.153 But the public dimension of the benefits of a new railway line was subject to the interpretation of promoters; detractors; and, indeed, debates in Parliament. A Select Committee on Metropolitan Communications was appointed in 1855 in order to assess the extent to which the Metropolitan and various other schemes put forward during the Parliamentary session of that year were adequate to the communication and related needs of London. Three out of the eight conclusions listed in their report involved railway schemes: 1 ‘That the different metropolitan railway termini should be connected by railway with each other, with the docks, the river, and the Post-office, so as to accelerate the mails, and take all-through traffic, not only of passengers, but in a still more important degree of goods off the streets’. 2 ‘That wherever, as for example in the case of the Metropolitan Railway, works for improving the communication of the Metropolis can be carried out by private enterprise, that course be adopted, and Your Committee consider that most important results may be secured in this way’. 3 ‘That where the objects specified can be more efficiently carried out by the combined agency of railways and street improvements suggested by Mr Pearson, it may be desirable to economize expenditure by uniting the two objects [private enterprise and public benefit] under the superintendence of the intended Metropolitan Board of Works, as recommended in the Railway Commissioners’ Report of 1846, referred to in the Evidence of Mr. Pearson’.154

90  Circulation and Improvement The projects examined by the committee were divided into two separate categories: those ‘for the direct and important relief which they would afford’, giving the urgency of the specific problems and locations they addressed, and those that ‘involve large and comprehensive designs for effecting extensive improvements in the whole system of Metropolitan Communication’. The first category consisted largely of street improvements. The second category consisted of nine schemes, eight of which were railways, namely, the Metropolitan Railway, the ‘conversion of the Regent’s Canal into a Railway, with extensions’, railway plans by Pearson, a Mr Taylor, a Mr Giles, John Hawkshaw (the engineer whose work is discussed in the following chapter), the Western Terminus Railway, ‘Mr. Lionel Gisborne’s plans for the Embankment of a portion of the Thames’ and ‘Sir Joseph Paxton’s plan for a Grand Girdle Railway and Boulevard’.155 The report made explicit that the schemes grouped under the second category were beyond the committee’s terms of reference. Projects of the first category, in turn, were generally commended and to ‘be carried out by the aid of local rates’. The Metropolitan Railway as well as the new version of Pearson’s project, connecting to the Great Northern terminus at King’s Cross and to the Metropolitan Railway, were among the comprehensive designs requiring extensive improvements that caught the committee’s interest. Yet it was the ‘splendid designs’ of Paxton’s scheme that the committee found most remarkable, particularly in relation to ‘the provision, on a suitable scale, for the accommodation of those great tides of passenger traffic which, with daily-increasing force and pressure, are flowing through the streets of this metropolis’.156 Paxton was the architect of the emblematic Crystal Palace built with great success, despite its scale, for the Great Exhibition that took place in Hyde Park in 1851. His vision of ‘a plan for the improvement of the whole of the communications of London’ was centred on a continuous arcade accommodating local, commercial and recreational traffic, all contained within one system, covered by one roof. The assemblage was conceived as a self-contained unit organised around a central arcade, with shops and houses above them lining either side. Three continuous corridors of a smaller section for the exclusive use of traffic were placed on both sides, one on top of the other; four of them had railway tracks and trains powered by atmospheric pressure. The whole continuous structure crossed the river at three different points. Paxton’s examination was the longest; it amounts to seventeen pages of the committee’s report.157 The commissioners underlined the strengths of his proposal, its innovative character as well as the practical outcomes that its implementation might promote. The comparison between London and Paris seemed inevitable as William Jackson, committee chair, felt compelled to ask: You have seen the effects of the various improvements which have from time to time been made in the city of Paris; do you consider

Circulation and Improvement   91 that this boulevard [you propose] would be as attractive to people generally as the improvements have been in Paris? To which Paxton answered: I think this would make London the grandest city in the world. There are other improvements which I should suggest, upon this being carried out, but this is the basis of the other improvements; this alone would be the greatest novelty in the world. The Committee should bear in mind very strongly that this will make such a beautiful promenade for every part of London. If you wish to get into parks, it will be perfectly easy to do so.158 Promenading implied a distinct vision of metropolitan traffic, one in which the seemingly conflicting flows of pedestrians, omnibuses, carts and several other vehicles could be ordered and contained within a single structure criss-crossing the city with little or no friction. But traffic flows were elusive, shifting, growing, concentrating at certain points and disappearing along tides of daily rhythms at others. The same fluidity and elusiveness applied to the capital required to implement the system that might channel them, whether it was Paxton’s, Pearson’s or any other. ‘It has become indispensable’, the commissioners reported, ‘to make provision in this respect for the future on a great and comprehensible scale, and with the least possible delay’.159 But what kind of infrastructure was to live up to the task and how to finance it were no simple matters. John Fowler, the Metropolitan’s chief engineer, said to the committee that works on the line were about to start.160 They did not. The Crimean War, the uncertainty and instability of the financial markets and the nature of the undertaking were to blame for the delay.161 ‘The reason for this inactivity’, as a note published by the Metropolitan Railway Co. in The Times explained, was a combination of the ‘unfavourable state of the money-market’, the conditions imposed by Parliament upon the company for the completion of the works and the concentration of ‘the greater portion of the shares’ in a few persons who had ‘no alternative but to abandon the undertaking’.162 The note was published in an attempt to attract subscribers for 50,000 shares. It provided a synthetic yet thorough account of the benefits of the undertaking, including the better conditions of travel by trains which ran beneath the streets, away from their dirt and dust, covered a longer distance than existing services and avoided the congestion of overcrowded streets. The line would also ‘promote the health and moral condition of the poorer classes’ by providing affordable means of transport to better housing in the outlying districts; it would improve mail services and goods traffic, particularly of the Great Western and Great Northern, in the interest of ‘the great warehousemen and merchants of the city’.163

92  Circulation and Improvement Three elements of the layout of the line at this point are significant as illustrations of both the process and the main conditions that had become central to the very operation of the Metropolitan: The issue of land in railway business, the relationship between the building of the line and street improvements, and the importance of connecting the goods traffic arriving at the main-line termini with the Smithfield market and the Post Office. All three were elements that Pearson had recognised and discussed extensively. The line was to commence at Paddington by an independent terminus immediately opposite the Great Western Hotel, and proceed to King’s-cross, where it will take a direct course to the prison in Coldbath-fields, which is to be removed, and the valuable site of 81 acres of land, on which the prison stands, will become the property of the Company. This was and had been one of Pearson’s main claims, namely, a land and railway company, although in this case it was a mere reflection of the compulsory powers for the purchase of land conferred upon all railway companies that proved the public benefit of their schemes. The important difference was that the 81 acres of land were in Central London. ‘The Line’, the note in The Times continued, ‘then enters upon the large open space which has recently been uncovered by the City under the powers of the Clerkenwell Improvements Acts’. Although conceived and executed separately, street improvements and the new Metropolitan Railway might be combined at last, fulfilling the recommendations of the royal commission (1846) and the select committee (1855) as well as the repeated advocacy of Pearson: By this fortunate coincidence not only will the cost of constructing the railway be most materially lessened, but an ample space may be obtained in the very heart of London for station purposes, and for warehouses for the accommodation of the daily increasing trade of London. The Line, the note concluded, ‘will then cross Smithfield, where again it will be carried for a considerable distance without any interference with buildings to St. Martin’s-le-Grand and the Post-office’.164 By the time the notice was published, Smithfield market was under renovation, following proposals, dating back to at least the 1830s, which sought to improve the premises and methods of slaughtering in the area and often included references to the Paris system of public abattoirs. A new livestock market had been built to the north, in Copenhagen Fields, Islington, which opened in 1855.165 The building at Smithfield was transformed from a livestock into a meat market to the splendid design of Horace Jones, opening in 1868.166

Circulation and Improvement   93 A new meeting at the London Tavern took place on 1 December 1858, months after the publication of the notice in The Times. The choice of the Tavern was apposite as a venue that had played host to debates on the French revolution, against the abolition of slavery, on the revolutionary cause in Colombia and to meetings that led to the founding of the London Institution and the Marine and General Mutual Life Assurance Society, among others. The Lord Mayor, John Russell, convened the meeting. Pearson, Members of Parliament, Baron Rothschild and other important capitalists were among the attendants. An important part of the discussion was the (by then) commonly rehearsed argument about the wretched state of the overcrowded houses of the inner districts, soon to be alleviated by the implementation of the line.167 The meeting was successful in that the issued shares were sold. The City Corporation of London joined shortly after this, having reached a slight majority (of one!) in support of the scheme six years before.168 But again further support was needed. In 1859, Pearson posted A Twenty Minutes’ Letter to the Citizens of London, in favour of the Metropolitan Railway and City station, in one of the solicitor’s last attempts to harness the support for the ideas that he had campaigned for over twenty years. The pamphlet-letter included a Postscript, Proposals for the Allotment of the Contractors’ Shares of the Metropolitan Railway and City Terminus, a Prospectus by W. A. Wilkinson, chairman of the Board, which included an explanatory note by John Fowler and an affixed stamp that recipients could use to return it with their assent and remarks, if needed.169 The letter concluded by detailing the expenditure of streets, markets and railway plans, projects in which he himself had been involved and offered a concise summary of the problems that the building of this particular railway would solve. This time Pearson presented the difficulties in direct relation to the benefits that the implementation of the scheme was to offer: ‘We have the Resolutions of Public Meetings and of Investigation Committees’, Pearson wrote, ‘we have calculations, estimates, and all the usual evidence of facts, showing that this Railway will tend to relieve the streets of their obstructions’, and ‘release the working people from their miserable courts and alleys’. The outline of what conditions any railway enterprise required to succeed was sharper and more focussed: that the site of the Railway is cheap, its cost of construction known and defined, the district it traverses teeming with a travelling population, that it is placed by nature beyond the possibility of competition from any other Railroad, and that the appointment of its Directors and Officers is vested in the hands of the public.170 Thanks to the time that had taken to debate and develop his ideas, the letter gave a clearer and more concise account compared with earlier claims. It was a ‘letter’ after all, however long, which invited readers

94  Circulation and Improvement to be persuaded by the plan and support it with their money. Not only was the Metropolitan an alternative route for passenger traffic within the metropolis, but also it incorporated a liberal and democratic way of ensuring that the public benefit was preserved by the administrative structure of the company that was to run it. The response of the citizens of London secured the capital needed to start the works at last. Through a diverse composition of shareholders, the enterprise joined the private interest, including laymen and long-­ established businessmen alike, and the interest of local authorities in the form of the City of London, although, as Bradley suggests, the City’s role was rather that of an investor and less so as the provider of ‘a service to the community’.171 The line was to operate trains at intervals of five minutes, increasing the frequency at peak times. The largest percentage of potential returns came from estimates of passenger traffic.172 And so there were not only differences but also important similarities between the operation of the new line and the services that the main-line railways offered. The first ‘metropolitan’ railway to take shape in London was largely the result of the degree to which the agency of private capital and the improvements and reform of the metropolis intersected, with all the opportunities and challenges that such a crossing represented.

Circulating to Improve By the second half of the nineteenth century the definition of a circulatory system devoted to the movement of goods and people had become central to how London and Paris would change and how their futures were envisioned. Engineers, architects, lawyers and others as well as the national and municipal authorities of the two cities contributed to refining the very terms of that system and how it might evolve. That definition would, in turn, respond to and be a reflection of two different contexts. Circulation was a function of the ‘urbanism of regulation’ that transformed Paris during the Second Empire and beyond. It was, as Florence Bourillon has observed, the ‘most visible’ and the ‘most imitated’ characteristic of Haussmann’s plans and one that was to serve as a model of city planning worldwide, however ‘precarious’ or incomplete.173 Circulation was important in London too, but as the coexistence of diverging forces the regulation of which proved difficult to resolve let alone direct. The extension of the city limits in an ordered fashion, the significance of the central market, the reorganisation of the city space and its fiscal functions, and the overt interest in preserving control over Parisians were key aspects that railway and other plans allowed to identify and articulate in Paris. Following a number of debates and official commissions in London, the Metropolitan Railway Company was formed at last to build the first ‘metropolitan’ railway line a central characteristic of which was to link the existing railway termini, the Smithfield market and the Post

Circulation and Improvement   95 Office, all situated on the northern bank of the river Thames. Other important decisions were taken in the process such as the introduction of a new metropolitan geography limiting the further penetration of railway lines into the city, as per the royal commission of 1846. Joining the interests of railway companies and those of the metropolitan authorities proved difficult and challenging in the two cities. The number of commissions and committees that were set up on both sides of the Channel gives sufficient evidence of this. There was agreement that, for example, severe street congestion was related to insufficient ­infrastructure – narrow lanes and alleys – but also to poor housing and unaffordable transport. What kind of plan or scheme would provide the right solution and, if found, how should it be financed were questions for which answers remained elusive. Street improvements were a common template whereby the opening of new streets with new buildings on either side gave authorities and landowners the means to effect change. This was the key principle of the extensive transformation that Paris underwent during the Second Empire, one that found admirers and sceptics in London, prompting in the process unique visions such as Paxton’s Great Victorian Way. Railways, their viaducts, trenches and locomotives, not to mention the passengers and goods they transported, produced change of a different kind: Connectivity of metropolitan centres with the region and country was their purpose. Circulation and connectivity were closely related to urban growth. Through their plans and writing, de Kérizouet in Paris and Pearson in London were among those who recognised the kind of change that was needed and the role that railways might play in the process. They showed that a more adequate connection between the provision of better housing for the working and poorer classes, and affordable means of transport, largely through railways, was not only possible and desirable but also achievable. In their work, railways became a planning instrument that would facilitate a more cohesive development of the two cities, most evocatively, by improving the conditions in which the less privileged lived and worked. Pearson’s ideas were suburban in a way that de Kérizouet’s were not. At the same time, in both their plans we find a merging of railways, housing and legal issues around tax collection and land ownership. A critical part of their contribution was to provide the necessary information to characterise traffic, through counts of pedestrians and vehicles at railway termini, and calculations of the effects of existing infrastructure on the costs of essentials such as fuel and food. Their accounts proved that time and distance were increasingly important: The time and cost of crossing the two cities were concerns not only for railway companies, or for the ironmongers of Wolverhampton, but also for a larger section of the population, travellers and customers who were regular and grew in number. When seen through visions such as Pearson’s and de Kérizouet’s, and through the thinking and debates that the question of metropolitan

96  Circulation and Improvement railways raised in mid-nineteenth-century London and Paris more broadly, modernity takes on a new distinctive form. The emphasis on ideas about and visions of the future as well as the context in which they were produced is important. Most of what this chapter surveyed by Horeau, de Kérizouet, Brame and Flachat, and Le Hir was never built. Pearson’s ideas, by contrast, found their way, if adjusted and somewhat limited, in the first section that the Metropolitan Railway Company would build in London, a development covered in the following chapter. This approach is less about the outcome or the impact of a new transport technology upon the city, a position that we tend to replicate by looking for the first germane idea or the genealogy with which to construct a taxonomy of tunnels, underground travel and whatever else. Moreover, this approach allows us to take distance from the kind of modernity that stays close to the grand vision of ‘a genuine future city’ (une vraie ville future), ‘the capital of capitals’ that Napoléon III sought to build with God’s help, on his return to France after his exile. While in New York, we are told that the emperor encountered a stranger, who, unrolling a scroll with his plans, produced a design of a city for 20,000 people, with churches, fountains, squares, monuments and the Bourse: ‘No longer will one house be built at a time’, as was the practice in Europe, said the stranger, but ‘the whole will be begun on the same day [and] finished at the same hour’. Thus goes the story as recounted by writer and publisher Arsène Houssaye in his Confessions, on a day that started with Napoléon III, his uncle Jêrome and his cousin the Prince Murat tasting a morning wine from Suresnes.174 Considering the modernity of Paris and London in terms of their encounter with railways shows us instead the wealth of material produced along and against the transformation inflicted through the wide boulevards that would come to define modern Paris, a transformation that, as Pierre Pinon has succinctly put it, was one of ‘middle-class ends by authoritarian means’ (fins bourgeoises par des moyens autoritaires). Harvey makes a similar point through what he calls a third modernity, ‘one which mixed authoritarianism with an uneasy respect for private property and the market punctuated with periodic attempts to cultivate its populist base’.175 Railways were an important factor for the plans that the Second Empire drew and built, but they never became the actual means to realise the vision of wholesale reconstruction that Paris experienced during this period. The boulevard, a model with firm roots in the past, was the vehicle. The July Monarchy, notably through the plans for the extensions of the Rue de Rivoli, the Rue des Écoles and the Boulevard de Strasbourg, had prefigured the extensive network of roads both new and improved that were realised under Haussmann’s tenure of the Seine Prefecture. Financiers, landlords, merchants, shop owners and wealthy residents had gathered to support these. To a significant extent, Napoléon III was the executor of their plans. Moreover, and as

Circulation and Improvement   97 Papayanis has reminded us, by 1853, when the ‘rebuilding’ of Paris was about to start ‘there was in place an extensive archive of proposals and plans for the reform of the [French] capital’.176 The result? A future implicit in the tried and tested model of wide boulevards lined with handsome uniform facades framing monumental vistas which sidelined any future that had railways as its guiding principle. The contrast with London is both stark and revealing. For all its flaws, debates in Parliament and other circles in London facilitated the experiment with a railway conceived largely as a response to metropolitan needs, however partial the readings of these were. What became apparent in the process was a clear recognition by many, official commissions and otherwise, of the importance to favour ‘one well-considered scheme’ on a ‘great and comprehensive scale’ so that the seeming unfettered growth of London might be regulated. And so the modernities of the two cities were plural in their recording of views and voices, however unrealised these were. Different publics found recognition in what was built just as different publics became central to futures of the two cities which are yet to come. To improve was to circulate; but to circulate, on streets and beneath them, need not always mean to improve.

Notes Excerpts from this chapter were published in an earlier shorter version in ‘The futures that never were. Railway infrastructure and housing in mid-nineteenth century London and Paris’, in A. Marklund and M. Rüdger (eds.), Historicizing Infrastructure (Aalborg: Aalborg University Press, 2017), 115–136. 1 Voltaire, Oeuvres Complètes de Voltaire, Tome Vingt-Quatrième (Paris: Librairie Hachette, 1892), 181–186; see also H. Fucore, Voltaire Ses Idées sur les Embellissements de Paris (Paris, 1909), and C. Jones, Paris: Biography of a City (New York: Penguin Books, 2006), 207–208. 2 The reference to Leroy-Ladurie is by A. Picon, Les Modèles de la Métropole: Les Polytechniciens et l’aménagement de Paris, in B. Belhoste, F. Masson, and A. Picon (eds.), Le Paris des Polytechniciens. Des Ingénieurs dans la ville 1794–1994 (Paris: Délégation à l’Action Artistique de la Ville de Paris, 1994), 138–139. As Papayanis remarks, Voltaire’s essay is best read as ‘a statement of principle’ or an ‘agenda’ whose details were for others to work out, N. Papayanis, Planning Paris Before Haussmann (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004), 20. 3 Jonas Hanway, A Letter to Mr John Spranger, On His Excellent Proposal for Paving, Cleansing and Lighting the Streets of Westminster (1754), quoted in M. Ogborn, Pavements, in S. Pile and N. Thrift (eds.), City A-Z (London and New York: Routledge, 2000), 176. 4 See, for example, J. White, London in the Eighteenth Century: A Great and Monstrous Thing (London: Vintage Books, 2013). 5 One well-known reference is to the discovery of the circulation of blood by William Harvey as explained in his Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus (1628); see, for example, the discussion

98  Circulation and Improvement by R. Sennett, Flesh and Stone: The Body and the City in Western Civilization (New York and London: W.W. Norton, 1994). An earlier example of the widening and rebuilding of streets in the interest of reducing obstructions and increasing utility and appeal to merchants and visitors is the Via S. Gallo in Florence, in particular, the works dating back to the early fourteenth century. See M. Girouard, Cities and People: A Social and Architectural History (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1985), 65–66. 6 G. Davison, The City as a Natural System: Theories of Urban Society in Early Nineteenth Century Britain, in D. Fraser and A. Sutcliffe (eds.), The Pursuit of Urban History (London: Edward Arnold, 1983), 362. 7 Vallée also provided details and estimates of branch lines for an alternative route north-eastwards via St. Quentin, following for the most part the river Oise. L. L. Vallée, Exposé Général des Études Faites pour le Tracé de Chemins de Fer de Paris en Belgique et en Angleterre, et d’Angleterre en Belgique (Paris, 1837). 8 Contrast with Papayanis who asserts the proposed extension included ‘a line running underground in the center of Paris under the Hôtel de Ville’. Papayanis, Planning Paris, 204. For a description of the section entering the central and inner districts see Vallée, Exposé Général, 3; for the alternative locations of the line’s termini see ibid., 9–12. 9 Vallée, Exposé Général, 13. 10 For a brief account of the role of engineers in Paris see Belhoste, Les Polytechniciens. For a thorough discussion of the planning conceptions dating back to the late eighteenth century including the ‘Functionalists’, ‘Saint-­ Simonians’ and ‘Fourierists’ (all important precedents to Haussmann), see Papayanis, Planning Paris. 11 The treatise was published two years before his death. Claude-Nicolas Ledoux, L’Architecture Considérée sous le Rapport de l’Art, des Moeurs et de la Législation (Paris, 1804). 12 On Perreymond and railways, including a reproduction of his ‘Grand Réseau National, Commercial et Stratégique’, see K. Bowie, Débats sous la Monarchie de Juillet, in K. Bowie and S. Texier (sous la direction de), Paris et ses Chemins de Fer (Paris: Action Artistique de la Ville de Paris, 2003), 36–51. See also Papayanis, Planning Paris, 195. For a fuller treatment of the differences and similarities between Saint Simonians and Fourierists, see ibid., Chapters 3 and 4. 13 M. Saboya, Presse et Architecture au XIXe siècle. César Daly et la Revue Générale de l’Architecture et des Travaux Publics (Paris: Picard Éditeur, 1991), 121; for an illuminating discussion of Fourierists and Saint Simonians related to the revue and the connection of their work to Enlightenment ideas see ibid., 119–136. The term fraternité égalitaire is by J. Valette, ‘Utopie sociale et utopistes sociaux en France vers 1848’, 1848, les utopismes sociaux (Paris: C.D.U., S.E.D.E.S., 1981), quoted in p. 127. 14 The Corn Exchange or Halle au Blé (1790–1795) was immediately adjacent on the western side in the Quartier de la Banque de la France. Based on Petit Atlas Pittoresque des Quarante-Huit Quartiers de la ville de Paris; par A.-M. Perrot, ingénieur Paris, 1834. Nos. 15 and 16, by M. Fleury and J. Pronteau (Paris: Commission des Travaux Historiques, 1987). 15 P. Lavedan, La Question du Déplacement de Paris et du Transfert des Halles au Conseil Municipal sous la Monarchie de Juillet (Paris: Commission des Travaux Historiques, 1969), 15–28. 16 For the reproduction of the decrees of 1811 and 1842 see V. Baltard and F. Callet, Monographie des Halles Centrales de Paris, Construites sous le

Circulation and Improvement   99 Règne de Napoléon III et sous l’Administration de M. le Baron Haussmann (Paris: A. Morel, 1863), 8, 10–11. For the various projects of improvement of the market area produced during the eighteenth century see B. Lemoine, Les Halles de Paris. L’Histoire d’un Lieu, les Péripéties d’une Reconstruction, la Succession des Projets, l’Architecture d’un Monument, l’Enjeu d’une "Cité” (Paris: L’Equerre, 1980). 17 Lavedan, La Question du Déplacement. 18 F. Boudon et al., Système de l’Architecture Urbaine: Le Quartier des Halles de Paris. 2 vols. (Paris: CNRS, 1977). 19 Quoted in Lemoine, Les Halles de Paris, 72. See also Papayanis, Planning Paris, 113–118. 20 The term ‘plan général de grande circulation’ is Perreymond’s; see his discussion of Meynadier’s Paris sous le point de vue pittoresque (1843) in Revue Générale de l’Architecture et des Travaux Publics 1844, col. 184–188 and 232–235. 21 ‘C’est en parcourant Paris dans tous les sens; c’est en voyant ses sites aux différentes heures du jour; c’est en observant les oscillations des masses plébéiennes sur la voie publique; c’est en pénétrant dans le coins et le recoins de toutes les vielles rues […] qu’on peut apprécier la nécessité des grandes voies de communication à Paris et qu’on peut indiquer avec plus de sûreté les points le plus utilisés pour leur départ, leur traversés et leurs aboutissants’. H. Meynadier, Paris sous le Point de Vue Pittoresque et Monumental ou Éléments d’un Plan Général d’Ensemble de ses Travaux d’Art et d’Utilité Publique (Paris, 1843), 7. Also quoted in Bourillon, A propos de la Commission, 150–151. 22 According to Papayanis, Perreymond ‘addressed the problem of urban sprawl’ and was able to articulate ‘an urbanism more global and detailed than Chabrol’s’, the Seine Prefect until 1833. N. Papayanis, Horse-Drawn Cabs and Omnibuses in Paris. The Idea of Circulation and the Business of Public Transit (Baton Rouge and London: Louisiana State University Press, 1996), 81. 23 ‘Études sur la ville de Paris’, Revue Générale de l’Architecture et des Travaux Publics 1842 (3me année), 540–554, 570–579; 1843 (4me année), 25–37; see also Lavedan, La Question du Déplacement, 27; B. Lepetit, The Pre-industrial Urban System: France 1740–1840 (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 429–431; and Papayanis, ­Horse-Drawn Cabs, 80–86. 24 Papayanis, Horse-Drawn Cabs, 84–85; for a fuller treatment of Perreymond’s work see Papayanis, Planning Paris, 176–193. 25 See ‘Édilité Parisienne’, Revue Générale de l’Architecture et des Travaux Publics, 1844, 22–29. 26 G. Texier-Rideau, Un espace public pris dans les réseaux. La place de XIXe. siècle, S. Texier (sous la direction de) Voies Publiques. Histoires et Pratiques de l’Espace Public à Paris (Paris: Éditions du Pavillon de l’Arsenal, Éditions A J Picard, 2006), 58–59. The Bazar National was to occupy ‘today the space between the quay Henri IV and the boulevard Morland, and the rue d’Aubigne and the rue Schonberg’. Papayanis, Planning Paris, 181. 27 Texier-Rideau, Un espace public; see also Bowie, Débats, 48–49. 28 See, for example, Perreymond, Le Bilan de la France ou la Misère et le Travail (Paris, 1849). 29 See Lemoine, Les Halles de Paris, 82–83; for a detailed and generously illustrated account of the process immediately prior to the execution of Baltard’s plan, including Horeau’s ideas, see ibid., Chapter 7, 71–86; see also Lavedan, La Question du Déplacement, 37–49.

100  Circulation and Improvement 30 The dates were, in order, 4 August 1845, 17 January 1847 and June 1851; see Baltard and Callet, Monographie des Halles, 13–14; for a reproduction of the summary of the deliberation of the city council see ibid., 15–17. 31 His list consisted of twenty-one points. Hector Horeau, Examen Critique du Projet d’Agrandissement et de Construction des Halles Centrales d’Approvisionnement pour la Ville de Paris (Paris, 1845), 5–6. 32 Hector Horeau, Nouvelles Observations sur le Projet d’Agrandissement et de Construction des Halles Centrales d’Approvisionnement pour la Ville de Paris (Paris, April, 1846). See also Lemoine, Les Halles de Paris, 84. 33 See Baltard and Callet, Monographie des Halles, 12–13; see also Lemoine, Les Halles de Paris, 79, 82. 34 Papayanis, Planning Paris, 207. 35 Horeau, Examen Critique, 7; Lemoine, Les Halles de Paris, 82. 36 See Lemoine, Les Halles de Paris, 94–103. New designs were submitted to a ‘false’ competition in 1853 by Horeau and others; see ibid., 125–144 37 Lemoine, Les Halles de Paris, 164. The final complex consisted of twelve pavilions, the last one of which was finished in 1874; the entire complex was dismantled in 1969 to make way for the Forum des Halles, a complex incorporating public gardens, a shopping mall and a large interchange station between the RER and the Métro. New works resumed in July 2012. 38 Baltard’s letter was published in Revue Générale de l’Architecture et des Travaux Publics 1869, col. 206. See Saboya, Presse et Architecture, 258. 39 Fl. de Kérizouet, Projet d’Établissement d’un Chemin de Fer dans l’Intérieur de la Ville de Paris (Paris, 1845). 40 Estimate from an 1843 report by Comte Daru; see de Kérizouet, Projet d’Établissement, 2. 41 de Kérizouet, Projet d’Établissement, note A, 15. 42 de Kerizouet, Projet d’Établissement, 9, 12. 43 de Kérizouet, Projet d’Établissement, 21. 44 Fl. de Kérizouet, Rues de Fer ou Examen de la Question Suivante: Supprimer les Octrois de Paris, sans Surtaxer l’Impôt et sans Réduire les Recettes Municipales (Paris, 1847), 8. 45 de Kérizouet, Rues de Fer, translated quote in Papayanis, Planning Paris, 212. 46 de Kérizouet, Projet d’Établissement, note D, 21; for the description of the route in this specific section of the line see ibid., 5–6. 47 de Kérizouet, Projet d’Établissement, 11. 48 de Kérizouet, Projet d’Établissement, 6, 7. 49 de Kérizouet, Projet d’Établissement, 14 and Documents Supplémentaires, ix–x. 50 de Kérizouet, Rues de Fer, 1. 51 de Kérizouet, Rues de Fer, 4. 52 de Kérizouet, Rues de Fer, 5. 53 See, for example, Du transport des marchandises par voie de fer, in the first issue of the Revue Générale de l’Architecture et des Travaux Publics (1840), 333–355; in the same issue Michel Chevalier contributed an article on the James River in Richmond, Virginia, likely based on his two-­volume Histoire et Description des Voies de Communication aux États-Unis (Paris, 1840). 54 de Kérizouet, Rues de Fer, 7. 55 de Kérizouet, Rues de Fer, 8. 56 Fl. de Kérizouet, À Messieurs les Membres du Conseil Municipal et Départemental (15 July 1848). The address consists of four unnumbered pages. 57 J. Simmons, The Railway in England and Wales 1830–1914, vol. 1 The System and Its Working (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1978), 37.

Circulation and Improvement   101 58 The first brochure was the Projet d’établissement (1845); second, Rues de fer ou examen de la question (1847); third, Rues de fer ou Locomotion dans les grandes villes, in which de Kérizouet explained the way in which ‘Paris was endangered by the railway companies, and the means to conjure up this danger’; fourth, Blocus de Paris par les Compagnies financières, in particular the case of the Compagnie de l’Ouest and the ‘junction lines in the environs’; and fifth, Crise imminente de la propriété parisienne, which was focussed on issues of speculation in the ‘displacement of land values (valeurs foncières) of the Seine department’. See de Kérizouet, À Messieurs les Membres. 59 Both the remark about the project being ‘utopian’ and the possibilities of financing it were part of the communication that precedes de Kérizouet’s 1848 address, written by Ardouin, possibly one of the members of the council. 60 Papayanis, Planning Paris, 210; see also 210–215. 61 de Kérizouet, Rues de Fer, 5. See also Blackwall Yard: Development, c.1819–1991, in H. Hobhouse (ed.), Survey of London: Volumes 43 and 44, Poplar, Blackwall and Isle of Dogs (London, 1994), 565–574. B ­ ritish History Online, www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-london/vols43-4/ pp565-574, accessed 15 March 2018. 62 Quoted in Papayanis, Planning Paris, 229. 63 Revue Générale de l’Architecture et des Travaux Publics 1844, col. 29–36. 64 Commission des Embellissements de Paris: Rapport à l’Empereur Napoléon III Rédigé par le Comte Henri Siméon (1853), edited and presented by P. Cassel (Paris: Cahiers de la Rotonde 23, 2000), 172. For a discussion of the commission see Bourillon, À propos de la Commission. For a brief biographical note on Siméon see: Base de données des députés français depuis 1789 of the Assemblée Nationale, www.assemblee-nationale.fr/­ sycomore/fiche.asp?num_dept=11069, accessed 7 August 2013. 65 The extension of the boulevard would also permit establishing a square in front of Notre-Dame des Champs. See Commission des Embellissements, 178; also quoted in Papayanis, Planning Paris, 233. 66 As Jones points out, this was the theory: wooden buildings should be no higher than 48 feet, with street width at between 24 and 29 feet, whereas on streets with stone facades height was limited to 60 feet and street width set up at between 30 and 45 feet. (Jones, Paris, 209; see also A. Sutcliffe, The Autumn of Central Paris: The Defeat of Town Planning, 1850–1970 (London: Edward Arnold, 1970), 11) 67 K. Bowie, Paris, « Plaque Tournante » du Réseau Ferroviaire. Projets, Débats et Choix pour l’Implantation de la Gare du Nord, in K. Bowie (textes réunis par) La Modernité avant Haussmann. Formes de l’espace urbain à Paris 1801–1853 (Paris, 2001), 252. For a concise account of the military implications of main-line railways at the time see A. Mitchell, The Great Train Race. Railways and the Franco-German Rivalry, 1815–1914 (New York, Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2000), 31–36. 68 Commission des Embellissements, 53. 69 Commission des Embellissements, 47. 70 Commission des Embellissements, 48; see also B. Ratcliffe, Urban Space and the Siting of the Parisian Railroad Stations, 1830–1847, Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Western Society for French History, vol. 15 (1988), 224–234. 71 Papayanis, Planning Paris, 230.

102  Circulation and Improvement 72 P. Pinon, Atlas du Paris Haussmannien. La Ville en Heritage du Second Empire à Nos Jours (Paris: Parigramme, 2016), 46; see also K. Bowie (sous la direction de), Les Grandes Gares Parisiennes au XIX Siècle (Paris: ­Délégation à l’Action Artistique de la Ville, 1987). 73 Commission des Embellissements, 47. 74 Pinon, Atlas du Paris, 40–48. 75 In Bourillon’s view, the renovation sought by the Commission was conceived ‘not in function of the city-centre but of the periphery, given that the annexation was limited to the territories between the octroi and the fortifications’. See Bourillon, À propos de la Commission, 141. 76 Commission des Embellissements, 99; see also K. W. Claffin, La Villette, la viande –« Enseigne et marchandise » (1867–1914), Food & History 3, 2 (2005), 56. 77 Commission des Embellissements, 99; and, more emphatically, Siméon’s manuscript ibid., 194. 78 Commission des Embellissements, 101. 79 This is discussed in detail in the following chapter. 80 Commission des Embellissements, 102. 81 BNR, Plan à l’Appui d’un Projet de Chemin de Fer Destiné à Relier les Halles Centrales de Paris avec le Chemin de Fer de Ceinture (Paris, 1854). The plan is also reproduced in K. Bowie and S. Texier, Paris et ses Chemins de Fer (Paris: Action Artistique de la Ville de Paris, 2003), 104. 82 N. Papayanis, Planning Paris, 218; for a detailed discussion of their project including biographical notes on the engineers see ibid., 216–220; for contemporary accounts see F. Sérafon, Les Chemins de Fer Métropolitains et les Moyens de Transport en Commun à Londres, New-York, Berlin, Vienne, et Paris (Paris, 1885), 89; and P. Reverard, Des Conditions d’Exploitation du Chemin de Fer Métropolitain de Paris (Paris, 1905), 49. 83 E. Brame and E. Flachat, Chemin de Fer de Jonction des Halles Centrales avec le Chemin de Ceinture: Rapport à l’Appui du Projet (1854); quoted in N. ­Papayanis, Planning Paris, 218–219; see also P. Lavedan, Nouvelle Histoire de Paris. Histoire de l’Urbanisme à Paris (Paris: Diffusion Hachette, 1975), 476. 84 See, for example, D. Harvey, Paris, Capital of Modernity (London and New York: Routledge, 2003). 85 Sutcliffe, Autumn of Central Paris, 42. 86 See Chapter 3; see also Papayanis, Planning Paris, 220. 87 L. Le Hir, Réseau des Voies Ferrées sous Paris (Paris, 1856), 5–8, 35–45; see also Papayanis, Planning Paris, 220–223. 88 Le Hir, Réseau des Voies, 10–11. 89 Le Hir, Réseau des Voies, see Chapters 3 and 4, 17–27. 90 Two other projects were built at the Boulevard Diderot and the Avenue Daumesnil under Napoléon’s aegis, see Pinon, Atlas du Paris, 31. See also A.-L. Shapiro, Housing the Poor of Paris, 1850–1902 (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1985). 91 According to Barker and Hyde, the first proposal ‘was to run from Camden Town […] to the Thames […] Between St. Pancras and Holborn there was to be a viaduct for carriages and pedestrians, below which [there] would be a “sub-railway” for trains’. See F. Barker and R. Hyde, London. As It Might Have Been (London: Murray, 1982), 130. 92 A. Saint and M. Chrimes, ‘Rennie, George (1791–1866)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/23374, accessed 12 January 2007. 93 For the London and Greenwich railway see Th. C. Barker and M. Robbins, A History of London Transport. Passenger Travel and the Development

Circulation and Improvement   103 of the Metropolis, vol. 1 (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1963), 44–48; F. Sheppard, London 1808–1970: The Infernal Wen (London: Secker & Warburg, 1971), 123. 94 See Report of the Directors of the London Grand Junction Railway (­London, 1835), and London Grand Junction Railway Bill (London, 1836). For Rennie’s quote see the Bill, 146. 95 See, for example, B. R. Davies’, A Street Map of London 1843. 96 London Grand Junction Bill, 1836, 158. 97 London Grand Junction Bill, 1836, 173–190. 98 London Grand Junction Bill, 1836, 275–277. The estate in question was the property of a Mr M’William, who was himself an examiner of the Bill. 99 London Grand Junction Bill, 1836, 148–149. 100 H. G. Lewin, Railway Mania and its Aftermath: 1845–1852 (London: Railway Gazette, 1936); for a selection of ‘mania’ projects see Barker and Hyde, London, especially Chapter 11; see also the note by Alfred Crowquill on ‘a Grand Terminus for all Railways’ in the Illustrated London News, 18 November 1845, reproduced in A. J. Lambert, Nineteenth Century Railway History Through the Illustrated London News (Newton Abbot, ­London, and North Pomfret: David and Charles, 1984), 58. 101 M. Casson, The World’s First Railway System. Enterprise, Competition, and Regulation on the Railway Network in Victorian Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 29. 102 ‘Railways in London’, The Times, 13 October 1845, 6. 103 W. Thornbury, Old and New London, vol. 2 (London: Cassell, Petter & Galpin, 1878), 404. 104 The Times, 13 October 1845, 6. 105 See Report of the Commissioners Appointed to Investigate the Various Projects for Establishing Railway Termini Within or in the Immediate Vicinity of the Metropolis (London, 1846), 21; for the brief descriptions and reports on every scheme on the southern bank see ibid., 17–20. 106 See particularly the accompanying letter of J. R. G. Graham and the commissioners’ introduction to their report. Royal Commission 1846, 2 and 3, respectively. 107 Royal Commission 1846, 6; also quoted in K. Bradley, The Development of the London Underground, 1840–1933: The Transformation of the London Metropolis and the Role of Laissez-Faire in Urban Growth. PhD Thesis, Emory University, 2006, 33. 108 According to the report, a larger population of the southern areas of Kent and Surrey had jobs in London by comparison with the counties of the north, Middlesex, Essex and Hertfordshire. Royal Commission 1846, 4. 109 Royal Commission 1846, 5–6. 110 Royal Commission 1846, 6; see also point 5, 21. 111 Royal Commission 1846, 7, 9. See also J. Kellett, Railways and Victorian Cities (London: Routledge, 1979), 36–37. 112 Barker and Robbins, A History of London Transport, vol. 1, 45. 113 Royal Commission 1846, 8. 114 Royal Commission 1846, 9. 115 ‘Railways and Metropolitan Improvement’, Westminster Review 45 (1846); quoted in S. Ryler Hoyle, The First Battle for London: The Royal Commission on Metropolitan Termini, 1846, The London Journal 8, 2 (1982), 140–155. Interestingly Joseph Paxton also alluded to Wren during his examination before a later select committee in 1855 discussed later. 116 Royal Commission 1846, 21; also quoted in Kellett, Railways and ­Victorian Cities, 43.

104  Circulation and Improvement 117 As Ryler Hoyle suggests, this was illustrated by the royal commission itself which became ‘part of that awareness [of London’s great and unexampled change], but its limitations also demonstrate[d] how inadequate the readier tools were to the widely-acknowledged task’. Ryler Hoyle, The First Battle for London, 152; see also 145. 118 Royal Commission 1846, 13. 119 According to Heap, ‘the enacting of the Public Health Act 1848’ was one of the outcomes of Pearson’s role as chairman of the City Board of Health between 1831 and 1833. See D. Heap, The Solicitor and the Underground, Law Society’s Gazette 60 (1963), 21–22; see also Bradley, Development of the London Underground, 44–45; and M. Robbins, ‘Pearson, Charles (1793–1862)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), http://0-www.oxforddnb.com.catalogue.ulrls.lon. ac.uk:80/view/article/38367, accessed 11 June 2006. 120 Royal Commission 1846, 13; also quoted in B. Baker, The Metropolitan and Metropolitan District Railways, in J. Forrest (ed.), The Metropolitan Railways (London, 1885), 5. 121 C. Pearson, City Central Terminus. Address to the Citizens (London, 1852), 5. 122 See ‘Letter from Charles Pearson’, Appendix no. 23 of the Minutes of Evidence published separately and running to 492 pages recording the hearings of and evidence submitted to the Royal Commission, 1846, 282–284. 123 Letter from Charles Pearson, 1846. 124 Letter from Charles Pearson, 1846. 125 Both the figures and the reference to Pearson are Thornbury’s, see ­T hornbury, Old and New London, 1878, 344–351; also available via British History Online, www.british-history.ac.uk/old-new-london/vol2/ pp344-351, accessed 7 September 2017. 126 H. Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor: The Condition and Earnings of Those that Will Work, Cannot Work, and Will Not Work, vol. III (London: Griffin, 1861), 308. 127 The literature on this subject is extensive; see, for example, G. ­Stedman-Jones, Outcast London a Study in the Relationship between Classes in Victorian Society (London: Penguin Books, 1992); see also P. Hall, Cities of Tomorrow. An Intellectual History of Urban Planning and Design Since 1880, fourth edition (Malden: Wiley Blackwell, 2014), especially Chapter 1. 128 The pamphlet consists of an introductory note (signed in London, 23 October 1852) and the actual text divided into fifteen points, most of which allude to the distinction between congested streets and crammed housing. C. Pearson 1852. 129 Pearson, City Central Terminus, 3. 130 Pearson, City Central Terminus, 4. 131 Pearson, City Central Terminus, 3. The quotes hereafter are from the same page. 132 Pearson, City Central Terminus, 4. 133 Report from the Select Committee on Metropolitan Communications (London, 1855), 133. 134 Pearson, City Central Terminus, 5. 135 Railway Times, 29 June 1850, quoted in Barker and Robbins, A History of London, vol. 1, 54. 136 Herapath’s Railway and Commercial Journal, 15 November 1851; quoted in Bradley, Development of the London Underground, 48.

Circulation and Improvement   105 37 1 138 139 140 141 142 143 144

145 146 147 148 149 150 51 1 152

53 1 154

55 1 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 63 1 164 165

Pearson, City Central Terminus, 7; emphasis in the original. Pearson, City Central Terminus, 6. Pearson, City Central Terminus, 10. Pearson, City Central Terminus, 9. Pearson, City Central Terminus, 8. Pearson, City Central Terminus, 10. See Kellett, Railways and Victorian Cities, 251; see also Barker and ­Robbins, A History of London, vol. 1, 53. The historiography dealing with Pearson’s plans tends to restrict the scope of his ideas to the context of early stages of the later implementation of the Metropolitan Railway. K. Bradley has identified this tendency focussing on the issue of laissez-faire, Bradley, Development of the London ­Underground, 48. See Bradley, Development of the London Underground, 50–53. See The Times, 11 March 1858, 5. For a brief description of the North ­London see Kellett, Railways and Victorian Cities, 261–262; see also Barker and Robbins, A History of London, vol. 1, 51. Bradley, Development of the London Underground, 51. See Baker, The Metropolitan and Metropolitan District, 6. The Times, 11 March 1858, 5. See W. A. Wilkinson, Metropolitan Railway Terminal Accommodation, and Its Effect on Traffic Results, Journal of the Statistical Society 21, 2 (1858), 156–169. Select Committee 1855. 102. Wilkinson, Metropolitan Railway Terminal Accommodation, 165–166. A similar description was made in The Times in relation to other main-line railways and their termini. See the brief note ‘To the Shareholders of the Great Western Railway Company’, The Times, 11 March 1858, 5. Wilkinson, Metropolitan Railway Terminal Accommodation, 166. The remaining points were tolls in roads and bridges should be abolished, streets either enlarged or new ones be open, ‘more direct lines of communication’ be sought and established; that favour be given to enterprises of public benefit to lower the cost, and that the costs concerning improvements of various sorts ‘should be defrayed by a local rate levied on the whole Metropolitan District’. See Select Committee 1855, iv. Select Committee 1855, v–vi. Select Committee 1855, vi. Select Committee 1855, 78–95. Select Committee 1855, 90. Select Committee 1855, iii. See his examination during the Select Committee 1855, 101. Barker and Robbins, A History of London, vol. 1, 110; Herapath Railway, 17 May 1856, quoted in Bradley, Development of the London Underground, 53. The Times, 11 March 1858, 5. The Times, 11 March 1858, 5. The Times, 11 March 1858, 5. An Act of Parliament was passed in 1835 to create the new meat market in Islington. See London and Grand Junction Railway Bill, 1836, 109. In relation to the operation of livestock and meat markets in Paris, see, for example, the ‘Abstract of Evidence before the Select Committee of the House of Commons on Smithfield Market, May, 1847’ that Thomas Dunhill included in his publication Health of Towns. A Selection from Papers on Sanitary Reform (London, 1848).

106  Circulation and Improvement 166 See P. Joyce, The Rule of Freedom. Liberalism and the Modern City (London and New York: Verso, 2003), 78; see also C. Otter, Civilizing Slaughter: The Development of the British Public Abattoir, 1850–1910, Food & History 3, 2 (2005), 39. 167 Bradley, Development of the London Underground, 55–56; Kellett, Railways and Victorian Cities, 324. 168 Common Council Minutes, 4, 11 March 1852, quoted in Simmons, Railway in England and Wales, 120. 169 See C. Pearson, A Twenty Minutes’ Letter to the Citizens of London, in Favour of the Metropolitan Railway and City Station (London, 1859). 170 Pearson, A Twenty Minutes’ Letter, 10–11. 171 Bradley, Development of the London Underground, 57. 172 The Times, 11 March 1858, 5. 173 F. Bourillon, Les Villes en France au XIXe Siècle (Paris, 1992), 112–122. More recently, Soppelsa has argued that as a model Haussmann’s ‘was never total or complete, but more like a series of tendencies, processes and schema - a common idiom in which to negotiate the city’s future’. P.  ­Soppelsa, How Haussmann’s Hegemony Haunted the Early Third Republic, in H. Clayson and A. Dombrowski (eds.), Is Paris Still the Capital of the Nineteenth Century? Essays on Art and Modernity, 1850–1900 (London and New York: Routledge, 2016), 37. 174 Based on Houssaye’s account, the party consisted of King Jérôme (­B onaparte), youngest brother of Napoléon I, and Prince (Lucien) Murat, son of Joachim, King of Naples. A. Houssaye, Les Confessions. Souvenirs d’un Demi-Siècle, vol. 4 (Paris: E. Dentu, 1885), 90–94. Also quoted in L. Benevolo, The Origins of Modern Town Planning, translated by Judith Landry (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1967 [1963]), 132–134. Bobrick uses Benevolo’s reference, though the statements by Napoléon III and the stranger are mixed up in his account. B. Bobrick, Labyrinths of Iron A History of the World’s Subways (New York: Newsweek Books, 1981), 140. 175 Pinon, Atlas du Paris, 39; Harvey, Paris, 83. 176 Papayanis, Planning Paris, 127; on the interests that gathered around the street improvements encouraged by Napoléon III, see Pinon, Atlas du Paris, 38–48.

3 Lines and Circles

At every street corner this huge torrent of people and things flows off in broad canals and is replenished with tributary crowds, expands and stagnates in squares and courtyards, filters into rills which twist through the narrow alleys and passageways among the houses. As I was borne along the current I suddenly heard a high-pitched whistle above my head. I raised my eyes and saw a steam train passing over a high bridge which spanned the street. No sooner had this train gone by than I heard another whistle on the other side and turned round to see another train passing over the chimney tops of the houses along the road. And at the same moment, coming from the opposite direction, a cloud of smoke issued forth from a large opening in the ground: it was a third train, this time on the underground network, which, upon seeing the daylight as it passed through a sudden gap in the tunnel, sounded its whistle in greeting […] And all around me a cacophony -the iron bridges groaning under the weight of the long trains sounding their whistles and breathlessly whooshing out steam, above and below me, near and far, on the ground, in the air, along the water; a furious race of departures and arrivals, continuous meetings, escapes, pursuits, accompanied by the sound of cracks and squeaks and thuds and bangs; the confusion of a vast battlefield together with the clockwork order of an immense factory. —Edmondo de Amicis, Ricordi di Londra, 8th edition (Milan: Fratelli Treves, 1882, originally published in 1873), 20–211 Wonderful, indeed, was the change the Commune had wrought in Paris! No longer any trace of the tawdry Paris of the Second Empire! No longer was Paris the rendezvous of British landlords, Irish absentees, 24 American ex-slaveholders and shoddy men, Russian ex-­serfowners, and Wallachian boyards. No more corpses at the morgue, no nocturnal burglaries, scarcely any robberies; in fact, for the first time since the days of February 1848, the streets of Paris were safe, and that without any police of any kind. —K. Marx and F. Engels, The Paris Commune. Address to the International Workingmen’s Association, May 18712

Figure 3.1  London 1880.

Figure 3.2  P  aris 1887.

110  Lines and Circles With the opening of the Metropolitan Railway in January 1863 in London, the question of a coherent railway system regained prominence. Plans for rings; transversals; circuits; and inner, middle and outer circles proliferated not only in London but also in Paris. A second company, the Metropolitan District Railway, would open the first section of its line between South Kensington and Westminster in 1868. The line was considered as the southern section of the ‘inner circle’ to be formed by the two companies, the two lines meeting at Tower Hill in the City. In Paris, the war with Prussia and notably the sombre events of the Commune would turn the relationship between the national and municipal authorities into a particularly difficult affair. However, ever more comprehensive visions of urban circulation than those produced before emerged with new plans. Yet neither system nor line was built, and so omnibuses, tramways, riverboats and other vehicles – including bicycles – flourished in their services. The relationship between the further specialisation of modes of urban and regional transport, on the one hand, and the constant shifts in the patterns of residence and work, on the other hand, was an important element of how railway communication was to evolve in the two cities. Two models emerged in the process: One centrifugal and the other circumventing the centre and connecting the periphery. The models were not mutually exclusive. They were, instead, characteristic of both cities and closely related to the interaction of the different publics that took part in the process of thinking about and building railways that were metropolitan: Private companies encouraged by competition to provide the best service; transport monopolies granted to secure accessibility to all; and the actual users, those who travelled regularly between work and home, and for whom the economy of time represented a real benefit. A defining question for metropolitan railways, and for (sub)urban transport more generally, concerned the provision of sufficient, affordable and adequate housing, an essential part of which included how to ensure a good connectivity between the suburbs and between the suburbs and the city centre. Important differences between the two cities aside, railways were seen as an opportunity by the authorities as well as the private operating companies to shape urban growth, often by reference to geometric terms: Circles that were metropolitan and interconnected and lines that were also metropolitan but expansive, suburban and beyond the city limits. Transport connectivity in terms of local, suburban and long-distance traffic was essential to these visions. But how did the different contexts shape the conflicts of interest that emerged? Were the centrifugal forces of railways consequent with the ideas about directing metropolitan growth?

London In a letter to the Metropolitan Board of Works dating from 1857, Colonel H. J. Yeatman explained his view about effective railway communication

Lines and Circles  111 into, across and out of London. The plan consisted of a transversal line connecting the railways north and south of the river Thames and a central station in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Yeatman’s distinction between northern and southern sections incorporated ‘leaders’ or trunk lines that would connect the existing main lines ‘outside of the town, instead of within, as heretofore proposed’. The scheme focussed on the transport of mail and people to be handled in and through the proposed central station, which provided enough space to accommodate the General Post Office, in turn, to be moved to the new proposed site. As Yeatman explained, by clearing away the few houses between Lincoln’s-Inn Fields and Holborn, a very large site will be obtained at no great cost, and two new streets from thence to the Strand will give free access to all parts of the town. This arrangement complemented ‘the present Railway Termini [that would] serve for goods and local passengers’.3 According to the minutes of the Metropolitan Board of Works, a notice of motion from 30 January 1857 was the only response the plan received.4 Little is known about Yeatman himself, but there are at least two aspects of his proposal that are worth considering. The scheme is part of the views that were brought to the attention of the recently created Board of Works, which, as will be shown, played an important role in the debates about, and support to, railway development in London, not least through the reports of its chief engineer, Joseph Bazalgette. Second, the scheme is indicative of the different aspects that were central to connecting the London railways, key among them: The difference between inside and outside the city; the specialisation of railway traffic, particularly that between goods and passengers; the connection to street improvements, often associated to slum clearance; and the issue of whether or not to make railways converge at a central station, which to Yeatman was a function of separating goods traffic from the transport of mail and people. Therein, at the suggested central station lay the problem of the distinctions that might be drawn: What was urban and what was suburban traffic and, furthermore, was it in the interest of London to concentrate part of that traffic upon a central station or to send it around circumventing its central and inner districts? The royal commission of 1846 had banned proposals for a central railway station and defined an area limiting the extension of railways into the central districts. Circumventing that area, on the other hand, represented an option for the kind of proposals that used railways in the interest of a well-arranged metropolitan growth. Railways had consolidated their position in the transport of merchandise to and from London by the 1860s. The location and facilities of their termini represented a significant advantage in contrast with those along the river, canals and roads, which also contributed to the sustained increase

112  Lines and Circles in the goods traffic that railways handled. According to the receipts of six main-line companies (the Great Northern (GN) excluded) covering the period between 1847 and 1857, the trend was towards a steady increase in both passenger and goods traffic. The one exception was the South Western whose receipts for goods traffic decreased to £10,500 during the first six months of 1857, against £42,000 in 1847 and £67,000 in 1852.5 During this period, passengers also started to require more regular, more frequent and more rapid services within the metropolis in contrast with the long-distance journey that main-line services provided heretofore. A larger population employed in and around the City was able to afford living in the outlying suburbs and commute daily between workplace and home. Suburban houses offered a number of different advantages when compared to the residences of the inner and central districts: Rooms were larger and increased in number while the houses were generally located in more spacious settings; in all, a better fit for the aspiration of modern lives than more traditional urban dwellings.6 It was in the interest of railway companies to cater for the new suburbanites, but the actual possibilities of connecting these areas by new lines or lines that already existed differed according to London’s geography and the history of change of each village now within reach of a growing metropolis. South of the Thames, for instance, suburbs ‘tended to cluster round pre-existing villages and small towns, where a nucleus of skills and services already existed’.7 These were the villages that housed wealthy Londoners since the middle ages, often seasonally. Camberwell was with Paddington, the area with the highest number of daily return journeys to the City by stage coach in 1825, 104 and 158, respectively.8 Outlying districts developed in their own right incorporating transport connectivity into their logic of expansion and change. The kind of population that changed their residence for the suburbs reinforced that process. Characteristically, though by no means uniformly, the suburban population consisted of the middle and upper classes in search of a lifestyle that prompted the emergence of services, small-scale industries and other activities complementing the initial residential settlement. Houses differed in size and amenities according to which riverbank they were on or on which part of the built-up area they were located, but the majority tended to have gardens, stables, coach houses and servants.9 Implicit in the idea of suburbia were distinct morals and values, and explicit aspirations about healthy and respectable living. Diversity and a degree of homogeneity that took the fancy of many observers developed side by side. Suburbs were of a mixed character in districts such as Hackney, Highgate, Hampstead, Clapham and Camberwell: Even so, their mixed development of large individual houses in parklike grounds for the wealthiest, and small squares and short runs

Lines and Circles  113 of terraced town housing for others, and their mixed use for family summer stations removed from the heat and stench of the city, and for holiday resorts, as well as for some permanent residence, gave them a pleasantly varied appearance and a diversified social life rather than an unmistakably suburban stamp.10 The ‘suburban stamp’ was how contemporaries, notably architects, ­described the suburbs as monotonous, featureless, without character, indistinguishable from one another, infinitely boring to behold, wastelands of housing as settings for dreary, petty, lives without social, cultural, or intellectual interests, settings which fostered a pretentious preoccupation with outward ­appearances, a fussy attention to the trifling details of genteel living, and absurd attempts to conjure rusticity out of minute garden plots. Of course, this wasn’t true of all suburbs or even of any one suburb when inspected in detail. Despite any of the prevalent aesthetic canons, and largely as a response to their own needs, suburbanites shaped the environments where they lived, forging identities through habitation and use, within the constraints of what the combined effort of developers and builders created. One well-known example already mentioned is Camberwell, south London, the subject of H. J. Dyos’s superb study of a Victorian suburb.11 An important question the mid-nineteenth-century suburb raised was which means of transport might provide an effective service between workplace, often in the City or in the central districts, and the suburban home. Around 135,000 people were to leave the central districts between 1851 and 1881 and choose their residence out in the suburbs, in what would become a defining trend for London as a whole.12 As a contemporary account would put it: Whether the whole of the 700,000 persons daily entering and leaving the city would all become railway travellers may be doubtful; but there is no doubt about the fact that there is a growing inclination amongst persons employed in and about the city, and not compelled by the nature of their engagements to reside there, to remove further and further into the suburbs; the tendency being only kept in check by the want of sufficiently convenient and economical means of transit. This is a movement which, for moral, social, and sanitary reasons of the deepest importance ought to be encouraged […] It must be expeditious; it must be economical; and, above all things, it must be punctual.13

114  Lines and Circles Reminiscent of Pearson’s ideas, the account would add, ‘These advantages [expeditious, economical, and punctual] can only be secured by having lines striking out from the centres of business into the suburbs; each line having its own times under one undivided control’.14 The relationship between the centre and the suburbs was an important element of how railway communications were to evolve in London. Railways were expeditious, economical and punctual (by Victorian standards) in a way that omnibuses and other horse-drawn vehicles could not afford. The shift in modes of travel represented, therefore, a shift in the means that were used, namely, from horse-drawn vehicles on roads to trains hauled by steam locomotives on iron rails. Improvements to connectivity between the centre and the suburbs were a matter of both effective circulation that alleviated congestion and overcrowding, and new technologies that, gradually and unevenly, would supersede the old. Inner and Outer Circles A new select committee was appointed in 1863 to deal once more with the question of urban circulation. It consisted of eighteen members of the House of Lords, including the Duke of Buckingham and Chandos, the Earl of Shaftesbury, Earl Grey and Lord Colchester.15 It was the committee’s responsibility to evaluate and decide on the schemes that would interfere with the future Adoption of a comprehensive Plan of Metropolitan Railway Communication [while considering] what provision can be made for the securing of such a comprehensive system, with the greatest advantage to the public, and the least inconvenience to the local arrangements of the Metropolis.16 In line with the decision taken by the 1846 royal commission of delimiting an area closed off to railways, the committee created a new and larger ‘Metropolitan Railway District’ defined as the territorial boundary for railway provision within the metropolis (compare Figures 3.3 and 3.4). An interesting feature of the definition of this area was the kind of landmarks that were used: Whereas the markers of the proposed limits in 1846 consisted almost exclusively of streets and roads, the only pointers in 1863 were railway stations, extensions and junctions.17 Naturally, the commission and committee were from two different times. Nevertheless, their reports illustrated how much of the metropolitan landscape had been changed by railway building. At the same time, the two areas made explicit one of the tasks that became increasingly important in Parliament, namely, defining, but also making sense of,

Lines and Circles  115 London’s geography in relation to a transport technology – by exclusion, as the 1846 royal commission endorsed, and by specialisation, as the 1863 committee suggested. The certainty remained that railways had become the most prominent referents not only when the city limits were considered but also when the issue of metropolitan communication was discussed. Several clauses supplemented the definition of a new railway district. First was a ‘provision in favour of the labouring classes’, according to which railway companies were required to inform and observe the legal rights of the residents displaced by works related to the demolition of ‘30 or more houses’. Similar claims had been made since 1853 by Lord Shaftesbury, one of the committee members, with the aim of having railway companies provide for alternative accommodation for those displaced, through the insertion of clauses that were conditions for the approval of railway bills. This would become known as the ‘Shaftesbury Standing Order’ or the ‘Demolition Statement’.18 Second and reinforcing the decision of the 1846 commission, the idea of a ‘great Central Station’ was objected to. Third, rather than viaducts preference was given to ‘subways, covered ways, or tunnels’. Fourth and except in the case of the Great Eastern (GE), the 1863 committee found it ‘not desirable to bring the main stations of any of the principal long lines of Railway […] farther into London than is at present authorized’.19 Of particular significance was the report’s assertion that one or more Railways should be made for carrying passengers from different parts of London to the main stations of the long lines. Such new lines not to be in the hands of any one of the present great Companies, but placed under such management as to ensure equal advantages to all. 20 The committee thus recognised the difficulties inherent in the model of competition, which was not always congruent with the transport needs of the capital, providing little guidance as to precisely how to finance the proposed new arrangement. For the commissioners, an independent management was pivotal to ensuring that effective measures be implemented, a comprehensive plan put into practice and the necessary means for its execution secured. The layout of such a system was a combination of inner and outer circles: That it would also be desirable to complete an inner circuit of Railway that should abut upon, if it did not actually join, nearly all the principal Railway Termini in the Metropolis, commencing with the extension, in an easterly and southerly direction, of

116  Lines and Circles the Metropolitan Railway from Finsbury Circus, at the one end, and in a westerly and southerly direction from Paddington, at the other, and connecting the extremities of those lines by a line on the north side of the Thames; such a continuous line of Railway would afford means of distributing the passenger traffic arriving by the main lines of Railway, and also absorb a very large portion of the omnibus and cab traffic, and thus essentially relieve the crowded streets. 21 An outer circle ‘within the Metropolitan Railway district’ connecting ‘at certain points’ with the above inner circle was also recommended. 22 In their vision, the movement of goods and people into and out of London was based upon two interconnected circles. Metropolitan communication was for the most part a question of rings of railway traffic.

Figure 3.3  L  imits of the area defined by the Royal Commission on Metropolitan Railway Termini of 1846 in London. Based on: Report of the Commissioners appointed to investigate the various Projects for establishing Railway Termini within or in the immediate Vicinity of the Metropolis (London, 1846).

Lines and Circles  117

Figure 3.4  Limits of the area defined by the Select Committee on Metropolitan Railways of 1863 in London. Based on: Third Report from the Select Committee on Metropolitan Railway Communication (­London, 1863).

The adoption of terms such as inner and outer circles enabled the committee to differentiate between the kinds of connections that were needed, particularly and most urgently those connecting the railway termini. Connections outside or inside the ‘metropolitan railway district’ depended on the kind of traffic they would afford and whether it was to transport people or goods. The outer circle was to relieve part of the goods traffic by joining the main-line railways in the outskirts of the city, before they reached their London termini. It allowed a circuitous communication between the northern and southern lines bypassing the city and, therefore, alleviating their effect on the congested streets of the central and inner districts: That heavy traffic in goods, and especially in minerals, could as a general rule be most conveniently carried from the Railways lying north of the Thames, to the Railways lying south of the Thames, by

118  Lines and Circles lines not passing through the central portions of the Metropolis. That there should be a line of Railway on the eastern side of the ­Metropolis connecting the Railways north and south of the Thames. 23 The recommendation to connect the railways on the east was likely a response to the traffic of the river docks, where two new consortiums of amalgamated dock companies would be created in 1864, each operating on either riverbank. 24 The outer circle specialised thus in the transport of heavy goods designated as ‘through traffic’. Conversely, the inner circle of which the Metropolitan Railway was a part was to focus on ‘local traffic’, namely, the transport of passengers within the metropolis. The combination of the two circles, or more accurately a circle and a loop, was to reflect the operational difference between ‘through’ and ‘local’ traffic within the metropolitan railway district, in effect what would be London’s built-up area by 1870. But, however articulate and seemingly coherent, the use of these terms was subject to the interpretation of the companies that built and worked the railways, especially in the case of the Metropolitan, and as it would later be for the Metropolitan District, which provided a connection between main-line termini and between the north-western and western suburbs and the City. In the view of Joseph Bazalgette, chief engineer of the Metropolitan Board of Works, the forty-seven projects presented to the 1864– 1865 Parliamentary session concerning metropolitan improvements were ‘not so numerous’ nor with ‘so extensive and costly a character’ when compared with the session of the previous year. 25 Railway proponents remained the large majority, thirty-three in total. Four of these schemes proposed to cross the Thames with a tunnel, and one proposed to do so with a bridge. Nineteen of them were situated north of the river, while nine sought accommodation in the southern bank. Main-line extensions and applications for additional powers for existing bills were also submitted. In addition, there were fourteen improvement projects, ranging from sewerage, street and building improvements to open spaces (London Fields) and the West London Docks and Warehouses. 26 Although Bazalgette was primarily concerned with the interference of the lines proposed on the existing sewer infrastructure, his report explained every scheme in detail, their dimensions and gradients per section of each line, assessing the extent to which the works would damage, alter or bypass not only the sewers but also streets and buildings under the jurisdiction of either the Board of Works or the local authorities. This type of evaluation enabled the Board to oppose Bills such as the King’s Cross, Islington and Limehouse Railway or the proposed junctions between Edgware, Highgate and London Railway, and the Tottenham and Hampstead Junction. 27 It also supported

Lines and Circles  119 recommendations concerning the inclusion of clauses that would give schemes much-needed clarity or to confirm the sufficiency of clauses already included in the bills. Such level of assessment would become particularly important the following year, when a second mania peaked, with forty-two bills seeking powers for 243 miles of new railway lines in London alone. The ‘credit panic’ as The Economist put it, occurred in 1866, ‘when the discounting house of Overend Gurney crashed with liabilities of £10 million, incurred through dealing in unsound shares, of railway companies in particular’. This affected several businesses: Notably, Peto & Betts (from Samuel Morton Peto and Edward Ladd Betts), the second-largest railway contractors in Britain (after Brassey); the London, Chatham and Dover (LCD); the Great Eastern; and the London, Brighton and South Coast (LBSC). 28 One of the aims inherent in the opposition or support to bills by the Board was to determine their public benefit, as the 1863 committee recommended. 29 To Bazalgette, three of the proposed railway schemes from the 1864–1865 session were consistent with the committee’s recommendation by connecting four of the northern lines (Metropolitan, North London, Great Eastern and Blackwall) with two of the south (LBSC and South Eastern (SE)), crossing the Thames via tunnels: In turn, the East London and Thames Tunnel Railway; the Metropolitan and South London; and the Blackwall, Greenwich and Woolwich Railway. 30 The Metropolitan was in these proposals part of the railways to be connected and, simultaneously, a critical part of the connection. The Metropolitan was the northern part of an inner circle, itself devised in response to local passenger traffic. The first section of the Metropolitan had opened on 10 January 1863 between Bishop’s Road, Paddington and its City terminus at Farringdon Street. This was the amended version of the scheme as the Parliamentary Act of 1854 had approved it. 31 Between 1864 and 1874, extensions were granted eastwards, first from Farringdon to Moorgate Street (via Aldersgate Street, completed in 1865) and subsequently to Bishopsgate (completed in 1875), westwards as far as High Street Kensington via Queen’s Road and Notting Hill Gate (completed in 1868) and north-westwards via the separate St. John’s Wood line (open to passengers in 1868). 32 The connection between the north-western and western suburbs and the City represented a clear benefit for a population consisting primarily of businessmen who travelled between Paddington and Bank, a route covered by sixty omnibuses and coaches by the mid-1830s. 33 As William Malins, chairman of the Metropolitan, said, the time saved by trains running beneath the congested London streets was well received and supported by ‘gentlemen engaged in commercial and business avocations’. 34 It was for this particular segment of the population that the journey between home and work might represent a daily pattern.

120  Lines and Circles Trains of several main-line companies used the line, which increased rather than eased congestion. Separate agreements between the Metropolitan and the companies included tolls charged to trains running on Metropolitan tracks; tolls the Metropolitan paid to other companies for using sections of their tracks; or, indeed, reciprocal agreements.35 One example was the convention from 2 September 1867 that gave the Midland Railway rights to run their trains and machines, and use their own staff on the new ‘widened lines’ between King’s Cross and Moorgate. The Midland also had a separate platform for their passengers and storage premises at Moorgate Station. In return, the Metropolitan received a percentage of the Midland revenues for the operation of this section of the line.36 The GN and the LCD had ‘their own station staff and separate booking offices’ at Moorgate too, an arrangement that remained in place until 1909.37 Drawing a clear distinction between main-line suburban services and services focussed on local traffic was difficult from the outset. Broadgauge tracks were laid for Great Western (GW) trains, also on the Edgware Road extension (Hammersmith and City Junction Railway), which the Metropolitan operated jointly with the GW. Similarly, the rolling stock of the first months of Metropolitan services was the GW’s, replaced by GN trains following a dispute starting in August 1863. 38 Although all these arrangements helped Metropolitan services, the regular and intensive use of their tracks by main-line railways (the GW, the Midland, the GN and the LCD) constituted a challenge for a vision of railway development that was based on outer and inner circles, each specialising in either local or through traffic. Things would change little after the opening in December 1868 of the first part of the southern section of the inner circle, between South Kensington and Westminster, built and operated by a separate company, the Metropolitan District Railway. The opening was reported as part of the works on the ‘Metropolitan Inner Circle’ or the ‘Metropolitan underground system’, terms that seemed ‘a little perplexing to the uninitiated’. 39 Agreements like those between the Metropolitan and the main-line railways were planned at Victoria Station which, according to a report in The Builder was ‘exceptional in its arrangement’, in that ‘a mezzanine floor [was] introduced for the booking-office, which is on a level, about half-height between the platforms of the Brighton and Chatham companies and the street, for the more easy access of passengers from these lines’.40 Similarly, in one of the shareholders’ annual meetings, the District’s chairman, James Staats Forbes, would mention that the company ‘had made an agreement with the London and North Western Railway whereby the latter would run its trains from its own lines, north of Euston, on to the District’s’ via the West London to Earl’s Court, using ‘the District’s tracks to run into Mansion House, thus giving it access to the City’.41 The London and North Western (LNW) paid for the agreement along with the ‘tolls for the two trains an hour using the facility’.

Lines and Circles  121 The District’s financial situation was difficult from the outset bearing some resemblance to how the financing of the Metropolitan was secured. The line crossed areas where the price of land was generally higher, in turn, exacerbated by the compensation costs and the costs relating to street improvements, both introduced by Parliament as clauses into their Bill: ‘The Metropolitan District Railway was involved in street widening and slum clearance at Tothill Street, and a great burden of compensation payments and accommodation works’ which the company incurred on the Grosvenor estate.42 By the time of the opening of the first section of the line, locomotives and rolling stock were the property of the Metropolitan, giving further evidence of the difficulties of their operation.43 Regardless of its seemingly apparent benefits for passenger traffic the District experienced first-hand the burden of building costs in central London. As The Times would report at this point, Speaking in the interests of London travellers only, it is impossible to look at a map without seeing that the most popular and useful subterranean line would be one extending from Paddington or Hyde Park-corner to the Mansion-house, with a branch from Oxford-­ circus to Charing-cross. If, however, the engineering and financial difficulties in the way of such a railway are ever to be overcome, it will hardly be until we have arrived at cheaper methods of construction and more moderate ideas about compensation than those which prevail at present.44 The District extension from Westminster to Mansion House opened in 1871, where the company’s terminal would remain for over thirteen years. Competition, ongoing financial difficulties and coordination between the Metropolitan and the Metropolitan District, and the metropolitan and City authorities were among the factors contributing to the time that completing the inner circle took in the end. The articulate arrangement of railway provision based upon inner and outer circles wasn’t congruent with the reality of railway building in London, especially when little or no clues were given as to how to finance such a vision. What is more, the intensive use of the two underground lines by main-line companies made them an addition to the existing model of railway operation where, despite some regulation at the national level,45 laissez-faire and competition dictated the directions into which metropolitan communications were to evolve. A Circle of Two Lines and Three Companies Conflicts of interest developed between the Metropolitan and the Metropolitan District from the outset, a situation that historians have

122  Lines and Circles characterised largely as a personal rivalry between the chairmen of the two companies.46 While the Watkin-Forbes affair was certainly part of the issue, my interest is to read whatever conflict there was as one between the planning of an inner circle for local metropolitan traffic and the operation by two private companies of the two if not three lines which made up that circle. One essential question is, therefore, whether completing the inner circle, as recommended by the 1863 committee, might be reconciled with the interest of the Metropolitan and the District in consolidating their suburban traffic. Thus we find the contrast between the centrifugal force of lines that reached out into the country and the circumventing journey not only bordering the centre but also connecting the railway termini along the periphery. A ‘chess-game’ was to unfold, with Parliament as the arbitrator. The Metropolitan’s Tower Hill extension ‘passing through Bishopsgate Street and with a curve under the Great Eastern Railway at Fenchurch Street’ had been approved in 1864. A decade later, the Metropolitan had applied ‘no less than seven times, either to abandon [it] or to extend’ either their powers or the schedules that had been set initially.47 Following the Metropolitan’s submission to forsake the extension, in 1870, Parliament issued an extension of time which included clauses limiting any further petitions by the company either for abandoning the existing plans or for obstructing new ones. The priority, stated Parliament, was the completion of the inner circle.48 In a separate clause, also from 1870 and applying to both the Metropolitan and the District, Parliament made clear that in the event of a third company seeking powers for the ‘formation of a Railway between [the Metropolitan’s station at] Aldgate and the station of the Metropolitan District railway in Broad Street’, efforts should be made to approve their request and, more emphatically, that under no circumstances should the two companies oppose either the application for or the consent to give powers to the third company. Subsequently, the Metropolitan and the District were bound to ‘afford all due facilities for the working of traffic thereon, and due use of the Aldgate station for the purpose of such traffic so that there may be a continuous through communication and service of trains’ by the three companies.49 However limited in its scope, the move instigated by Parliament shows a degree of effectiveness in legislation that supported, or at any rate gave precedence to, the public benefit. The Act of the Metropolitan District Company (July 1864) authorised the completion of an ‘Inner Circle of Railways north of the Thames’. It comprised the Metropolitan’s extension to Tower Hill, which was, effectively, the northern section of that inner circle. But the Metropolitan’s priorities lay somewhere else, as the St. John’s Wood extension, the Hammersmith and City, and the little or no progress on the City end of the line after ten years demonstrated. Things were different along the

Lines and Circles  123 southern section of the inner circle, although with a similar result: The District made no progress extending their line to Tower Hill, which, as Forbes would explain, was largely due to mounting costs and the financial difficulties that his company experienced. 50 By contrast extensions were complete to Richmond in 1869. Because of conflict, disagreement or mere indifference, a third company was created to solve the impasse. The company was called the Metropolitan Inner Circle Completion Railway (MICCR). It was created through an Act of Parliament in 1874 ‘to make and maintain certain Railways […] and to make a new street from King William Street to Fenchurch Street and to widen and improve these’. 51 The company was endowed with the standard powers for the compulsory purchase of land, in their case, and meaningfully, including street improvements. There were two stations planned: One to accommodate ‘the interchange of traffic between the Railways of the Company and the Cannon Street Station of the South Eastern Railway Company’ and Mansion House which was the District’s obligation to improve as stipulated in their Act of 1875. 52 Street improvements and further connectivity with main-line railways were, in this sense, important characteristics of the MICCR, not only underlining but also departing from the pattern that the Metropolitan and the District had adopted. The completion of the inner circle was to respond to the overcrowded state of the area around Fenchurch Street and Gracechurch Street and Root Lane and Eastcheap, 53 facilitating at the same time circulation between the City and the south bank through the South Eastern Railway. The MICCR would be responsible for the construction, operation and maintenance of the ‘Link Line’, as it was referred to in the various Acts and Bills. Tolls would be paid per train and applied to all companies. In case of subscribing to the agreement, the District and the Metropolitan were to pay the MICCR 10 per cent of the receipts for the traffic operating along the circle. MICCR trains bore no charges, but the company was obliged to hand over ‘[a]ll monies received or payable at stations’ and give a percentage to the District in case of profit.54 The arrangement was aimed at facilitating the service of a metropolitan inner circle in a context where its completion was dependent upon the operation and willingness of two competing companies. Opposition to completing the circle by the Metropolitan was merely speculative, said Mr Pope, one of the MICCR representatives; their aim was to undermine the link line in order to be able to acquire the District with a better deal. ‘But in the interest of the public’, Pope affirmed, Parliament, since 1863, has by every means insisted that every encouragement should be given to the completion of this Inner Circle

124  Lines and Circles […] by enabling [the MICCR] to raise the capital and subscribe to the line, and not to permit the Metropolitan Company to shut us out of the market and to deal with us as they have hitherto dealt with their extensions in the same direction. 55 After withdrawing their initial opposition, the Metropolitan Board of Works and the Commissioners of Sewers of the City of London agreed to capitalise the company given the mixed character of the enterprise which included street improvements. The Metropolitan’s response was to lodge its own plan: ‘a game of chess’ in the view of Forbes and others. 56 A new MICCR Bill was presented in 1876 seeking to extend the period for the execution of the works, which was initially set at two years. The extension of time was granted up to ‘Two years from the 7th day of August 1877’. 57 However, this time the tables (and chessboard) were changed with the Board of Works; the Commissioners of Sewers; and the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Commons of the City of London petitioning against the bill.58 The Board claimed against the extension of time, the acquisition of land near Queen Victoria Street (a project executed by the Board itself) and the Metropolitan’s reluctance to participate in the undertaking.59 According to the response of the MICCR chairman the Board’s interpretation of the bill was misleading.60 But the petition against it remained unchanged. The Commissioners of Sewers followed a more standard route showing their concern about ‘the protection of [their] rights, interests, and privileges’, specifically in the sections of the line that entered the City’s jurisdiction.61 The Major and Aldermen made a similar statement, focussing on the effects upon the several properties in nine parishes of the City of London, notably the Church of St. Swithin, London Stone, which would be affected by the works.62 In the end opposition won, and so the idea of completing the inner circle through a third company was shelved. Metropolitan railway traffic continued to be the business of competing companies. The Metropolitan and the District, in turn, contributed to the pattern that main-line railways had created since the 1830s. Extensions towards the suburbs and outlying districts mattered to the two companies in a way that consolidating a system for local traffic did not. The vast array of railways surrounding and piercing London by the third quarter of the nineteenth century continued to grow in extension and complexity. What was metropolitan of that model became a relevant question for visitors who came to the city to learn and take back experiences that might illuminate the reality of their own cities, for good or for worse. The French were among the most assiduous observers, providing not only a useful description of

Lines and Circles  125 what might be built and what should be avoided in Paris but also a synthesis of railway developments in London that was to prove valuable and illuminating. The French Observers Observing the experience of London became a relatively common exercise for French parties, official and otherwise. Traffic went, of course, both ways, depending on the motivations behind the missions, whether these concerned metropolitan railways, underground tunnelling, the sewers, water supply or the world exhibitions to which Paris played host four times before 1900. Berlin, New York and Vienna were also destinations of French missions. What is significant of their commentary and the reports they produced is their being a reflection of how they made sense of metropolitan railways in London, in light of not only the similarities but also the important differences when compared to the Paris railways. If the process of completing the inner circle had proven difficult, making sense of the entire railway network in London was no lesser challenge. Some of the accounts presented London as a model. F. Sérafon, for example, thought about the ‘hypothesis of the London network applied to Paris’.63 Sérafon was a civil engineer and principal inspector of the Victor-Emmanuel railway, the line through the Piedmont that crossed the Alps at Mont Cenis, incidentally, one of the feats of engineering of its time central to which was the use of compressed air.64 What was typical of Sérafon’s account and would become characteristic of subsequent French reports was the treatment of London railways as a more or less coherent whole where main-line services were largely the same as those of the Metropolitan and the District. As Bazalgette’s reports had suggested, the Metropolitan – and later the District – were grouped into clusters that were defined in the interest of making sense of metropolitan railway traffic. Sérafon used a similar strategy by designating central and circular groups and describing the railways in terms of rings and circles: The distance between the eastern and western limits of London was covered more effectively by ‘Northern circular lines’ (lignes circulaires du Nord) which took about half the time that it took omnibuses and riverboats.65 The ‘circular group’ comprised three different sections serving both riverbanks though primarily connected to the services of the LNW Railway: (1) North London, from Poplar (east) to Chalk Farm (north-west); (2) Hampstead Junction (also known as the London and North West, Hampstead and City junction railway), from Camden Town to Willesden Junction; and (3) the West London Extension Railway, from Willesden Junction to Clapham junction, where the LNW joined the main-lines south of the

126  Lines and Circles river, LBSC, London and South Western (LSW) and LCD. The East London line (using Brunel’s Thames tunnel at Wapping) was also part of this group.66 The central group consisted of the Metropolitan, the District and their extensions; the ‘urban lines’ of the Great Northern and Midland running trains via Metropolitan tracks from King’s Cross; and the various sections operated by different main-line companies, namely, (1) Charing Cross to Cannon Street and London Bridge (operated by the LSW), (2) Fenchurch Street to Blackwall (by the North London), (3) Bishopsgate to Stratford Junction (North London), (4) Dalston to Broad Street (North London), (5) Euston Square to Willesden Junction (LNW), (6) Paddington to West London (GW) and the two branch lines of the Metropolitan from Baker Street to Swiss Cottage and the Kensington and West Brompton junction. As Sérafon noted, this ‘network of Metropolitan and Suburban Railways’ was largely the result of ‘competition [between] companies that [had] their termini (tête de ligne) in London’, notably between the GW and the LNW in the north, and the SE and the LCD south of the Thames. 67 If partly resembling the interconnected system of outer and inner circles that the 1863 committee had recommended, there was a precision to Sérafon’s term, Metropolitan and Suburban Railways, founded on the need to persuade his readers of ‘all the advantages’ that such a model might represent in the French capital. 68 Other observers would use their own terms defining different groups and boundaries. An official mission in 1876 identified a different ensemble of London railways which was partly a reflection of the changes since 1872 when Sérafon first reported. By the mid-1870s, nine main-line railway companies connected London with the country: The GE, the GN, the Midland, the LNW, the GW, the LSW, the LBSC, the LCD and the SE, plus a local service between Fenchurch Street and Plaistow by the London, Tilbury and Southend (LTS).69 There were fourteen main-line railway termini: Six within the City (Broad Street, Liverpool Street, Fenchurch Street, Cannon Street, Ludgate Hill, and Holborn Viaduct), six north of the Thames (Paddington, Euston, St. Pancras, King’s Cross, Charing Cross and Victoria) and two on the southern bank (Waterloo and London Bridge).70 Two important features mentioned in the mission’s report provided an interesting contrast with the situation in Paris, especially concerning the ‘working arrangements’ and ‘running powers’ negotiated between railway companies. In London, several companies might run their trains to/from one terminus. Victoria Station, for example, handled the traffic of six different companies (GN, Midland, LNW, GW, LCD and LBSC). Conversely, trains of one company might depart from or arrive at several

Lines and Circles  127 stations: The GN, for instance, operated trains from King’s Cross, Broad Street, Moorgate Street, Victoria and Ludgate Hill.71 In Paris, with the exception of the Gare St. Lazare, one company generally operated its own terminal. The report also divided the railways of London into four different groups. The first comprised the North London, which ran trains to (1) Richmond, in the west, over LNW tracks (between the junctions at Hampstead and Willesden) and over LSW tracks (via Acton Junction), and (2) eastwards, over LTS tracks (between Bromley junction and Plaistow) and over GE tracks (between Victoria Park Junction and Stratford Bridge). Traffic figures of the North London showed that goods traffic remained more significant than that of passengers. As Huet, chair of the mission, affirmed, the company finances were better than those of the Metropolitan and District, partly because the North London was part of the LNW, which gave it a connection to the river docks. The second group consisted of the East London only, between New Cross and the GE terminus at Bishopsgate (later Liverpool Street), operated by the LBSC. The third group included the Metropolitan and St. John’s Wood, operated by the Metropolitan, while the fourth was the Hammersmith and City, a company with capital and operations shared by the Metropolitan and the GW railway.72 Four other lines were listed as ‘occupying an important place in the network of metropolitan railways’, namely, the West London, joining the GW and LNW (the two companies operating the line) at Earl’s Court and running through the District’s tracks up to Mansion House; the West London Extension between the former line and Clapham Junction, joining in this way four different companies, the GW and LNW coming from the north and the LSW and LBSC from the south (a branch to Longhedge Junction connected the LCD); the metropolitan extension of the LCD, between Victoria (the company’s terminus) and Moorgate Street; and the South London, from the LBSC, joining Victoria and London Bridge.73 This was, and to this day remains, a dense and convoluted construct. Passenger traffic, which was the main function of the Metropolitan and the District lines, was embedded in a vast network of urban and suburban services for goods as well as people. To reach their destinations, passengers were required to negotiate a multiplicity of trains, stations and platforms belonging to several companies. Difficulties emerged out of the necessity to understand the operation of these services when travelling in and through the city, a task that was particularly challenging at junctions. Railway junctions were specific points on the outskirts of London where connections between lines developed into complicated arrangements which were largely due to topographical conditions and the levels

128  Lines and Circles that each line had adopted independently. New Cross, for example, constituted An already complex system of junctions […] expanded into the semblance of a gigantic spider web; which would no doubt be very skilfully arranged; but it is awkwardly suggestive of some of those clever tricks which are apt to end in broken heads or dislocated vertebrae.74 The convoluted character of these junctions was replicated not only in New Cross, the southeast junction (Figure 3.9), but also in the three other main-line junctions of Clapham (south-west), Willesden (northwest) and Stratford (north-east), and later at the junction between the Metropolitan, District and West London railways (Brompton, West Brompton), ‘a very curious work’, in Sérafon’s words.75 Junctions were important for ‘the working of urban and suburban lines’ since the connection between viaducts (lignes au-dessus du sol) and underground sections (lignes au-dessous) might occur here, connecting up to four or five different railways.76 If at all possible, the transfer from one line to the other was cumbersome. Complicated manoeuvres were needed for handling luggage, which normally caused delays. To French eyes this was ‘one of the most serious problems of the operation of London railways’.77 In principle, junctions permitted greater flexibility to passengers. This might have been an important benefit, except that the coordination of transferring times, lengths of connection and amounts of passengers remained a major problem. At intermediate stations, Sérafon affirmed, ‘carriages were insufficient for the number of passengers [in possession of] issued tickets’, an anticipation of the all too familiar reporting on overcrowded trains. In the case of the Metropolitan, for example, the decision of which passengers could board a train was often taken according to the length of the journey (longer ones had priority) and, if further needed, by considering their ticket number.78 The company’s St. John’s Wood extension, on the other hand, required passengers to change trains at Baker Street, as it still does today, reinforcing the Metropolitan’s character as a main-line railway rather than a line focussed on local traffic.79 The entangled character of railway provision across London represented an important challenge for passengers, companies transporting goods and observers who wished to learn from London in order to take some lessons home. As important was the transformation of the areas where not only the junctions but also the lines were built, particularly with regard to the connections between railway building and the transformation of the country into areas serving – and soon becoming part of – the metropolis. The anxieties around finding one’s way at Willesden or Clapham resonated with the anxieties behind another dimension of the same change: Witnessing how iron rails consumed the greenery of the rural past.

Lines and Circles  129 The Consumption of the Metropolitan Landscape Westbourne Green is now wholly obliterated by railways, the great Paddington station, properly in Westbourne, and the numberless lines running into it or from it, to the city and to Addison Road, meeting on the very spot which was so long the village common. At the beginning of the present century, and long after, it was remarkable for its rural appearance. Westbourne Farm was the country residence of Mrs. Siddons, and Westbourne Place was a villa built for a city merchant by Isaac Ware, of whom a contemporary declares that though originally only a sweep, he was a born architect. Be this as it may, both villa and farm have long been destroyed, and Westbourne Green is consumpta per ferrum, razed literally with the level ground, and covered with hundreds of lines of iron railway. Westbourne Green Lane survives, but is now known as Queen’s Road, Bayswater. A few trees and a nursery garden or two remain, but all the rest is railway station, shops, and taverns. (W. J. Loftie, History of London (1884), 241–242) The geography of Loftie’s history is peripatetic. It resembles a journey illustrated by maps and personal descriptions of the places that are captured in his narrative. His writing suggests the pace of footsteps; their imprint on the places through which he walked his readers being consequent with a life organised around the village common. Railway terminal, sidings and tracks had produced a new Westbourne: The Great Western terminal replaced past greens and commons, and worse, to some, the memories of evening summer parties at Mrs Siddons, famous tragedienne, some of which counted the Prince Regent and other royals among the guests.80 By the 1880s the obliteration of Westbourne Green had been the result of railway building but also of the expansion of the metropolis. Loftie’s account of this transformation blamed railways for the changes inflicted upon the rural landscape, in his view, for the worse. But consumption and obliteration were also the expression of another aspect of London’s continuous growth, one with a longer history than railways, playful with and utilitarian of its own conspicuousness, namely, shopping. Westbourne Grove, a neighbouring street in Bayswater, underwent a different yet related transformation after the opening in 1864 of Whiteley’s, the shop that was to become London’s first department store: The Centre of social gravitation in Bayswater is undoubtedly the few hundred yards of roadway, familiarly known as ‘The Grove’ […]

130  Lines and Circles between 10 am and 6 pm […] every class, every age […] and almost every nationality contribute to the tide of life. Long-standing residents of Westbourne, visitors and a ‘large contingent of former colonial administrators’ alike thus joined The Grove’s ebb and flow in the interest of shopping, if not simply to be exposed to novelty: It is no doubt an exceedingly delightful and entertaining way of passing the afternoon and seeing the world and one’s acquaintances, this gathering in clusters around displays of laces, feathers, jewelry, and what not, thrown before one’s very feet as it were, and lavishly tempting the eye on every side […] London offers no more seductive allurements for this amusement than to be found in Westbourne Grove.81 There might have been consumption of the Green by iron rails, to use Loftie’s words, but there was also consumption staged to entice customers in the Grove. Railways, and means of transport for that matter, were but one factor in the transformation that Westbourne and London, more generally, experienced at the time. The opening of new lines and the operation of new transport routes between particular districts were only a part of the broader trend of metropolitan growth and change. At the same time, the Great Western terminal at Paddington was a significant instigator that prompted, but also followed, patterns of change reflecting shifts in population, their means and their needs, not only in Westbourne but also across the metropolis (see Figures 3.6a and 3.6b). Through the Metropolitan and District, main-line companies were able to simplify the transport of their goods to areas around Smithfield market and further into the City as well as create routes that might be attractive to suburban passengers, notably those wishing to visit Whiteley’s. The Metropolitan, for example, allowed the Great Western to transport in ‘meat, vegetables, and other provisions from West Somerset, Devon, and Cornwall’ as well as cultivate their ‘suburban traffic, their line running through a salubrious and beautiful district immediately beyond the outskirts of London’. 82 Railway transport involved numbers and convenience, often concerning time and dependent upon which class people travelled, that other means of transport could not afford. For passengers, railways connected what were often two distinct poles of urban life: At one end of the line, the city terminus, with its congested, polluted, overcrowded streets and its wretched commercial and residential districts, and on the other end, the salubrious suburb where more space, an idyllic landscape and

Lines and Circles  131 consumption havens were becoming as characteristic of the life of the metropolis. To a degree, main-line companies as well as the Metropolitan and the District were able to exploit the connection between the services they provided and suburban growth. This, however, might suggest a sense of direction or even coordination that did not exist. The relationship between railway development and the emergence; expansion; or, indeed, torpor of the suburbs was subject to conditions that were as localised as they were uncertain. Central to this were the cycles of boom and bust in the building trade across London and since at least the 1850s not only in areas like Stockwell, Kennington Common and Vauxhall but also in Bloomsbury, Bayswater and East Dulwich.83 In some cases, ‘new railway services influenced the lease and sale of land for building’, as was the case in the extensions of the District first to Ealing (opened in 1879) and then to Hounslow (opened in 1883).84 Of course, companies needed more than promotion to attract either customers or investors for developing the areas that were adjacent or connected to the proposed new sections of their lines. ‘Between 1878 and 1881 the District Railway, either directly or indirectly, promoted four Bills for extensions’, all of which were clearly intended for suburban traffic: A locally-backed and abortive project of 1866 for a branch line from the Great Western at Acton to Hounslow was revived in 1878, partly with the same promoters but with the support of the District, which was to work the line. After its initial rejection, the Bill was passed in 1880, when ‘building on the Beaconsfield estate adjacent to the proposed South Ealing station had begun’. Two related bills put forward by the District in 1880 and 1881 were unsuccessful.85 The ‘half-finished railway villages’ that James Thorne identified within a radius of 20 miles around London, in places like Barnet, Buckhurst Hill and Reigate, might have attracted railways, building speculators and building societies, to develop sites next to stations.86 Yet commuting patterns, perhaps the most determinant factor for ascertaining whether railway lines and housing building went hand in hand, shifted rapidly. Moreover, figures of commuters between the central and inner districts and the suburbs at this time are not part of the evidence we have. The diverse composition of the suburban population, different residents in different sections of a good number of estates, resists generalisation about who was travelling where and why. Any assumption about connectivity between railway developments and suburban housing during this period is only tentative.87

132  Lines and Circles In the 1860s for example, plans in the Askew property, between Kew Bridge and Turnham Green, included residences for commuters to the City who would use the planned extension of the Metropolitan to Hammersmith: The Metropolitan, having successfully promoted the Hammersmith and City line across what were then fields west of Paddington and north of Kensington, claimed that between Hammersmith and Kew the entire district would ‘be crowded with a population who would require to go to the City and return’.88 Likewise, ‘local landowners were among the promoters of an unsuccessful Bill [in 1874] for a line to link the centre of Acton with the western terminus of the District Railway at Hammersmith’.89 In the Hounslow and Metropolitan Railway Bill of 1880, representatives of the District considered building activity at Ealing Common to be evidence of the significance of the line they proposed in 1877 for the development of the suburb, between Turnham Green (connecting with the LSW) and Ealing (connecting to the GW).90 What was certain is that expansion across the suburbs and into outlying districts – if not open country – was the policy that seemed to match the interest of both the Metropolitan and the District. One argument was that railway lines should precede housing development encouraging traffic rather than being responsive to existing and consolidated routes. The proposed extension of the District, which was to reach Uxbridge, the very north-western tip of London, was a case in point. To Forbes, the District’s chairman, ‘the theory of all these extensions westward is that they create new traffic … [which] serves, or will in time serve, to compensate a company for the enormous cost of the main line’.91 Extensions outwards helped the District alleviate the elevated costs of building in central London, at least in principle. At the same time, early and, often, premature plans for extension might also help avoid the future costs of areas turned into attractive land not only by developers but also by competing railway lines. Watkin had similar ideas concerning the role that railway extensions should play in encouraging new traffic, particularly that of workers: Let us find the wealth of London ready to grapple with this great evil of the crowding out of the working man. Let us see the capital raised at 5 per cent, to build working men’s houses for 100,000 in any healthy place down our line and we shall be ready to recommend you to contract to carry the people at times to suit [them] and

Lines and Circles  133 at prices not greater than the difference in rent and taxes between unhealthy London and the healthy open fields beyond.92 This was part of his address to the shareholders of the South Eastern, one of the five railway companies Watkin chaired. In his statement are rehearsed again the ideas not only of connecting the polluted centre to the healthy country but also of using railways as an instrument of social reform – in other words, increasing profits by extending the company operations into the housing market – both issues that Pearson had recognised and advocated. The Metropolitan became ‘the only railway company exempted from the statutory ban upon residential estate ownership’, something that was duly exploited in the development of Metro-Land later in the twentieth century.93 This was accomplished by the gradual introduction of clauses to the company Acts, first in 1862, then in 1868, and consolidated in full through section 19 of the Act from 21 July 1873, which ‘allowed the Metropolitan to retain any superfluous lands whenever acquired, including those acquired in the future’.94 Developments concerning its land were not one of the Metropolitan’s priorities at this stage, and so the emphasis lay on extensions to suburbs, some real, others imagined, a few in the making. The extension policy of the Metropolitan and the District was met with mixed reactions. ‘When the [District’s] Ealing branch was sanctioned in 1877 the Railway Times conceded the success of the District extension across the orchards and market gardens of Fulham and Hammersmith’. By the late 1870s, traffic in the District’s section of the Inner Circle had not increased as expected. By contrast, returns from the branch lines and extensions grew significantly during the 1880s and 1890s, while the central section remained nearly stagnant. By 1900, the Railway Times would again affirm that ‘the extension policy – always excepting the Inner Circle - is, without doubt, the best thing the District has done’.95 Other reactions voiced criticism. A clergyman writing to the Herapath Railway Journal on 15 February 1890, ‘pleaded that the directors concentrate their attention and resources on the original purpose of the [metropolitan] railway – to carry passengers within the metropolis itself’ and not in areas where ‘ducks and drakes and donkeys’ were the only living beings to be seen.96 Expansion was to stabilise and the efforts finally to complete the inner circle resumed. In 1878, the Metropolitan and the District approached John Hawkshaw, who was responsible for several high-profile projects across Britain and overseas, including the Severn railway tunnel, which he would take charge of a year later in 1879.97 Hawkshaw’s idea was, essentially, to join the completion of the inner circle to street

134  Lines and Circles improvements, namely, ‘the widening of Eastcheap and Great Tower Street, and the construction of a new street between Mark Lane and Trinity Square’, projects that were under the jurisdiction of the Metropolitan Board of Works and the City, respectively.98 Hawkshaw and John Wolfe Barry were appointed the same year to produce the plans for and execute the works. Their plan included an eastern extension to join the East London railway, which would give both the District and the Metropolitan, as well as the main-line railways on both riverbanks, access to the more easterly and south-easterly districts. The extension ran under Whitechapel Road and included a terminus for the exclusive use of the District adjoining the East London’s Whitechapel Station. The street improvements, inner circle and the Whitechapel extension were complete in October 1884. The Board of Works and the City Commissioners of Sewers together contributed £800,000 to cover the costs of the street improvements (total of £929,412). The Metropolitan and the District, also responsible for the purchase of property and the execution of all works, met the rest.99 As Barry asserted, ‘The completion of the ring of railway has been rather the joining together of two parallel lines than the completion of a circle’. Moreover, the arrangement of trains per hour consisted of six different types of services, reflecting the degree to which the circle was divided into lines, rings, loops and circuits (see Figure 3.10): 1. Eight Inner Circle trains going ‘completely round the circle’; 2. Six District trains running ‘from Ealing, Richmond and Fulham, by way of Earl’s Court, South Kensington, and Mansion House to Whitechapel or (via the Thames Tunnel) to New Cross’; 3. Two Middle Circle trains from Aldgate by King’s Cross, Bishop’s Road, Paddington, via the Hammersmith Branch to Latimer Road onto the West London railway to Earl’s Court, South Kensington and Mansion House; 4. Two Outer Circle trains from the LNW terminal at Broad Street, Bishopsgate, via the North London railway through Dalston, Camden Town, Willesden and onto the West London to Mansion House; 5. Two Metropolitan trains from Aldgate to New Cross via the Whitechapel extension; and 6. Eleven Metropolitan trains between Moorgate and Edgware Road during the busiest hours, excluding ‘the traffic of foreign companies’ that used the widened lines.100 This amounted to up to thirty-one steam-operated trains per hour in each direction during the busiest times running through different sections

Lines and Circles  135 that extended far beyond the inner circle. Not surprisingly, there were severe problems: Despite the four days of experimental working which preceded the opening […] services were thrown into chaos by the new schedules […] Dislocation was so severe that traffic sometimes came to a complete standstill for hours on end, and there is at least one well-­ authenticated case of exasperated passengers having to get out of their train in the tunnel and walk to the nearest station.101 The difference between through, long-distance and local traffic was the result of the agreements between private railway companies. The interest of the Metropolitan and the District, in particular, was suburban not local traffic as the extensions of their lines illustrated. Their extensions were coupled to suburban growth, notably north and west of London, where the main lines that used the inner circle originated. At the same time and despite the problems concerning the operation of outer, middle and inner circles, the debates around committees such as that of 1863 and the reports by French observers, demonstrate a sound awareness of the complexity and scale of railway communication in London and the extent to which its development might be used in the interest of metropolitan growth. This qualifies Sutcliffe’s assertion that London seemed to be ‘rearranging its built fabric around a completely new means of transport, but in a way which did not immediately suggest that the metropolis was being consciously and centrally planned’.102 The envisioning of interconnected circles discriminating types of traffic was both systematic and comprehensive. The centrality was somewhat manifest in the role that the Metropolitan Board of Works and the City played. However, the building of any system depended on the actual financial model behind railway operation, the challenges of which committees, commissions and commentators alike recognised. Rather than being the long-overdue outcome of the battle between the chairmen of the two ‘metropolitan’ railway companies, the completion of the inner circle might also be seen as the brief history of a joint effort: Between the metropolitan and City authorities, on the one hand, and the Metropolitan and the District, on the other hand. Steps were taken, indeed, to direct the centrifugal forces of railways in favour of a more orchestrated development of London. Different interpretations of the public benefit became apparent throughout the process, at least as many as there were publics: Private companies encouraging and competing for suburban traffic, authorities with interests that were both complementary and mutually exclusive, and passengers for whom time was money and the difference between home and work a question of daily travel. Not one dominated, nor could either account for the benefit of all.

Figure 3.5  S ection of a London street, late nineteenth century. The French press reported frequently on developments in London, including railways. The two lower thirds of this section show the ‘underground’ railways of the District (middle) and the Great Western (below). Above these, the street shows two cyclists (one female), pedestrians and horse-drawn transport as well as a train of the London, Chatham and Dover railway high above on a viaduct. All three trains were hauled by steam locomotives. Source: La Nature, 1899. © The British Library Board, shelfmark P.P.1614.ca.

(a)

(b)

Figure 3.6 ( a and b)  Change of the built-up area in Paddington, west London between 1834 (top) and 1910 (bottom). This was the area that Loftie (1884) described as comsupta per ferrum. Note the proximity of the two main-line railway terminals to the Regent’s Canal, which, while over six decades apart (Paddington opened in 1838 and Marylebone in 1899), shows the importance of connectivity to existing infrastructure and access to facilities for the transport and storage of goods.

(a)

Figure 3.7 ( a and b)  Change of the built-up area in Asnières and Clichy, north/ northwest Paris between 1876 (left) and 1900 (right). The area between the Pont de Clichy and the bridge carrying the railway line into Paris via the Porte d’Asnières would become the subject of several paintings by the likes of Claude Monet, Georges Seurat and Vincent van Gogh, who in their own distinct ways drew contrasting landscapes and themes: Rural and idyllic or urban and industrial, depending on which bank of the Seine they captured. This wasn’t Paris ‘proper’, the fortifications (line wall at the bottom) being the administrative limits of the city since 1860. The important growth of the area in the late nineteenth century is paralleled by recent developments in Clichy-Batignolles (see Figure 5.2) where extensions of the Métro will bring this former periphery into contact with central Paris.

(b)

Figure 3.7  (Continued)

Figure 3.8  P  roposals for railway circuits and rings in London, 1864. Right after the first section of the Metropolitan Railway opened to passenger services in January 1863, proposals for further railway lines, rings and circuits circulated widely, including in Parliament. Central to these was the increasing differentiation between the transport of goods and people and whether they would circumvent or penetrate central London. The ‘outer’ circle as per John Fowler’s plans, for example, ran along the boundary of the city’s built-up area with important junctions taking shape at Stratford, New Cross and Clapham. Source: Remarks upon some of the London Railway Projects of 1864. © The British Library Board, shelfmark P8235.l.21.

Figure 3.9  N  ew Cross Junction as depicted in a hand-drawn map of the railways of London (detail), c.1875. Likely based on Stanford’s District Railway Map, this is one example of the variety and reach of the extensive archive of French accounts of London railways. Note the skill with which the convoluted arrangement of railway lines is drawn, suggesting a close engagement with – often a clearer understanding of – the reality as well as the plans for metropolitan railways across the Channel. Source: © Archives Nationales de France, series F14 9181.

Figure 3.10  F  low map of the Inner Circle in London, 1884. A number of key characteristics central to metropolitan railway services in London, all steam operated, would become apparent once the inner circle was complete in 1884: Its intensive use (and remarkable high frequencies); emergent different patterns (per company); and important stations, where journeys ended and started from at Baker Street, Aldgate and Mansion House. Based on: John W. Barry, The City Lines and Extensions (Inner Circle Completion) of the Metropolitan and District Railways, Minutes of Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers (London, 1885).

Figure 3.11  S chematic view of Vauthier’s Inner Circular Railway. Vauthier’s was among the first plans to propose what would become defining features of the Métropolitain as it would be built at the turn of the twentieth century, namely, a circular line using the available space of the boulevards which followed the line of the former wall of the Fermiers Généraux and a layout (circular and transversal) which provided no direct connection with main-line services. Based on: L.-L. Vauthier, Chemin de Fer Circulaire Intérieur (Paris, 1865).

Figure 3.12  Vauthier’s Inner Circular Railway, detail of the proposed sections. Different materials were to serve different areas of the city: The viaducts of the circular line (along the boulevards) would use either masonry or a cast-iron structure interspersed with stone pillars; by contrast, the transversal line (along the river embankment) was carried entirely on a cast-iron viaduct. The boulevard and the river had each its own aesthetic. Source: L.-L. Vauthier, Chemin de Fer Circulaire Intérieur sur la Ligne des Anciens Boulevards Extérieurs et le Quai de la Rive Droite de la Seine. Avant-projet (Paris, 31 March 1865). © Régie Autonome des Transports Parisiens (RATP).

Figure 3.13  G  eneral plan of the Chemin de Fer de Ceinture (Paris, c.1869). This map and timetable show the services of Paris’ own railway circle, started in the early 1850s, focussing on goods traffic, connecting to facilities such as the new abattoirs at La Villette (north-east). Completing the circuit travelling westwards from Courcelles-Levallois took two hours, while the same journey going eastwards took slightly shorter: One hour and fifty-three minutes. Although workmen’s trains were introduced in 1866, passenger traffic remained sparse, except for the traffic of the Auteuil line, serving the area of the Bois de Boulogne and with a terminus at the Gare St. Lazare, as well as the vast and exceptional traffic of the world exhibitions in 1867, 1878, 1889 and 1900. Source: © Bibliothèque Nationale de France.

Figure 3.14  C  hemin de Fer Métropolitain de Paris, c.1887. This is one of several plans where the process of defining what the Métro was to be is clearly apparent. Note the many conventions used (three colours, red, orange and blue, seen here as shades of grey), including the junction and sidings at the Gare du Nord; the Gare d’Austerlitz; and, perhaps most surprising of all, the loop around the Palais de Luxembourg. Top centre and left of the map are also ‘revisions’ of ideas erased, one emanating from the Porte Maillot; the other spread (and flattened) resembling a spider with its head on the Opéra area. Source: © Archives Nationales de France, series F14 9181.

Lines and Circles  145

Paris As was the case in London, railway termini had become important centres of distribution of goods and people in mid-nineteenth-century Paris. Plans for a cohesive system of urban transport, including railways, continued to proliferate as they did in the previous two decades. However, the planning and realisation of such a system would become intertwined with the opening of wide boulevards and the extensive programme of public works of the Second Empire. An important question was, therefore, whether new facilities of urban transport should be linked to the transformation that Paris was to experience, significant to which was a booming housing market, and if so, with what consequences and in whose interest. In May 1854, the police prefect P. M. Pietri would express his concern about a unified system of urban transport accessible to all and not only in the service of the privileged: Affordable transport is immensely significant in a big city like Paris. There is a strong solidarity with a wide range of relationships between all districts. Competition, a regime imbued with difficulties […], will not contribute to these relationships as it will favour certain districts and ignore others. The best option is thus to create a single company that, with minor expenses, provides transport at a lower price; [a company] that, through unity of direction, reinforces the solidarity in a service that radiates in all directions; [a company] that carries through the delivery of a proportion of the [present] costly transport and reclaims the public interest.103 The Prefect’s response to the growing transport needs of the French capital involved the creation of a single company, under unified management, providing a good service with more affordable fares, reinforcing solidarity, all in the public interest. According to geographer Pierre Merlin, the Prefect’s statement introduced a new element in the discourse around public transport in Paris, namely that a public service might reinforce certain aspects of urban life beyond profit (une étroite solidarité de relations de toute nature) in exchange for monopolies.104 Directing the otherwise disjointed efforts of capitalists was thus paramount to providing a good service in the interest of the urban population, much in the same vein as what Thiers and others had said since the 1830s. Within this rationale, the Compagnie Générale des Omnibus (CGO) was created by imperial decree of 22 February 1855, assuming the monopoly of omnibus services in Paris.105 The operation of the omnibus network responded to interests that were at once public and private. Despite restrictions imposed by the general policies and the particular arrangements with the municipal

146  Lines and Circles authorities, the CGO considered the operation of their services as a profitable business in line with the character of a private company. The public interest, on the other hand, was met by offering an efficient and affordable means of transport to a larger and more inclusive segment of the population and, in some limited cases, by ‘provid[ing] a very active contribution to the execution of sanitation and enlargement plans’ in the city.106 As Lavollée suggested, by introducing new routes in ‘the new districts of Paris’ the CGO performed a similar function to that of railways, helping to connect areas outside the walls – but also within them as in the intra-muros – to the centre and inner districts. The question was the degree to which accessibility of new areas to classes other than the privileged seemed to correspond with suburban growth. The CGO operated four types of services: Omnibus routes that were urban and suburban, and railways and tramways.107 The company ran twenty-five regular omnibus routes within Paris, a fewer number of suburban lines and railway services which, in 1867, consisted of four western routes: The Louvre-Sèvres, operated in conjunction with another company (Compagnie Gibiat); the Boulogne service which had a terminus at the Place du Palais-Royal; the mail service to St. Cloud by voie de terre; and the service of the Universal Exhibition of 1867 (from 27 April to 3 November).108 The fourth service of the company amounted to almost half of the entire tramway network operated together with two other companies, one in the north by the Département de la Seine and the other in the south by the city.109 The CGO’s section was divided into a circular network of five lines (two on the right bank and three on the left) and two sets of branches linking the Nord and Sud networks outside the walls. According to the municipal administration, the financial arrangement was to have the Nord and Sud companies operate the radiating branch lines up to a terminus within the city. The companies would then be required to pay the CGO a toll for the right of using the city part of the network. In addition, the companies were expected to ‘[reimburse] all the maintenance costs, the interest of capital used for the construction of the lines, plus a quantum determined by the entire amortization [valid] for the length of the concession’.110 The arrangement was to ensure that the transfer of passengers at the fortifications would not add traffic to the city gates. Apart from the vast services the CGO offered, two other means of transport formed an important part of urban circulation within and without Paris: Riverboats and main-line railways. The first operated routes along the Seine (bateaux-omnibus), which were particularly successful during the 1867 exhibition, the first of the expositions to be held at the Champ-de-Mars. Their traffic would increase significantly by the mid-1880s, when ‘seats [were] often scarce on Sundays and [bank] holidays’.111 Railways, in turn, provided services for long-distance traffic.

Lines and Circles  147 A railway ring was also being built along the Thiers fortifications, which allowed the different main-line companies to connect their termini within the city. This ring or Ceinture consisted of three main sections, two on the right bank and one on the left.112 In a process that resembled the granting of monopolies across France, the first section of the Ceinture to Auteuil (Auteuil line) from the Gare St. Lazare was given in concession to the Paris-St. Germain railway, in August 1852; later the company merged with the Compagnie de l’Ouest, in June 1855. A ninety-nine year concession for the larger and second section of the right bank, between the Avenue de Clichy (north of the Gare St. Lazare) and the Rapée-Bercy (south-east of the Gare de Lyon) was granted to a consortium of five companies: Rouen, Nord, Strasbourg, Lyon and Orléans, starting 1 January 1854. Intermittent services opened on different sections of the line and were operated individually according to the needs of each company. Between 1854 and 1862 passenger traffic was restricted to emigrants and military forces. Regular passenger services started on 14 July 1862, with five stations open: Batignolles-Clichy, Belleville-Villette, Ménilmontant, Charonne and Rapée-Bercy. The first of several intermediate new stations opened in 1869, followed by over twenty others thereafter, which reduced the significant distance between the original stations and extended access to both riverbanks (see Figure 3.13).113 The left bank section of the Ceinture consisted of three subsections operated by the Compagnie de l’Ouest: The first was the long section from Auteuil to the Rapée-Bercy;114 the second was the branch joining the Auteuil line with the right bank section; and the third was the branch between Grenelle and Champ de Mars, opened for the 1867 Universal Exhibition on 1 February and closed on 28 December the same year. This latter section was reopened in April 1878 for the Exposition of that year, remaining open thereafter.115 The Ceinture specialised in goods traffic.116 This was reconsidered following the pressure placed on the syndicate in 1861 primarily by the outlying districts of Sceaux and St. Denis.117 Workmen’s trains (trains du matin) were introduced in 1866. Passenger services initially consisted of eighteen trains per day during the summer and sixteen during the winter,118 between stations that remained far from each other and without connection to the city centre. The Auteuil line was different, as the Compagnie de l’Ouest was able to consolidate a commuter route connecting the north-western part of the centre with the suburbs of the west, notably the area around the Bois de Boulogne where mostly the new bourgeoisie now lived. Diversity thus characterised the ways in which people and goods moved in Paris. But unlike London, diversity was also the result of the interaction between the companies that held a monopoly to run a particular kind of service and the municipal and regional authorities with

148  Lines and Circles which companies not only competed but also collaborated. Services differed along omnibus routes, tramway lines, riverboats and railway rings, each catering for a particular kind of service concerning goods (to places like La Villette) or people (immigrants and the military). What role should a metropolitan railway play in this context? To what extent was its potential contribution dependent upon whose views were voiced and which interests were at stake? The Centre and Its Periphery At the core of Paris’ growth was the relationship between new transport provision and the transformation of the city, notably the pulling down of the wall of the Fermiers Généraux with the subsequent annexation of the suburbs to the municipality’s jurisdiction. These were the communes that for a period of nearly twenty years formed the ring around the centre known as the intra-muros, namely, the area between the wall of the Fermiers Généraux, which demarcated the limits of the early modern city, and the outlying fortifications built in the 1840s. Annexing the outlying suburbs involved exercising control over an area whose growth did not correspond with the visions of an ordered and centralised authority. As historian Louis Girard has suggested, prior to the decision to incorporate the suburbs (by the mid-1850s) one of the questions was whether ‘to let this area which [has] become the mist of future Paris to grow in an unruly fashion’.119 A report by Haussmann, then Seine Prefect, highlighted the same problems that had been identified in the central districts by the Siméon commission in 1853. The difference this time was that the problems seemed to have been replicated in the periphery: a compact enceinte [made] of suburbs, in the hands of (livrés) more than twenty different administrations, randomly built, covered by an inextricable network of tortuous and narrow public roads, of alleys and dead ends where nomadic populations pile up with a prodigious rapidity without a real bond with the sun and without effective surveillance.120 For the Seine Prefect, the inclusion of the suburbs under the jurisdiction of one authority was to reverse the randomness, tortuosity and anarchy of such a hotchpotch. The adjustment of the octroi, the tax collected at the wall of the Fermiers Généraux, was one of the most important consequences of the annexation of the suburbs. Following the wall’s demolition, the municipal authorities drew the administrative boundaries based on twenty new arrondissements, effective as of 1 January 1860. Eleven communes were thus annexed to ‘the administrative, military, and fiscal limits’ of Paris,

Lines and Circles  149 namely, Passy, Auteuil, Batignolles-Monceaux, Montmartre, La Chapelle, La Villette, Belleville, Charonne, Bercy, Vaugirard and Grenelle.121 However, the annexation was also characterised by the sharp contrast between central Paris and what until then had been its outer districts: More than one third of the [total] surface of streets [in the annexed communes] was neither cobbled nor paved. For a total length of 257 kilometres of public roads, that of sewerage was only 12 kilometres. Informal (casuel) lighting, insufficient or non existent distribution of water (arrosage); a police agent for every 5,165 inhabitants, 49 public schools in an area with more than 350,000 inhabitants; churches could accommodate but one eighteenth of the population. It seemed as if the annexed districts ‘were no longer suburbs, but not Paris yet’. As Girard asserts, the inhabitants of these districts found themselves ‘at once prisoners of the octroi and exiled from the urban centre’.122 The new limits had also an effect on transport, notably the railways. The warehouses and storage buildings of the annexed communes were given the temporary status of bonded warehouses or entrepôt à domicile, a model first instituted in 1814. It was granted for a period of ten years with the possibility of extension, subject to approval by the municipal council.123 Goods for local consumption were taxed when entering the city. For tax-collection purposes, railway termini were no different from the city gates, except in those cases when the operations of foreign companies might place their goods in a different category than that of more conventional routes. Termini were deemed lieux de transit, with the custom dues payable elsewhere in such cases. Tax officers enjoyed full access to the railways so that customs could be cleared either on the trains themselves or at the offices and other facilities that the railway companies were required to provide in their termini.124 To give a sense of the scale of the task, the octroi would employ around 3,000 people by the mid-1870s.125 The relationship between Paris and the newly annexed communes was thus a matter of connectivity between strategic centres of distribution but also between the centre and the suburbs. The extent to which railways could be used to shape this relationship was one of the concerns of the municipal council, and so in 1865, they commissioned L.L. Vauthier to design a new railway for the city. The same year, on 12 July, an Act on railways of local interest was passed through which the state was committed to support the Départements by a ‘system of direct public construction aid’. The resources provided as a result of this were generally misused, which led to the abandonment of plans with the consequent ‘inextricable difficulties and embarrassments’ of the regional authorities.126 The same Act ‘stipulated that the standard gauge’

150  Lines and Circles adopted throughout the national network on the advice of the Ponts et Chaussées, ‘was not an absolute’,127 which facilitated the emergence of regional differences in so far as plans could be devised for connecting to the main railway network if and when needed. In Paris views differed, at times substantially, for the interests of railway companies, the national authorities and the municipal council collided in what became a defining characteristic of the process of conceiving of a metropolitan railway throughout the second half of the nineteenth century.128 Vauthier, who would become a member of the municipal council by 1878 and an active participant in the debates around the transformation of French railways, was well placed to gauge the consequences of the new legislation for the capital.129 His report contained meticulous information on technical matters such as specific sections of the scheme proposed as well as evidence compiled to clarify the feasibility and benefits of the project. This made it a comprehensive document to which he returned in 1872, after no decision on the implementation of the project had been taken. The siege of Paris during the Franco-Prussian War, followed by the terror and violence of the 1871 Commune, exacerbated the difficulties of the relationship between Parisians and the national government. At least 20,000 people were killed during the bloody week of 21–28 May, when the French army marched into the city, staging public executions in places like the Parc Monceau and the Luxembourg Gardens. By the end of the Commune, about 100,000 people had fled the city. Martial law, censorship and a curfew were maintained until 1876. Only in 1879 would the government return to Paris, after an eightyear exile in Versailles.130 No doubt the 1871 events and their aftermath were to shape ideas around the possible directions along which Paris was to change. Comparisons with the transport situation in other cities helped. To Vauthier, Paris lagged behind London, a city whose ‘complicated network of internal railways’ was emulated by other towns in the United Kingdom and Europe, potentially a sign illustrating the benefits of the model.131 However, Vauthier also recognised the difficulties of the London railways, namely, the ‘entanglement of tunnels and viaducts’ and the general confusion that the operation of somewhat disparate lines connecting the central districts and the suburbs generated.132 Differentiating between three types of connection helped to clarify the problem of circulation in Paris, according to his account: The traffic handled through the main-line railway companies or ‘long-distance communications’; the extension of the city to the suburbs and the communication both between the suburbs and between these and the city centre, or what he called ‘the relationships between the suburbs’; and urban circulation within the walls or ‘inner circulation’. The assessment of the situation in relation to inner, suburban and long-distance traffic suggests that Vauthier was well aware of the necessity to relate

Lines and Circles  151 the Parisian situation to developments in national railway legislation such as the 1865 Act.133 Since the 1830s, Paris had been turned into the centre of the national railway network, prompted by visions such as the Étoile Legrand and the actual plans executed and approved by the engineers of Ponts et Chaussées. Such arrangement represented important benefits for the capital and its connectivity to the country, although as Vauthier noted, the distances that passengers were forced to walk in order to reach the railway termini were often burdensome and not as convenient as their relatively central location suggested. In the case of inner circulation and the relationships between the suburbs, each was void (double lacune), which was something demanding urgent action.134 To improve communications in the periphery, Vauthier proposed to link the different suburbs through a combination of the Ceinture and new ‘périmètriques’ that were, in turn, connected to the city centre. For the movement within the walls he proposed inner lines (lignes intérieures) ‘distributed along industrial and populated zones’, those that were identified as such already as well as those that might be proposed in future plans. Having outlined the general context of his plan, Vauthier went on to explain the core which consisted of two main parts (see Figures 3.11 and 3.12): A ‘circular line’ using the boulevards that followed the former wall of the Fermiers Généraux and a transversal line or diamétrale running along the river wharves. The first proposed to use a combination of viaducts, trenches and tunnels. The second was to cross the city from east to west on viaducts built on the right bank of the Seine. The operation was by steam locomotives that would establish a connection between the city’s ‘main centre’ and ‘the most important of the secondary centres that [had emerged] in the enceinte’ along the outer city walls.135 More tellingly, the railway scheme was an instrument for the more cohesive growth of Paris in response to the large-scale displacement of the population that the Second Empire works had produced. As Vauthier suggested, the circular line in particular ‘definitely placated ­(asseoira) […] the population that [had] refuse[d] to be persuaded [by the success], even after twenty years, of the demolitions in the centre of Paris’.136 The circular section of the plan was thus to urge a more coherent set of transport links as a compensation for and complement to Haussmann’s wide boulevards. Vauthier’s inner circular railway was never realised even though the ‘technical execution’ of the project was simple and the means to build it were known. It is worth noting that the route that the circular line followed in the plan resembles closely Line 2 of the Métropolitain as it would be built later, in the 1900s. The seemingly sound municipal finances of the late 1850s and early 1860s had started to show clear signs of deterioration by the time Vauthier’s plan was published: ‘Between

152  Lines and Circles 1853 and 1870 the City’s debt had risen from 163 million francs to 2,500 million, and in 1870 debt charges made up 44.14 per cent of the City’s budget’.137 More importantly, and as the debates of the following three decades would demonstrate, reconciling the visions of the different authorities, companies and individuals presented what appeared to be an intractable challenge: To whom was the transformation of the city a sign of the public benefit? What role, if any, were main-line railways to play in the process? Two features of Vauthier’s inner circular railway and transversal line may provide some provisional answers to these questions. First, the relationship between the city centre and its periphery, a model that could be recognised in the railway system of France as a whole but, which, interestingly, applied in Germany too.138 Second, Vauthier’s was among the first plans to present what would become a defining feature of the ‘true’ (veritable) Métropolitain, namely, an independent system without a direct connection to the main-line railways, separate from their termini. By contrast, and in the view of the national authorities, notably the Ponts et Chaussées engineers, the Métropolitain was to provide a junction for the main-line railways that would facilitate the transfer of goods and passengers within the city. This was partly to ensure a more rapid circulation of regional and international traffic, but it was also a concern based upon strategic reasons. For the municipal authorities, the Métropolitain was ‘exclusively reserved to [meet] the needs of urban circulation [while being] autonomous and absolutely independent of the main line networks’.139 Both the model of centre and periphery and the design of an urban railway system that was separate from the main-line railways contributed to the longer narrative of the Métropolitain up to the turn of the twentieth century. In a text presented to the municipal council in 1867, Haussmann’s successor and new Seine Prefect, Léon Say, asserted that the ‘transversal’ movement of the population in relation to the city centre was more significant compared with the ‘circular’ ring as represented by the connectivity of the suburbs on the edges including districts such as La Chapelle, Batignolles and Montmartre. The peripheral relationship between the suburbs, Say affirmed, was determined by the past communications that each of these areas had established with ‘central Paris’.140 Patterns had been set by commuters and others travelling regularly between home and workplace. Mainline railways were an important part of these developments in that they not only allowed rapid communication with the areas beyond the walls but also facilitated the concentration of a range of activities and trades around their city termini. The distinction Say made between the two types of movement, one crossing the city and the other circumventing it (thoroughfare and circle), was an indication

Lines and Circles  153 of the extent to which railways were defining new patterns of urban movement and replicating or modifying those that already existed. This would become particularly apparent during the period between 1880 and 1890, when the majority of city railway projects examined by the municipal and departmental assemblies incorporated at least one circular line, more often two and in some cases even three.141 The question behind these models was one relative to the kind of service that the new system was to provide and, therefore, how the local service, strongly identified with omnibuses, related to the long-distance traffic of main-line railway companies. Agreeing on the terms which best defined the service and interest of the Métropolitain remained the single most important issue that the plans produced between the 1870s and 1880s were forced to address. Tensions between the central government and the local authorities escalated in the process. After partially recovering from the previous financial crises of 1857 and 1864,142 the city council struggled to regain control following the events of the Commune. At the same time, the council’s independence was restricted by the prefects of Police, appointed by the Ministry of the Interior, and of the Seine Department, who had autonomy over decisions on works that were funded with monies collected by the council. One of the major projects in relation to this was the transformation and replacement of the octroi.143 As Hallsted-Baumert has suggested, the pronounced disagreement between the state and the city developed into ‘two different conceptions of urban society’. The exercise of their powers was, in the case of the state, ‘based on centralized politics, on closed circles of high finance and on conservative social and moral principles’. Indeed, Hallsted-Baumert goes on to say, ‘the French government viewed the railroad in primarily military or strategic terms’, which rendered the Parisian urban railway ‘as a mere extension of the larger national railroad network and as such crucial to national defence’.144 The state’s vision for the Métropolitain was largely an alignment of private interests in the form of railway companies and the regional neighbouring authorities, whose aim was to limit but also be able to respond without delay to any revolutionary elements – something Parisians knew all too well. ‘In essence, members of Parliament in the latter part of the nineteenth century viewed Paris as a “national interest”, indeed a “potential mirror” of conservative Third Republic politics and values’.145 Conversely, the Parisian authorities pulled the other way, focussing on the definition and advocacy of the interests of the population which they believed they represented, however restricted their actions were by the politics and administration of the structure within which they functioned. If there was urgency to some of the problems – traffic congestion, informal suburban development, acute overcrowding and growing density – a

154  Lines and Circles metropolitan railway allowed ‘Parisian councillors (in particular, municipal Radicals) [to feel that] they could control the city’s organization, indeed, its very identity’.146 Regulation continued to be an important condition of the process but as the expression of a conflict of legitimacy rather than an imposition of imperial demands by Napoléon III and his Prefect. To control the centre and its newly incorporated periphery was about new transport models as much as it was about effective political allegiances, something of a tradition in Paris, France and elsewhere. The Politics of Metropolitan Transport Networks In 1871, the Seine Prefect appointed a special commission to study and plan ‘a network of metropolitan railways’. The commission comprised fourteen members, including Jean-Charles A. Alphand, later director of Public Works; various representatives of the Ceinture; and the director of the Paris-Orléans railway. All the members appeared to work ‘in some capacity with the major railroad companies’. Seven proposals, Vauthier’s included, were examined. All of them were rejected.147 The scope of the commission was regional. Central to the Conseil Général de la Seine (CGS) was creating a new inner ring that would link the city centre with the existing Ceinture and ‘bring together the different parts of the Seine Department’ into one coherent system. Their recommendations were to: (1) bring together (mettre en communication) the different parts of the Seine Department with a [new] Ceinture railway which will be at the interior of Paris within the present Ceinture; (2) bring together this new Ceinture railway with the Centre of the city of Paris; (3)  service the line of the quays extending it upstream and downstream; (4) service the line of the inner boulevards; (5) connect the different railway termini with a new railway between them [or] with the centre of Paris.148 The Council’s suggestion was, therefore, to devise a network rather than a collection of separate lines. This was consequent not only with a systematic vision but also with the revenue that the network would make: ‘for obtaining satisfactory returns, the Parisian network should be sufficiently tight and offer numerous correspondences in every direction’. The operation of the omnibus network by the CGO, which, as we have seen extended its services to railways and tramways, provided a good illustration, based as it was on a system of correspondences instead of ‘isolated lines, few in number, and badly connected’ with one another.149 The London experience, eight years since the opening of the first section of the Metropolitan at this point, would begin to permeate the

Lines and Circles  155 discourse of change in urban transport in Paris. The commission’s report, published in 1872, highlighted some of the similarities between Paris and London, especially those related to residential and working patterns. It suggested that an important fraction of urban traffic in London was due to the travelling patterns of those who could afford two residences, one in or near the City and another in the suburbs. According to the report, the same tendency had developed in Paris among the segment of the population characterised by its ‘ordinary affluence’ (aisance mediocre). The Est and Ouest companies, in particular, had reinforced and taken advantage of this trend. The Compagnie de l’Ouest, for example, had established commuting traffic between its terminal at the Gare St. Lazare and the western residential district of Auteuil, by exploiting one of the sections of the Ceinture. ‘All the western part of Paris resembles that of London’, said the report, ‘the Compagnie de l’Ouest play[ing] the role of a true metropolitan railway’.150 One of the projects submitted to the appointed commission was that of A. Lavalley and A. Rostand, which they called a network of metropolitan railways (réseau de chemins de fer métropolitains). Alexander Lavalley was an engineer with training in England and France, known at this stage for his important contribution to the completion of the Suez Canal open to navigation two years earlier in November 1869. Of Rostand, we know less unfortunately. In their project, the engineers claimed for ‘the concession of the entire network, without subvention or guarantee of [local or national] interest’, a sign of their independence.151 The technical specifications of the project had been submitted to the municipal administration first on 30 January and 5 February 1872, and later on 8 and 10 March supplementing two letters sent to the committee. To Lavalley and Rostand the question of urban circulation had evolved into the specific question of passenger traffic within the walls, in much the same way as in Vauthier’s scheme.152 Using the omnibus figures of 1869, Lavalley and Rostand presented a map and a series of ‘theorems’ reflecting the existing travelling patterns within Paris: (1) The largest circulation flows were concentrated along the route from Madeleine to Bastille, via the inner boulevards; (2) ‘the majority of the circulation was distributed in [centrifugal] flows radiating in all directions from a central part of the city comprising the Bourse, the Palais-Royal, and the Hôtel-de-Ville’; and (3) the size of these flows decreased substantially as they reached the line of the (Thiers) fortifications, in a movement ‘from the centre to the circumference’, reducing their importance in terms of potential returns. Based on this reading, passenger traffic might thus be reduced to three main routes: ‘the semicircular line from the Madeleine to the Bastille; the east-west transversal line along the streets Faubourg-Saint-Honoré, Saint-Honoré, and Rivoli; [and] the north-south transversal of the Boulevards of Sebastopol and

156  Lines and Circles Saint-Michel’; also included in their reading of traffic flows was a group of five largely linear flows criss-crossing the centre and inner districts.153 Besides the existing patterns of omnibus routes, Lavalley and Rostand built on Haussmann’s ‘grands percements’, which they described in three different categories: Those responding to ‘the insufficiency of existing roads in the quarters where circulation was most active’; those meant ‘to give access to construction sites’; and those ‘whose main object was the embellishment of the city, such as the avenues around the Étoile barrier’. Important elements of their plan were thus contributing to the embellishment of areas where monuments and architectural landmarks had been or were in the process of being built as well as the adequate access to areas where congestion was most severe and where large construction works progressed. Consequently, the plan consisted of six different sections which together stressed the interdependence of omnibus routes and street improvements, namely, a ‘circular line along the inner boulevards’ extending to both riverbanks and a system of transversals, diagonals and axes. All the railway termini and the central market would be connected. The latter was particularly important, following their criticism of the cost, layout and the connections with the outer districts that the line to La Villette built by the municipality provided.154 The connection between their network and the periphery resembled Vauthier’s périmetriques, a design they acknowledged. Their shorter circular line would connect to the circle proposed by the municipal ­project – that is, Vauthier’s – if and when its traffic developed. Tramways were also a complement to their branch lines as they would facilitate the extension of the service beyond the fortifications, in turn, the limit of their scheme. A preliminary summary of benefits included ‘a satisfactory service’, a ‘low price’, unlimited extensions and a comprehensive scope that covered every Paris corner.155 There was no need for raising a large amount of capital for commencing the works. Instead, they proposed to begin with the construction of the three main lines (circular and transversals east-west and north-south) in return for their concession. The fate of their plan was no different. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the commission would produce a plan of its own.156 An important element of the debate that the report generated was the acknowledgement of how different were the operation and the infrastructure of main-line railways when contrasted with the more ‘metropolitan’ lines planned within the city. For the Ceinture Syndicate, for example, it seemed that it was no longer a question ‘of extending the French [railway] network on the roads, but of giving Parisians the facilities of transport [proper to] the capital’.157 The scheme the commissioners would produce half reflected this, however, for it consisted of two transversal lines, east-west from the Bastille to the Bois de Boulogne and north-south, which was to join the Ceinture on both

Lines and Circles  157 riverbanks via the central market of Les Halles. The first might have focussed on passenger traffic, while the second would transport goods to the market. On the commission’s advice, the Seine Department authorised the city authorities ‘to concede the first line or network (réseau) to a railway of local interest’.158 In 1875, after the scheme failed to attract bids for concessions, the city council launched a new inquiry in relation to which E. Huet, ‘chief engineer of the study of municipal railways’, proposed a new plan that included five lines, four of which converged in a central station at the Palais-Royal. A revised version of the plan was drawn up after the Seine Council raised some objections. The new version suggested offering concessions to one or more companies to build five lines along the following routes: Palais-Royal – Gentilly, Palais-Royal – Gare St. Lazare and Batignolles, Halles Centrales – Gare du Nord, Pont de l’Alma – Gare d’Orléans and an ‘inner ring (Ceinture intérieure) connecting all the [existing] railway termini’.159 The project was eventually abandoned in what was to become a profound disagreement about the definition of whose interests the Métropolitain stood for. Historians have explained the abandonment of Huet’s project as the lack of a satisfactory technological alternative for the working of locomotives underground, that is, how to evacuate the smoke of steam engines effectively.160 Others have suggested that the role of the municipal and departmental councils was ‘essentially consultative, discursive’, and so the production and discussion of plans was intertwined with the contexts where consultations and discourses were articulated: ‘political, institutional […] structural’, and otherwise.161 Technology was indeed important but not sufficient to account for the rejection of the mounting number of projects that Huet, Lavalley and Rostand, Vauthier and others produced. As ever, several factors combined within a changing institutional structure that prevented any plans from becoming the reality, which, in the view of many, Parisians needed. Central to this were the newly annexed suburbs, particularly their influence on existing and shifting patterns of residence and work; the models of finance and administration whose efficacy and stability were hampered by external forces such as financial crises; and, importantly, the disputes over political legitimacy between the municipal and departmental councils, and the national authorities, aggravated as they were by the events of the Commune. In the process, the fluid character of the factors that might help secure the building of Paris’ own metropolitan translated into a conflict between the state’s interest in preserving a unified national railway network which, to some extent, favoured the main-line companies and the city’s insistence on the local interest countering, at the same time, any possible interference from forces outside the walls.

158  Lines and Circles The Mirror of the English Capital and the Reassuring Findings of New Commissions An official mission went to London in May 1876 with the aim of studying the state and progress of the city’s metropolitan railways. It consisted of Jean-Charles A. Alphand, by then general inspector of Ponts et Chaussées and director of Travaux de Paris; E. Huet, as representative of the city authorities; Gregoire, from the Seine Département; Nouton, chief engineer of Promenades de Paris; Banderali, a civil engineer; and Hochereau, an architect inspector.162 National and municipal interests were thus represented through experts on railways and public roads, architecture and civil engineering. Reports of previous missions had been published in the Annales de Ponts et Chaussées by Boreux and Derôme (August 1866), Malézieux (January 1873) and Salles (January 1875).163 The careful study of the London railways as well as railway developments of all kinds in different cities across the world was publicised in specialist publications too such as the Revue Générale des Chemins de Fer and the Journal des Transports, to name but two. Likewise there was a constant exchange of experiences in the circles of engineers, architects, antiquarians and other relevant professions – and learned ­societies  – stimulating the information flow between Britain and France. Beyond the minutiae, the report made clear one thing: The kind of enterprise employed in London represented no advantages for Paris. This was largely due to the political climate of the Third Republic and the financial crisis of 1873.164 But the report was also shaped as a wide-­ ranging document that gave a detailed account of the various aspects of building, operating and financing the Metropolitan and the District lines in London. These included ‘technical conditions of establishment’ or the building specifications used in tunnels, junctions, typical sections, stations and rolling stock; ‘expenses of first establishment’; ‘technical operation’ or the running of trains, their speed, approach and departure from stations as well as security mechanisms; ‘commercial operation’; and returns or ‘financial results of the business’ both existing and projected. Although the larger part of the report was focussed on the Metropolitan and the District companies, ‘other metropolitan lines’ and ‘suburban services’ were also considered in order to present a complete picture of how railways had developed in London. There were, the report asserted, ‘four metropolitan companies’ and several main-line extensions connecting the suburbs and the City, creating a network of inner, middle and outer circles. Yet again, the French managed to see, accurately or not, what British select committees and royal commissions struggled to define and implement in their own capital.165 The location of railway termini was also highlighted as an important aspect of railway developments in London, reiterating what had been stressed for over three decades. For Huet, the key figure behind

Lines and Circles  159 the report, the facilities that companies provided at their termini represented an important advantage, particularly in view of the contribution that storage space and facilities for the redistribution of goods, including shops, made to the final prices of products. Huet used the example of the Great Eastern terminus at Broad Street, adjacent to Liverpool Street, to illustrate the arrangements that might be put into practice for handling the traffic of passengers (North London) and goods (LNW). The number of trains, wagons, times, destinations, sections of viaducts, platforms and approaching roads, as well as the machinery used, were all explained in detail in order to show how different companies worked out their own services in one place.166 The contrast between the two cities led Huet to characterise the Parisian Métropolitain as ‘a network of inner railways running frequent trains over short distances’ (petite longueur) as opposed to the services of main-line companies. The network, Huet concluded, would ‘satisfy a very tangible necessity, respond to a truly general interest, and contribute indirectly to the development of [new] sources of wealth for the city and, therefore, for the country as a whole’. Its success depended only on two conditions: The plan had to be ‘conceived of rationally’ in line with existing ‘large circulation flows’ and it needed to ‘join the main railway termini with the centre of Paris and the [the market at the] Halles Centrales’. This may have not been an appealing ‘advantageous enterprise’ in itself, given the financial and political conditions at the time, but a serious company could take on the project ‘without subvention or guarantee of interest’.167 The French were not unfamiliar with the use of subventions to attract private investment in the interest of completing the plans devised by government.168 However, such practice was likely to attract operators of other modes of transport and not necessarily the parties required for building a metropolitan railway network. In the late 1870s, for instance, and following the consent of the Seine Council, tramways were successfully devolved to contractors; the CGO was one of them. By contrast, the Métropolitain failed to attract investors according to the terms that Huet had mentioned, namely, neither subvention nor the guarantee of any interest.169 On the other hand, the national and municipal authorities set different, often opposite, priorities concerning long-distance traffic (of goods as well as people), passenger traffic within the walls and the provisioning of the Halles and other Parisian markets. This led to important differences in the plans proposed over matters such as the choice of gauge. To create a network specialising in local services, for example, might imply the introduction of a different gauge than the one in use, as trains would be lighter, speedier and generally more flexible compared to the mainline rolling stock. This, in turn, would make difficult if not impracticable connections with the main-line railway termini.

160  Lines and Circles The lack of a direct connection between their termini was likely to affect significantly the potential returns of the railway companies, not to mention their willingness to contribute to such a scheme in the first place. The minister of Travaux Publics, writing to the Seine Prefect in July 1878, was not at all sure that a separate city railway network should be favoured, given the way in which passenger traffic within the city had evolved. In his view, tramways presented ‘advantages’ compared with ‘the little attraction that the transport by a subterranean tube (tube souterrain) exerted on the Parisian population’.170 Naturally, travelling preferences depended upon who pronounced them. The section between the Gare St. Lazare and Batignolles – short by comparison to a metropolitan network – was ‘almost entirely underground’, its operation ‘amidst the steam smoke’ (la fumée de houille) and in ‘badly lit carriages’,171 yet this was part of the line giving the Compagnie de l’Ouest the important commuting traffic to Auteuil. Soon after, the minister and the general council of the Ponts et Chaussées ‘declared that the future Métropolitain of Paris was of general interest’, a move that appeared to undermine the control that the municipal authorities wished to have over the project. To a degree, this marked the beginning of a two-decade-long process during which the definition of the interest that the Métropolitain was to represent became paramount to its actual implementation and building.172 At the same time, clarifying that interest, the publics it represented, was a concern that city and country shared. At the public conferences organised during the 1878 Exposition Universelle, in the session of 24 September, Ernest Chabrier, president of the Meuse railway company, discussed the importance of differentiating ‘local’ from ‘general’ interests in railway operation. ‘Transit movement’, that is long-distance or express traffic (à grande vitesse), largely between major towns and using the ‘large networks’ across France, constituted the general interest. All the rest was traffic of local interest connecting rural areas that had been excluded by the trunk sections of the national railway network converging in the capital.173 Chabrier believed that remote areas could benefit from the trade of their produce by creating local networks identified with a particular kind of interest.174 The Act of 1865, he noted, ‘ha[d] not given any satisfaction to the need’ implicit in the possibilities associated with the local interest, and so alternatives were needed. Debates led by the Société des Agriculteurs de France since 1872 – in the aftermath of the war with Prussia – had explored the relationship between transport and agriculture, with reports publicised in subsequent years (Chabrier’s pamphlet covers the period from 1872 to 1878). Chabrier himself, Le Chatelier (general inspector of mines) and Lavalley were among the members of the committees appointed to study ‘the means of putting the railways of local interest at the service of farmers’.175

Lines and Circles  161 The emergence of transport networks, local; regional; national; and, indeed, international, was part of how farmers in the country and municipal councils in cities framed their growth and future transformation. Integration was critical, but so was separation. Building on the 1865 Act, a new law of 11 June 1880 stressed the right that towns across France had to grant concessions for the construction of tramways and railways of local interest within their jurisdiction.176 Partly in response to this, a ninety-nine-year concession ‘without subvention or guarantee of interest’ was requested in December 1881 to operate a metropolitan railway in Paris. The request came from two new proponents, Buisson des Leszes and Blanchard. Their plan consisted of five lines and branches.177 The response? A clear ‘separation from the State railway[s] by attribution of the city’s property’ and the operational partition of urban transport services ‘by exclusion of the [main-line] Companies and the specialisation of [the plan on a local] service’, said the municipal council.178 New terms were agreed after a revised version of the plan, now divided into two networks, was submitted. The first network consisted of one main east-west axis and two branch lines connecting to the Auteuil line, one going northwards to Batignolles Station and the other westwards to Porte Maillot. Instead of following the external boulevards, as recommended by the 1872 commission, the main section of the line went through the Rue Réamur. The city council expected the company that would be created for the execution of the plan to meet the costs of completing the street without compensation. Disagreements between the company, in reality a consortium, and the authorities intensified even though the concession of the first network was considered a done deal. Negotiations halted, after the entire plan was deemed inadequate partly on the grounds that it represented a benefit only for the upper classes. The consortium had bought land adjoining some of the sections of the line with the aim of erecting country houses. To the council, this ran counter to the benefit that the plan was to represent, notably for the working classes. Signalling a rare moment when the interests of national and municipal authorities converged, and unintended as it was, the Ponts et Chaussées sealed the fate of the plan years later, in 1889, by rejecting it.179 Gradually the local interest was being further specified as a service for the less privileged. In 1882, a new commission was appointed, and again, one of the important aspects of their report was the comparison with London: ‘Contrary to what happens in London, […] the Parisian workers live generally close to their offices, shops, studios, and often under the same roof as their office. This results in an excessive density of the population in many districts’.180 The edges of that excess looked sharpest on Sundays when workers and their families were condemned to stay in their murky residences instead of satisfying the ‘basic need’ of getting some fresh

162  Lines and Circles air. Only ‘expensive, difficult, and insufficient means of transport’ could be used to reach remote, healthy locations, the report explained, which encouraged men to ‘go and take the air at the cabaret’, needless to say without their families. By contrast, complete families and men included – which wasn’t good business for the cabarets – might leave the city in search of fresher places, at least on Sundays, if the journey to these locations was made more affordable and easier. In that way ‘morals, honesty, wellbeing, and health [all] gain[ed]’.181 But Sunday journeys accounted for a different type of service. Excursion trains that left the city on Sundays or bank holidays were, in most cases, long distance, speedier and less frequent. Furthermore, the bourgeoisie rather than the working and poorer classes were the likely customers, a situation that was further emphasised by the marked differences in the railway provision between the residential districts of the west and the largely industrial landscape to the east. With the exception of the line to Vincennes, effective railway connections fostering a local service further east were virtually absent by comparison with those of the west.182 The relationship between the centre and the outlying districts, redefined once the suburbs were annexed, kept changing too. Areas outside the walls became part of the regular destinations of residents of central Paris and its inner districts, though that happened gradually and unevenly. It was a middle- and upper-class trend of districts that became known as villégiatures bourgeoises which changed only once railway companies modified their pricing policies and a more widespread use of season tickets was introduced. Seasonal tickets had been used tentatively since 1883 but became truly important for commuting patterns only by the first decade of the twentieth century.183 By contrast, seasonal travel would become an important factor for traffic numbers and daily travel in the twenty communes of Seine-et-Oise by the 1880s.184 The possibilities that Parisians had to explore the city environs, near and farther afield, were both limited and selective, each representing a different kind of service. There were three main types of services that main-line companies provided: The long-distance trains or ‘express à grand parcours’, the ‘trains de grande banlieue’ serving the surrounding districts within a radius of 100 km and the ‘trains de petite banlieue’ connecting the centre with the near suburbs.185 Express trains handled the international and regional traffic, which, with the appropriate connections, might add important benefits to the services of the Ceinture and of the future Métropolitain. English visitors going to Nice via Calais, for example, would have the chance to spend an hour or two enjoying a meal in any of the Parisian boulevards, should connections such as those at Willesden Junction (in London) become part of the overall design of metropolitan railways in Paris. Convenience was based on connectivity rather than

Lines and Circles  163 travel times, which would give visitors, both foreign and regional, from areas like Bordeaux, the chance of reaching their destination with their luggage without changes across means of transport.186 By contrast, the real difference that the Métropolitain would make was for the travellers from the inner districts, now contained within the walls (petite banlieue) and for whom travel consisted of ‘the same journey, with the same destination, at the same time’.187 Unlike weekend traffic, which grouped families rather than commuters, or the traffic connected to international express services often consisting of a few trains spread evenly throughout the day, the travel population during the week was regular, frequent and covering roughly the same distance. The Métropolitain was therefore aligned with a service that over two decades had gained further specificity: From passengers (not goods) within the walls to the regular journey between home and work. Such was the theory at least. To the 1882 commission, it seemed that the Ceinture had subordinated urban and suburban services to long-distance traffic (mouvements extérieurs). The authors of the report, Deligny and Cernesson, also criticised the fares which had been ‘increased further on Sundays and bank holidays’, as well as ‘the low frequency of trains’ and ‘the isolation of the centre’.188 The Ceinture provided no communication between the suburbs and the centre, which meant that most of the city’s traffic went to omnibuses, tramways and riverboats. The poor continued to walk and, despite the large-scale displacement of the Second Empire works, lived as close as possible to where there was work. The provision of affordable and reliable transport services connecting the centre to the periphery was in this sense a means of turning the Métropolitain into a project that was both ‘popular and social’, inclusive, in the interest of all. The municipal authorities wanted to create a system that would neither respond to ‘the monopolistic CGO’s network [nor to] the Seine’s tramway lines’.189 The idea was to keep services separate so that the new transport network might evolve together with the ‘great flows of urban circulation’. Following what was then an emergent tradition, the commission proposed its own plan, with a layout similar to Vauthier’s, centred on a circular line. Good traditions call for predictable outcomes, and so the plan was opposed, this time by Alphand and the Ponts et Chaussées who said that ‘all that was needed was a few radiating lines’.190 Between February and October of 1886, a new ministerial project was put forward, and, once more, new changes, additions and amendments went back and forth prior to it being rejected.191 But there are aspects of that process that are worth discussing, notably the increasingly divergent views of what publics the Métropolitan was to represent. The Bill (projet de loi) was presented by the new minister of Travaux Publics, Charles Baïhaut, on 3 April 1886. After consultation with the municipal council, the Ponts et Chaussées produced the first notice of

164  Lines and Circles approval in May. The general concern of the newly appointed municipal commission was largely the same as before: To assess the extent to which the new plan responded to Parisian needs. The novelty of their demands lay on the choice of a specific constructive system (elevated viaducts or underground tunnels) and, significantly, the type of labour to be employed. Technical expertise could be hired elsewhere (Berlin, London or New York), but Paris required local labour, whose knowledge and experience was visible in the viaducts criss-crossing the capital. Such insistence accentuated the tension between the city and the railway companies, turning the demands of the municipal council into measures that were characterised as ‘protectionist and socialist’. Among the measures were workmen’s fares, the use of national products and equipment for the construction works, and a set percentage of the foreign workforce.192 After the usual exchange between council and minister, the ministerial project was legally divided into ‘essential’ and ‘non-essential’ lines. A bilateral agreement (contrat synallagmatique) for the first essential lines existed already between the national government and the concessionaire, on the one hand, and the national government and the railway companies, on the other hand, and so any changes to these terms were difficult to implement.193 As the commission’s reporter Lefebvre-Roncier explained, after additional negotiations and municipal pressure, the left bank section between the Gare d’Orléans and Trocadéro (crossing the river Seine and terminating on the right bank) of the proposed circular line was suspended and subsequently subjected to further study by the municipal commission. A new layout was proposed after consultation with representatives of the arrondissements directly involved. The route of the new line was to benefit the working classes, linking the peripheral districts of the south (XIII and XIV, with areas such as Montparnasse and Maison Blanche), which also lacked a direct communication with the city. Lefebvre-Roncier also presented the changes made to the underground route, introducing a direct service to Les Halles, as part of the commission’s achievements. Another ‘central subterranean line’ between the Gare St. Lazare and the Place de la République, considered previously during the studies of 1883, was also proposed and added to the project. After receiving ministerial approval (gain de cause), the changes and additions would transform the entire project investing it with ‘the definitive character of a true and very Parisian Métropolitain’, affirmed Lefebvre-Roncier. A western junction between the Ceinture and the ‘nouvelle Ceinture’, from the Place de l’Étoile to the Porte Maillot was also included: Willesden had reached Paris, if only on the drawing board (see Figure 3.14). A new economic crisis had started in 1882, with the effects still very much present four years later.194 There was, therefore, ‘a political and

Lines and Circles  165 social interest’ in the pursuit of the Métropolitain as its implementation would lead to ‘the recovery of the job market (reprise du travail) and the progressive return of the working classes to [their] well-being’. The necessity to employ ‘the workers of all the Parisian official authorities’ (corps d’état) had been made explicit to the Ministry, which was responsible for the execution of the works. In short, the Métropolitain was to become a symbol that was ‘republican, national, and communal at once’. Although erected within the jurisdiction of the capital, the Métropolitain could be ‘a grand national instrument of employment [which] will firmly cooperate in the renaissance of public prosperity’.195 Both the departmental and municipal councils issued their notices in early July. With a letter of 21 July 1886, Baïhaut requested some changes to the municipal notice and so a modified version was produced on 6 August. A second bill was ready in October with a railway commission reporting to the Chambre des Deputés on 27 October 1886. The Chamber dismissed the project in July 1887, after the majority of votes opposed the bill.196 The structure of municipal council, Seine Prefect and the various national authorities involved framed the kind of interests that were articulated around the debates of the dozens if not hundreds of versions of the Métropolitain produced and rejected during this period.197 Institutions, their practices and disagreements might have outweighed the decision of building any metropolitan railway system, but specificity was gained: In its Parisian incarnation the Métropolitain was to transport passengers, not goods, regularly and within the walls, with connections to the existing railway termini being only marginal. It was also a means of bringing back prosperity in times of crisis and ensuring that measures should be taken to include the working classes and the poor, either through cheaper fares or by employing them. Yet the kind of exchange that took place through commissions, bills and committees developed into a conflict during which the seemingly cohesive visions of the future of urban transport in Paris ended up being diluted in an atmosphere of marked antagonisms. ‘Such is our present condition’, affirmed Yves Guyot, Baïhaut’s successor, in 1883: the two prefectures always at war between themselves and with the Municipal Council –an enormous machine, unable to move without a friction by which it wears itself out without any useful result; wheels revolving in opposite directions; the public interest crushed and injured at every turn; gigantic efforts without result; nobody responsible for anything; a complete and hopeless anarchy;- this is what it has come to because the central authority is determined to be the master of Paris, and leave it but the shadow of municipal liberty.198

166  Lines and Circles

Forcing the Lines of Circles Le matin où, avec Elle, vous vous débattîtes parmi les éclats de neige, les lèvres vertes, les glaces, les drapeaux noirs et les rayons bleus, et les parfums pourpres du soleil des pôles. — Ta force. The morning when, with Her, you struggled through shards of snow, the green lips, the icefields, the black flags and blue rays, and the crimson perfumes of polar sun. — Your strength.199 (Arthur Rimbaud, excerpt from ‘Métropolitain’, Illuminations c.1873) Métropolitain is one of Rimbaud’s forty-two poems published in 1886 as Les Illuminations. Rimbaud’s choice of title, Illuminations, is both a reference to coloured plates, as Paul Verlaine explained in the preface to the 1886 edition, and part of the poet’s interest in using English and other foreign words, incorporating them into his poetic compositions. Rimbaud spent nearly a year in London from 1872 to 1873. Whether prompted by a real journey on the metropolitan railways or not, Métropolitain was for Rimbaud a means of articulating the ambivalent relationship between the poet and the city. 200 Métropolitain is a souvenir of impressions that recalls colours, textures and landscapes of cold and heat. The pulse of the metropolis, which the poet sensed, had a presence in the country (la campagne) and the city (la ville). Between a battle and the sky were the ‘crystal boulevards’ where the ‘poor young families’ lived as well as the ‘last vegetable gardens’ and the ‘luminous heads’ visible amidst the phantasmagoria of shadows, mist, river and fog. This was the landscape that railways connected and crossed. Their force was expansive. The metropolitan force, by contrast, could be contained, hesitant even, divided into threads that were pulled in several directions, often conflicting, each the claim of a different public. Between the 1860s and 1880s, railway developments in London and Paris raised questions that were metropolitan in character. Ideas about which directions these developments should take inspired a new envisioning of their urban form, particularly with regard to the relationship between the suburbs and between the suburbs and the city centre. There were important differences among local, suburban and long-distance traffic, which were coupled to the inner, middle and outer circles of these visions. These concerned, for example, the transport of minerals and other heavy goods, the regular daily journey of early commuters, and the occasional recreational trip of families on Sundays. Matching the spatial differentiation of home, leisure and work with a new transport infrastructure, including railways, would be a process adopting distinct forms in the two cities.

Lines and Circles  167 The opening of the first and subsequent sections of the Metropolitan and the Metropolitan District lines in London demonstrated the difficulties of reconciling the centrifugal forces of the two private companies with a model of interconnected railway circles, a central aim of which was to serve local rather than suburban traffic. In Paris, railway and transport connectivity were often depicted as a model of centre and periphery in which new infrastructure and new services were to reflect a cohesive growth within the walls. Conversely, the creation of a metropolitan railway district in London and the potential use of available spaces left by the former city walls in Paris give evidence of a conscious attempt to limit and direct the impact that railways might have upon their urban form. Ideas about circles, lines, centres and peripheries were closely related to the ways in which the notion of the public benefit was understood and articulated in the two cities. Most tellingly, debates in Parliament, municipal councils and other specialist circles challenged common practices. In London, the 1863 select committee recommended the creation of a separate company above and beyond laissez-faire and the prevalent practices of competition so that the inner circle they endorsed might be completed. The short-lived company gave way to the 1878 plan under which street improvements, the eastern extension of the Metropolitan District and the completion of the inner circle were joined. Once finished, the works, which also created an outer circle, brought together the interests of the two metropolitan railway companies and those of the Metropolitan Board of Works and the City Commissioners of Sewers. This is not an illustration of centralised planning, partly because there was no central authority executing plans of the kind that were built in Paris, but it does complicate our understanding of how London was transformed as a result of railway building. Coordination between private and public parties and subordinating competition to the relatively orchestrated growth of the metropolis constituted a significant part of that process. In Paris, unity of direction and the provision of a transport service in the interest of all were among the key conditions to ensuring the public benefit. Starting with Vauthier’s inner circular line and reinforced by several similar subsequent versions, the Métropolitain was to help alleviate the effects that the Second Empire’s extensive programme of public works had on the population, by and large the poor, and often providing an alternative that combined affordable transport and housing in the healthier outlying districts. A good number of these projects were municipal. Haussmann’s plans were, by contrast, the enactment of Napoléon III’s vision. The definition of the publics that the Métropolitain was to represent was at the centre of the disputes around whether and how to reconcile the two visions, which was, in turn, an essential characteristic

168  Lines and Circles of the development of metropolitan railways in Paris during the following thirty years. Railway development, however, remained tangential to the transformation that the French capital experienced during this period. It was the opening of wide boulevards that drove modernisation in Paris, a model that would circulate widely in France, across Europe and beyond. One final element of this part of the story brings the significance of the differences between the two cities into a sharper focus. The two sections of London’s inner circle provided a link for main-line companies to connect their railway termini, somewhat circumventing the central districts. The inner circle and the Metropolitan and District for that matter were largely an extension of the pattern that main-line railways had set since the 1830s. By contrast, ideas incorporating an inner circle and transversal lines would contribute to creating one of the most defining features of the Métropolitain in Paris, namely, the creation of a system that was separate from and closed to main-line railways. Using the Métro as a way of guiding growth rather than connecting the termini of national railway companies was the prerogative that led to the fiercest opposition from the municipal council. The battle continued. The boulevards were open and wide, and so was the rift between those who could afford to use them, and those who, like Baudelaire’s pauvres, could only stare from the cold.

Notes Excerpts from this chapter were published in an earlier shorter version in ‘Metropolitan Railways: Urban Form and the Public Benefit in London and Paris c.1850–1880’, The London Journal 38, 3 (2013), 184–202. 1 Quote from Memories of London. Translated by Stephen Parkin (Richmond: Alma Classics, 2014), 18–19. 2 Reproduced in Manifesto of the Communist Party, K. Marx and F. Engels, Selected Works, vol. 1 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1969), 65. 3 Yeatman’s proposal included two maps: A ‘Davies’s Map of the Environs of London’ with the surrounding areas of the counties of Middlesex, Essex, Surrey and Kent (scale 1 in. to the mile), and a ‘Smith’s New Map of London and Environs’, more detailed (scale 3.5 in. approximately to the mile) and focussed on the immediate area around the City. According to two accompanying hand-written notes, the second map was sent later (12 February 1857; the first note being from 29 January 1857) to be included in the memorial that W. Wilkinson was to present before the Metropolitan Board of Works. London Metropolitan Archives (hereafter LMA), Henry John Yeatman C. E., To the Metropolitan Board of Works, 10, Old-square, Lincoln’s-Inn, London, 27 January 1857. 4 LMA, Minutes of Proceedings of the Metropolitan Board of Works 1857, 79, 136.

Lines and Circles  169 5 See W. A. Wilkinson, Metropolitan Railway Terminal Accommodation, and Its Effect on Traffic Results, Journal of the Statistical Society 21, 2 (1858), Table II, p. 167. For the position railways accomplished compared with canals, coastal navigation and roads in Britain, see J. Kellett, Railways and Victorian Cities (London: Routledge, 1979), 351. 6 For a compelling analysis of the relationship between slums and suburbs see H. J. Dyos and D. A. Reeder, Slums and Suburbs, in H. J. Dyos and M. Wolff (eds.), The Victorian City: Images and Realities Vol. 1 (London: Routledge, 1978), 359–386. 7 Kellett, Railways and Victorian Cities, 369. 8 Th. C. Barker and M. Robbins, A History of London Transport. Passenger Travel and the Development of the Metropolis Vol. 1 (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1963), 391–392. 9 Kellett, Railways and Victorian Cities, 370–371. 10 F. M. L. Thompson, Introduction: The Rise of Suburbia, in F. M. L. Thompson (ed.), The Rise of Suburbia (Leicester: Leicester University Press 1982), 3–4, 8. 11 H. J. Dyos, Victorian Suburb: A Study of the Growth of Camberwell (Edinburgh: Leicester University Press, 1961); see also H. Clout (ed.), The Times London History Atlas (London: Thames Books, 1991), 88–89. 12 R. Porter, London A Social History (London: Penguin Books, 2000), 252. 13 Anonymous, Remarks upon Some of the London Railway Projects of 1864, comprising Mr. Fowler’s Outer Circle and Inner Circle, Mr. Hawkshaw’s Lines, The Metropolitan Grand Union, &c. (London, 1864), 3. 14 Remarks upon 1864, 3. 15 See the ‘Order of Reference’, Third Report from the Select Committee of the House of Lords, on Metropolitan Railway Communication (London, 16 July 1863), vi. 16 Select Committee 1863, iii. The committee had considered thirteen bills during its first report, five of which were opposed (20 April). After the petition of promoters of the Metropolitan, Tottenham and Hampstead Railway, which was part of the bills opposed, the committee issued a second report (24 April) reiterating its previous recommendation. Subsequent references are to the third report. 17 Select Committee 1863, point 1, iii. 18 Kellett, Railways and Victorian Cities, 54; see also the reference given in N. McAlpine and A. Smyth, Urban Form, Social patterns and the ­E conomic Impact Arising from the Development of Public Transport in London, 1840–1940, in R. Roth, and M.-N. Polino (eds.), The City and the Railway in Europe (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), 175. 19 Select Committee 1863, iv. 20 Select Committee 1863, point 11, iv. 21 Select Committee 1863, point 12, iv. 22 Select Committee 1863, v. 23 Select Committee 1863, points 6 and 7, iv. Also quoted in J. Bazalgette’s 1865 report (p. 7) discussed later. 24 The London and St. Katherine Docks Co. consisted of the London Dock (opened in 1805), St. Katherine Dock (opened in 1828) and the Victoria Dock (opened in 1855), all situated north of the Thames. South of the river the Commercial Dock and Grand Surrey Dock amalgamated into the Surrey Commercial Dock Co. See J. Broodbank, History of the Port of London, Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 (London: Daniel O’Connor, 1921).

170  Lines and Circles 25 J. W. Bazalgette, Report upon Metropolitan Railway and Other Schemes of Session, 1865 (London: Metropolitan Board of Works, 1865), 5. 26 Bazalgette, Report upon Metropolitan, 11–12. 27 Bazalgette, Report upon Metropolitan, 39, 56. 28 J. Simmons, The Railway in England and Wales 1830–1914, vol. 1 The System and its Working (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1978), 79– 80, 121. 29 Select Committee 1863, point 17, v. 30 Bazalgette, Report upon Metropolitan, 7–8. 31 Amendments included the Deviations Act 1855, Great Northern Branch and Amendment Act 1856, Amendment Act of 1857, and Metropolitan Railway Act 1859. See, for example, LMA, ‘Agreement as to Sale and Purchase’ between the Metropolitan and Mr David Bell Johnstone from 11 December 1860. 32 For the opening of stations and sections of lines of the Metropolitan, District and subsequent London Underground lines see D. Rose, The London Underground. A Diagrammatic History (Middlesex: Douglas Rose, 1999). Also A. Jackson, London’s Metropolitan Railway (Newton Abbot: David & Charles, 1986), 38–44. 33 Statement by William Hill from the Stamp Office, see Senate House Library, evidence of London and Grand Junction Railway Bill (London, 1836), 93; for a comparison with other routes see also the table containing the returns of stage carriages, ibid., 91–93. See also Barker and Robbins, A History of London Transport vol. 1. 34 Quoted in K. Bradley, The Development of the London Underground, 1840–1933: The Transformation of the London Metropolis and the Role of Laissez-Faire in Urban Growth, PhD Thesis Emory University, 2006, 53. 35 See, for example, O. Huet, Les Chemins de Fer Métropolitains de Londres. Étude d’un réseau de chemins de fer métropolitains pour la ville de Paris. Mission à Londres en mai, 1876 (Paris, 1878), 45. 36 Huet, Métropolitains de Londres, 45–47. 37 Jackson, London’s Metropolitan 47–50. 38 The dispute took place between 10 August 1863 and autumn the same year. See E. T. Macdermot, History of the Great Western Railway. Volume One 1833–1863 (London: Ian Allan, 1964), 104, 230. 39 The first term, ‘Metropolitan Inner Circle’ was used by the Illustrated London News on 2 January 1869; quoted in S. Halliday, Underground to Everywhere. London’s Underground Railway in the Life of the Capital (Sutton Publishing London’s Transport Museum, 2001), 28; the other term ‘Metropolitan underground system’ was used in the brief report on ‘The Metropolitan District Railway’, The Builder, 2 January 1869, 2, which gives a concise account of the details of its construction, also in relation to the Metropolitan. 40 The Builder, 2 January 1869, 3. 41 Halliday, Underground to Everywhere, 31. 42 Kellett, Railways and Victorian Cities, 255. 43 The agreement lasted a little longer than two years, however; see Halliday, Underground to Everywhere, 29. 44 The Times, 5 April 1870, 4. 45 Through, for example, the Regulation Act of 1871, following several accidents and a report in 1870 by the Chief Inspecting Officer of the Board of Trade, see Simmons, Railway in England and Wales, 81. 46 See, for example, Barker and Robbins, A History of London Transport vol. 1, Halliday, Underground to Everywhere, and C. Wolmar, The

Lines and Circles  171 Subterranean Railway. How the London Underground Railway Was Built and How it Changed the City Forever (London: Atlantic Books, 2004). 47 LMA, Select Committee on Railway Bills (London, 1876), 21. 48 For a contemporary account see the note ‘Metropolitan Board of Works’, The Times, 3 May 1873, 5. 49 Select Committee 1876, 21–22. 50 LMA, Metropolitan Inner Circle Completion Railway Bill 1876, 4. 51 Metropolitan Inner Circle Completion Railway Bill 1876, 2; see also the Act, pp. 1–2. The LMA holds two bound volumes under the title Metropolitan Inner Circle Completion Railway Bill 1876. The first volume consists of Bills and their corresponding Acts, including several versions, amendments and a final Act with Royal assent which indicates a degree of consensus; all the documents date from 1876. Also included in the first volume are petitions against the Bill, correspondence and minutes of evidence. The second volume consists of the minutes of evidence and speeches related to the Select Committee on Railway Bills. 52 Metropolitan Inner Circle Completion Railway Act 1876, 2. 53 Select Committee 1876, 7. 54 Select Committee 1876, 16. 55 Select Committee 1876, 37. Mr Pope was a clear advocate of the Inner Circle, but his role in the company is not immediately apparent from the committee’s evidence. 56 The assertion is by James S. Forbes, the District’s chairman, during his examination. Select Committee 1876, 8. 57 Metropolitan Inner Circle Completion Railway Act 1876, 4. 58 All the petitions against are part of the Metropolitan Inner Circle Completion Railway Bill as follows: ‘Petition of the Metropolitan Board of Works Against’ the mentioned Bill, 6; ‘Petition of Commissioners of Sewers of the City of London Against’, 3; ‘Petition of Lord Mayor, Aldermen and Commons of the City of London Against’, 4. 59 Petition of the Metropolitan Board of Works Against, 5. 60 Letter of 2 March 1876, signed by Newman Stretton Hilliard. 61 Petition of Commissioners of Sewers of the City of London Against, 3. 62 Petition of Lord Mayor, Aldermen and Commons of the City of London Against, 3–4. 63 F. Sérafon, Étude sur les Chemins de Fer, les Tramways et les Moyens de Transport en Commun à Paris et à Londres (Paris, 1872), 70–72; F. Sérafon, Les Chemins de Fer Métropolitains et les Moyens de Transport en Commun à Londres, New-York, Berlin, Vienne, et Paris (Paris, 1885), 36. 64 See, for example, M. A. Pernolet, L’Air Comprimé et ses Applications Production Distribution et Conditions d’Emploi (Paris, 1876). 65 Sérafon, Étude, 2. Another term he used was ceinture du Nord, ibid., 13. 66 See Sérafon, Étude, 7–10. Kellet refers to the North London, West London extension and the Metropolitan as the ‘inner ring’ or ‘underground railways’, Kellett, Railways and Victorian Cities, 268. 67 Sérafon, Étude, 5. 68 Sérafon, Étude, 74. 69 See Huet, Métropolitains de Londres, 92–93. 70 Charing Cross, opened in 1864, is missing from Huet’s list; similarly, his count includes Moorgate Street (likely as a result of Midland services), Mansion House (District) and Bishopsgate, which was closed to passenger traffic in 1875, following the opening of the Great Eastern’s terminus at Liverpool Street the year before. Huet, Métropolitains de Londres, 99. See

172  Lines and Circles also Simmons, Railway in England and Wales, 125; Kellet, Railways and Victorian Cities, 268; Clout, Times History of London, 90–91. 71 Huet, Métropolitains de Londres, 101. 72 Huet, Métropolitains de Londres, 79–82. 73 Huet, Métropolitains de Londres, 83–84. 74 Remarks upon 1864, 2. 75 Sérafon, Étude, 21. 76 Sérafon, Étude, 10–11; see also Sérafon’s Chemins de Fer Métropolitains, 39. 77 Sérafon, Étude, 7. The significance of travelling with or without luggage is discussed in the following chapter. 78 Sérafon, Étude, 50. 79 Simmons, for example, is tempted to consider Baker Street as one of London’s main-line termini, Railway in England and Wales, 125; see also Barker and Robbins, A History of London Transport vol. 1, 210–211. 80 Cl. Parsons, The Incomparable Siddons (New York and London: Methuen & Co, 1909), see, for example, 237–241. 81 Both references are from the Bayswater Chronicle, October 1882, quoted in E. Rappaport, ‘The Halls of Temptation’: Gender, politics and the construction of the department store in late Victorian London, Journal of British Studies 35, 1 (1996), 58–83; for the reference to colonial administrators see p. 63. 82 Remarks upon 1864, 1. 83 Porter, London, 250–251, 270. 84 Other examples were ‘transactions following the improvement of the North London service from Acton in 1865, the provision of new stations on the Great Western at Acton in 1868 and Castle Hill three years later’. See M. Jahn, Suburban Development in Outer West London, 1850–1900, in F.  M. L. Thompson (ed.), The Rise of Suburbia (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1982), 144–145. For the opening dates of the District extensions see Rose, The London Underground. 85 The line proposed consisted of ‘a nine-mile District extension from Ealing via Hayes to Uxbridge, a town already linked to the Great Western main line by a short branch from West Drayton’. Jahn, Suburban development, 122. 86 The reference is to Thorne’s Handbook to the Environs of London (1876), quoted in Simmons, Railway in England and Wales, 127. 87 The situation is similar if not the same in Paris as discussed in the following section. 88 Survey of London and Hammersmith and City Junction Rly Bill 1864; quoted in Jahn, Suburban development, 110. 89 Jahn, Suburban development, 114. 90 The line proposed in 1877 had ‘intermediate stations at Acton Green (later Chiswick Park), Mill Hill Park (later Acton Town) and Ealing Common’. Jahn, Suburban development, 116; see also Rose, The London Underground. 91 Evidence of J. Forbes, Metropolitan District Railway Bill, 1881; quoted in Jahn, Suburban development, 124. It was the Metropolitan which would open, early in the twentieth century (July 1904), its extension to Uxbridge, one of the line’s termini today. 92 Quoted in Barker and Robbins, A History of London Transport vol. 1, 174; the first time Watkin ‘presided over the [Metropolitan’s] board’ as the company new chairman was on 9 August 1872; see ibid., 160. 93 Kellett, Railways and Victorian Cities, 396–397; for Metro-Land, see A. Jackson, Semi-detached London: Suburban Development, Life and Transport, 1900–1939 (Didcot: Wild Swan, 1991).

Lines and Circles  173 94 Jackson, London’s Metropolitan, 134, 137. 95 Both quotes from Jahn, Suburban development, 124–125. 96 Quoted in Halliday, Underground to Everywhere, 34. 97 Mike Chrimes, Hawkshaw, Sir John (1811–1891), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, online edn, January 2013 [0-www.oxforddnb.com. catalogue.ulrls.lon.ac.uk/view/article/12690, accessed 19 June 2013]. 98 J. W. Barry, The City Lines and Extensions (Inner Circle Completion) of the Metropolitan and District Railways, Minutes of Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers 81 (1885), 35. 99 The MBW contributed £500,000, the CCS £300,000; the Parliamentary estimates for the cost of the railway works was £830,320 and £1,534,941 for the purchase of land; Barry, The City Lines and Extensions, 36–38 100 Barry, The City Lines and Extensions, 50. Accounts of the various circles differ in existing historiography; contrast with, for example, Halliday, Underground to Everywhere, 38. 101 Barker and Robbins, A History of London Transport vol. 1, 232–233. 102 A. Sutcliffe, London and Paris: Capitals of the Nineteenth Century, The Fifth H.J. Dyos Memorial Lecture (Victorian Studies Centre, University of Leicester, 1983), 10. 103 ‘Il y dans une grande ville telle que Paris, un immense besoin de transports à bas prix. Il existe entre tous les quartiers une étroite solidarité de relations de toute nature. Le régime de la concurrence qui rencontre des grandes difficultés dans l’état de la voirie ne donnerait pas satisfaction à cet intérêt, parce qu’il desservirait certains quartiers et pas d’autres. Le mieux est donc de constituer une seule compagnie qui, avec de moindres frais généreux, produira le transport au plus bas prix, qui, par une unité de direction, établira la solidarité dans un service appelé à rayonner en tous sens, qui sera en mesure d’exécuter dans une certaine proportion les transports onéreux que réclamera l’intérêt public’. Quoted as ‘principles of the new Parisian regime’ (18 May 1854), in C. Lavollée. Les Omnibus à Paris et à Londres (Paris: Compagnie Générale des Omnibus de Paris, 1868), 46–47. 104 P. Merlin, Les Transports Parisiens (Étude de Géographie Économique et Sociale) (Paris: Masson & Cie. Éditeurs, 1967), 38. 105 Merlin, Transports Parisiens, 38; N. Papayanis, Horse-Drawn Cabs and Omnibuses in Paris. The Idea of Circulation and the Business of Public Transit (Baton Rouge and London: Louisiana State University Press, 1996), 213; N. Evenson, Paris: A Century of Change, 1878–1978 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1979), 77. 106 Lavollée, Les Omnibus, 55. 107 The following account is based on A. Martin, Étude historique et statistique sur les moyens de transport dans Paris avec plans, diagrammes et cartogrammes (Paris, 1894), 89–94. 108 An eastern section to Vincennes opened in 1875. Three routes operated thereafter following the east-west axis from Vincennes to Louvre and from Louvre to either Sèvres or St. Cloud (dividing at Boulogne). 109 Another service was the trolley or Chemin de Fer Américain operating the route between Pont de la Concorde and Pont de St. Cloud; see, for example, Bibliothèque Nationale de France (hereafter BnF), Itinéraire officiel du voyageur en omnibus. Publié par la Cie. Gle, d’Affichage (Paris, 1862), 19. 110 Martin, Étude historique, 92. 111 Sérafon, Chemins de Fer Métropolitains, 85. 112 Martin, Étude historique, 136–147; see also P. Reverard, Des Conditions d’Exploitation du Chemin de Fer Métropolitain de Paris (Paris: Arthur Rousseau, Éditeur, 1905), 33–35; J. Gay, Le Chemin de Fer de Petite

174  Lines and Circles

113

114

15 1 116 117 118

119

120 121

122 123 124

125

126 127

Ceinture sous le Second Empire, in Métropolitain. L’autre dimension de ville (Paris: Mairie de Paris, 1988), 41–57; D. Larroque, Le Métropolitain: Histoire d’un Projet, in D. Larroque, M. Margairaz, P. Zembri, Paris et ses Transports XIXe – XXe siècles. Deux siècles de décisions pour la ville et  sa région (Paris: Éditions Recherches, 2002), 42–44; and B. Carrière, La Petite Ceinture, in K. Bowie and S. Texier (sous la direction de), Paris et ses Chemins de Fer (Paris: Action Artistique de la Ville de Paris, 2003), 116–121. A. Hauet, Note sur le Chemin de Fer de Ceinture de Paris (rive droite), Revue Générale des Chemins de Fer, June 1888, 339. The junction of Courcelles between the right bank section and the Auteuil line opened in March 1869; see Larroque, Le Métropolitain, 43. It opened on 25 February 1867, after being declared of ‘public interest’ by imperial decree in 1861. The left bank section was seen as an extension of the Ceinture right bank creating a link between Auteuil and the Gare d’Orléans (instead of the Rapée Bercy across the river). See Carrière, La Petite Ceinture, 116. A. Martin, Étude historique, 143; Reverard, Des Conditions, 36. See, for example, Gay, Le Chemin de Fer de Petite Ceinture, particularly the section ‘L’oubli des voyageurs’, 47–50. B. Carrière, La Saga de la Petite Ceinture (Paris: La Vie du Rail, 1991), 34. Hauet, Note sur le Chemin de Fer, 339. For frequencies of trains departing from and arriving at the Gare St. Lazare see also B. Carrière, La Petite Ceinture et les Expositions, in K. Bowie and S. Texier (sous la direction de), Paris et ses Chemins de Fer (Paris: Action Artistique de la Ville de Paris, 2003), 122. ‘comment laisser grandir dans l’anarchie cette zone qui devenait la nébuleuse du Paris futur’, L. Girard, La Deuxième République et le Second Empire 1848–1870. Nouvelle Histoire de Paris (Paris: Diffusion Hachette, 1981), 124. For the addition of the suburbs to the capital’s administration see ibid., 123–129. Quoted in Girard, La Deuxième République, 126. Thirteen additional communes were considered for annexation later on, namely, Neuilly, Clichy, Saint-Ouen, Aubervilliers, Pantin, Pré-Saint-­ Gervais, Saint-Mandé, Bagnolet, Ivry, Gentilly, Montrouge, Vanves and Issy. See ‘Loi sur l’extension des limites de Paris’, 16 June 1859, Art.1er, reproduced in E. Feugère, L’Octroi de Paris Histoire et Legislation (Paris and Nancy: Berger-Levrault, 1904), 307–308; see also F. Bourillon and A. Fourcaut (eds.), Agrandir Paris 1860–1970 (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2012). Girard, La Deuxième République, 126, 127. ‘Loi sur l’extension’, Arts. 5 and 6, in Feugère, L’Octroi, 308–309. ‘Décret imperial portant règlement d’administration publique, pour l’exécution de la loi du 16 juin 1859, en ce qui concerne l’extension du régime de l’octroi de Paris jusqu’aux nouvelles limites de cette ville’, Art. 34–36, in Feugère, L’Octroi, 323–324. M. du Camp, Paris ses Organes, ses Fonctions et sa Vie dans la Seconde Moitié du XIX siècle, vol. 6 (Paris: Hachette, 1876), 1–22. Articles 11–23 of the Décret Impérial also give a good sense of the variety of activities in which tax officers were engaged. Feugère, L’Octroi, 313–318. A. Picard (1887) quoted in F. Dobbin, Forging Industrial Policy. The United States, Britain, and France in the Railway Age (Cambridge: ­Cambridge University Press, 1994), 129. Dobbin, Forging Industrial Policy, 137.

Lines and Circles  175 128 For a detailed discussion of this see Larroque, Le Métropolitain, 41–94. 129 This would be illustrated later by letters Vauthier addressed to the minister of Travaux Publics late in 1878 and early 1879. Particularly relevant was a conference he gave at the Palais du Trocadéro on the occasion of the Exposition Universelle on 13 July 1878, L.-L. Vauthier, Conférence sur les conditions techniques et économiques d’une organisation rationnelle des chemins de fer (Paris, 1879). 130 C. Jones, Paris: Biography of a City (New York: Penguin Books, 2006), 324–332. 131 Régie Autonome des Transports Parisiens (RATP), L. L. Vauthier, Chemin de Fer Circulaire Intérieur sur la Ligne des Anciens Boulevards Extérieurs et le Quai de la Rive Droite de la Seine. Avant-projet (Commissioned by the Ville de Paris, 31 March 1865). The summary or ‘mémoire’ I quote from is dated 31 March 1872, p. 3. 132 Vauthier, Circulaire Intérieur, 4. 133 It is difficult to ascertain whether Vauthier’s plan was commissioned in response to the 1865 Act as the material consulted gives no evidence of this. 134 Vauthier, Circulaire Intérieur, 4–5. 135 Vauthier, Circulaire Intérieur, 44. 136 Vauthier, Circulaire Intérieur, 45. 137 A. Sutcliffe, The Autumn of Central Paris: The Defeat of Town Planning 1850–1970 (London: Edward Arnold, 1970), 24, 42. 138 A. Mitchell, The Great Train Race. Railways and the Franco-German Rivalry, 1815–1914 (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2000), particularly the introduction. 139 Reverard, Des Conditions, 80. 140 Quoted in Sérafon, Chemins de Fer Métropolitains, 88–89; also in N. ­Lauriot, La genèse d’un réseau urbain: la logique des tracés, in S. Hallsted-­ Baumert and F. Gasnault (eds.), Metro-Cité: Le Chemin de Métropolitain à la Conquête de Paris 1871–1945 (Paris: Paris Musées, 1997), 36. 141 Lauriot, La genèse, 37. 142 M. André, Notes sur les Variations de la Circulation dans les Rues de Paris de 1872 à 1887 (Paris, 1888), 44. 143 See, for example, C. Yearley, The ‘Provincial Party’ and the Megalopolises: London, Paris, and New York, 1850–1910, Comparative Studies in Society and History 15 (1973), 83–84. 144 S. Hallsted-Baumert, The Métropolitain: Technology, Space and the Creation of Urban Identities in Fin-de-Siècle Paris, PhD Dissertation, New York University 1999, 3–4. 145 Hallsted-Baumert, The Métropolitain, 17. 146 Hallsted-Baumert, The Métropolitain, 18. Larroque makes a similar point when he writes, ‘The margins of manoeuvre of the local [representatives were at the time] narrow. Among other reactions, they directed [their role as representatives] to use the project of the Métropolitain like a place of affirmation of their own identity’. Larroque, Le Métropolitain, 47. 147 The proponents were Brame and Flachat, Lemasson, Vauthier, Lavalley and Rostand, Brunfaut, Bergeron, Pochet, and Lemoine. See Hallsted-­ Baumert, The Métropolitain, 131–133. 148 Quoted in T. de Beauregard, Chemin de Fer Métropolitain Parisien. Comparaison des Deux Principaux Projets (Paris, 1883), 8. 149 Statement by the commissioners; quoted in de Beauregard, Comparaison des Deux Principaux Projets, 15–16. 150 Quoted in A. Cottereau, Les Batailles du Métropolitain: La Compagnie du Chemin de Fer du Nord et les Choix d’Urbanisation, in S. Hallsted-­Baumert

176  Lines and Circles

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52 1 153 154 155 156

57 1 158

159 60 1

161 162 163 164 65 1 166 167 68 1 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177

and F. Gasnault (eds.), Métro-Cité: Le Chemin de fer Métropolitain à la Conquête de Paris 1871–1945 (Paris: Paris Musées, 1997), 77. RATP, A. Lavalley and A. Rostand, Projet de Chemin de Fer Métropolitain (Paris, 1872), 2. For a different discussion of the project see Hallsted-­ Baumert, The Métropolitain, 136–139. According to Larroque the director of the Ceinture, Francois Mantion, was also one of the proponents; see Larroque, Le Métropolitain, 44–45. Lavalley and Rostand, Projet de Chemin de Fer, 3. Lavalley and Rostand, Projet de Chemin de Fer, 5. Lavalley and Rostand, Projet de Chemin de Fer, 7–8, 10, 11. Lavalley and Rostand, Projet de Chemin de Fer, 11. Another project which is not part of the report is, for example, BnF, ­A ntoine-Emile Letellier, Avant-Projet d’un Réseau des Chemins de Fer dans Paris (Paris, 1872); see also his atlas, Les Chemins de Fer Projetés dans Paris (1875). Quoted in Larroque, Le Métropolitain, 45. Sérafon, Chemins de Fer Métropolitains, 92. The following account is based on Martin, Étude historique, 442–450 and Reverard, Des Conditions, 48–78; this reference p. 443 and p. 51, respectively. It is worth noting that Reverard’s account reproduces, often identically, Martin’s work. See also Papayanis, Horse-Drawn Cabs, 24. Martin, Étude historique, 443; Reverard, Des Conditions, 53. A. Mitchell, Le Métro: Bataille Technologique, in K. Bowie and S. Texier (sous la direction de), Paris et ses Chemins de Fer (Paris: Action Artistique de la Ville de Paris, 2003), 132. The issue of technology is discussed with an emphasis on electricity in the following chapter. Larroque, Le Métropolitain, 46. Huet, Métropolitains de Londres, 7. Huet, Métropolitains de Londres, 8. Huet, Métropolitains de Londres, 6; on the economic crisis see, for example, André, Notes sur la Variation, 44; see also B. Marchand Paris, Histoire d’une Ville XIXe – XXe siècles (Paris: Éditions du Seil, 1993). Huet, Métropolitains de Londres, 77; contrast with London section earlier. Huet, Métropolitains de Londres, 103–105. Huet, Métropolitains de Londres, 108. For a brief discussion of the official mission and its report, see Larroque, Le Métropolitain, 49–51. See the section on railways of Chapter 1. Sérafon, Chemins de Fer Métropolitains, 81. Quoted in Sérafon, Chemins de Fer Métropolitains, 93. de Beauregard, Comparaison des Deux Principaux Projets, 11. Sérafon, Chemins de Fer Métropolitains, 93; Reverard, Des Conditions, 56–59. E. Chabrier. Les Chemins de Fer d’Intérêt Local Sur Routes (Paris, 1879), 31, 44. Chabrier, Chemins de Fer d’Intérêt Local, 30–33. Chabrier, Chemins de Fer d’Intérêt Local, 44. See the report of February 1873, included in Chabrier’s pamphlet. Larroque, Le Métropolitain, 52. The lines were St. Cloud to Chemin de Vincennes and branches, Halles – Ceinture (right bank), Montrouge – Boulevard Jourdan, Square Cluny – Pont de l’Alma and Carrefour de l’Observatoire – Place de l’Étoile. See Anonymous. L’avant-projet du Chemin de Fer Métropolitain de Paris, Revue Générale des Chemins de Fer, Vol. V (April 1882), 272.

Lines and Circles  177 178 Quoted in Sérafon, Chemins de Fer Métropolitains, 96. 179 For the different stages of Buisson des Leszes’s project and the exchange with the various official authorities see Mitchell, Le Métro, 133, 136; see also Sérafon, Chemins de Fer Métropolitains, 100. 180 Quoted in Sérafon, Chemins de Fer Métropolitains, 79–80; Cottereau, Les Batailles du Métropolitain, 78; and Larroque, Le Métropolitain, 54. 181 Sérafon, Chemins de Fer Métropolitains, 80. 182 Lines were built for long-distance traffic with few stations in the vicinity of Paris such as Paris-Nogent-sur-Marne (1856), Paris-La Varenne (1859) and Paris-Aulnay-sous-Bois (1860); see I. Raubault-Mazières, Chemin de Fer, Croissance Suburbaine et Migrations de Travail: L’Exemple Parisien au XIXe siècle, Histoire Urbaine 11 (2004), 10–11. 183 Raubault-Mazières, Croissance Suburbaine, 23–26. 184 Raubault-Mazières, Croissance Suburbaine, 24. For an analysis of the possible correlation between the size of the suburbs, their population and socio-economic orientations, railway traffic and other related aspects see ibid., 15–23. 185 L. Le Chatelier, La Question du Métropolitain (Paris, 1888), 16. 186 Le Chatelier, La Question, 17. 187 Le Chatelier, La Question, 18. 188 Quoted in Sérafon, Chemins de Fer Métropolitains, 87. For a brief discussion of the report see Larroque, Le Métropolitain, 52–55. 189 Hallsted-Baumert, The Métropolitain, 101. Part of the CGO reaction was to publish a pamphlet, Le Métropolitain et les Transports en Commun à Londres et à Paris, in which it stated, unsurprisingly, that if ‘indispensable in London’ the metropolitan railway ‘was absolutely of no use in Paris’. Quoted in Reverard, Des Conditions, 77. 190 Hallsted-Baumert, The Métropolitain, 100, 107–108. 191 The following account is based on the report by Lefebvre-Roncier to the municipal council and appendixes. See Conseil Municipal de Paris, Rapports et Documents 1886 (no. 69). 192 Journal des Économistes Series 4, Vol. 35 (July 1886), 148. 193 As Larroque has noted, the combinations used in the contracts were ‘particularly complex’; they incorporated, for example, interests on capital guaranteed by the State, tolls the companies were to pay and set revenues based on the prospect of traffic figures ensured by the companies. Larroque, Le Métropolitain, 61–62. A similar situation would be observed later with the ‘projet de convention’ between the same parties in 1894, as discussed in the following chapter. 194 According to André the end of the crisis came when financial indicators fell to the minimum figures known during the immediately preceding crises. Interestingly 1882 figures showed no effects on passenger traffic but on the transport of goods. André, Notes sur la variation, 34, 44. 195 Conseil Municipal de Paris, Rapports et Documents 1886 (no. 69), 17. 196 Larroque, Le Métropolitain, 68; for a detailed discussion of Baïhaut’s project see ibid., 60–68. 197 For a helpful scheme of the various bodies involved and how their separate agencies circulated in the institutional structure see the ‘Itinerary of a project of the Metropolitain of general interest’, Larroque, Le Métropolitain, 64, figure 7; contrast with the scheme depicting the adoption of the municipal project, figure 14, p. 82. 198 Y. Guyot, The Municipal Organization of Paris, Contemporary Review 43 (January–June 1883), 448; also quoted in Yearley, Provincial Party, 84.

178  Lines and Circles 199 The translation draws on A. Rimbaud, Rimbaud Complete Vol. 1: Poetry and Prose. Translated, edited and with an introduction by Wyatt Mason (New York: The Modern Library, 2003); and A. Rimbaud, Collected Poems. Translated with an introduction and notes by Martin Sorrell (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). 200 The meaning, intention and inspiration behind Rimbaud’s Métropolitain have been the subject of much debate; see, for example, M. Spencer, A Fresh Look at Rimbaud’s Métropolitain, Modern Language Review 63, 4 (1968), 849–853. On Rimbaud’s time in London see G. Robb, Rimbaud (London: Picador, 2000).

4 Steam and Light

We return to the heart of the city [where] it seems as if the day were beginning again. It is not an illumination, but a fire. The Boulevards are blazing. The ground floor of all buildings is in focus. Half closing the eyes it seems as if one saw on the right and left two rows of flaming furnaces […] all these theatrical splendors, jagged by the greenery which now reveals and now hides the distant illumination, and presents the spectacle of successive apparitions; all this broken light, refracted, variegated, and mobile, falling in showers, gathered in torrents, and scattered in stars and diamonds, produces the first time an impression of which no idea can possibly be given. —Edmondo de Amicis, Memories of Paris, 28 June 18781 The Strand and St Martin’s Lane open out like rivers of fire, the fog billows and glows like a solar flare, illuminated and prickled by innumerable points of light. Stretching in unbroken chains, along all the pavements are theatres, restaurants and Music Halls, a fantastic, electric architecture […] The new underground electric railway, like a parabola of energy – admittedly only visible on the map – with its apex at the Bank of England […] is likewise a work of art; monumental in its practical simplicity, splendid in its solid elegance […] And the next moment there stops at the platform a strange, coiled steel monster with staring insect’s eyes, behind which, like the brain, the train-driver hides; this is a creature almost of flesh and blood, a manifestation of the most modern art, worthy of being treated with the same reverence with which we honour tools or utensils perfected in vanished centuries. —Sigurd Frosterus, London Rhapsody, 19032

Figure 4.1  L  ondon 1914.

Figure 4.2  Paris 1908.

182  Steam and Light ‘A journey from King’s Cross to Baker Street’, remarked a commentary in The Times in the mid-1880s, ‘is a form of mild torture which no person would undergo if he could conveniently help it […] ­Passengers have been consoled’, the writer went on to assert, ‘by the assurance that self-­asphyxiation by sulphurous fumes [was] not an injurious thing even for the asthmatic’. On this, railway directors could only disagree with ‘coughing sufferers’.3 Despite the discomfort and potential self-­ asphyxiation, steam railways had dominated the landscape of suburban and long-­distance travel to and from London for nearly fifty years. The same allure of steam would be the subject of the powerful portraits of railway termini by Claude Monet in Paris. But there, in the termini, the service was into and out of the city, circumventing it via the Ceinture. What was ‘metropolitan’ of the service that main-line railways provided differed significantly between the two cities. While metropolitan, the Metropolitan and the District in London relied on the same technology as the main-line railways, making any attempt to separate between the two both vain and arduous. The Métropolitain, in turn, would symbolise and help articulate the interest and reservations of the municipal authorities in Paris, not least their insistence on keeping main-line and metropolitan services as two independent systems, each with its own technology. The operation of main-line services for long-distance routes was different from the operation of a local service: Timetables, frequencies and transfer facilities differed according to the nature of the journeys, whether it was by powerful and heavy trains transporting passengers and their luggage across long distances or by trains resembling an omnibus service within the city. Platforms were distributed differently at major stations in response to these differences, as were the transfer of luggage between lines and the potential synchronisation of services. Several things became increasingly apparent about the kind of service that a metropolitan railway network should ­provide as electric traction became a real alternative in urban transport. Trains could be lighter and speedier, frequencies could be increased and the distance between stations could be shortened. An electricity-­ operated line could also become part of a larger system, powered at a distance from one generating plant such as those built at Bercy in Paris and Lots Road, Chelsea, in London. The power generated at these large plants reached substations where the energy was transformed and distributed across a specific number of trains carrying a certain amount of passengers. All of this translated into electric circuits that were part of one and the same system. Added to the comfort of not being asphyxiated by the smoke and debris of steam locomotives was the potential to create a network where interchanging stations would allow passengers to change between lines, ideally without changes to the fare they paid. This was, of course, the theory, defended by the likes of Jean-Baptiste Berlier and Fulgence Bienvenüe in Paris and James Greathead, William Thomson and Charles Yerkes in London. Its implementation was gradual, once more, carving different paths in the two cities.

Steam and Light  183 In London, an improved tunnelling shield allowed ‘tube’ lines to be laid deeper into the city’s strata with trains hauled by electric locomotives as early as 1890. Five new city railway lines opened between 1890 and 1907, serving both urban and suburban traffic: The City and South London (CSL), the Central London, the Piccadilly, the Bakerloo and the Hampstead. The opening of the Waterloo and City (1898) and the Great Northern and City (1904) was also an indication of the last efforts of main-line companies to extend their lines further into the City. The emergence of a single administration responsible for the operation of four different lines, the Underground Electric Railways of London (UERL), would constitute a significant stage in the development of a metropolitan railway network; its creation illustrating the predominance of the political and business cultures that remained central to transport in the English capital. In Paris, the Métropolitain went through the last stages of the debate that preceded the opening of the first line in 1900. Line 1 opened between Porte de Vincennes (east) and Porte Maillot (west), followed by the northern section of the circular Line 2 between Porte Dauphine and Place de la Nation. The two lines were part of a comprehensive network of six lines, as initially approved in 1898, to be operated by one concessionaire overseen by the municipal authorities. The network was entirely operated by electricity, providing a local service, with no direct connection to the main-line railways. The local interest, which would engage the municipal authorities in the last tail of fierce political battling, responded to a logic whereby it was to become ‘a less powerful but more adaptable instrument’.4 Adaptability was relative and limited to the area within the walls. Two other developments would supplement the Métro, namely, two main-line incursions further into the city, both on the left bank, electrified, and for the service of the 1900 Expo: One by the Compagnie de l’Ouest and the other by the Paris-Orléans railway. The other was a ‘tube’ line, the Nord-Sud, which crossed the Seine and connected the main-line termini at St. Lazare and Montparnasse. The centrality of circulation and improvement in the debates around railways and metropolitan growth from the 1830s to the 1860s had developed into a model of centrifugal lines and circumventing circles that connected the periphery in various ways. The introduction of electric traction would further qualify this process, whereby lighter and speedier trains running at higher frequencies were to become the desired new standard. Its introduction depended upon the success of a new form of traction and the persistent dependency on conventional trains and locomotives as well as the necessity to specify a service that was metropolitan, whether this meant suburban, urban, concentrated in the busiest parts or all of these. With new technologies came new interests and new publics, particularly in terms of capital, foreign and global in its scope. The following section of this chapter outlines some of the key aspects concerning developments in electricity and other technologies which will help better to situate the fuller discussion of what exactly had electric

184  Steam and Light traction to offer the future of metropolitan growth and transport in London and Paris by the turn of the twentieth century.

Let There Be Light Experiments with electricity in cities increased in kind and number during the nineteenth century. 5 Telegraphs, lighthouses and street lamps were among the early applications. Street lighting was tried successfully in St. Petersburg in May 1873 with lamps whose light contemporary accounts described as analogous to sunlight.6 The same year, a ­magneto-electric machine perfected by the French engineer Zénobe Théophile Gramme, was tested on Westminster Bridge Road, London. The Daily News reported on the occasion that The carbon points had been placed at the end of this street, and at the application of the current, an intense light was thrown on the shed at the opposite end, a distance of about 300 yards, which ­illuminated ­every object within that space with a painful brilliancy. At that ­distance it was not only quite easy to read the smallest print, but the flame of an ordinary gas lamp threw a distinct shadow upon the board behind it. At the same time the light burned with a steadiness which we have never seen equaled in any other magneto-electric machine. Moreover, the report concluded, the relation of cost and performance was superior to that of gas lamps.7 Electric lamps required dynamos to ‘convert the energy of motion [produced and stored in a stationary plant] into electrical energy, through the medium of magnetism’. Following his visit to the 1878 World Exhibition in Paris, W. H. Preece, prominent British engineer, remarked that these ‘dynamo-machines […] were exhibited in abundance, of all kinds and forms, from the original apparatus of Faraday, made with his own hands, to Mr. Edison’s latest development’. The original dynamo-machines had been made in Haarlem, The Netherlands, and Italy, in 1842 and 1861, respectively.8 The chairman of the Metropolitan Railway, Edward Watkin, and the company’s general manager, Myles Fenton, also visited the exhibition to witness, among other things, the performance of Edison’s arc lamps. After initial trials in 1879 in two of the stations of the Metropolitan, Edgware Road and Aldersgate, and at Charing Cross station, of the District, the arc lamps lit by Edison’s system were used in the successful large-scale test carried out at the Holborn Viaduct in April 1882.9 Other experiments with electric lighting were also conducted in the section between High Street Kensington to Putney of the District using ‘a Siemens dynamo and a William three-cylinder engine’, the results of which were ‘considered very satisfactory’.10 By the end of the nineteenth century arc lamps were used in places such as the British Museum, King’s Cross, ‘parts of Buckingham Palace and the

Steam and Light  185 Houses of Parliament […] along with numerous theatres, banks, courts, and churches’.11 However, the lighting of streets, public spaces and public buildings combined several technologies, including electricity, gas and the more traditional yet widespread use of oil lamps. Crucially, the use of electric lighting was neither uniform nor extensive. In Paris, theatres; railway termini; the facades of iconic buildings; the parks of Monceau and Buttes-­ Chaumont; and places such as the Arc de Triomphe, the Champs-Elysées or the Hôtel de Ville would be lit at night by the late 1880s, while the majority of other areas continued to rely on what Maxime du Camp would call the lighting relics (fossile de l’éclairage) of old street lamps.12 Unsurprisingly, ‘modern’ lighting tended to be limited to areas where visual impression was important, notably for customers of boutiques, specialist shops and similar businesses. By contrast, residential districts continued to rely on existing services and technologies. As du Camp explained, in Paris ‘the absence of boutiques seem[ed] to condemn’ the areas that did not have any ‘to a perpetual shadow [with] the remoteness of all houses contribut[ing] to maintain obscurity’. And there were shortcomings too: Electric lighting ‘dazzle[d] and [did] not ignite’, while its service remained irregular.13 At the same time, and however uneven, the effect of gas light on the perception of the city was also dependent upon where one stood. The view from high points, for example Montmartre, produced different effects as a visitor to Paris recorded in the late 1860s: In our field of vision there emerges a web of flames with countless fine threads: the map of Paris, drawn in shimmering strokes, the boulevards powerful skeins of light where they meet; the big and the small streets, filaments of light; the open squares, powerful nodes of flame, which shoot their shining rays in all directions - and all around, like a reddish belt of flames, the suburbs […] This is what Paris looks like when its 40,000 gas flames burn - Paris by lamplight, when the shimmering tide makes her beauty and every one of her temptations more tempting yet.14 The urban applications of electricity were determined by a number of different conditions, notably its use and safety. Even by the late 1870s when experiments had sufficiently demonstrated the practicability and safety of dynamos in lighting, electricity was perceived as a hazardous technology. Reservations, if not outright fear, were substantiated by fires in Vienna, Paris (during the 1878 exhibition), and New York, which prompted the introduction of tight rules concerning the materials used, the manner in which they were bed in and the types of operation that electricity could support.15 To an important degree, lighting and powering the metropolis with the new technology was a matter of efficiency and safety, and whether or not its use should be restricted to exceptional events and places.

186  Steam and Light The reluctance of the municipal council in Paris to preserve the ‘62 foyers Jablochkoff’ used to light the Avenue de l’Opera during the 1878 World Exhibition was typical of the doubts surrounding the use of electricity, particularly its safety and cost.16 Noticing this, Preece wrote: nothing whatever was done in Paris to improve the illumination of streets. The Avenue de l’Opéra, the first street practically lighted by electricity, still remaine[d] as it was in 1878 [Preece was writing in 1882]; but prior to the opening of the Exhibition, a portion of the Boulevard des Italiens was lit up by four De Mersanne lamps, suspended high up, at wide intervals, over the centre of the road. The issues around testing a new technology seemed thus twofold: Allowing the conduct of experiments in urban areas, something that cities like Paris, London, Berlin, Chicago, Vienna and St. Petersburg appeared to embrace, and ensuring its continuity should the experiments prove useful, reliable and sustainable in view of metropolitan needs. Preece regretted that the experiments in London could not compare with those of the French capital: ‘Street illumination in England by electricity up to the present time is as a rule, a questionable success’.17 The situation seemed to have changed little by 1900 when a contemporary account dismissed the lack of a working system in London and the necessity to ‘go on with the existing absurd muddle – indifferent gas, insufficient electricity, supplied over the Metropolis’.18 The contrast between Paris and London regarding public lighting was illustrative of important differences concerning the adoption of a new technology in the two capitals. In Paris, six different companies, including the Société continentale Edison, received in 1880 an eighteen-year concession for the provision of new services, demonstrating a degree of hybridity in the services provided (electricity and compressed air) and a level of specialisation that was geographical as it was technical providing either lighting, power capacity or both. The companies were ­Société d’éclairage et de force par l’électricité, the Compagnie anonyme du secteur de la place Clichy, the Compagnie Parisienne d’électricité et d’air comprimé, the Société anonyme du secteur des Champs-Élysées and the Société anonyme du secteur de la rive gauche, the latter having the largest area.19 The effects of the concessions would be seen only years later, notably during the Exposition Universelle of 1889 which to historians marks ‘the birth (naissance) of electricity in Paris’, 20 taken to its apotheosis by the spectacular Palace of Electricity of the following Expo in 1900. 21 During the 1880s, the attitudes towards electric lighting in the City of London shifted from sheer enthusiasm to hesitation and reluctance. On the one hand, there were the engineers who saw their technical expertise as a means of improving the existing conditions of streets and public spaces based upon their mastery of the new technology. On the

Steam and Light  187 other hand, there were the City authorities whose concern might have been technical, in view of the scale of the works and the disruption they entailed, but also administrative and, above all, financial, given the substantial capital required for the implementation of the works: The City Corporation’s Streets Committee produced thirty-nine separate reports on the subject [of electric public lighting] until, in 1890, it was decided to split the City into two zones and invite tenders. The two companies chosen amalgamated into the City of London Electric Light Company shortly after. The challenges that electric lighting faced were not so different from those that the provision of gas; water; or, indeed, urban transport had encountered previously. As Chris Otter observes: ‘Reformers blamed, among other things, administrative fragmentation, corporate inertia, vested interests, “bumbledom”, institutionalized parsimony, and obdurate landowners, for selfishly blocking technical progress’. 22 Fragmentation also characterised the situation of London as a whole, where there were seventy generating stations, ‘forty-nine different types of supply systems, ten different frequencies, thirty-two voltage levels for transmission and twenty-four for distribution, and about seventy different methods of charging and pricing’. 23 This was the kind of plurality that bent the most committed of system builders. In terms of transport, means of locomotion in particular, experiments with electricity included the design of electromagnetic locomotives, the industrial applications of which proved successful during the world exhibition held in Vienna in 1873.24 Yet, time and more definite experiments were needed before electricity could be considered suitable for the effective operation of urban railways. This was also due to the number of experiments with several technologies that had been tried before, none proving to be a sound alternative to steam locomotives. Lines worked by atmospheric pressure (Paxton’s Great Victoria Way proposed to use it) or ‘pneumatic tubes’ were tried and built for specific purposes, notably, postal services. Successful applications of the pneumatic system would include the delivery of parcels and light goods connecting railway termini to central post offices, banks, the stock exchange, hotels and large buildings. The London Pneumatic Dispatch Company opened in 1863, the same year of the first section of the Metropolitan Railway, followed soon after by ‘Le pneu’ in Paris, whose service started in 1867 for the transport of urgent letters. Similar systems were operational in Berlin (1865); Vienna (1875); Prague (1899); and, by the turn of the twentieth century, several cities in the United States, including Philadelphia, Boston, New York, Chicago and St. Louis.25 Besides compressed air, there were proposals for new systems using hot water; steam engines; funicular; and, of course, electricity.26 If limited in size and power, electric street tramways were in service since the early 1880s in the outskirts of Berlin and St. Petersburg. The

188  Steam and Light first electric tramway between Gross-Lichterfeld and Berlin opened in 1881 by Siemens-Halske. 27 Lines built in Blackpool and Brighton in 1883 and 1885 in Britain would prove that the combination of electric traction and sea resorts was profitable, with part of that legacy still enjoyable today. 28 The Brighton electric tramway, for example, runs along the shoreline of the Sussex coast, between the Old Chain Pier and Black Rock, and is operated by the Volk’s Electric Railway Association. 29 Another technology, cable traction, was used for steep gradients in San Francisco, Chicago and other cities of the United States; also in the line between Archway Tavern and Southwood Lane, Highgate, in London since 1884; and in the funicular lines of Montmartre and Belleville in Paris, since the 1890s.30 By 1890, The Engineer would produce a concise summary of the state of electric traction in connection with urban transport: A number of small tramways, both on the Continent and in the United Kingdom, have been worked electrically, and in the United States many of the street tramways are worked in this way; but it has not hitherto been applied on any large scale to the working of a railway of the usual gauge for passengers.31 International expertise would become increasingly important in the process of refining the ways in which electricity might be used in urban transport just as it had been when electric lighting was gradually transformed into a commodity.32 What was clear is that the benefits opened up by electricity outweighed those that steam offered. The new contrast with electric traction rendered steam locomotives in a light that showed their limitations, especially in cities where medium- and short-distance traffic continued to accelerate and grow. In what had become a consensus during Parliamentary sessions in Britain in the 1860s, engineers agreed that there were three elements necessary for the success of the technical operation of metropolitan railways: Trains should be hauled by a ‘hot-water locomotive’, trains including passengers should weigh no more than 20 tons and journey times should be between twelve and fifteen minutes. The actual operation of the lines, notably the Metropolitan and the District, proved their calculations were off the mark: ‘the hot-water locomotive was not even tried [conventional though “specially designed condensing engines” were used instead]; the trains necessary for accommodating the traffic weigh, exclusive of engine about 120 tons’, while the journey took twice the time projected.33 Density was an important condition shaping what the limitations and benefits which steam and electricity provided in urban and ­suburban transport were. Density determined what a metropolitan journey was and whether that journey required lighter and speedier trains, and

Steam and Light  189 higher or lower frequencies. By 1891, Parisians would live in a city twice as dense as London. On average, that same year, there were in London 7,6 inhabitants to a building and double that figure in Paris. Overcrowding, long recognised in the two cities, increased, unsurprisingly affecting largely the poor: 330,000 of them, or over 13 per cent of the population in Paris, and nearly the same number (314,000) in the East End of London alone. 34 These were trends that plans for metropolitan railways could not afford to ignore, especially when the London County Council (LCC) and the municipal authorities in Paris were involved. It  was in the interest of proponent companies to tap into this growth as it was the responsibility of commissions, municipal, parliamentary and otherwise, to determine whether new technologies were well placed to support the kind of service and solutions that matched the two cities’ uneven growth. Opportunities emerged again to rehearse the trope of the polluted city and the healthy country, in the interest of persuading the public of the benefits of new connections, however partial and however limiting these were. Calls to separate between internal and external traffic, between the centre and its periphery, also re-emerged, highlighting the difficulties of connecting a vision of cohesive growth with the reality of metropolitan traffic, often shifting, disjointed, overlapping and split into several modes of transport. The Metropolitan and the District in London ran to a five-minute frequency, but theirs was a service that would change as a clearer understanding of the needs of the metropolis was gained. Electricity provided an alternative to respond more effectively to these needs: For new lines into the country in London and, crucially, for the design of a new metropolitan railway system within the walls in Paris.

London In the early 1880s, the Siemens brothers obtained the concession to build an electric railway connecting Trafalgar Square to the area in the immediate surroundings of Waterloo Station, crossing the river with a bridge: ‘the scheme did not get beyond the building of 20 yards of tunnel under Northumberland Avenue and the Embankment’ and was subsequently abandoned. 35 A second attempt was the London Central ­Electric Railway (1884), also by the Siemens, which proposed to link this time Charing Cross (a few yards from Trafalgar Square) and Cheapside, in the City. The officer of the Metropolitan Board of Works, William R. ­Selway, objected to the scheme, calling it ‘speculative and experimental’.36 Like their first scheme it was also shelved. The same year, in 1884, the City of London and Southwark Subway (CLSS) received an Act of Parliament to build a line between King ­William Street in the City and the Elephant and Castle, south of the river Thames. The line was to be built by a ‘tube’ system of tunnelling

190  Steam and Light with trains operated by cable traction. 37 Tunnelling was devised with an entirely different construction technique than the ‘cut-and-cover’ of the Metropolitan and District lines. The idea was to take the line deeper into the city’s soil using a system that incorporated both traction and tunnelling as had been conceived in the mid-1860s by Peter William Barlow. In the patent of his invention ‘Improvements in Constructing and Working Railways, and in Constructing Railway Tunnels’, Barlow explained the benefits of a new system for working underground and other railways. This consisted in ‘employing local in contradistinction to constant power to propel trains of carriages on railways’, whether underground lines; tunnel crossings; or overground, ‘where trains are required to start and stop at short intervals’.38 The trains would be attached to and hauled by a rope connected to ‘cylinders worked by hydraulic power’. Tunnelling would follow the cylinder principle (in effect, a tube), devising gradients on either end of every station as to alleviate the pressure on the brakes of arriving trains and facilitating their departure by gravity and inclination.39 In terms of its operation this was a system ‘consisting of iron tunnels 8 feet in diameter, in which single steel omnibuses, [would] seat twelve passengers each’. There were no stations, at least not in the ordinary sense, passengers paying their fare directly in the omnibuses. The arrangement became more elaborate as the topography required it with ‘three series of subways at different levels, the carriages as well as the passengers being lifted in passing from one to the other’ at intersections with steep gradients.40 The Tower Subway, opened in August 1870, would be a test version of Barlow’s system (see Figure 4.3). The subway, buried beneath the Thames between the southern end of Tower Hill and Vine Street, Southwark, was fitted with lifts on both riverbanks and a tramcar hauled by a cable, which, in turn, was propelled by stationary engines. Barlow’s initial plan was for the subway to be ‘manumotive’, relying on the strength of ‘two and a half men, if the journey was made in one minute’ in a carriage with twelve passengers, covering a distance of 1,320 ft. (402 m) or, alternatively and as it was originally proposed, ‘one manpower constantly applied’, which increased the journey time to approximately two and a half minutes.41 The cable operation proved unsatisfactory, the railway and lifts removed, leaving the subway as a footpath until its closure in 1894, when the opening of Tower Bridge rendered the river crossing below redundant, at least for paying ‘passengers’.42 James H. Greathead, one of Barlow’s collaborators during the construction of the subway, was appointed chief engineer of the CLSS, while John Fowler, engineer of the Metropolitan and District, accepted a role as consulting engineer.43 An agreement with the Patent Cable Tramways Corporation Limited was issued for the use of the cable system in January 1886. Subsequent amendments would be introduced later (3 March) for rolling stock, electric lighting and Parliamentary duties.44 Powers

Steam and Light  191 were obtained to extend the line further south to Stockwell in 1887 and north to Islington in 1893.45 The Cable Tramways Corporation went into liquidation early in 1888, and so the CLSS requested detailed plans for the use of electric traction to operate the line with trains every three minutes.46 A draft containing specifications for the ‘Electric Plant’ was submitted and approved on 14 August. Later in September, ‘the Tenders for [the] Electric Plant were considered; the Engineers were requested to obtain from Mess. Siemens Brothers further particulars and amended estimates’.47 Drafts, terms and technical specifications of a possible contract with the Siemens were discussed in October under the advice of Greathead, Benjamin Baker and Charles E. Spagnoletti, the latter two having been approached as consulting engineers.48 After considering alternative solutions produced by an Anglo-American company, the CLSS’ board decided to accept the proposal of ‘working the subway electrically including the supply of the electric light’ by Mather, Platt and Hopkinson subject to changes as might be recommended by the company’s engineers.49 John Hopkinson had patented his three-wire distribution system in 1882 – only a few months before Edison in the United States and Siemens in Germany made their respective applications for a similar system – which improved the performance of dynamos by placing them in a series. Hopkinson would soon (in 1890) become professor of electrical engineering in King’s College London. 50 The agreement between the two parts was confirmed during the board meeting of 18 January 1889; a revised version of the contract was approved a few days later on 29 January.51 By 1890, the largest part of the tunnelling work was ready, and the electric locomotives had been tested. In a letter to Greathead (dated 17 February 1890), Hopkinson endorsed the ‘direct acting locomotive’ and ‘geared locomotive’ as he had witnessed experimental trials, and the results seemed satisfactory.52 The Lord Mayor and other gentlemen were taken on a trial journey from the City to the Elephant and Castle on 5 March with good results. Lighting remained a problem and so the company’s ‘solicitor was instructed to communicate to Mss. ­Mather and Platt that as they were unable to efficiently light the stations with electricity under the terms of the contract it had been decided to substitute’ the electric lamps with ‘the use of gas’. 53 Prior to the official opening, an agreement was reached for a five-minute frequency and a service restricted to weekdays (no Sundays nor Christmas day), starting at 8 am. 54 The six stations were King William Street, Borough, Elephant and Castle, Kennington, The Oval and Stockwell, where the car sheds and generating plant had been built. Regular passenger services started on 18 December 1890, though the company, now called the City and South London, 55 experienced the problems and difficulties associated with the use of a new technology. The combination of the insufficient power generated from the plant at the southern end and the weight of locomotives

192  Steam and Light produced questionable results. The locomotives used were ‘ponderous, noisy, and slow’. 56 As the company board had instructed, stations were lit by gas, while ‘on the trains themselves [the electricity supplied] gave only a feeble glimmer whenever a number of locomotives all accelerated at the same time’. 57 To generate sufficient power for the operation of frequent trains hauled by locomotives running in both directions – an important part of which involved keeping power loss by distribution at a minimum – showed the kind of challenge that the new arrangement had produced. Lighting on the trains, perhaps the least urgent of the company’s worries, was still unsatisfactory by 1895. 58 At the other end of the line, in the City, things were no brighter. The decision to follow the pattern of streets forced an awkward arrangement at King William Street whereby the two tunnels that for the largest part of the route ran more or less parallel were built one above the other. As Greathead would explain, ‘Except where it passes under the Thames and one property on its south bank, the railway is under the public thoroughfares throughout’.59 King William Street station was reorganised in 1895, with two pairs of tracks and an ‘island platform’, replacing a single line and platforms on either side as it had been built initially.60 But it was not until the opening of the northern extension of the line first to Moorgate and Bank stations, in 1900 and then to Angel, Islington in 1901, that the company could solve the problems at King William Street, by closing the station on 24 February 1900, and adjusting the line’s route. One of the novel features of the CSL was the use of hydraulic lifts, something that would become characteristic of the deep-tube electric lines.61 As Arthur Beavan, an American journalist with an interest on transport, noted in the early 1900s, The telescopic doors clashed upon us, and we stood for a second or two silently expectant […] Noiselessly the lift descended to an apparently fathomless depth, but in reality, I believe, some 90 or 100 feet.62 When released by the janitor, we found ourselves in a small, well-lighted, cool, and spotlessly clean, white-tiled station, whence was discernible a couple of small tunnels side by side, leading to unknown regions, seemingly all too narrow to accommodate even the miniature cars waiting for us at one of the narrow platforms.63 As for the actual journey, Beavan’s description resorted to referents that were familiar from preceding lines: To most of us accustomed to roomy Pullmans and commodious railway carriages, the cars, though comfortable, seemed cramped, especially in height […] fitt[ing] the tube with such nicety and economy of space that, could the windows have been let down, we could easily have touched the iron plates of the tunnel.

Steam and Light  193 Moreover, the journey represented a clear difference in terms of the atmosphere, the air and the sounds that passengers associated with the operation of the Metropolitan and District trains, in turn, no different than those of main-line companies. ‘We realised, too, that although there was no smoke or smell, the railway was by no means noiseless; neither, in the opinion of several of the experts present, was the running as steady as on the “Underground”’. One last remark referred to the warning notice that made passengers aware of the possibility of a temporary suspension of the service. ‘As we rather uneasily recalled this’, Beavan went on to explain, ‘the speed gradually slackened, and finally the train stopped altogether, and simultaneously the incandescent lights began to pale, and at last subsided into filaments of sickly red. The situation was not a pleasant one’, Beavan wrote, as the confinement developed into a growing anxiety emphasised by the silence shared with fellow passengers. ‘But after a very few moments of suspense the train rattled on again, the lights reappeared, and presently we drew up at the Borough, the first station on the Surrey side’, on the southern bank of the Thames.64 As stated by the general manager of the CSL, Thomas Chellew J­ enkin, the first ‘north-to-south railway’ incorporated a number of different features that distinguished it from the Metropolitan and the District.65 Stations were fitted with lifts to cover the considerably larger distance between street and platform and, perhaps more visibly, the power and smoke of steam engines had been replaced by the pale light and traction of electric locomotives. By contrast, there was also something that the CSL, the Metropolitan and the District shared, as the Prince of Wales, later Edward VII, stressed during his speech preceding the official opening ceremony on 4 November 1890: ‘This railway today’, the Prince affirmed, this first electric railway which has been started in England will, I hope, do much to alleviate the congestion of the traffic which now exists, so that business men who have a great distance to go will find easy means of getting away from this great city and enjoying the fresh air of the country and I hope that it will also be a great boon to working men who are obliged to work in an unpleasant atmosphere, and who by its means will be able to get away for a little fresh air.66 Congestion, travel and health framed the Prince’s hopes. The old promise of the new railway reiterated what had been heard before, repeatedly: Overcrowded streets and residences that might give way to comfortable travel by opening up the healthy country to businessmen and workmen alike. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the royal comment encapsulated an understanding of urban life that was characteristic throughout the nineteenth century. What had changed by 1890 when the CSL ran its services was

194  Steam and Light the context in which these remarks were made, namely, London had a metropolitan-wide authority – the London County Council (LCC), created in 1889 and succeeding the Metropolitan Board of Works. Without a doubt, the advent of electricity added a new dimension to urban transport, but the question was also whether transport might be a way to solve other problems, some pressing like the acute housing crisis that Parliamentary commissions examined from the mid-1880s onwards. Four decades had passed since Pearson’s plans to house artisans in North London were first voiced. The struggle to house the working classes and the poor turned into a political battle fought between moderates and progressives in the LCC and in other circles, including influential figures such as Charles Booth, Sydney and Beatrice Webb, and Octavia Hill, and a range of societies, associations and philanthropic bodies which, since the 1860s, had provided model-dwelling housing, often in the form of blocks of flats and in exchange for the observance of strict rules and morals.67 Aligning housing issues to the choice between electricity and steam for the running of new railway lines would prove at least as challenging as the joining of private and public interests in the metropolitan railways had been before. At the same time, now lines could be dug deeper, creating a system of tunnel, rail and carriage. This differed substantially from the cut and cover technique and shallow tunnels that had been employed hitherto. Difficulties were all too evident: The feeble glimmer, the ponderous noise and the wanting pull. In hindsight, the CSL differed, but only so much from the Metropolitan and the District: Trains were still pulled by a locomotive, electric, yes, but locomotive nonetheless. Trains ran to the same frequency: Five minutes, no less, no more. What was new then about an electric railway? What options were truly open other than the tried images of the healthy country and less congested streets? Multiplicity and Uniformity One of the key points contained in the report of a new committee on electric and cable traction was whether the use of either technology could respond effectively to metropolitan needs. By the time the report was produced, in 1892, three different city or metropolitan railway lines were in service, the Metropolitan, the District and the CSL. The first two used steam locomotives while the third embodied the benefits and difficulties of electric traction. The central question for the committee this time was ‘whether underground Railways worked by electricity or cable traction [were] calculated to afford sufficient accommodation for the present and probable future traffic’. The other major point related to ‘the terms and conditions under which the subsoil should be appropriated’.68 The committee was to determine whether and which projects were suitable in terms of their provision of new routes for metropolitan

Steam and Light  195 traffic. Six projects were examined, and as before, several witnesses representing a range of interests were heard, including the Board of Trade, the LCC, the Corporation of the City of London and the agent and surveyor of Lord Portman’s St. Marylebone estate. The committee did not find sufficient grounds to object to any of the bills; both systems, electric and cable traction, were deemed suitable; more and longer suburban lines extending ‘further into the country’ were recommended.69 During the sessions, Charles Harrison, vice-chairman of the LCC from 1892 to 1895,70 urged the committee and the public to recognise the consequences of the recommendations included in the report for the future development of railways in London. Harrison suggested that tunnels should be a uniform 16 ft. so that connectivity between the lines proposed and those conceived in the future could easily become part of one network. Connectivity with existing main-line services should be considered too so that interchanges, particularly those between suburban and urban traffic, might be planned more effectively. ‘It is of vital importance to the future well-being of London’, ­Harrison wrote, ‘that every possible opportunity should be taken to promote cheap and rapid communication between every part of Inner London and what is at present the Outer Suburban Belt’. The LCC further advocated an orchestrated development of railway lines and the provision of housing for the poor. ‘In support of this contention’, Harrison went on to explain, the experience of the Metropolitan and Metropolitan District ­ ailways may be alluded to. Intended originally only as ‘circle’ lines, R they have both found it expedient to stretch out into the suburban belt, in order to accommodate the traffic caused by London’s constant expansion.71 Specifying tunnel sections and gauging the possibilities that new railway lines could offer were also a matter of the different kinds of traffic that the existing arrangement accommodated. In Greathead’s opinion, for example, the six lines before the committee ‘should not be made capable of taking ordinary trains from outside railways’, that is, trains from main-line companies. A clear difference between outside and inside railways, between external and internal traffic, was a more suitable model for the transport needs of London, in Greathead’s view. The Metropolitan and the District would have been able to respond to internal traffic more effectively ‘if they were not subject to the inconvenience of junctions with ordinary railways, and the interruptions of [morning and evening] trains […] completely loaded’ with a travelling population originating in the outlying districts.72 An important part of choosing a particular technology, cable, steam or electricity was therefore related to how traffic might be divided; how boundaries might be drawn, at

196  Steam and Light least conceptually; and the degree to which a new line, or indeed a new system, would provide either urban (Metropolitan and District) or suburban (main-line) services. But the traffic of the Metropolitan and the District was both, and in no minor part, suburban, which showed once more the difficulties of reconciling models (such as the inner, middle and outer circles discussed in the previous chapter) with the reality of and the practices around what had been built. As for the layout of the six schemes examined, the LCC also advised that depending on topographical conditions – and not too ­adventurously – lines should follow ‘the shortest and most direct routes’. For this ­Harrison proposed an ‘easement or right of tunnelling’, which would require companies to pay compensation only in those cases where damage to private property was evident. Furthermore, the council or any authority acting as representative of the public interest should be able to exercise the same rights on the streets as individuals did in connection with private property.73 With the exception of one advice, namely, ‘that the companies should be put under obligation to furnish an adequate number of cheap and convenient trains’, the committee’s report showed no explicit concern for what the LCC had recommended. A clause establishing a minimum of 11-ft. 6-in. tunnels instead of the 16 ft. which the LCC proposed would further limit the scope for coordination between existing and future lines. Tunnels in the ‘cut-and-cover’ inner circle had a section of 25 and 28 ft., which, unlike the tube, allowed trains to run side by side. Stations of the Metropolitan and the District were, generally, a few flights of stairs from the level of streets rather than a lift’s ride 100 ft. or so below, a difference that Londoners will know all too well today. In relation to the use of electric or cable traction, the committee did little more than follow the advice of engineers whose expertise was at the service of the proponent companies. At the time when their report was produced, the question of whether or not electricity could compete effectively with a steam-operated system had no clear answer. As the experience of the CSL proved, the comparison between electric traction and steam locomotion was hardly favourable, nor was there sufficient clarity about the consequences of supplanting one technology with another. In a letter to the chairman of a new company, the Central L ­ ondon Railway, and following consultation with Alexander Siemens, ­William Thomson (later Lord Kelvin) would summarise his views on electric traction using six main points: Electric traction provided a safer, steadier, healthier and more comfortable journey for passengers. ‘Whatever risk there is in the presence of a high pressure boiler is avoided in the electric system’. Furthermore the ‘waste steam of the steam locomotives, the smoke, the foul air of the fumes, the sparks, and the small fragments of clinker, flying from their funnels, are entirely absent in the electric system’. Electricity offered a greater ‘facility of starting’, with a higher

Steam and Light  197 frequency of trains (of up to three minutes) and affording ‘special facilities for signalling so as to minimise, and as nearly as possible annul, danger of collisions’. An electric system was also ‘decidedly less liable to stoppage or breakdown than a steam locomotive’ while providing a slightly more favourable relationship between operation and cost.74 The letter, dated 6 January 1893, was prompted by the Central ­London, which was in possession of one of the schemes before the electric and cable traction committee and was also in need of reassurance about the benefits and challenges of using electricity for the operation of their line. Based on Thomson’s analysis, three elements highlighted the superiority of the performance of electricity in the operation of urban railways: The safety and comfort of the journey; the higher frequency which the system could afford; and the signalling, which was more reliable and, therefore, helped reduce substantially the risk of accidents. The contrast between the two technologies also involved securing the necessary capital and facing the criticism of sceptics who saw in the mist of steam the reality of tried services and the prospect of foreseeable returns. Steam engines were ‘the only efficient form of locomotive power’, said Edward Watkin, which would come as no surprise, presiding over as he did the boards of several railway companies, including the Metropolitan’s.75 The balance was tipping the other way, slower than investors wished perhaps, but steadily, for sure. The Central London had obtained powers in 1891 to build a line between Shepherd’s Bush, West London and Cornhill in the City. By 1892 the scheme included a station opposite the Bank of England (instead of Cornhill) and an extension going northwards up to Liverpool Street, meeting the terminal of the Great Eastern railway.76 For traction, the company decided to use more powerful and heavier electric locomotives than those the CSL used. General Electric in the United States, the company formed in 1892 following the merging of Edison’s own company and the Thomson-Houston Electric Company, assembled the locomotives. During the 1890s, Frank J. Sprague, former collaborator of Edison’s and responsible for the successful design of the Richmond Union Passenger Railway in Virginia (1888), had developed a system based on the combination of carriages fitted with motors and an overhead wire that supplied them with electricity.77 Although widely used for street tramways (trolleys) across the United States, the implementation of the system underground raised a number of concerns. Sprague’s subsequent multiple-unit system, based on the same principle of cars fitted with motors fed by an electric wire, would be able to meet the demands of mainline railways including passenger lines, as it was proved by the successful operation of the Chicago South Side Elevated Company in 1897.78 Sprague’s inventions helped little the Central London, however, at least at the beginning. The director of General Electric, Darius Orgson,

198  Steam and Light was one of the large shareholders of the Central London in a markedly international composition of interests behind the new company. General Electric developed its own system, based largely on Sprague’s ­multiple-unit model, which was introduced over a year after the opening, in October 1901. By 1903, the electric locomotives were no longer running the Central London services.79 While electric traction was being perfected, companies continued their usual procession before Parliament, lobbying to obtain powers for the extension of their lines; for changes to their routes or stations; or to adjust the terms of their Bills, particularly time and capital. Seven different schemes appeared to be going through this process in 1895, including the Central London, the Great Northern and City, and an east line between Whitechapel and Bow connecting the Metropolitan; District; and the London, Tilbury and Southend railways.80 Two other lines promoted by main-line companies and worked by electric traction would open later. First, the Waterloo and City, in August 1898, providing a shuttle service between Waterloo station, the London and South Western’s terminal, and Bank, in the City; second, the commercially less successful Great Northern and City, opened in 1904 between Finsbury Park and Moorgate (also in the City), after successive changes and various peaks and downturns in its financing since its Act was granted in 1892. Despite its many problems, and the reservations that Barker and Robbins rightly recognised, there were important merits to the Great Northern and City, notably, the fact that the entire operation of the line, including the running of main-line rolling stock, was by electricity.81 In July 1900, the Central London opened to passenger services with stations at Shepherd’s Bush, where the depot and generating plant were built, Holland Park, Notting Hill Gate, Queen’s Road (later ­Queensway), Lancaster Gate, Marble Arch, Oxford Circus, Tottenham Court Road, British Museum, Chancery Lane, Post Office (later St. Paul’s) and Bank.82 This was an east-west axis crossing the most congested parts of the City and West End, connecting areas ‘which measured by geographical standards [were] near […] but gauged by standards of time ha[d] hitherto been far apart’.83 A 3.5-minute frequency replaced the five-minute frequency used first, once the multiple-unit system was fully adopted. The Central London, or the Two-Penny Tube as it would soon be known because of its standard fare, was also a line that somewhat reinforced the discrepancy between the well-served central and western districts and the dearth of lines furnishing a comparable service in the eastern and north-eastern parts of London, where main-line railways dominated. The report of a new committee would point towards the need to coordinate the efforts behind individual bills. The issue of how railways, electric, underground, urban, metropolitan and otherwise might be used for a more orchestrated planning of the capital would therefore be addressed once more, at the very outset of the twentieth century.

Steam and Light  199 The Geography of a Traffic System Between May and July 1901, a new joint committee on London Underground Railways would examine ten different schemes, including the proposed ‘loops’ of the Central London at both ends of the line, which were to ensure the replacement of electric locomotives by the ­multiple-unit system; two different bills for the Charing Cross, Euston and Hampstead (CCEH); the CSL’s extension to Islington and Euston, presented as a separate bill from an independent company in order to ensure capital subscribers;84 the King’s Road; the West and South London Junction; two bills that were to provide services in the north-east, the City and North-East Suburban and the North-East London; and three lines which sought powers to connect the areas in and around the City and the West End with residential districts further west, namely, the Brompton and Piccadilly Circus (BPC); the Charing Cross, Hammersmith and District; and the Piccadilly and City.85 This was a combination of new and old schemes, some of which had their parliamentary acts; a few were partly built; others were yet to start. As in 1892, the committee was a joint exercise of the Commons and the Lords, reporting, as did their predecessors, on the constructive techniques and types of technology that were proposed as well as issues relating to ‘present and probable future traffic’. Also part of their report was a discussion of what measures were needed ‘for the protection of the owners, lessees, and occupiers of properties adjacent to underground railways from possible damage and annoyance’.86 New technologies, property and prospects relative to the sustained increase in traffic remained central to the debate about the implementation of new railway lines and the role that these might play in the growth of London. Points the committee highlighted so that the ‘best routes’ of underground communication would materialise included future extensions ‘into the country’, drawing on existing demand; responsibilities and obligations of the operating companies towards the public and the legal means to enforce it; the granting of ‘locus standi’ to the City, the LCC and local councils regarding the opposition to schemes which might affect or interfere with their jurisdiction; and the operational aspects related to the connections between main-line services and underground or metropolitan lines, especially at railway termini and junctions. The commissioners also confirmed one of the recommendations of the 1892 report concerning ‘way-leaves in the case of [both] private property’ and public ways, as well as the necessity for the underground system to maintain its premise of taking as much as possible and at particularly crowded points the traffic off the streets: ‘Interchange stations should, where practicable, be placed at all points where underground lines cross one another, and should be connected by subways so as to facilitate the passing from one system to another under ground’.87 One example was

200  Steam and Light readily available at Bank station of the Central London where the Bank of England, the Royal Exchange and Mansion House were connected via pedestrian subways, which also allowed communication across the Central London, the CSL and the Waterloo and City (see Figure 4.12).88 Perhaps unsurprisingly, this was one of the street crossings where William Haywood, chief engineer of the Commissioners of Sewers of the City of London, had counted the amount of pedestrians crossing from one building to another at different times of the day in the late 1860s.89 By 1900, the intensity of movement at this very crossing – in no minor part due to the extent of its connectivity – had forced the opening of subways beneath the streets, where horse-drawn vehicles and, gradually, motorcars would dominate the streetscape. Due consideration of the risks of damaging private property was also a point stressed in the 1901 report, echoing most if not all of the views by committees and commissions throughout the nineteenth century. At this point, and as deep tunnelling became widespread, the problems identified were due either to subsidence or vibration. Whereas subsidence needed to be dealt with on a case-by-case basis, there was no clear directive about vibration, which affected the Central London in particular, with its heavier electric locomotives. A separate commission had been appointed specifically for that and was in the process of assessing what the real inconvenience was and what measures should be taken. The decision was that a clause dealing specifically with vibration should be inserted in all the bills.90 The London Underground Railways committee commended all the bills it considered. Only the east end loop of the Central London at Liverpool Street raised some reservation and required further studies. The City and North East Suburban and the North East London were encouraged to assess the similarities between their routes in the interest of shaping a provision of ‘rapid transit’ in an area where this service did not exist. The extension of the BPC to Bloomsbury Square was opposed, with the committee recommending a connection between Piccadilly Circus and Angel (Islington) instead, which would constitute ‘a useful route and should receive favourable consideration’.91 Encouraging and issuing recommendation was, after all, how far parliamentary committees went. Two additional matters raised in the 1901 report are worth highlighting. First, the uniformity of fares for workmen’s trains; second, and itself a concern that was not part of the committee’s terms of reference, the ways in which the often disparate initiative of private companies might be brought together to prompt a vision encompassing London as a whole and not only its constituent parts. Having a uniform fare for all workmen’s trains, both functioning and planned, had its benefits; the real challenge was how to enforce it. The committee’s recommendation was for the Board of Trade to produce a report which ‘while giving no absolute power regulating the conduct of the railways, would have a very

Steam and Light  201 strong moral effect in inducing the companies to take a reasonable view of their duties to the public’.92 The second important matter was if and how to bring together all underground lines ‘subject within certain limits to the control of a central authority’.93 The City and the LCC agreed on this point given the importance of and interrelation between underground lines and suburban growth, especially considering the effects these had on traffic and financial prospects. To both authorities, the issue of a central body regulating the numerous schemes put forward before Parliament was a question that should be taken seriously. But it remained unclear what kind of authority was commensurate with such a task and the degree to which a central body would regulate fares effectively, which according to the existing financial model were based upon the estimated revenues to be paid on capital. The City, the LCC and the local councils might take a more active role in this by partaking in the construction of new lines, following the model of the Light Railways Act from 1896: Such powers would enable the councils to encourage by subsidy or otherwise, the prolongation of railways into districts thinly populated, and therefore suitable for the relief of congested districts, whereas, in many cases at any rate, a public company would not feel justified in extending their line till the population became greater.94 The Nottingham suburban railway, 3¾ miles in length, complete in 1889, provided an earlier example, however unfitting the comparison might have been. Paid for in part by ratepayers’ money, it was ‘never profitable’, but, as Simmons noted, ‘it certainly fulfilled something of the social purpose the Town Council had in mind’.95 Through its report, the committee conceded that more coordinated efforts were needed, should traffic, suburban growth and workmen’s trains be viewed together. One way of doing so was by introducing a centralised model that would help get over the administrative fragmentation and the inertia of institutional and business practices upon which railways in ­London and across Britain had been built. A central authority might run a system involving different modes of transport, at least that was the experience that could be observed in other cities or, at any rate, how it was reported. Following a visit to New York and Boston – and in a way similar to what the 1901 commissioners concluded – officers of the LCC observed that the true solution to the question [of the city’s traffic problems] does not lie in the building of deep level railways, or for that matter subways as separate systems entirely disconnected from each other, but rather in a complete system which should be carefully conceived and carried out from the first with a view of intercommunication between all parts of the Metropolis.96

202  Steam and Light A system also involved standardised and cohesive practices. As Sylvanus P. Thompson, chairman of the Royal Society of Arts, would assert around the same time: Not only must the procedure and methods in laying out tubes and trams so that they worked harmoniously together be systematised, but they must be systematised from the point of view of Greater London. Promoters should also systematise their method of going to work to get powers and insist on the abolition of those insane corners in the law which brought about a position of deadlock on such little details as putting together a few hundred yards of line to connect up with the main system.97 A system, of sorts, was emerging. Like London itself, metropolitan railways constituted a collection of fragments: Rich and full in places, wanting and absent in others. There was no clear notion of main, secondary or subsidiary means of urban transport, but there was a growing realisation that such an overarching view was needed. Four ‘metropolitan’ railway lines were in operation with two different technologies of traction: Steam engines and electricity. Incidentally, the suburban services of main-line companies made it difficult if not impracticable to distinguish between exclusively internal traffic and the traffic of the outlying districts connecting to the centre and the inner districts. On the streets, pedestrians, omnibuses, tramways, bicycles and an increasing number of motorcars gave a vivid if crowded picture of life in the metropolis. This was largely the result of companies that followed their own practices and of practices from institutions such as the City, the LCC and local councils which restricted themselves to their own interests and jurisdictions: A multitude of councillors, and of Councils, might have projected and constructed each its own bit of line […] Each little Pedlington would have its staff of Parliamentary agents, engineers, and contractors, each one would demand its share of the profit, if any could arise, from such a hugger-mugger of ownership and management. The accounts would be voluminous, and their accuracy would be practically impossible, and so the real question was whether the Pedlingtons and councillors ‘might have got these fragments operated as one system’. Thus wrote John Robinson, acting on behalf of the London United Tramways, and proponent of the London United Electric Railway, yet another scheme, combining ‘light’ and ‘tube’ railways.98 There might have been no easy way of bringing together the vast array of interests that converged in the provision of a common arrangement of

Steam and Light  203 urban, suburban and long-distance transport for London. Connections across and within modes of transport did exist, of course, but not in the sense of services being provided by one company or one authority; a model too close to a monopoly to be accepted as a viable route. The next step in laying a firm ground for a metropolitan railway system was financing: A logical step perhaps, if somewhat riddled with but also able to benefit from the foreign interests that thrived in an imperial capital. Electrification and the Aegis of Business Interests Capital from the United States, instrumental in the financing of the Central London, would soon gain a stronger presence in the financing of London railways. Charles Yerkes, a financier and ‘robber baron’ in the words of his biographer, moved to London early in the twentieth century, having made a fortune in Chicago, first with street cars in the mid-1880s, and subsequently financing the building of The Loop, the elevated railway circumventing Chicago’s central district.99 Yerkes had an interest in two of the bills examined during the 1901 session, namely, the CCEH and the BPC. The CCEH represented a clear benefit for the passenger traffic of main-line companies, not least because of one of the sections proposed to go as far as Kentish Town, connecting to the Midland railway and continuing via Archway to meet the Great Northern’s branch at Highgate and Edgware.100 The BPC, in turn, was to bring Brompton residents to the West End, which, following the opening of Shaftesbury Avenue in 1886, attracted new theatres and shops, expanding but also consolidating the character of the area as an entertainment and shopping district.101 By 1902, Yerkes would own three different tube schemes and the plans to electrify the District. Besides the CCEH and the BPC, Yerkes acquired the southern section of the Great Northern and Strand scheme, negotiations of which had finished in November 1901. This section (up to Finsbury Park) would be executed as a common enterprise with the BPC, in effect what is now the Piccadilly Line. A new addition came in March 1902, following the bankruptcy of the London Globe Finance Corporation Limited, the company that owned the bill and had executed part of the works of the Baker Street and Waterloo (later Bakerloo).102 Three new tube lines and the District became thus part of one and the same enterprise; soon would all four use electric traction. The first signs of a system being formed came therefore from the aegis of investors. A degree of cohesion was reached, though according to the terms of financiers rather than those of Parliamentary commissions or what the LCC recommended. Tellingly, though understandably perhaps, none of Yerkes’s schemes entered the jurisdiction of the City. At the same time, the southern section of the inner circle, the District, was soon to leave steam behind and embrace a new future powered by electricity.

204  Steam and Light A new and short-lived company, the Metropolitan District Electric Traction (MDET), was created for the electrification of the District. The company was responsible for the execution of the works involved in the transformation from steam locomotion to electricity. Experiments in  the section between High Street Kensington and Earl’s Court had been carried out in June 1900.103 Electrification was an enterprise that combined the legal standing of the District Company and the renewed financial strength of the capital that Yerkes assembled: The District Company shall by the exercise of their Statutory powers acquire the site necessary for a Generating Station at Lots Road Chelsea and the Traction Company shall provide all funds requisite for payment of purchase money and cost of acquisition. The choice of the site at Lots Road would benefit both the District and the BPC.104 The Traction Company would carry out all the works concerning the generating station, the conveyance of electric power to Earl’s Court (including appliances and equipment) and the works necessary for the effective running of the trains. Both line (District) and scheme (BPC) were divided into eight different sections: (1) Mansion House to Earl’s Court, (2) Earl’s Court to High Street Kensington, (3) Gloucester Road to High Street Kensington via Cromwell Curve, (4) Earl’s Court to Putney Bridge, (5) Earl’s Court to Studland Road Junction, (6) Studland Road Junction to Turnham Green Junction, (7) Turnham Green Junction to Ealing and (8) Mansion House to Whitechapel Mile End Station.105 With a letter to the company’s shareholders (dated 9 April 1902), Yerkes explained the decision to extend the powers and aims of the MDET Company beyond the transformation of the line from steam locomotion to electric traction, engaging ‘in the business of building certain roads for the purpose of making a system which cannot be but profitable’. The new company, Underground Electric Railway Company of London Limited (UERL), was then to incorporate the acquisition and working in whole or in part of the future Undertakings controlled by [the] Company, as well as agreements in connection with the electrification of the Metropolitan District Railway, and general powers to carry out other similar works. As Yerkes went on to reassure the shareholders, by the time ‘the plans of [the MDET] Company were originally made’ the Acts of the CCEH, BPC, GNS and BSW were in his possession and that of Robert W. Perkes. Shareholders of the company were invited to transfer their shares from the MDET to the UERL at offices in Boston, Baltimore or New York.106

Steam and Light  205 The UERL was thus created in 1902, becoming the first company soon to operate four different lines, using electric traction, and working under a single management. To Yerkes the acme of railway transportation in the City of London and its suburbs would be that a person could travel from any one point to any other point, making connections from one line to another, all for a single fare. That would be the perfection of travel and it will never come about unless there is an amalgamation of the railways.107 Amalgamation might be construed as a byword for monopolies, especially when used by someone like Yerkes, a character with a colourful past. What the UERL showed was an important level of cohesion, which resonated with the growing realisation not only that railway lines should be thought of as one system but also that their operation might fall under one organisation. Metropolitan railway transport demanded a closer integration with the growth of the metropolis: What London needs for its working classes is fresh air and green grass, and they will never get either with the railways and tramways in the condition that they are, at the present time, or being run as they are.108 This was the updated version of the old adage of the healthy country and the polluted city, though containing within it a sharp distinction between what was desirable and what were the means to bring that vision to fruition. Except for the inner circle trains, the works to electrify the District were complete in 1905, using the multiple-unit system, with trailing cars in the middle and on both ends of the trains.109 The Piccadilly opened between Hammersmith and Finsbury Park in December 1906, while the Bakerloo opened between the Elephant and Castle and Baker Street in March the same year and up to Edgware Road in June 1907. At this point, electricity would prove to be reliable, effective and safe, as the editorial comment of The Tramway and Railway World informed its readers: ‘Perhaps the fact most calculated to give assurance to those of faint heart is that the tunnels will be continuously lighted throughout their entire length’.110 The lighting of tunnels consisted of ‘16 candle-power incandescent lamps, spaced about 40 ft. apart’, which were to work continuously in contrast with the other lines: they are always to be alight, and though the illumination is, of course, small compared with that inside the trains; still the passenger has not the sensation of looking out into utter darkness, and as the lamps

206  Steam and Light are attached high up there is no succession of disagreeable flashes on the passenger’s eye, but only a general diffused light. The tunnels are whitewashed throughout, and when this has been completed the lighting will be much more effective. The passenger will then always have the mental comfort that if his train should break down he can easily walk along the lighted tunnel to the next station.111 The brief report did take the precaution of warning readers about the mains conductors along the tracks, which might easily cause instantaneous death by electrocution, in case passengers where indeed obliged to find their way to the next station following a train failure. Two comments made during the opening ceremony of the Bakerloo, one by Edgar Speyer, who took over the UERL’s direction after Yerkes’s death in December 1905, and another one by David Lloyd George, president of the Board of Trade, testified to the confluence of interests behind the services that the new company provided, rehearsing once more the recurring themes of reform, progress and improvement: This line will furnish great advantages to the poor people of this great metropolis, and I think it will be the first step towards the solution of the problem of the housing of the poor, which the Queen has so much at heart. And in line with the mediating role of the Board of Trade: ‘I trust that the London County Council and the Underground Electric Railways Company of London will combine to furnish an example of that cordial co-operation between private and municipal interests in which lies our best hope for the future’.112 On the one hand, the much-invoked ‘solution of the problem of the housing of the poor’ and, on the other hand, a future of cooperation beyond the usual disputes between diverging interests. Housing the poor would be solved, and at any rate only partly, after the Second World War, though there were important signs of improvement in the 1910s and 1920s.113 Collaboration between private companies and elected authorities around the issue of affordable housing and transport would continue to be a challenge. The LCC, however, deployed a combined strategy of tramways and large housing developments, first, at Totterdown Fields in Tooting, South London, where over 1,200 new homes were complete by 1911, and most impressively at Becontree, in Essex outside the LCC’s jurisdiction, where over 100,000 people would be housed by 1935 as part of the programme ‘homes fit for heroes’ following the Great War.114 The Becontree estate was served by the District line and other main-line railways. The Hampstead tube (previously the CCEH) was the last UERL line to complete the metropolitan railway network as it would remain until

Steam and Light  207 the 1960s. It opened between Charing Cross and Golders Green and Highgate (later Archway). The reaction of a writer to the Hampstead and Highgate Express, of 22 June 1907, would make explicit class sentiments adding a new dimension to the service offered by the newly built transport network. To him, the offer of free travel during the opening day of the line was sure to be chiefly taken advantage of by the great unwashed of St Giles’s and the equally hydrophobic denizens of the ‘Dials’ [Seven Dials, then still a slum], not to mention tramps, outdoor dossers of St James’s and Hyde Park with other germinals, let us hope, for our peace of mind, and body, that the trains will be thoroughly fumigated and disinfected before the railway is opened to the paying public.115 No records of trains being fumigated have survived, though the CSL did commission a study on the bacteriological conditions of the air on their line, a couple of years earlier in 1905.116 What the Hampstead and Highgate comment made apparent were the anxieties of mixing classes and of being confronted by different habits in one confined space. Interestingly, an important section of the paying public that the commentary alluded to was likely to be from the newly planned and built Hampstead Garden Suburb, originally intended as a residential district for ‘all classes of people’ and ‘all income groups’. In reality, an enclave of the middle and upper classes, buying into the idea of a life in the country within the city that supplemented the older and aristocratic Georgian squares of the West End, with a better view.117 By 1910, seven different lines, four of which the UERL operated, would criss-cross London producing a geography of metropolitan railways that extended far: To Barking and Upminster, Finsbury Park, Archway, Wembley, Uxbridge, Ealing, Richmond, Wimbledon, Clapham Common and New Cross. Balancing the disparity of well-connected areas and areas where new connections might encourage a more cohesive growth was a key concern of the LCC and its campaign for persuading the authorities, private companies and the public at large of the benefits of planning a metropolitan railway system rather than continuing with the building of discrete lines. The benefits were widely acknowledged in a number of circles. Yet coordination came at the aegis of private businesses, and not under the lead of the recently created metropolitan authority. Electricity illustrated the situation all too clearly: The UERL succeeded in creating a system, operated by one company and ran by one technology. But the system was only a part of the vast and mixed array of railway lines, each serving the metropolis in its own way, each making London’s modernity visible in its own terms: Layered, expansive and open.

Figure 4.3  A second tunnel under the Thames, London. Tower Subway as reported in the French press, with the initial operation by cable traction. Note the slight slope towards the centre, which was one of the features of Peter Barlow’s design. The busyness of the river is centrepiece, with a few pedestrians around the tunnel shaft on the Tower side (left) and a larger operation with cranes, porters and horse-drawn carts against a background of warehouses on the Rotherhithe side (right). Source: La Nature, 1873. © The British Library Board, shelfmark P.P.1614.ca.

Figure 4.4  E  xterior of Stockwell Station, City and South London Railway. Stockwell was the terminus of the first ‘tube’ line, the City and South London, when it opened in 1890. The quietness of the countryside (transformed in the following decades) provided a stark contrast with the busy area around King William Street, in the City, the site of the line’s other terminus. The picture emphasises the middle-class aspirations of suburban living, namely, quiet (only a couple is seen on the forefront of the picture), and amid tasteful surroundings, not least the station’s dome. Source: The Railway Magazine, Vol. V (July to December 1899), p. 9. © The Railway Magazine.

Figure 4.5  Souvenir London Electrified 1908. This is a souvenir postcard from the Anglo-French (Franco-British) exhibition at White City in 1908. It shows the complete ‘Tube’ network, plus the (electrified) District, the Waterloo and City, and the Great Northern and City, as well as the terminus stations for tramways. Electricity is given priority over steam (the Metropolitan began electrification of sections of its lines in 1905 and is not listed); intersection stations – something that inner and outer circles couldn't offer – in turn, concentrated traffic at places like Euston, King’s Cross and Bank. Source: © TfL from the London Transport Museum collection. Original in colour, reproduced in black and white with permission.

Figure 4.6  Lots Road Chelsea power station. The ‘gaunt monster at Chelsea’ as Barker and Robbins called it (vol. 2, p. 107) is undergoing a new facelift through a large new development, since 2013 called C ­ helsea Waterfront which includes two residential towers, thirty-seven and twenty-five storeys each (front left). The bleak scene of smoking chimneys is gone – the station was closed in 2002 – and is now being turned into chic industrial heritage, the centrepiece of future boutique shops, restaurants and luxury (non)residents. From an aide of industry, key to the siting of the power station, Chelsea Creek (bottom centre) is now a central feature of ‘one of London’s most desirable residential addresses’. © Photo by the author.

Figure 4.7  Transversal section of the Métropolitain’s electric substation, Paris. From left to right: The electric machines room, the boiler room and the coal storage room, giving a clear impression of the overlapping of technologies and the resources and machinery that each used. Beneath the building a series of galleries and ducts accommodate, in turn, cables, fumes, waste water and auxiliary machinery. Source: Le Génie Civil, tome 38 (2 March 1901). © Régie Autonome des Transports Parisiens (RATP).

Figure 4.8  C  hrétien’s version of a metropolitan railway in Paris (1881) combined the use of electricity (substituting steam); the monumentality and ornament of cast iron, as in the obelisk; and the unobtrusiveness of a light structure (at least in his drawings), all of which were to persuade authorities and others of the benefits his system provided and how little would be its effect on the life of the boulevards. From Chrétien’s perspective (and as we look at the picture) the viaducts nearly disappear when seen against the backdrop of handsome buildings and fluid traffic. Source: Jean Chrétien, Chemin de Fer Électrique à Paris (1881). © The British Library Board, shelfmark 8757.dd.2.

Figure 4.9  General plan of the Métropolitain network in Paris, 1899. This early reproduction of the Métro map (it appeared less than year before the opening of Line 1) showed the different constructive systems in use, a contrast that the coloured and numbered format of contemporary maps fails to show. Note, for example, where the underground sections concentrate (understandably in the centre and predominantly on the right bank) and where the viaducts and trenches are (most of the circular Line 2). This kind of representation allowed readers to see that from Barbes (centre top), for example, the Métro ran underground (north and south), on a short trench (westwards) and on a viaduct (eastwards). Source: Le Monde Moderne, August 1899. © Bibliothèque Historique de la Ville de Paris.

Figure 4.10  ‘Ant galleries’ beneath the Place de l’Opéra, Paris. Beneath the fashionable Opéra ‘quarter’ the artist of this remarkable drawing reveals the many passages; arcades; toilets; access points; and, of course, the Métro, connecting hotels, shops, restaurants and Garnier’s building. A bird’s-eye view that captures the intricacy of layers sustaining metropolitan life and circulation in Paris. The distance also suggests a degree of order that no partaker in the life of the boulevards then (as now) could have possibly agreed with. Source: L’Illustration, 5 November 1910. © L’Illustration.

Figure 4.11   ‘A surprise awaiting Parisians. The underground station of the Nord-Sud Line beneath the Place du Havre’, Paris. The contrast of two different worlds, one above, one beneath, is made more striking by the use of a photograph (top half) and a rather stylised drawing (bottom half). Beneath we see only fashionable Parisians, in no rush, in keeping with the peristyle structure of marble columns and vaulted ceilings, and vitrines (shop windows) all around the circular space, features that created yet another contrast between the Nord-Sud and the Métropolitain. Source: L’Illustration, 22 October 1910. © L’Illustration.

Figure 4.12  P  ublic subways and station of the Central London Railway beneath the Bank of England and Mansion House. Note the many-sided shape of the plan and the (alleged) simplicity of the section. Bank became one of the key intersections of what would later be known as the London Underground, with three lines meeting there: The Central London, the City and South London, and the Waterloo and City. A later subway (1933) would connect to Monument station, served by the Circle Line and the District. To these would be added the Docklands Light Railway in the early 1990s, illustrating the centrality that commerce has played in the making of metropolitan railways in London. Based on a schematic plan published in The Times, 23 November 1899.

216  Steam and Light

Paris The Third Republic continued with fervour what the Second Empire had started: ‘More than three times as many buildings were erected between 1878 and 1888 as between 1860 and 1869’.118 The tone might have been different, republican rather than imperial, but property speculation continued to attract as much interest if not more than before. Over 250 real estate development companies (sociétés anonymes) were created between 1870 and 1900 whose very purpose, ‘speculation’, was often statutory.119 The straight line of the boulevard and the uniform façade – four to six storeys high and made different by a range of ornaments characterising individual buildings – continued to exert their influence on how Paris was transformed, with important differences between the centre and the periphery. As Jean Bastié has noted, whereas the ‘will for order’ (volonté organisatrice) and the concern for the aesthetic characterised most of the building activity in central Paris, it was confusion and improvisation that shaped most of the new developments in the banlieue. This led to a kind of urbanisation which Bastié sees as ‘a succession of missed chances’, partly as a result of the authorities’ focus on the centre, itself a legacy of the Second Empire, and partly because of the challenges of reconciling a long tradition of autonomy in the communes and the need to develop a common plan and policy for Paris as a whole.120 What exactly had the Métropolitain to offer in this context was as much a question of connectivity and growth as it was of ease of movement. ‘It is a universal necessity of our age to move fast and easily, and all the attention of Parisian building practices (l’édilité) should apply themselves to satisfy this new necessity’. Thus wrote M. André in his Note sur les Variations de la Circulation, in relation to Paris streets in particular, covering the period right after the Commune (1872) and stretching to 1887,121 the year when the works for the construction of Gustave Eiffel’s tower commenced at the Champ de Mars. 1887 was also a particularly prolific year for Van Gogh, during his sojourn in Paris and before his move to Arles, escaping the ‘Parisian furnace’.122 One thing should be refined from André’s statement: What was new was not the necessity – faster and easier movement – but to whom that necessity applied. The newness consisted in its being universal, like the promise of the omnibus in the 1820s. In no minor part, wide boulevards were predicated on the idea of unimpeded movement of military forces, of imperial and other processions, and of the masses who, despite their perambulations, also brought circulation to a standstill, momentarily, with the iconic barricades of the Commune. By the third quarter of the nineteenth century, the necessity to ‘move fast and easily’ would apply predominantly to businessmen, also including a growing bourgeoisie, largely concentrated in the western districts, who travelled regularly to the Bon Marché or the Opéra. As important was the movement of the

Steam and Light  217 masses of visitors to the world exhibitions flocking to the Champ de Mars as they did in 1867 and 1878, the second and third that Paris hosted. Over 30 million people would visit the site in 1889 between May and October, Eiffel’s Tower being the main showcase piece, despite fierce criticisms. True, the necessity was universal, but it was also exclusive and differentiated. Different people moved at different speeds using different modes of transport whenever the purpose of travel changed. Which technology should be used for the operation of metropolitan railways in Paris was important from the start. More precisely, and as it had been debated before, the question involved who moved where, with what purpose and how. The size and weight of steam locomotives transporting passengers within a densely populated area had been the subject of intense debate since at least the 1870s, a significant part of which involved devising the most effective means of evacuating smoke from underground tunnels.123 By the mid-1890s, the authorities would suspend the use of conventional coal, allowing only the use of high-quality coke in the Ceinture locomotives, as Alan Mitchell suggests, anticipating the possible intrusion of main-line rolling stock into the city centre, beyond their termini. Other solutions such as trains operated by atmospheric pressure were not entirely satisfactory due to the unsolved problem of loss or shortfall of power. The situation was no different when using electricity.124 The number of projects that had been produced by 1880 continued to increase involving names both new and old; some of their visions were transformed, made more complex or less ambitious; a number of them stayed the same. Proposals ranged from circular lines, lines traversing the city from east to west and north to south, through to elaborate schemes that included several means of traction, the combination of which might constitute cohesive and sophisticated systems supported by a range of technologies. One such project was P. Villain’s 107me Projet de Chemin de Fer Métropolitain which he described in a pamphlet published in 1887. The project consisted of seven different sections, including railway lines, funiculars, junctions with the main-line railways and a central station next to the Hôtel de Ville for the exclusive use of passengers and postal services.125 As with many of the projects preceding his, Villain’s vision remained confined to theories, but his ideas, as the ideas of those who had been and were involved in the formulation of railway schemes for the city, enhanced the body of expertise about the options that Paris had and, furthermore, they helped clarify what aspects might turn a scheme into a more feasible plan compared with others, all 106 of them. As Villain urged his readers, two main conditions were particularly important in order to conceive of a coherent system of circulation: The available city spaces which could be used effectively for the design and construction of new lines and the technical aspects related to the choice of traction and infrastructure. The first was something that several schemes before had

218  Steam and Light made apparent. The second concerned not only the possibilities but also the important reservations behind the use of a new technology. Two separate schemes, each by a different advocate, would demonstrate the extent to which electric traction as a means of locomotion would encourage the creation of a system along the lines of what Villain proposed. The Traction of Taste J. Chrétien’s Chemin de Fer Électrique des Boulevards à Paris (1881), or Electric Railway of the Paris Boulevards, consisted of three electric railway lines along the Avenue Friedland and the boulevards Haussmann and Voltaire – all three Second-Empire works forming an east-west arc on the right bank of the Seine connecting the Arc de Triomphe to the Place de la Nation – and including a route from the Madeleine to La Bastille. The structure used elevated viaducts supported by pillars (1.80–2.00 m in section and between 4 and 5 m high), with an average distance of 40 m between supports.126 Electricity was distributed by copper wires (fils de cuivre); every carriage was provided with an electromagnetic motor (machine magneto-­ électrique), which transformed the current of the main distributing line into the locomotive traction that moved the individual cars.127 Four stationary steam engines where dynamos transformed the mechanical energy of the engines into electricity supplied the system, maintaining a distance of 2–3 km between them. Two of the plants or substations (for the stationary steam engines) were partially visible at the Place Voltaire – east line – and Boulevard du Temple opposite the Cirque d’Hiver – line of the inner boulevards; the other two were ‘entirely fitted underground’, one at the Carrefour Drouot – inner boulevards line – and one on the Avenue Friedland, near the Rue de Messine – west line. The chimneys and other constructive elements of the plants could be used as referents or to embellish the areas in their immediate surroundings, aiding too to supply the potential local demand for electricity, domestic, commercial and otherwise.128 Chrétien’s estimate of costs included an extra sum to embellish the structure. The difference between ornament and the engineering and structural parts of the system was a delicate point for the concession he sought and for attracting bidders.129 His position was to celebrate rather than hide the utility of ‘modern constructions’, accentuating their ‘artistic value’ with the flair of art nouveau which had started to entice a select group of Parisians and Europeans. The choice of a new decorative language – art nouveau – was deliberate and went against the tendency of resorting to past traditions as was apparent in the majority of Paris’ most iconic buildings. The Opéra, complete in 1875 to Charles Garnier’s design, was perhaps the most unrestrained example of that tendency, having engaged the work of painters, mosaicists and over seventy sculptors to complete the building’s exuberant ornamentation, an important part of which was based on Greek mythology.130

Steam and Light  219 Chrétien’s position was that the design of buildings should be integral to their function, a view anticipating the famous modernists of the twentieth century for whom ‘form followed function’, including figures such as Adolf Loos.131 This was partly a response to the criticisms from a ‘privileged public’ indifferent to the costs involved in the fashioning of buildings that were not to ‘everyone’s taste’, but it was also Chrétien’s own manner of affirming the aesthetics and functionality of his new system.132 What architectural, decorative or artistic language should define the infrastructure responding to the transport needs of a modern metropolis was therefore an important part of the form and appearance that infrastructure should take. Interestingly, a similar debate around style and taste would take place twenty years later in the very same Place de l’Opéra when the supporters of Garnier’s Beaux-Arts triumphed over the newness of the art nouveau that the édicules of Hector Guimard represented. Le Matin and La Presse objected at the time to the stylistic conflict between Guimard’s structures and the surrounding buildings, notably the Opéra. It would take decades before the édicules, the ornamental entrances to the Métro, would find the support and admiration that they do today.133 The construction and operation of the electric railway were two important aspects that Chrétien also discussed. His idea was to engage the private industry either separately or as a common enterprise with the city authorities but in any case under some form of central supervision. The city, Chrétien insisted, should preserve a right of control; oversee the strict enforcement of the clauses [contained in] the legal contract (cahiers de charges); remain the representative of public rights; and, in addition, give full freedom as well as all responsibility to the concessionaire.134 Whereas oversight and responsibility were not shared, the benefits and obligations behind the operation of the railway would be distributed somewhat proportionally between a private company and the public authorities. There were several objections to Chrétien’s project, beyond the disagreement about architectural styles and ornaments. Central to these was the disruption that the structure would cause in the boulevards, not least with its cast iron viaducts, however ornamented, and their effect on a streetscape consisting of smart buildings, shops and residences (see Figure 4.8). Aesthetic considerations mattered in a manner that resembles the reluctance with which tramways were introduced at around the same time, in London and Paris, but also in Britain and Germany, more generally.135 Other reservations were about the estimated benefits of an electric system, especially when compared to the steam-operated lines that carried an important suburban traffic in areas such as Auteuil. A contemporary commentary would remark that, while overly optimistic, Chrétien’s estimate of trains was nevertheless insufficient. In his system,

220  Steam and Light trains would move 6,000 passengers per hour in both directions, while the Auteuil line alone served 20,000 passengers.136 Perhaps more importantly, there was no consistent case in the early 1880s for electric traction to power urban or suburban railway traffic, despite the advice of engineers and their compelling calculations. Electric traction, Chrétien asserted, ‘is the most practical means of locomotion in cities’, what is more, ‘electricity is an agent the use of which we begin to understand [and] to which the future belongs’.137 It was in the future indeed, not the present, where the precise connections between urban transport and electricity were made apparent and more convincing. Enduring the same fate of over a hundred projects before and after his, Chrétien’s electric railway remained an idea too premature to find its rightful application. Things would be different for a second project, which, as Chrétien’s, succeeded in showing the possibilities that electricity might open up for transport within Paris. The proponent was Jean-­Baptiste Berlier. His idea, inspired by Barlow’s Tower Subway and Greathead’s tunnelling shield in London, consisted in subterranean tubular tramways or Tramways tubulaires souterrains. The scheme, dating from 1887, proposed to cross the centre also with an east-west axis, though longer than Chrétien’s, between the Bois de Boulogne and the Bois de Vincennes, providing a service operated by ‘lighter, frequent, and speedier trains’. Instead of viaducts the line was to be built underground using the cylinder shield that Barlow and Greathead had perfected, which allowed the laying of tube and rails deep into the Parisian soil. The reception in the municipal and departmental assemblies was generally positive while the national authorities, the Conseil d’État and the general council of the Ponts et Chaussées expressed their doubts recognising that it was a ‘great public work of a special nature’.138 It had been the Ponts et Chaussées after all who had rejected an earlier proposal by the English engineer T. W. ­Rammel who, like Berlier, proposed to use subterranean tubes though p ­ owered by atmospheric pressure.139 Historians disagree about whether and when Berlier got the concession that would enable him to raise the capital for the implementation of his project.140 Whichever the case, the capital was not secured and the scheme forsaken. At the same time, Line 1 of the Métropolitain, built a decade later, followed the same route of Berlier’s subterranean tramway. Moreover, in 1905 Berlier ‘obtained [a new] concession for a separate underground line running from the Gare Montparnasse to Montmartre’ in conjunction with the Société de Chemin de Fer Électrique Nord-Sud de Paris, which is discussed later.141 Two aspects of Berlier’s plan are worth noting here. First, the provision of a service that relied on lighter, frequent and speedier trains. This was different from the service that main-line railways and the Ceinture could ever provide: Their trains were heavier, partly as a result of also

Steam and Light  221 transporting goods, while their service was limited to the frequency of a steam-operated system, which, as the London example demonstrated, worked in the suburbs more so than it did within the city. Second, ­Berlier was among the many experts, supplementing official missions, who made Parisians aware of developments in London, especially in terms of constructive techniques uniquely suited to metropolitan transport needs. These developments were followed closely in newspapers and in a wide range of specialist circles, notably those of architects and engineers, with information circulating frequently in both directions across the Channel. The important difference is that Berlier’s scheme incorporated tramways, not railways, suggesting that different technologies were suited for different needs. Whereas electric street tramways were in operation in cities such as Berlin, St. Petersburg and Cleveland (Ohio, USA), the reality of travel in Paris and London raised different concerns. One option was to take tramways beneath streets, and, whenever possible, below the sewers. What the two schemes by Berlier and Chrétien illustrate is the process of fine-tuning the exact benefits of electric traction as the technology that would support the creation of a new system of metropolitan transport. Such a system would compete against horse omnibuses and tramways, steam railways and riverboats. Examples were springing up everywhere which gave Parisians, not least the authorities, a sense of things to come and a clearer idea of limitations, whether those of the technology itself or those related to the available spaces of the city, both above and beneath the boulevards. The utopian promises of a new technology were coloured by the density and history that characterised Paris, however much its face had changed. Taste mattered and so did function. In the meantime, people travelled more, though not necessarily for longer distances. The breakdown of journeys per year that the average Parisian made by the late 1880s consisted of 107 by omnibus or tram; 9 by riverboat; and 36 by railway, namely, 8 by the Ceinture, 6 on the Auteuil line, 5 on the Vincennes line, 3 on the suburban services departing from St. Lazare and 14 on the remaining main-line railways. The Compagnie Générale des Omnibus operated 35 omnibus routes while there were 37 tramway routes (17 by the CGO, 11 by the Sud company and 9 by the Nord company), all within the walls. There were also the services to the exhibition grounds at Champ de Mars which would transport millions in 1889, and millions more in 1900.142 The majority of the traffic concentrated in the centre and followed for the most part the new boulevards. What exactly did electricity have to offer in this context? This was ­nineteenth-century France, and so the answer was, of course, political. Expanding to Contain or Containing to Expand? The process of implementing a metropolitan railway in Paris went ‘from setback to setback and abandonment to abandonment’.143 At least this

222  Steam and Light was the view of Frederic Sauton, reporter of one of the several commissions that evaluated the plans produced by the municipality and a range of other parties. A key question for the plans was how to join the often diverging interests of the state, the city and the private companies, and, more specifically, how to do so under the precepts of one project. This posed important challenges that were largely political. As Larroque suggests, by the end of the 1880s, the disagreement about the general and local interest that had characterised most of the debates of the preceding two to three decades would incorporate ideas and concerns around the Third Republic and the routes that might be opened up (and closed) by a more authoritarian regime.144 Where was the Métropolitain to sit in this context? If electric traction was becoming a true alternative, what politics were consequent with not only the promises but also the hesitations behind new ideas and new technologies? Of the numerous figures involved in this renewed debate, two appeared to highlight key themes that resonated with several of the ideas which had been discussed before, namely, the availability of spaces, the choice of traction and infrastructure, and the transformation of the octroi. One of the proposals was by Gustave Pereire, who spoke on behalf of the range of interests connected to his family – banking and railways, to name but two; the other was Vauthier’s, known to us as the proponent of different versions of a metropolitan railway since the mid-1860s, fostering a view supportive of the municipal authorities. There were a number of other proponents, of course, including the Compagnie des Établissements Eiffel and the Compagnie du Nord, which together proposed a combination of inner circle (similar to that of London) and ‘penetration’ lines open to main-line rolling stock as well as lighter trains resembling tramway cars.145 The discussion of Pereire’s and Vauthier’s work is concerned with the motivations behind the two proposals, notably, the doubts about using a new line or a new network for linking up the railway termini, and the consequences that this would have for the operation of urban, suburban and regional traffic, both elements the two proposals shared. Pereire’s ideas were ambitious and went as far as suggesting the abolition of the octroi, ‘a question debated passionately’ in the city council by the end of the 1880s.146 The model of centre and periphery that had been recreated through the octroi and the fortifications required redefining – if not completely transforming – for a new transport arrangement to emerge. If ‘relieved of all fiscal or material impediments [Paris] without octroi and without the continuous fortified enceinte’ might extend its own territory into ‘regions where nature offers air, light, and greenery’. But the realisation of this ‘seductive dream’, as Pereire affirmed, was, first and foremost, dependent upon ‘the methodical reorganisation of means of transport between the centre, which remains fixed, and the circumference that grows more distant (s’éloigner) year by year’.147 Prior to the choice of which technology of traction or what kind of network should be built was the kind of decision required to support this reorganisation.

Steam and Light  223 The approach was above all administrative and, characteristically, in line with what de Kérizouet had proposed in the 1840s. For Pereire, the scope of this reorganisation demanded a concept of urban circulation that included both new and existing modes of transport. It was through their ‘rational coordination’ that his vision could work most effectively. Extending the city limits as it had been enforced in 1860 could alleviate overcrowding in the centre and the inner districts: An area extending 3–4 km from the Thiers wall.148 Moreover, technology would be key to a new transport hierarchy: First, standard gauge railways; second, railways of narrow gauge irrespective of their traction; third, street tramways (à fleur de sol) and mechanic traction; and lastly, horse-drawn omnibuses and hiring cabs.149 The Ceinture could be moved to the line of the fortifications where separate tracks could be built for three different types of service: Goods, express trains and the metropolitan itself.150 The network central to Pereire’s plan consisted of four different sections, each with a distinct technology: (1) A line through the embanked sections of the right bank of the Seine; (2) a north-south transversal from the Gare du Nord to the Gare Médicis, the only line to be built entirely underground; (3) a circular line via the external boulevards to be operated by electric tramways; and (4) the new Ceinture (relocated and closer to the walls), which made up the largest section with six different pairs of tracks. Berlier’s tubular tramway could be made part of the network subject to changes in its layout. With the exception of the circular line and the potential incorporation of Berlier’s tube, the network would be built for railway operation while the existing omnibus and tramways would be encouraged to implement new modes of traction as a complement to the overall plan.151 Pereire also highlighted the potential benefits that the rearrangement of transport provision on such a scale might represent for the shortage of affordable housing – a concern the municipal authorities held dear – and in light of the receding military presence along the enceinte.152 The distinct and dissenting interests of the state, the railway, the tramway and omnibus companies, and the city would be brought together under the administration of an independent company: ‘The Parisian network should be operated in the interest of Paris and not that of any other network, and it is important that it be safeguarded (soit soustrait) from the consequences of rivalries between companies’ and their tendency to seek profit from ‘a common ground’.153 Centralisation would therefore ensure coordination if urban circulation were to improve, which, to an important degree challenged and acknowledged the role that the politics involved in the administration of the French capital played. The kind of change that the Métropolitain encapsulated in Pereire’s plan would resonate with some of the concerns of the municipal authorities themselves. A set of correspondence between Vauthier and Deligny and the minister of Travaux Publics and the president of the railway commission shows just how dense the nature of the exchange around the Métropolitain

224  Steam and Light could be, partly because it also concerned the planning of the new edition of the world exhibition in 1900.154 Vauthier and Deligny, ‘old members of the Paris Municipal Council’,155 had worked together at least since 1885 when they proposed a plan using trains on a ‘viaduct and underground through existing streets’.156 Their scheme had initially been pushed aside in favour of the ministerial project of P. Haag, which intended ‘to make [the] Métropolitain an instrument in the hands of the [main-line] companies [rather than being operated by] an independent entity’.157 A decade later, and as the correspondence suggests, Vauthier and Deligny would resubmit their project, this time to the minister of commerce and to the general commissioner of the 1900 Exposition Universelle.158 The advice of the exhibition committee was positive, but the project stalled after a commission of the Chambre des Deputés objected to the ‘occupation of a part of the Champs Élysées’, as was proposed by the exhibition commissioner himself. At this stage, the government had issued a letter dated 27 September 1895, in which, subject to certain conditions, the Métropolitain was declared of local interest, its construction and operation trusted to the municipal authorities. Vauthier and Deligny’s proposal was thus part of the final stages of how metropolitan railway transport in Paris had evolved. Their project was based on studies first prepared on 12 January 1895. A ring line (ligne annulaire) was ‘especially projected in view of the Exhibition, going from the Étoile to the Place de l’Opéra, via the Champs-Élysées and the Concorde’. This was modified on 11 February, once a second version of the plan was submitted, but as the councillors explained, it could be used if the plans to occupy part of the ChampsÉlysées went through. Vauthier and Deligny had reassured the national government that the concession would be ‘without subvention or guarantee of interest [regardless of the latter being by] the State or the City’. The councillors would take care of the company needed for the operation of the line, ‘reserving the right to determine future extensions’. It was, as they described it, ‘an autonomous ring line, provided with its rolling stock […] serving both river banks, circumventing the entire site of the Exhibition, and extending via the large public thoroughfares’ from the western part of the city at Trocadéro and the Étoile to the south-eastern corner where it was to join the Lyon and Orléans railways.159 The time estimated to complete the works was three years. The line, Vauthier and Deligny affirmed, ‘should be considered as the axis itself of the Parisian Métropolitain, as its framework or structure (ossature)’; with it, extensions, whether to the outlying districts or within the city walls, would become part of a cohesive urban transport network.160 Both Pereire’s and Vauthier and Deligny’s were plans that contributed to the two distinctive visions which characterised most if not all of the debates around the Métropolitain: One was connective, expansive and supportive of existing railway services, while the other

Steam and Light  225 was insular, separate and exclusively urban. Advocates of the former thought that the ‘essential object’ of whatever should be built was connecting the main-line railways in order to simplify the transit of passengers and their luggage, facilitate the operation of ‘inter-­ continental express’ trains and promote a more effective service than the Ceinture. Central stations where all main lines would converge or ‘bypassing stations’ were still proposed during the 1890s to this end.161 To the advocates of the latter, the Métropolitain was urban, Parisian, and should exclude the traffic of the main-line companies. For the radicals within this spectrum, one option was to build a network using the narrow gauge so as to prevent main-line rolling stock from using municipal tracks, turning suburban and national railway traffic into an entirely separate system in terms of its connectivity and operation. As Vauthier and Deligny suggested, this position was primarily informed by the apprehension and fears that included, for example, ‘an exodus of the city population’ beyond the walls, with its effect on the octroi and the municipal finances. ‘One cannot imprison the population in Paris, but it is necessary to impede [its] exit’, seemed to be the logic that those proposing an emphatically distinct urban system had in mind. To them, the councillors responded by asking whether the Métropolitain should then be ‘a plaything [that] we are to create for the amusement of onlookers’.162 The reference to the ‘badauds’ was a very real and relatively recent one. Visitors to the 1889 Expo were entertained, among other things, by the Decauville, the 6-km-long narrow-gauge railway taking them from one end to another, largely within the expo grounds.163 Although Vauthier and Deligny, city councillors as they were, did emphasise on the separateness of their ligne annulaire, the adoption of a different gauge was something they categorically opposed. One of the arguments against the standard gauge was the cost, but their estimates and calculations proved the opposite. The benefits and operation of 1-m-gauge lines were widely known in France and elsewhere.164 The issue was one of connectivity and of continuity of infrastructure between the capital and the country. Disconnecting Paris from the national network ran counter to ‘the possibility of linking later the rail ways (voies ferrées) of Paris with the roads (chemins) serving the rest of the French territory’.165 National security was important. Military reasons were about the only argument that the municipal council was prepared to accept, although the war ministry had confirmed since at least 1889 that the Métropolitain did not represent any strategic advantage in the case of mobilising troops. The consequences of separating railway networks would only become apparent in the face of hostilities.166 While designing a metropolitan railway that was separate from the national railway network was a way of ensuring the smooth running and operation of a new system, main-line extensions continued to

226  Steam and Light transform the Parisian landscape with their viaducts, their tunnels and their locomotives. Two extensions had been authorised to the Ouest and Orléans companies by 1894.167 The first extension was the Limours line of the Paris-Orléans (Act of 14 December 1889) which, apart from two short trench sections (à ciel ouvert), ran its course entirely underground. The adoption of a tubular section, reminiscent of Berlier’s plan, represented an important technical challenge only at the junctions with three river bridges. The sinuosity of the route – largely following the river on the left bank –, the complicated arrangements needed to avoid a direct crossing with main sewer collectors as well as the removal of trees – their shade being highly valued by the promeneurs of the boulevards and river shores during the summer – arose the praise and criticism from the city council and Parisians alike.168 The other extension was the line of the Compagnie de l’Ouest from Courbevoie-­P uteaux-Moulineaux to Champ-de-Mars and on to the Esplanade des Invalides (Act of 5 July 1893), including a terminus for mail and passengers. The station was planned below ground, ‘its buildings arranged in a manner that respected the perspective of the Esplanade and the Hôtel des Invalides’.169 To Vauthier and Deligny, the intrusion of main-line railways into the city was ill advised. Moreover, in their view, ‘It was not the Compagnie de l’Ouest that should come from Courcelles to the Invalides [but] the Métropolitain that should go to Courcelles’ instead. Both extensions opened in time for the 1900 Expo, despite their criticism. The Compagnie de l’Ouest had had a terminus in the Champ de Mars since 1867, serving the expo of that year and used in subsequent editions of the event. The feat of the Paris-Orléans was somewhat different, with the stunning Gare d’Orsay – now home to the famous museum – as the gateway for their electrified services into and from Paris. By the mid-1890s, the voluminous body of work produced in connection with the Métropolitain, from the plethora of ambitious plans to seemingly innocuous correspondence, would serve as the background against which the final ideas and the actual layout of the lines that would be built were shaped. Pereire’s vision of Parisian transport was urban and suburban; expansive and connecting to existing infrastructure, including the Ceinture and the different main-line railways. In contrast, the ring line that Vauthier and Deligny proposed was modest, perhaps more realistic, but also conceived of as the main structure that would help articulate future extensions, largely within the walls. Whether centrifugal or centripetal in character, the envisioning of and the debates around the Métropolitain had demonstrated the significance of the services that the new system should provide and the extent to which these services were different from existing urban and suburban transport. Abolishing the octroi, as Pereire suggested, or preserving a standard gauge so that the capital remained connected to the national

Steam and Light  227 railway network, as Vauthier and Deligny, municipal councillors themselves, advocated, was firmly grounded in the perceived needs of Parisians. Perceptions, of course, differed, often widely. At the same time, the need for effective and convenient circulation had become universal, as André had stated earlier. To a large extent conceiving of the adequate system depended on separating out a fairly specified kind of movement – that of passengers within the walls – and, subsequently, building the infrastructure necessary to accommodate it. According to the general inspector of the Ponts et Chaussées at the time, it was the relationship between (rail)way and vehicle that called for a clearer definition so that the system might ‘acquire a speed independent of the ordinary vehicles and run measurably faster’.170 Independence was important and so was speed. But independence and speed for whom? The relationship between, on the one hand, the spaces that were available and the new ones that might be built, and, on the other hand, the technology supporting frequent services for passengers within a closed system was gaining not only depth but also, and more importantly, political definition. Trailing Carriages and Electric Circuits Which rolling stock to use and what kind of electric system should be in place became paramount to refining the Métropolitain as it would be built. Fulgence Bienvenüe, engineer of the Technical Service of the Métropolitain, explained each in detail in a report on urban railways operated by electric traction.171 In it, Bienvenüe distinguished between two types of vehicle: Coupling or trailing carriages (voitures d’attelage) and carriages fitted with their own motors (voitures automobiles). Broadly speaking, this recalls the difference between the electric locomotives of the CSL and the Central London, and the Sprague multiple-unit system introduced in the later tube lines and the Central London since 1903. In Bienvenüe’s estimates, each carriage of the Métropolitain would seat forty-four passengers, while the length of platforms (75 m) would accommodate six carriages. In terms of operation, the proposed network – in its newest version consisting of a circular line and two transversals – was divided into six different electric circuits: West, east, north, Porte Maillot (circular north), Porte Maillot (circular south) and north-south diameter.172 The circular line followed for the most part the external boulevards, while the two transversals ran, one, east to west (partly along the Rue Réaumur) and, the other, north to south crossing the river Seine. Four types of circulation resulted from this arrangement, namely, at one, two, three or four circuits, based upon traffic sections of different intensities (sections de trafic à intensités differentes). In other words, the type of service that the Métropolitain would provide depended on the frequency of trains; their speed; the timing of boarding stops; and, of course, the

228  Steam and Light power needed to supply the system: Eight trains per hour in each direction in the sections that were operated with one circuit, sixteen trains in those with two circuits, twenty-four trains in those with three circuits and thirty-two trains in those with four circuits.173 In its entirety, the network supported ‘forty-five trains circulating simultaneously in each direction [at any one time] or ninety in total’. Vehicles were fitted with dynamos; the lighting of stations and the powering of other facilities were by electricity. Two depots housed the power plants, the rolling stock and yards: The depot at Vaurigard supplied the circuits west, Porte Maillot (south circular) and the north-south line. Charonne’s, in turn, supplied the circuits east, north and Porte Maillot (north circular). An intermediate substation was planned at Montmartre to break the distance between the two.174 Bienvenüe’s report was instrumental to clarifying the extent to which electricity was necessary to create a metropolitan railway system. By the end of the nineteenth century and as E. Huet would assert in reference to the report, there were little doubts that electricity was ‘the only possible [type of traction] for the operation of a metropolitan network’.175 E. Huet was now administrative director of Travaux Publics, having chaired the report of the official visit to London in 1876. Among the objections that Huet raised in the appendix to Bienvenüe’s report were the lack of connectivity with the existing railway termini and the real capacity of the system to move large numbers of people. The latter, Huet explained in terms of the relation between the number of carriages and the length of platforms, and taking into consideration the frequency that Bienvenüe proposed. His suggestion was also for the two transversals to connect to the circular line and the Ceinture, ‘with the aim of bringing the inhabitants of the periphery to the centre’. Effective connections with three of the railway termini of the right bank (Nord, Est, Bastille) would provide the Métropolitain with a distinct ‘general utility’ although this did not necessarily involve the adoption of a particular gauge. A larger gauge for larger trains meant that capacity could increase, but the investment needed for building such a system did not compare favourably with the best estimates of the many studies produced so far. It was the sheer expenses of building a railway of standard gauge that had led to the abandonment of the numerous projects of the past 20 or 30 years, or so was Huet’s view. Another matter was connecting the execution of the works to the opening of the 1900 exhibition: ‘it is prudent’, Huet wrote, ‘not to count on [the Métropolitain’s] capacity of transport for the service of the exhibition’.176 Both reports were based on the latest version of the future Métropolitain, that is, one circular line and two transversals (north-south and east-west). The plan had been produced by a new municipal commission, which also thought it pertinent to insert five requirements in their report:

Steam and Light  229 That narrow gauge should be adopted; that construction works be executed directly by the city; that electric traction should be used; that services should be maintained without interruption; and that the detailed plans (avant projet) should be studied by the city engineers, considering as far as possible a constructive system consisting of two underground lines (the two transversals) and a circular line above ground.177 With the commission’s recommendations in mind, Huet suggested that significant benefits could be obtained by ‘adopting rails 1 metre wide, allowing a substantial reduction in the area that the Métropolitain [would] occupy in the public way [whether] on a viaduct or in a trench’. This also reduced the disruption caused by the construction works and therefore the cost.178 By the time the reports of Huet and Bienvenüe were produced, the layout of the Métropolitain remained provisional and yet to be agreed upon. The debate ended in November 1897, when the general council of the Ponts et Chaussées declared the project to be of a municipal character and, therefore, restricted to the local interest.179 Three amendments were made to the terms of the bill by the Conseil d’Etat, the Ministry of War and the council of the Ponts et Chaussées: The gauge of the rolling stock was changed from 2.10 to 2.40 m in order to increase operational capacity; the gauge of rails supporting bigger trains was changed accordingly to 1.44 m instead of the 1.30 m that the municipal authorities initially proposed; and the conditions of employment were specified, with a minimum salary and limited working hours per day.180 An Act of 30 March 1898 defined the legal terms for the execution of the works and sanctioned the public utility of the project. But even at this point, the deliberation that took place that day reflected how much disagreement and, at times, vicious opposition there was between members of the city council. As the new Seine Prefect Justin Germain Casimir de Selves, former director of Postes et Télégraphs, asserted no other project had been through all the detailed studies and debates across and between government bodies in the way that the Métropolitain had been, and yet once the final stages of the debate seemed close, objections were found and disagreements expressed with force and no restraint.181 The metropolitan railway network as was set in the 1898 Act was of local interest, with trains operated by electric traction and a service that concentrated on the ‘transport of passengers and their hand luggage’.182 It consisted of six lines and their respective junctions (see Figure 4.9): A Porte de Vincennes – Porte Dauphine, which followed the same route as Berlier’s earlier plan. B A circular line following the external boulevards on both riverbanks, the southern section of which was very similar to what Vauthier and Deligny proposed.

230  Steam and Light C Porte Maillot – Ménilmontant, following an east-west axis as per the final project drawn by the municipal commission. D Porte Clignancourt – Porte d’Orléans, following a north-south direction. E Boulevard Strasbourg – Pont d’Austerlitz, connecting the Gare du Nord and Gare d’Orléans as per Huet’s suggestion. F Cours de Vincennes – Place d’Italie. Provisions were made for main-line extensions and for the layout of the tunnel beneath the Seine so that any conflict with ‘the bridge [already] planned with the extension of the Rue du Louvre’ was avoided.183 The agreement between the city and the concessionaire stipulated that the latter was to raise capital enough to operate the network and provide the rolling stock, including tracks as well as the access points to stations. In turn, the city provided the infrastructure, including platforms. Further to the execution of the works, ‘the concessionaire was required to begin the works of superstructure two months after the platforms of each section were delivered by the city’ and have every such section ready for operation within ten months.184 Infrastructure consisted of the works relating to tunnelling; the diversion of existing networks (water, sewerage and gas) whenever needed; and the handling of disruption and changes to existing streets, buildings and public spaces, where appropriate. Superstructure concerned electricity, including generating plants, substations and the overall layout of the system. The distinction between the two, infrastructure and superstructure, would prove to be a contentious point illustrated later by the disagreement between the eventual concessionaire and the municipal council about the construction of a new plant for the generation of electricity.185 The concession was to be granted without subvention or guarantee of interest, lasting thirty-five years either for one line or for the entire network. Lines A, B and C were to be completed within a period of eight years after their public utility was declared, in other words, by 30 March 1906. Lines D, E and F were due five years after that, in March 1911. Three other lines were reserved for a possible future concession (concession à titre éventuel): (G) Place Valhubert – Quai de Conti, (H) Place Danube – Palais-Royal and (I) Auteuil – Opéra. Line G would soon be abandoned and replaced by the Compagnie d’Orléans’ extension to the Quai d’Orsay. The initial contract was granted to the Compagnie Générale de Traction, which associated itself with the Établissements Schneider du Creusot, the well-known steel manufacturers and with firm interests in electricity under the leadership of Eugène, Henri’s son.186 The association of the two companies represented an important shift in that the new industries concerned with the production and distribution of electricity

Steam and Light  231 would take a position normally occupied by main-line railway companies.187 Shifts in financing would be accentuated further with the agreement between the eventual concessionaire, the Compagnie du Chemin de Fer Métropolitain de Paris (CFMP)188 and the Société d’Électricité de Paris on the construction of the generating plant at St. Denis, in operation from 1906. Moreover, foreign capital, notably from the ­Belgian conglomerate of Général Baron Édouard Empain, would become increasingly central to the operation of the Métropolitain as the twentieth century progressed.189 By the time that works on the first three lines were about to start, changes were introduced, transforming the proposed network into Line  1, from Porte de Vincennes to Porte Maillot; Line 2 Nord, from Porte Dauphine to Nation; Line 2 Sud, from Nation to Étoile; and Line  3, from Porte Dauphine to Ménilmontant. Line 1 and the junctions between Étoile and Porte Dauphine and Étoile and Trocadéro were given main priority.190 Conditions included in the legal contract (cahier de charges) discriminated between technical aspects, such as maximum length of trains (72 m) and the avoidance of level crossings. The layout followed the existing pattern of streets with shallow tunnels which were as close as possible to the surface or, as Robert has remarked, ‘à fleur de terre’.191 The construction resembled in this sense the cut-and-cover technique used in the Metropolitan and the Metropolitan District in London. Stations at either end of the lines were the termini.192 Although the distance between tracks was the same the operational gauge of the main-line railways and the Métro remained different. Mainline company trains were excluded from the metropolitan network as the dimensions of the tunnels accommodated the Métropolitain cars (2.40 m wide) but not the national rolling stock (3.20 m wide).193 The 1898 Act became thus a compromise between the national authorities and the city, preserving a standard gauge throughout which in practice kept the two networks separate. The initial plans that had placed Paris as the central node of the national network in 1842 were, with the Métropolitain, transformed and rewritten. Costs were reduced with the construction of smaller tunnels, and connectivity between national and metropolitan railways severed for the following 30 years when the Réseau Express Régional (RER) was built.194 Line 1 opened on 19 July 1900, three months after the opening of the Exposition Universelle on 14 April. The extension of the Compagnie de l’Ouest from their Gare St. Lazare to Champ de Mars would serve the exhibition grounds first, including the junction between the Champ de Mars and the Invalides, operated by electric traction and in service from the same day of the opening.195 The underground spaces of the Métro would be a much-welcome relief from the heat of the Parisian summer by late July.196 Eight stations were in service at Porte de Vincennes, Place de la Nation, Gare de Lyon, Place de la Bastille, Hôtel de

232  Steam and Light Ville, ­Palais-Royal, Champs-Élysées and Porte Maillot.197 The sections between Étoile and Trocadéro and between Étoile and Porte Dauphine of Line 2 opened in October and December the same year. Lines 3, 4, 5 and 6 would be complete by 1910, all operated by electricity. A standard fare was adopted throughout. A maximum of one-third of the seats available were reserved for first-class passengers who paid a higher fare.198 Ticket control was at the platform entrances; corridors led to stairs on either end, where a hall (with a booking office) and a staircase connected street to tunnel.199 Trains ran every ten minutes; from 20 September the frequency was increased to six minutes between 5:30 am and 9:30 pm and back to ten minutes between 9:30 pm and 12:30 am. From 30 January 1901, and largely in response to passenger demand, trains ran to a three-minute frequency.200 No doubt, there were problems. Short circuits in the electric system disrupted operations in July, August and September, with a train arriving in flames at the Tuileries station on 11 October 1900. An accident near the Concorde the following week injured twenty-nine passengers and a driver. This added to a difficult summer that saw a heat wave, water shortages, outbreaks of typhoid and smallpox, several accidents due to collapsing structures and walkways on and leading to the Expo grounds as well as other electric malfunctions and fires on tramways. Some accounts recorded 10,500 workers injured in preparation for the Expo.201 Modernity and spectacle had their costs. Financed and managed separately, a new line would provide nearly a decade later a direct connection between main-line railways, supplementing the Métro services. The Nord-Sud line, the concession of which was obtained in 1905, followed the principle of a tube line, on average 30 m below the surface as Berlier had envisioned it in the 1890s. The line crossed the river with a tunnel by the Pont de la Concorde connecting to the Gare St. Lazare (Compagnie de l’Ouest) and the Gare Montparnasse (Sceaux line). The cost was three times that of building one of the Métro lines, even though the deviation of underground infrastructure and compensations to property owners were kept low. An important technological innovation was the combined use of conduits via the rail and an overhead wire (trolley), which precluded the presence of ‘pernicious currents’ (courants vagabonds). 202 Lighting appeared to be ‘substantially better than that of the Métro’, providing too lifts in the majority of stations. There were seven interchange stations between the line and the Métropolitain network at Boulevard Pasteur, Gare Montparnasse, Place de la Concorde, Place de la Madeleine, Gare St Lazare, Place Clichy and Place Pigalle. Connections with the Gare St. Lazare were particularly well laid out, offering a relatively straightforward connection between the line and the services of the Compagnie de l’Ouest (see Figure 4.11). 203 Tickets for the line were also valid on the Métropolitain, after the Nord-Sud agreed to pay the CFMP for this in exchange for ‘the extension of the concession until 30 June 1950’. 204

Steam and Light  233 Bienvenüe, and indeed Parisians, had reasons to celebrate. Their Métropolitain had left the drawing rooms and the meeting halls of national, regional and municipal assemblies at last. The map of Paris was now a map with a cohesive and dense network that covered the city from east to west and north to south. True, there were no direct connections between the Métro and the main-line railways, which were to a large extent the very instigators of the system in the first place. The NordSud line provided a counterbalance, though connecting the termini of two main-line companies only. By contrast to how railway transport had evolved in London, Paris’ own Métropolitain was based upon a vision limited to the walls: It was contained, perhaps insular, more so than it was expansive. At the same time, the Métro allowed Parisians ease of movement within a system of numbered and interconnecting lines (1–6), running to high frequencies, with lighter trains, not only reproducing but also intersecting with the pattern of streets and boulevards that was the legacy of the Second Empire and the Third Republic.

Metropolis and Technology When seen from the grounds of the Expo 1900 in the Champ de Mars and through the writing of the likes of Paul Morand, H. G. Wells and others, the future of Paris and London looked both bright and haunting. Electricity lit and powered homes, shops, streets and transport, though by no means everywhere or evenly. Steam and the spark of ‘live’ electric mains coexisted, underground and above. To the large majority, and as the curtains of the twentieth century were raised, London and Paris looked modern in the way that Vienna, Brussels, Barcelona, Chicago, Boston, New York and Berlin, as well as several other Victorian cities and their ‘pride in progress’, did. 205 Their space, extent and connectivity between different areas had been transformed. What is revealed by the different trajectories that electric traction followed in the two cities is the significance of the interaction of the different publics that took part and had taken part in the process of defining what metropolitan railways were and what role were they to play in the future of the two cities. Each city shaped its modernity in its own terms. The break with the past wasn't radical. Striking visions of future London and future Paris featuring metropolitan railways included but were not dominated by the allure and promise of and the fascination with electricity. After the opening of the CSL in 1890, the dependency on locomotives gave way to the multiple-unit system, perfected in the United States by Sprague. With the technology came investors so that General Electric was a key shareholder in the Central London. Yerkes, in turn, managed to amalgamate four different schemes, including the electrification of the District, into one company operating electric railways underground both deep and shallow. Despite the LCC’s

234  Steam and Light repeated calls to couple the service of new railway lines to housing developments at or near the edges of the built-up area, the Tube electrified lines reinforced a forty-year-old pattern started by the Metropolitan and the District. It would fall to the tramways to become the vehicle for the realisation of some of the LCC’s vision of cohesive growth. 206 Electric traction was a structural part of the design and building of the Métropolitain in Paris. To a large extent building the Métro was the result of the possibilities that the new technology provided. The sixline network was made technically and operationally distinct from the services of the Ceinture and main-line companies. Traffic within and without the walls was kept separate; connections between the two made impracticable. The type of service that the Métro was to offer, the interest it represented and the technology that was to ensure its operation differed from the steam services that main-line railways had provided since the 1840s, a gesture that was perhaps radical in a manner that had no equivalent in London. Reconciling the expansive force of railways, both main line and metropolitan, with a model of urban growth that would ensure good transport connectivity, especially in relation to the suburbs, remained a challenge in the two cities. The challenge was intensified by the geography of population growth which clustered precisely in the suburbs, the banlieue and the outer districts. In Paris, population trebled between 1860 and 1914 in this peri-urban area, mostly outside the walls, with dramatic increases where new industries located in areas such as St. Denis (increase from 15,700 to 71,800), Asnières (from 1,200 to 42,600), BoulogneBillancourt (from 7,600 to 57,000) and Ivry (from 7,056 to 38,307). 207 Of these, only Asnières was served by the stations at Monceau and Ternes of Line 2, although to use them passengers were encouraged to cover a distance of at least 1 km, should their journey start at or near the wall. However comprehensive and unified, the Métro replicated an important historic pattern of segregation, which had, in turn, been shaped by the legacy of two walls: One (Thiers) serving as its limit and the other serving as the perimeter left by the Fermiers Généraux, which introduced a circular route equidistant from the Ceinture. Decennial growth in the outer suburbs of London, in turn, stayed around 50 per cent from 1861 to 1891 and 45 per cent in the following decade. Between 1881 and 1891, Leyton, Willesden, Tottenham and West Ham were the four places with the most rapid population growth in Britain, with percentages of 133.3, 121.9, 95.1 and 58.9, respectively. The trend continued during the following decade when ‘no less than twelve of the seventeen urban districts which recorded rates of growth of over 30 per cent [across the country] were suburbs of London’. 208 Except for West Ham, served by the District since 1902, this was main-line territory, that of the Great Eastern and the North London in particular. Steam, not electric traction, was the technology

Steam and Light  235 conveying commuters and travellers in their journeys across London to and from these areas. Placing the introduction of electrified metropolitan railways against the background of the (suburban) growth of London and Paris is important in several respects. It qualifies our understanding of the precise role that technology has played in metropolitan transport. Electric traction supplemented steam and only gradually and unevenly would supersede it. Central to this were the important differences in density between the two cities and what distribution of density in and around the inner and outer districts could be observed. Density mattered in the process of defining what a metropolitan journey became, and with it, the kind of technology that was to support it, for which length and with what frequency. Such an approach shifts our focus from system building, as per the important work of Thomas Hughes and others, and highlights the constraints but also the possibilities that cities like London and Paris offered new technologies. The necessity to create a comprehensive system of urban, suburban and metropolitan railways had been recognised long before electric traction became a real alternative to steam-operated services. What counts is then less the novelty, and more what exactly had electric traction to offer within specific constraints. Electric traction was a solution for journeys within the two metropolises, which required lighter and speedier trains, running at high frequencies and covering shorter distances. But these were only one of the multiple kinds of journeys that Londoners and Parisians made. The shift of focus is also a means to identify the precise benefits to the different publics, diverse and historically specific as they always are, who were implicit in the promises around a brighter future by the advocates of the new technology. This is not to suggest that the interaction between capital and technology didn't matter. Of course, it did, as the example of the Central London and the UERL all too clearly illustrate. And as important were the conflicts of interest and the ‘fights for influence’ that often clashed across local, metropolitan and national levels, 209 as well as the spaces that were available so that electric traction would enter a realm characterised by dense use and occupation and a vast multiplicity of exchanges. Compared to Chicago and Berlin, London – and Paris, for that matter – may have been lacking when the lens we use is electricity, but only if the measure is the output of kilowatts sold from central generating stations. The Métro resembled the ‘unified and electrified urban transportation system’ that Yerkes, the system builder, made possible in Chicago, though responding to the needs that a socialist municipal council deemed sufficient and appropriate. 210 By contrast, the separate lines that shaped developments by the turn of the twentieth century in London each promoted a different rendering of the travelling public, its needs and how the city’s future was to respond to these.

236  Steam and Light The modernities of London and Paris looked very different once we consider the process of electrification of metropolitan railways and what role that process played in their future: Supplementing steam, gradually becoming a cohesive network, open and expansive, on one end of the Channel; contained, unified and closed, on the other end of the same Channel.

Notes Excerpts from this chapter were published in an earlier shorter version in ‘Converging Lines Dissecting Circles: Railways and the Socialist Ideal in London and Paris at the Turn of the Twentieth Century’, in M. Davies and J. Galloway (eds.), London and Beyond: Essays in honour of Derek Keene (London: Institute of Historical Research Series, 2012), 317–337. 1 E. de Amicis, Ricordi di Parigi, Terza Edizione (Milano: Fratelli Treves, 1879), 34–35. See also H. Clayson, Mary Cassatt’s Lamp, in H. Clayson and A. Dombrowski (eds.), Is Paris Still the Capital of the Nineteenth Century? Essays on Art and Modernity, 1850–1900 (London and New York: Routledge, 2016), 263. 2 Reproduced in R. Allen, The Moving Pageant A Literary Sourcebook on London Street-Life, 1700–1914 (London and New York: Routledge, 1998), 208–211. 3 The Times, 7 October 1884; quoted in T. C. Barker and M. Robbins, A History of London Transport. Passenger Travel and the Development of the Metropolis Vol. 1 (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1963), 235–236. 4 P. Reverard, Des Conditions d’Exploitation du Chemin de Fer Métropolitain de Paris (Paris: Arthur Rousseau, Éditeur, 1905), 81. 5 For a general discussion of developments in electricity see T. P. Hughes, Networks of Power: Electrification in Western Society, 1880–1930 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983). For a contemporary description of the various applications of electricity by the mid-1850s, including public works, street lighting, mining and other military uses see M. ­Fernandez de Castro, L’Électricité et les Chemins de Fer (Paris: Lacroix et Baudry, 1859), 410–419. 6 See the report of the Russian paper Golos reproduced as ‘The Electric Light’ in Journal of the Society of Arts XXI (22 August 1873), 779. 7 See ‘Gramme’s New Electric Light’, Journal of the Society of Arts XXI (9 May 1873), 484. 8 W. H. Preece, Electric Lighting at the Paris Exhibition, in Compte Th. du Moncel and H. Preece, Incandescent Electric Lights, with Particular Reference to the Edison Lamps at the Paris Exhibition (New York: D. Van Nostrand, 1882), 131–132. 9 Barker and Robbins, A History of London Transport vol. 1, 297–298. 10 The Builder, 19 January 1884, 117. 11 C. Otter, Cleansing and Clarifying: Technology and Perception in ­Nineteenth-Century London, Journal of British Studies 43, 1 (2004), 57. 12 M. du Camp, Paris, ses Organes, ses Fonctions et sa Vie dans la Seconde Moitié du XIXe siècle Vol. V (Paris: Hachette, 1874), 406. See also A. Beltran, Création et Développement du Réseau Électrique Parisien 1878–1939, in F. Caron et al. (sous la direction de), Paris et ses Réseaux: Naissance

Steam and Light  237 d’un Mode de Vie Urbain XIXe-XXe Siècles (Paris: Bibliothèque Historique de la Ville de Paris, 1990), 242–243. 13 du Camp, Paris, ses Organes, 407–408. 14 The commentary is by Julius Rodenberg (1867), quoted in J. Schlör, Nights in the Big City, Paris, Berlin, London 1840–1930 (London and New York: Reaktion Books, 2016), 281–282. 15 Preece, Electric Lighting, 148–152. 16 Beltran, Réseau Électrique Parisien, 242. 17 Preece, Electric Lighting, 147–148. For an earlier discussion of how electric lamps compared to gas lighting, see the paper by W. Lloyd Wise and its subsequent discussion in the Journal of the Society of Arts XXI (7 March 1873), 288–294. See particularly the categorical statement of the benefits of electric lighting as provided by the last discussant ibid., 293–294. 18 See the brief note ‘Electric Lighting in London’, The Builder, 27 January 1900, 76. 19 See G. Vitoux, La Distribution de l’Énergie Électrique à Paris, La Revue Technique Annales des Travaux Publics et des Chemins de Fer et Annales Industrielles 18, 21 (November 1897), 495–497. 20 Beltran, Réseau Électrique Parisien, 243–245. 21 The literature on the Expo 1900 in general and the Palais de l’Électricité in particular is extensive and wide ranging; see, for example, T. Pacquot, Paris 1900 le Palais de l’Électricité. Les Cahiers de Médiologie, 10 (2000), 200–207; P. van Wesemael, Architecture of Instruction and Delight. A ­Socio-Historical Analysis of World Exhibitions as a Didactic Phenomenon (1798–1851–1970) (Rotterdam: 010 Publishers, 2001). 22 Otter, Cleansing and Clarifying, 59, 62; for a description of the piecemeal development of public lighting in the City see ibid., 58–61. 23 Hughes, Networks of Power, 227. 24 J. Chrétien, Chemin de Fer Électrique des Boulevards à Paris (Paris, 1881), 11, 14, 31. 25 See M. Dikeç and C. López Galviz, “The Modern Atlas” Compressed Air and Cities c.1850–1930, Journal of Historical Geography 53 (2016), 11–27. 26 For a contemporary treatment of these technologies see L. Francq, Chemin de Fer Métropolitain. Recueil des Articles Publiés dans le Journal ‘le Métropolitain’ à Propos de la Traction du Métropolitain Parisien (Paris, 1892). 27 See A. Mitchell, Le Métro: Bataille Technologique, in K. Bowie and S. Texier (sous la direction de), Paris et ses Chemins de Fer (Paris: Action Artistique de la Ville de Paris, 2003), 138. For a concise description of the various attempts with steam and other engines particularly in tramways see Barker and Robbins, A History of London Transport vol. 1, 293–295. 28 J. Simmons, The Victorian Railway (London: Thames & Hudson, 1995), 93. 29 See http://volkselectricrailway.co.uk, last accessed 15 September 2014. 30 Barker and Robbins, A History of London Transport vol. 1, 295–96. For a brief and concise report on the Funiculaire de Montmartre see the contemporary account by L’Illustration, 11 August 1900, 87. See also S. ­Hallsted-Baumert, The Métropolitain: Technology, Space and the Creation of Urban Identities in Fin-de-Siècle Paris, PhD dissertation New York University, 1999. 31 The Engineer, 7 November 1890, quoted in Barker and Robbins, A History of London Transport vol. 1, 309–310. 32 ‘In the 1870s dynamos were being sold in numbers on the continent and America by Siemens, by French firms manufacturing the product of Z.T.

238  Steam and Light Gramme, and by several American companies, notably that dominated by C.F. Brush’. Barker and Robbins, A History of London Transport vol. 1, 297; the dynamos used in the Edison system were improved by John Hopkinson early in the 1880s; for a discussion of Hopkinson’s work see ibid., 308–309. 33 B. Baker, The Metropolitan and Metropolitan District Railways, in J. ­Forrest (ed.), The Metropolitan Railways (London, 1885), 8. 34 P. Hall, Cities of Tomorrow. An Intellectual History of Urban Planning and Design Since 1880, fourth edition (Malden: Wiley Blackwell, 2014), 28, 32–34. J. Bastié, La Croissance de la Banlieue Parisienne (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1964), 190. 35 Barker and Robbins, A History of London Transport vol. 1, 304. See also F. Sérafon, Les Chemins de Fer Métropolitains et les Moyens de Transport en Commun à Londres, New-York, Berlin, Vienne, et Paris (Paris, 1885), 47. 36 30 April 1884, Commons committee on the London Central Electric Railway Bill; quoted in Barker and Robbins, A History of London Transport vol. 1, 305. The line was to run from Charing Cross via Cranbourne Street (for Leicester Square) and New Oxford Street (with a branch to Piccadilly Circus), and then via stations near Lincoln’s Inn Fields and Bedford Row to Gray’s Inn Road, Holborn Circus, Farringdon Street and Cheapside. (Ibid., 304) 37 See, for example, the interview to the general manager of the City and South London, as the company would later be called, in G. A. Sekon, Illustrated Interviews, Mr. Thomas Chellew Jenkin, The Railway Magazine V (July to December 1899), 2. For a concise description of the early years of the City of London and Southwark Subway see also Barker and Robbins, A History of London Transport vol. 1, 305–307. 38 London Transport Museum, P. W. Barlow, Improvements in Constructing and Working Railways, and in Constructing Railway Tunnels, patent No. 2207 of 9 September 1864, p. 2. 39 Barlow, patent No. 2207, 1–3. An addition to this patent (from March 1868) contemplated the event of water breaking into the tunnel and means to solve it. 40 For the key features of the systems, see P. W. Barlow, On the Relief of London Street Traffic, with a Description of the Tower Subway now Shortly to be Executed (London, 1867); also relevant is his second pamphlet The Relief of Street Traffic. Advantages of the City and Southwark Subway, with Reasons why the Proposed Connection of Street Tramways from the Elephant and Castle through the City is Unnecessary and Undesirable. Second Pamphlet (London, 1871); see also the paper Greathead read before the Institute of Civil Engineers on 19 November 1895, J. Greathead, The City and South London Railway; with some Remarks upon Subaqueous Tunnelling by Shield and Compressed Air (London: The Institution of Civil Engineers, 1896), 5. 41 C. López Galviz, Mobilities at a Standstill: Regulating Circulation in London c.1863–1870, Journal of Historical Geography 42 (2013), 71–73. 42 The subway remained in use for the passage of mains and pipes only. For a contemporary account see ‘The Tower Subway and London Docks’, W.  Thornbury, Old and New London: Vol. 2 (1878), 122–128. www.­ british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=4508, accessed 16 June 2008. For an insightful discussion of Tower Bridge see R. Dennis, Cities in Modernity Representations and Productions of Metropolitan Space, 1840–1930

Steam and Light  239 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). See also T. S. Lascelles, The City & South London Railway (Oxford: The Oakwood Press, 1987), 6–7; C. E. Lee, The Northern Line. A Brief History (London: London Transport, 1973), 9; Barker and Robbins, A History of London Transport vol. 1, 300–303. 43 The directors of the CLSS decided on both appointments on 28 October 1884 and 18 December 1885, respectively. See London Metropolitan Archives (hereafter LMA), City of London & Southwark Subway Company. Minute book 1, 1884–1889, 8, 29. 44 CLSS minute book 1, 1884–1889, 34, 46. The Cable Corporation went into liquidation in early 1888, as it was reported in the meeting of 30 January 1888; see ibid., 161. 45 Sekon, Illustrated Interviews, 5, 8; see also Greathead, City and South London Railway, 5. 46 See the company’s board meeting of 31 July 1888; CLSS minute book 1, 1884–1889, 206. 47 CLSS minute book 1, 1884–1889, 208, 214. 48 See the meetings of 9 October and 23 October, CLSS minute book 1, 1884–1889, 218, 221. 49 This was during the meeting of 15 January 1889, when two letters, one of which was by Siemens, were also read; see CLSS minute book 1, 1884– 1889, 239. The options of the Anglo-American company were considered on 20 November 1888; see ibid., 228. 50 Hughes, Networks of Power, 83–84; T. H. Beare, ‘Hopkinson, John (1849– 1898)’, rev. S. Hong, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 2015 [0-www.oxforddnb.com.­ catalogue.libraries.london.ac.uk/view/article/13758, accessed 15 September 2017]. 51 See CLSS minute book 1, 1884–1889, 240, 243. 52 The letter is reproduced in LMA, CLSS minute book 2, 1889–1892, 22–23. For a detailed description of the technical aspects of the construction of the line, see Greathead, City and South London Railway. 53 CLSS minute book 2, 1889–1892, see entries of 11 March 1890, p. 29 and 6 May 1890, p. 44, respectively. 54 The frequency and days of service were discussed on 29 July and 9 December 1890; see CLSS minute book 2, 1889–1892, 68, 103. 55 The name changes in the minutes of the board meeting of 29 July 1890 to City and South London Railway Company (compare headings in pp. 62 and 66). On the opening see Lascelles, City & South London Railway; also Barker and Robbins, A History of London Transport vol. 1, 310. 56 Simmons, Victorian Railway, 94. 57 Barker and Robbins, A History of London Transport vol. 1, 312–313. 58 Greathead, City and South London Railway, 17–18. 59 Greathead, City and South London Railway, 6. 60 Barker and Robbins, A History of London Transport vol. 1, 314. 61 For a brief discussion of the design and operation of lifts and their later replacement (in the 1910s) by escalators see A. Jackson, From Street to Train, Journal of the Railway & Canal Historical Society 34 (March 2002), 34–37. 62 The ‘maximum depth of 73 ft. below high water’ was the mark when crossing the river; see Greathead, City and South London Railway, 6. 63 A. Beavan, Tube, Train, Tram and Car or Up-to-Date locomotion (­London: Geo. Routledge & Sons, 1903), 19. 64 Beavan, Tube, Train, Tram, 20–21.

240  Steam and Light 65 See his interview in Sekon, Illustrated Interviews, 8. 66 From the Daily News, 5 November 1890; quoted in C. Wolmar, The Subterranean Railway. How the London Underground Railway Was Built and How it Changed the City Forever (London: Atlantic Books, 2004), 136. 67 Dennis, Cities in Modernity, 226–230; see also C. López Galviz, Converging Lines Dissecting Circles: Railways and the Socialist Ideal in ­London and Paris at the Turn of the Twentieth Century, in M. Davies and J. ­Galloway (eds.), London and Beyond: Essays in Honour of Derek Keene (London: Institute of Historical Research Series), 317–337. 68 Report of the Joint Select Committee on the Electric and Cable Railways (London, 1892), v. For a discussion of the report see J. Simmons, The Pattern of Tube Railways in London. A Note on the Joint Select Committee of 1892, Journal of Transport History 7, 4 (1966), 234–240. 69 See Joint Select Committee 1892, v–vi. 70 See Martha S. Vogeler, ‘Harrison, Charles (1835–1897)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [0-www.­ oxforddnb.com.catalogue.ulrls.lon.ac.uk:80/view/article/38891, accessed 23 September 2008. 71 See the memorandum submitted by Harrison, included as an appendix to the committee’s report and evidence: ‘Electric and Cable Railways (Metropolis)’, Joint Select Committee 1892, 137–139. This quote, p. 138. 72 J. Greathead, evidence of the 1892 committee; quoted in Simmons, Pattern of Tube Railways, 236. 73 As it is contained in the memorandum: ‘the public authority should be placed, as regards the streets, upon the footing of a private freeholder where no other freeholder can show title’. Joint Select Committee 1892, 138. 74 For a reproduction of the letter, see M. Robbins, Lord Kelvin on Electric Railways, Journal of Transport History 3, 4 (1958), 235–238. 75 Quoted in S. Halliday, Underground to Everywhere. London’s Underground Railway in the Life of the Capital (Sutton Publishing London’s Transport Museum, 2001), 53. 76 For a general description of the schemes before the committee see the examination of G. P. Goldney, City officer, Joint Select Committee 1892, 3. For a concise account of the formation of the Central London including details of its financial backing and construction see Barker and Robbins, A History of London Transport vol. 2, 38–47. 77 For a detailed account of the developments in electric railways and of Sprague’s work in particular see M. Duffy, Electric Railways 1880–1990 (London: Institution of Electrical Engineers, 2003), 23–33. 78 Duffy, Electric Railways, 31. 79 Barker and Robbins, A History of London Transport vol. 2, 46–47; for the list of shareholders see ibid., 42. 80 See ‘Proposed New London Railways’, The Times, 26 December 1896, 9. For a brief account of the Whitechapel and Bow railway, opened on June 1902, see Barker and Robbins, A History of London Transport vol. 2, 76–77. 81 For brief accounts of the Waterloo and City and Great Northern and City see Barker and Robbins, A History of London Transport vol. 2, 50–51; and 47–50, respectively; contrast with M. Duffy, Electric Railways, 32. 82 Bond Street opened in September the same year, while British Museum closed in September 1933, a day before Holborn opened. See D. Rose The London Underground. A Diagrammatic History, 7th edition (Middlesex: Douglas Rose, 1999); see also Barker and Robbins, A History of London Transport vol. 2, 44–45.

Steam and Light  241 83 See the brief account prior to the opening, ‘The Central London Railway’, The Builder, 30 June 1900, 634–635. 84 See P. Holman, The Amazing Electric Tube. A History of the City and South London Railway (London: London Transport Museum, 1990), 51, 54. 85 For the list and comments on each scheme see Report from the Joint Select Committee on London Underground Railways (London, 1901), vii–ix. 86 JSC on London Underground Railways 1901, v. 87 All the points are in JSC on London Underground Railways 1901, vi. 88 See The Times, 23 November 1899, 12; also a brief notice after the opening to the public of five out of seven staircases on 8 January 1900. The Times, 9 January 1900, 7; also The Builder, 30 June 1900, 635. See also Greathead’s remark about the underground connection during the examination of the Joint Select Committee 1892, 17, 24. 89 López Galviz, Mobilities at a Standstill. 90 The committee was chaired by Lord Rayleigh. JSC on London Underground Railways 1901, vii. 91 JSC on London Underground Railways 1901, viii–ix. 92 JSC on London Underground Railways 1901, vii. 93 JSC on London Underground Railways 1901, ix. 94 JSC on London Underground Railways 1901, ix. For a different discussion of the report see Barker and Robbins, A History of London Transport vol. 2, 65–67. 95 J. Simmons, The Railway in England and Wales 1830–1914, vol. 1 The System and its Working (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1978), 102. 96 Joint Report by the Tramways Manager and Electrical Engineer […] ­London, 20 October 1901; quoted in Barker and Robbins, A History of London Transport vol. 2, 90. 97 See discussion of J. C. Robinson’s paper before the Society, Journal of the Society of Arts L (21 March 1902), 424. 98 See J. C. Robinson, Electric Traction: London’s Tubes, Trams, and Trains, 1902, Journal of the Society of Arts, L (21 March 1902), 419. 99 See Theo Barker, ‘Yerkes, Charles Tyson (1837–1905)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [0-www.­oxforddnb. com.catalogue.ulrls.lon.ac.uk:80/view/article/49515, accessed 18 March 2009]. See also J. Franch, Robber Baron. The Life of Charles Tyson Yerkes (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2006). 100 See the evidence of the Charing Cross, Euston, and Hampstead Railway, JSC on London Underground Railways 1901, 79. 101 See, for example, R. Porter, London A Social History (London: Penguin Books, 2000), 355–356; J. White, London in the Nineteenth Century: A Human Awful Wonder of God (London: Jonathan Cape, 2007). 102 For a description of the various stages of Yerkes’ involvement and his financial interests see Chapter 4 of Barker and Robbins, A History of ­L ondon Transport vol. 2, 61–84. For a concise description of the works of the Bakerloo from the beginning in 1898 until the taking over by Yerkes’s consortium see C. Lee, The Bakerloo Line. A Brief History (London: London Transport, 1973), 7–9; see also 12–13. 103 See ‘Electric Traction on the Underground’, The Builder 2 June 1900, 535. 104 LMA, The Metropolitan District Electric Traction Company Limited. Directors Minute Book, 1901–02. See clause 1 of the agreement between the District and the MDET, dated 18 July 1901; affixed to p. 14 of the minute book. 105 See Clause 2 of the agreement, MDET Directors Minute Book, p. 1; for details of the financial, technical and legal aspects of the agreement between

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123 124 125

126

the two companies see Clauses 3–15, pp. 1–5. For the different sections see Clause 16, p. 5. See the letter affixed, MDET Directors Minute Book, pp. 56–57. A notice calling for an extraordinary meeting on 8 August 1902 was to give the details of the liquidation of the MDET; see minute book, p. 75. Quoted in Wolmar, Subterranean Railway, 176. Yerkes quoted in Wolmar, Subterranean Railway, 177. Metropolitan trains running the inner circle were operated by electric traction before the District’s, see Barker and Robbins, A History of London Transport vol. 2, 106–109. ‘Baker Street and Waterloo Railway’, reprinted from The Tramway and Railway World, 8 March 1906, 25. Baker Street and Waterloo Railway, 16. Lloyd George’s remark was a letter read in his absence; both remarks quoted in Lee, Bakerloo Line, 10. J. White, London in the Twentieth Century: A City and Its People (­London: Penguin Books, 2002); see also Porter, London, 327, 374–378. See, for example, Dennis, Cities in Modernity, 201. Quoted in Wolmar, Subterranean Railway, 186. W. Scott Tebb, The Chemical & Bacteriological Condition of the Air on the City & South London Railway (London, 1905). On the Hampstead Suburb see, for example, D. Hardy, Utopian Ideas and the Planning of London, Planning Perspectives 20 (2005), 35–49. C. Jones, Paris: Biography of a City (New York: Penguin Books, 2006), 334. A. M. Yates, Selling Paris Property and Commercial Culture in the Fin-deSiècle Capital (Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 2015), 6. Bastié, La Croissance, 15–16, 197. M. André, Note sur les Variations de la Circulation dans les Rues de Paris de 1872 à 1887 (Paris: Imprimerie Nouvelle, 1888), 8. The reference to the Parisian ‘furnace’ is from Van Gogh’s Letter to his brother Theo, c.29 September 1888. See the Van Gogh Letters Project by the Van Gogh Museum, English translation available at: www.­vangoghletters. org/vg/letters/let691/letter.html#translation, accessed 19 March 2018. See Mitchell, Le Métro, 128–129. Mitchell, Le Métro, 138, 142. The sections were, in order: (1) An external line penetrating Paris; (2) an internal line; (3) the line of Bois de Boulogne; (4) three funiculars: Gare de l’Est to Châtelet, Gare St Lazare to College Chaptal and Gare Montparnasse to Rue du Louvre; (5) a central station, next to the Hôtel de Ville, between the Rue de Rivoli and the river embankments, dedicated to post services and passengers only; (6) a line linking the central station, the Halles and the Hôtel des Postes, for goods traffic only and entirely underground (an additional goods terminal was proposed at the Canal St. Martin between the Rue de Faubourg du Temple and the Avenue de la République); and (7) junctions with main-line railways. For a description of each element see P. Villain, Le 107e Projet de Chemin de Fer Métropolitain (Paris, 1887), 8–13; the design of the central station was based on the model of the new terminal for postal services (gare aux messageries) of the Compagnie de l’Ouest, see ibid., 17–18. Chrétien, Chemin de Fer Électrique, 22; for a general introduction see ‘Exposé du projet’, 15–18.

Steam and Light  243 27 1 128 129 130 131 132 133

34 1 135

136 37 1 138

39 1 140

141 142

143 44 1 145 146

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Chrétien, Chemin de Fer Électrique, 31. Chrétien, Chemin de Fer Électrique, 32–33; see also plate opposite p. 59. Chrétien, Chemin de Fer Électrique, 44, 48. See, for example, the account by the Opera’s archivist Ch. Nuitter, Le Nouvel Opéra (Paris: Librairie Hachette, 1878); the full list of painters and sculptors employed in the building is on pp. 239–240. See, for example, C. Schorske, Fin-de-Siècle Vienna Politics and Culture (New York: Vintage Books, 1981), 338–339. For a description of the possibilities the viaduct had in the Place de l’Opéra, see Chrétien, Chemin de Fer Électrique, 53–57. See ‘La Gare de l’Opéra’, La Construction Moderne, 8 October 1904, 21. The tone of the note is generally ironic and supportive of Guimard, ridiculing the reactions expressed in Le Matin and La Presse. For Guimard’s édicules see F. Descouturelles, A. Mignard, and M. Rodriguez, Le Métropolitain d’Hector Guimard (Paris: Somogy et al., 2003). Chrétien, Chemin de Fer Électrique, 47. B. Schmucki, The Machine in the City: Public Appropriation of the Tramway in Britain and Germany, 1870–1915, Journal of Urban History 38, 6 (2012), 1060–1093; and A. Passalacqua, Reluctant Capitals: Transport Mobility and Tramways in London and Paris 1830–1950, Town Planning Review 85, 2 (2014), 203–216. See T. de Beauregard, Chemin de Fer Métropolitain Parisien. Comparaison des Deux Principaux Projets (Paris, 1883), 17–18. Chrétien, Chemin de Fer Électrique, 49. Quoted in D. Larroque, Le Métropolitain: Histoire d’un Projet, in D.  ­Larroque, M. Margairaz, P. Zembri, Paris et ses Transports XIXe– XXe siècles. Deux Siècles de Décisions pour la Ville et sa Région (Paris: Éditions Recherches, 2002), 71. See Mitchell, Le Métro, 136–138. Evenson affirms that Berlier received a concession in 1892; N. Evenson, Paris: A Century of Change, 1878–1978 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1979), 105. Larroque, in turn, notes that Berlier’s project only reached Parliament in March 1893 and was never considered by ‘the vote of the national representation’. Larroque, Le Métropolitain, 71. Evenson, Paris, 109. See L. Le Chatelier, La Question du Métropolitain (Paris: Libraire Polytechnique, Baudry et Cie Éditeurs 1888), 14–15; and ‘Transports en Commun. Itinéraires dans Paris en 1889’, map no. 15 of Les Travaux de Paris. 1789–1889. Atlas. Sous la direction de M. A. Alphand (Paris, 1889). Conseil Municipal de Paris Procès-Verbal, 5 July 1889; also quoted in Mitchell, Le Métro, 133; and Larroque, Le Métropolitain, 70. Larroque, Le Métropolitain, 69. For a discussion of the debates relative to the Eiffel-Nord project see ­Larroque, Le Métropolitain, 71–76. For a summary of projects produced under the ‘private initiative’ see Reverard, Des Conditions, 72–78. The quote is from Le Chatelier, who proposed to combine a central station for express trains (gare d’octroi) and personnel checking the trains of other services. Le Chatelier, La Question du Métropolitain, 25–26. For the octroi reform, see, for example, the ‘Proposition’ by P. Baudin (10 January 1898) relative to the replacement of the octroi, Conseil Municipal de Paris Rapports et Documents Année 1898 (report no. 2). Archives Nationales (hereafter AN), G. Pereire, Les Transports dans Paris (Paris, 1895), 4.

244  Steam and Light 48 1 149 150 151 152 53 1 154 155 156 157

158 159 160 161 162 163 164

165 166 167 168

Pereire, Les Transports, 7. Pereire, Les Transports, 4–5. Pereire, Les Transports, 7. For the description of the sections and their modes of traction see Pereire, Les Transports, 8–9. Pereire, Les Transports, 13–14. On the housing crisis of the 1880s see, for example, Ann-Louise Shapiro, Housing the Poor of Paris, 1850–1902 (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1985). See Pereire, Les Transports, 11–12. AN F14 9181.The following account is based on this correspondence which covers the period from January to June 1896. AN F14 9181. Term used in the letter to the president of the railway commission, dated 28 January 1896. See Le Chatelier, La Question du Métropolitain; see, particularly, the tableau synoptique on p. 10. Le Chatelier, La Question du Métropolitain, 21. Le Chatelier’s analysis provides a good contrast of the two projects examining their benefits and disadvantages in relation to the service they were to provide, the expenses involved in expropriation, the constructive model and its impact on existing streets and the sewers. He concluded that ‘the establishment of [either] Métropolitain could be perfectly considered as a viable operation’. Ibid., 15. AN F14 9181, as Vauthier and Deligny affirmed this process was recorded in two telegrams (dépêches) of the ministry of Travaux Publics, dated 11 October 1894 and 30 March 1895. See their letter from January 1896. AN F14 9181, see the letter of 28 January 1896 and the plan submitted with another letter of 22 January 1896. AN F14 9181, see the letter to the president of the municipal commission of the Métropolitain, 23 March 1896. One example was Ch. Bourdon et L. Chapron, Chemin de Fer Transversal de Pénétration et de Jonction des Lignes d’Orléans, de Lyon, de Vincennes, de l’Est et du Nord, avec Gare Centrale (Paris, 1891). ‘Est-ce donc un joujou qu’on va créer pour l’amusement des badauds?’ For the characterisation of these views see AN F14 9181, letter of 23 March 1896, attached to the letters of 16 May and June. See British Library, Guide Illustré de l’Exposition Universelle de 1889 Comprenant 50 Gravures & 20 Plans (Paris: 1889), 41; 211–12. See, for example, A. Sartiaux and Banderali, Des dispositions de voies, de gares, de bâtiments, de signaux, de matériel roulant des chemins de fer à voie de 1 mètre, Revue Générale des Chemins de Fer (September 1884), 123 – 130. There is a reaction by Louis Rey in the issues of ­January and March 1887, and others in April, July, September 1888 and January 1904. AN F14 9181, see Vauthier and Deligny’s letter of 23 March 1896; also quoted in the letter of 13 June 1896. See, for example, AN F14 9183 ‘Proposition de Resolution’ presented by M. Delattre before the Chambre des Députés (attached to the procès-verbal of 11 April 1889). Also AN F14 9181, letter of 13 June 1896. See, for example, AN F14 9183, ‘Note sur les questions relatives aux chemins de fer dans Paris’, 26 February 1894. G. Mercier, La Ligne de la Rive Gauche, La Revue Technique Annales des Travaux Publics et des Chemins de Fer et Annales Industrielles, XVIII, 22 (November 1897), 518–519. See also A. Martin, Étude Historique et Statistique sur les Moyens de Transport dans Paris avec Plans, Diagrammes et

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169 170 171 172

73 1 174 175

176 177 178 179 180 181

182

83 1 184 185 186

Cartogrammes (Paris: Ministère de l’Instruction Publique et des BeauxArts, 1894), 439. Martin, Étude Historique, 440. He uses the term ‘system’ in connection with both main-line and local traffic; see Reverard, Des Conditions, 86. Régie Autonome des Transports Parisiens (hereafter RATP), F. Bienvenüe, ‘Chemins de Fer Urbains à Traction Électrique. Devis Descriptif et Estimatif’ (Paris, 20 February 1896), 2, 6. The circuit ouest supplied the junction at Rue du Dunkerque and sections of the circular and north-south lines; the circuit est supplied the junction at Rue Turbigo and sections of all three lines; the circuit nord supplied the junctions at Rue Spinoza and Rue de Rome and sections of the circular and west-east lines; the Porte Maillot (circulaire Nord) supplied the junction at Rue Spinoza and sections of the circular and east-west lines; the Porte Maillot (circulaire Sud) supplied the junction at Avenue Kleber and sections of the circular and east-west lines; and the Diametre Nord-Sud supplied the north-south, including the sections shared with the circular. Bienvenüe, Chemins de Fer Urbains, 7. Bienvenüe, Chemins de Fer Urbains, 8. Bienvenüe, Chemins de Fer Urbains, 9–10. RATP, E. Huet, ‘Métropolitain urbain à traction électrique: Rapport du Directeur Administratif des Travaux. Paris, 2 March 1896’, plus ‘Annexe au rapport’, Paris, 23 March 1896; this quote is from the appendix to report (23 March), 2. Huet, Métropolitain urbain, appendix to report (23 March), 2–4. Huet, Métropolitain urbain, 1–2. Huet, Métropolitain urbain, 2–3. For a detailed account of the process prior to the decision see Larroque, Le Métropolitain, 80–87. See CMP Rapports et Documents 1898 (no. 24); see also J. Robert, Notre Métro (Neuilly sur Seine, 1967), 25; S. Hallsted-Baumert, The Métropolitain; Larroque, Le Métropolitain, 87–88. For the prefect’s statement see CMP Procès verbal, 30 March 1898, 357; for Berthelot’s report and the reaction of the councilors see ibid., 347–362. For further illustration of the conflicting process, even after decisions had been taken, see, for example, another report by Berthelot concerning the financing of one of the additional lines, ‘Etablissement d’une ligne métropolitain complémentaire […]’, CMP Procès verbal, 1 July 1898, 54–57. This is the first article of the Act or ‘Projet de loi adopté par la Chambre des Députés ayant pour objet la déclaration d’utilité publique du chemin de fer métropolitain’; see CMP Procès verbal, 30 March 1898; see also E. Hubault, Omnibus, Tramways, Métropolitain, Nord-Sud: Supplément au Recueil Annoté de Lois, Décrets, Ordonnances, Arrêtés, Décisions Concernant les Transports en Commun, etc (Paris: Imprimerie Municipale, 1910); also quoted in Robert, Notre Métro, 25–26; and Mitchell, Le Métro, 142. Robert, Notre Métro, 25. Robert, Notre Métro, 26. See A. Beltran, Une Victoire Commune. L’Alimentation en Énergie Électrique du Métropolitain (1re moitié du XXe siècle), in Métropolitain. ­L’Autre Dimension de Ville (Paris: Mairie de Paris, 1988), 118–120. Henri Schneider was among the most prominent members of the family, having been régent of the Banque de France; vice-president of the Comité

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189 90 1 191 192 193 194

95 1 196 197 98 1 199 200 201

202 203

204

des Forges; administrator of two railway companies, the Paris-Orléans and Midi; mayor of Creusot; and general councilor and deputy of Autun, ­Burgundy, eastern France. T. de la Broise and F. Torres, Schneider, Histoire en Force (Paris: Editions de Monza, 1996). Larroque, Le Métropolitain, 78. The terms of the transition between the initial concessionaire and the CFMP were considered and adopted by the city council during the session of 27 June 1898. See Berthelot’s report ‘Constitution de la Société concessionnaire du Métropolitain’, CMP Procès verbal, 27 June 1898, 835; and the subsequent deliberation during the same session, CMP Délibérations, 27 June 1898, 463–464. For a brief discussion of Empain’s role in the provision of electricity for the Métropolitain network, see Beltran, Une Victoire Commune, 115–117. Robert, Notre Métro, 27–28. Robert, Notre Métro, 28–29. Gare de Lyon was the only terminal with two platforms and four pairs of tracks as it was thought that Lines 1 and 2 would connect there. Robert, Notre Métro, 29–30. See Robert, Notre Métro, 25–26; Evenson, Paris, 105–106; Larroque, Le Métropolitain, 87–90; Mitchell, Le Métro, 143. The difference between the metropolitan network and the network of main-line companies would intensify as the twentieth century progressed and regardless of initial plans to connect them. Larroque characterises them as ‘two parallel histories’ joined only by ‘the disappearance of the railway companies from the urban scene’ and the consolidation of a regional transport service and subsequent creation of the RATP in the 1930s. Larroque, Le Métropolitain, 90–94. Robert, Notre Métro, 34. For a contemporary account prior to the opening see ‘L’ouverture du Métropolitain’, L’Illustration, 14 July 1900, 22–23; see also the brief note in The Builder, 28 July 1900, 72. See Robert, Notre Métro, 35. For changes in the name of all stations in the network see the appendix ‘Stations ayant changé de nom depuis 1900’, ibid., 302. Larroque, Le Métropolitain, 86. Robert, Notre Métro, 31. Robert, Notre Métro, 35–36, 38. P. Soppelsa, Paris’s 1900 Universal Exposition and the Politics of Urban ­Disaster, French Historical Studies 36, 2 (2013), 277, 283; see also P. Soppelsa, Finding Fragility in Paris: The Politics of Infrastructure after Haussmann, Proceedings of the Western Society for French History 37 (2009), 242. See ‘Nord-Sud et Métro’, L’Illustration, 8 October 1910, 232–233. Pernicious currents were deadly and often wasteful currents of the central conductor along the rail tracks. According to the note in L’Illustration, this was the most important station of the line, which included ‘a metallic counter (calotte sphérique) creating a rotunda thirty metres in diameter [with] wickets (guichets) distributed across the centre’. ‘Direction’ signs were introduced too aiding travellers to orient themselves when travelling along the line. See ‘Nord-Sud et Métro’, 233. ‘Nord-Sud et Métro’, 233. For a detailed discussion of another line following a north-south axis see S. Hallsted-Baumert, Une Ligne Peu Académique: La Ligne 4 et l’Institut de France, in S. Hallsted-Baumert and F. Gasnault (eds.) Métro-Cité: Le Chemin de Fer Métropolitain à la Conquête de Paris 1871–1945 (Paris: Paris Musées, 1997).

Steam and Light  247 05 A. Briggs, Victorian Cities (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968). 2 206 Barker and Robbins, A History of London vol. 2, see Chapter 5, especially pp. 96–104. 207 Jones, Paris, 357; see also Bastié, La Croissance. 208 H. J. Dyos, Victorian Suburb A Study of the Growth of Camberwell (Edinburgh: Leicester University Press, 1961), 19–20, based on T. W. Freeman, The Conurbations of Great Britain (1959); see also Porter, London, 282. 209 See D. Bocquet, Les Réseaux d’Infrastructures Urbaines au Miroir de l’Histoire: Acquis et Perspectives, Flux 65 (July–September 2006), 7. 210 Hughes, Networks of Power, 206, 227, 232, 260–261.

5 Modernities or Remembering Future Events

The nineteenth century, when it takes its place with other centuries in the chronological charts of the future, will, if it needs a symbol, almost inevitably have as that symbol a steam-engine running upon a railway. This period covers the first experiments, the first great developments, and the complete elaboration of that mode of transit, and the determination of nearly all the broad features of this century’s history may be traced directly or indirectly to that process. —H. G. Wells, Anticipations of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon Human Life and Thought (1902), 6

Wells was here entering murky waters of the kind historians face when calling upon the one invention, the one event, the one character that qualifies an era, or should the ambition afford it – as has often been the case with Paris’ historiography – a whole century. Wells had too a perceptive sense of time and of the relationship between the past and the future. Making repeated references to the historian of the future, Wells noted, especially in Anticipations, how the twentieth century would look back upon its predecessor, how the significance and illusions of a democratic age, which, incidentally, inspired no sense of safety in urban cyclists, might be assessed a century on, removed from his own view in the early 1900s. At the turn of the twentieth century, the future of locomotion was no longer steam but the motor age, with motorcars transporting heavy goods and parcels in bulk on the ‘high-roads’; omnibuses serving the suburbs with motor rather than horse-drawn vehicles; and the motorcar either for hire or owned privately, with which One will be free to dine where one chooses, hurry when one chooses, travel asleep or awake, stop and pick flowers, turn over in bed of a morning and tell the carriage to wait –unless, which is highly probable, one sleeps aboard.1 On this, as in the growing segregation of different kinds of traffic, Wells was right, save, perhaps, travelling asleep in those cases where one was the driver.

Modernities or Remembering Future Events  249 Less accurate were Wells’s predictions of how the moving pavements of the Paris Expos (in 1889 and 1900) could be made to work in the tunnels of London’s inner circle: Seven ‘moving’ platforms or conveyors in all, each running at a different speed, fixed with comfortable seats, bookstalls and more. 2 Not only was the reality of travel for Londoners very different from this techno-future – whose epitome would later be popularised in William C. Menzies’s film Things to Come (1936) – but it was also one that built upon the continuity of what the railways, both electrified and steam operated, had created for three quarters of a century. One key to Wells’s prediction is the symbol and what that symbol, the ‘steam-engine running upon a railway’, stood for; what it highlighted; and what it sidelined and ignored. Our fascination with new technologies, what some consider the ‘shock of the new’, often leaves the latter in the background, with important consequences for the kinds of past futures and of histories which we choose to remember. 3 Central to the notion of modernities developed in this book is recovering past visions of the future, including the routes not taken, so that we learn what and who exactly was sidelined, partly as a result of symbols that gathered interests around them, not least the steam-engine running upon a railway. This is a point about historiography. To be sure, we can and, perhaps, should always learn more of the minutiae of the histories of the London Underground and the Paris Métro, partly because it is our job as historians to query the archives and sources in ways that are context specific. At the same time, when we place side by side the number of persuasive visions of the future of London and Paris – those that used railways as a means of imagining their future in particular – we recognise the different ways in which urban change was understood; the alternative shape that their urban form might have taken; and the many publics who were included in a process which, by extension, excluded many others. The contrast between the two cities shows that similarities and differences were equally important. The expansive force that main-line railways encapsulated was, by and large, reproduced in the pattern of the first two metropolitan railways in London. That force was somewhat curbed, contained and kept within the city walls through Paris’ own version of its Métropolitain. One important common recognition, which became apparent in the two cities since the 1840s, was the necessity to integrate transport and housing in a manner that would benefit the working classes and the poor. Railways, of course, carried a significant amount of people, often between their home and work, but becoming an instrument in the hands of, for example, local, municipal and metropolitan authorities was riddled with difficulties related to the infringement of private interests, and the degree of regulation and control that was commensurate with the kind of change that was deemed acceptable and necessary in the two cities. Proposals were seen as too close

250  Modernities or Remembering Future Events to a monopoly or too close a reflection of socialist views, depending on which side of the Channel one stood. The promise that railways engendered in the two cities was certainly one driven by technology. However, the promise of steam and, later, of electricity, can only account for so much that was important to how the future of nineteenth-century London and Paris was envisioned. Railways proved to be one of the most transformative forces in Britain and France throughout the nineteenth century. It was in the two capitals that their force intensified and concentrated. True, there was much destruction in the creation of railway networks across the two countries, as much as there was in the building of their termini, yards, sidings, junctions and stations in and around the two capitals. But the impact that railways had upon London’s and Paris’ built and social fabric was also directed in response to metropolitan needs. The encounter between the railways and the two cities was, in this sense, one of clashes, disjunctures and complementarity transforming the space, the politics and the technology that became available to Londoners and Parisians in their everyday travel as well as in the transport of the goods they manufactured and consumed. The encounter was spatial, first and foremost, concerning the difference between the riverbanks and the effects that these had on the siting of the main-line railway termini. While the pattern surrounding the inner and central districts was similar, there were important differences in how that pattern evolved in both cities. Central to developments in Paris were the predominance of the walls and with them of the octroi, the model of centre and periphery both spatially and administratively, and the lack of connectivity between the suburbs and between the suburbs and the city centre. This continues to be relevant today. Particularly telling is how the Société du Grand Paris described a key premise of their project (in 2015), namely, ‘the region [of Île de France] should be redesigned according to a logic [that reinforces] a better balance between the territories, between the east and the west, and between Paris and the suburbs’.4 In London, the concentration of ‘metropolitan’ traffic along the inner circle was indicative of the degree to which the Metropolitan and the District were an extension of main-line services, which meant not only that traffic consisted of goods and passengers but also that it was suburban, reaching far into the outlying districts around, if not well outside, the metropolis. Space also involved the decision not to concentrate traffic in a central station, an agreement that was reached independently and for different reasons in both cities, showing an important divergence from the pattern adopted in other cities in Europe, the United States and elsewhere. Closely related to this was the creation of a metropolitan railway district in London restricting, though with limited success, the further penetration of railway lines into the centre and the City. Space also involved the tunnels, trenches and viaducts that added layers above,

Modernities or Remembering Future Events  251 beneath and across one another in the interest of accommodating the ever-growing circulation of goods and people in the two cities. The encounter was also political. One of the main questions that emerged during the hundreds of debates in the two cities since the 1830s was whether and how to join railway building to street improvements. This, of course, related to administration and governance, but more importantly, it showed the challenges of joining the interests of private companies and those of the public authorities, especially when the uneven growth of the two cities was concerned. In which direction should the metropolis grow and how best to ensure effective connectivity to existing services were questions that were reiterated time and again in the halls of Parliament and in municipal, regional and national councils. Politics and business not only intersected but also clashed. The completion of the inner circle in London brought together the City, the Metropolitan Board of Works and the Metropolitan and District companies. Laissez-faire was directed, if not by the state, by the need to cooperate and bring to fruition a plan that represented the interests of a number of publics. Laissez-faire also meant that there was concentration of metropolitan railway services north and west of the City lessening in the east and north-east, a pattern that the later tube lines somewhat reinforced. The six lines of the Paris Métro complete by 1912 covered the city from east to west and north to south, providing an affordable service within the walls. This was the realisation of what the municipal (socialist) council thought should be built, with the Compagnie du Chemin de Fer Métropolitain becoming an exemplar of conditions of employment. To a degree, the Métro served as a counterpart to the boulevard in the sense that it effected change not by the opening of vistas and the building of imperial monuments but by separating travel within the city from travel outside the walls. The national interest was kept at the barriers, at least in theory, and not for long. Technology, in turn, was to play a vital role in shaping what would become a ‘true’ metropolitan railway service, that is, a service for journeys that were lighter, speedier, flexible and more frequent. The distinction between steam and electricity was linked directly to the traffic for either goods or passengers. In London, the operation of the Metropolitan and the District amounted to no real difference from main-line services; railway companies operated their trains along the same tracks, connecting to places like Smithfield Market. Things changed significantly with the tube lines, creating as they did a system of tube, rail and carriage, powered by electricity, although using locomotives first, replacing them some 13 years later with multiple-unit cars. It was electricity, especially following the creation of the Underground Electric Railways of London (UERL), that contributed to creating a system of metropolitan railways in London, combining as it did the management and operation of different lines.

252  Modernities or Remembering Future Events The creation of the UERL was an important change in the practices behind the building of the first four lines in London, each operated by one company. This included the influence of global capital from General Electric – as was the case in the Central London – and from Charles Yerkes, the main person behind the UERL. Electricity was the Métro’s sole technology in Paris. It provided a service for passengers only; it was urban, contained within the walls; travel was through smoke-free tunnels and well-lit stations the majority of which were a few steps down from the level of streets, except for the Nord-Sud, which used the tube and deep tunnel system. In both cities, global capital shifted the influence that railways had exercised for decades in favour of the influence associated with the ‘first globalization of the world economy’. 5 Through this shift, the design and construction of a new transport network became dependent upon electric circuits powered from plants and substations that moved a specific number of cars with a specified number of passengers all within one electric system. One other dimension of the encounter between railways and London and Paris encapsulates the meaning of recovering what is only a minor part of the vast reservoir of past visions for their future and paying close attention to the contexts in which these visions emerged. This takes us back to Alice and the White Queen and can be framed in relation to the following questions: What exactly does it mean to remember future events? Where does the threshold of past, present and future leave us when thinking about London’s and Paris’ modernities? To Alice and the White Queen, remembering the future is largely an exercise of anticipating each other’s moves across the chessboard. In one way, the black and the white squares of the chessboard resemble coordinates in the manner that we think of the ‘x’ and ‘y’ axes on a table. The axes allow us to locate Alice, the White Queen and other characters, and determine the potentiality of their movements as well as the mutual constraints that their positions on the board involve. Something similar might be said of cities. And if we think of the space between the axes as showing dots, each a city, next to or distant from one another, we can tell differences and identify clusters. From more to less advanced when measured against, say, economic output and the percentage of school leavers entering university; from developed to undeveloped when we consider health infrastructure, the technologies that support it and the governance behind its operation. The corollary of such an arrangement is a hierarchy, a measure against which cities are more advanced and developed than others, more or less modern. Rather than keeping our safe distance when contemplating this hypothetical table remembering future events invites us to walk through an imaginary threshold, so that we think about urban change differently and consider the relationship of a city’s present to its past and its future at once. A brief and last contrast with how Haussmann understood urban change will help to underline

Figure 5.1   Crossrail, tunnelling machine Elizabeth breaks through into Farringdon, London, May 2015. Despite the fact that this photo was taken in the early decades of the twenty-first century, the boring machines used in the tunnelling of the new Elizabeth Line (Crossrail) resemble remarkably closely the ‘shield’ system perfected over 120 years ago by James Greathead. The tunnelling ‘marathon’ ended in May 2015, once Victoria and Elizabeth reached, fittingly, Farringdon, the original terminus of the first section of the Metropolitan Railway, having started their journey at the Limmo Peninsula and driven westwards through Canary Wharf and Whitechapel. It was here, in Farringdon, where Ada and Phyllis finished their journey too from the Royal Oak Portal, via Paddington and Tottenham Court Road. Source: © Crossrail.

Figure 5.2  Clichy-Batignolles, Martin Luther King Park, Paris. Note the contrast between new and old, not least the density. The building in the foreground housed a foundry situated near the Thiers fortifications now the Périphérique (to the left, outside the frame of the picture), an equally dividing wall. Clichy-Batignolles is the site of a large intervention, in the making since 2001, with a programme including 3,400 new homes, 140,000 m 2 of office space and the future Palais de Justice. Line 14 of the Métro, the north-south axis of the Grand Paris Express, will have two new stations here, Pont Cardinet and Porte de Clichy, due to open in mid-2019. Line 14 will connect St. Denis Pleyel with the Orly airport. © Photo by the author.

254  Modernities or Remembering Future Events the significance of a shift in approach, leaving the boulevard aside, if you like, and concentrating on the new ideas that railways engendered. ‘Our century, and this will be one of its glories, has given a remarkable impetus to historical studies’. This was the opening sentence that Haussmann chose to address Napoléon III in the introductory volume that outlined the overall plan for and discussed the key precedents of the Histoire Générale de Paris. The volume, published in 1866, was the work of the Commission Municipale des Travaux Historiques, a body set up a year before by Haussmann himself, and which he presided over with the approval and support of the emperor. The commission, consisting of municipal councillors, academics and archivists, had been at work for several years, expanding and building upon the work of earlier commissions, such as that on Historic Monuments, set up in 1837.6 The monumental ambition of the Histoire was a fitting match for the scale of the transformation that Paris experienced at the time, aligning the existing knowledge of the city’s history with newer standards of historical research, deploying the learning from the emerging fields of ethnology, linguistics and archaeology. The Introduction, prepared by the Secretary of the Commission, Lazare-Maurice Tisserand, was soon followed by two volumes of Topographies (1866 and 1868), in turn, succeeded by dozens of volumes in the subsequent years and decades, including reproductions of ancient records; royal correspondence; inventories of libraries, schools, hospitals and ecclesiastical buildings; a gazetteer of epitaphs (twelve volumes); and a registry of deliberations by the city authorities since the late fifteenth century (twenty volumes). The extent of the enterprise was part atonement (for the wholesale creative destruction that the Second Empire works involved) and part genuine concern to preserve which was also a response to the significant outrage and opposition that demolitions generated, especially those in areas such as La Cité. The Histoire, and the work of the Commission at large, which would also concern the founding of the city museum and library (today’s Musée Carnavalet and the Bibliothèque Historique de la Ville de Paris), stood for what Haussmann considered to be the ‘highest expression and the brightest manifestation of modern tendencies’, namely, ‘to seek in the past for the explanation of the present and the preparation for the future’. This was a tendency that the Prefect also recognised in the Emperor, who, in turn, replied by praising his effort and that of the municipal council in making of Paris ‘the most splendid and the most salubrious of Europe’s capitals’.7 Theirs was a modernity of hyperbole and platitudes, taking us back to where we started in this book, with Voltaire’s own version of the same statement. And, perhaps, the Histoire had to be dressed in splendour, given the nature of the publication and the uneasy relationship of emperor, prefect and municipal council. If we were to place Haussmann and Napoléon III in the imaginary threshold that joins the past, the present and the future of Paris, we

Modernities or Remembering Future Events  255 could see what shape the past took before them as much through the work of the Commission des Travaux Historiques as it did through the extensive destruction inflicted by the line of the boulevard. This is a past that helps to explain the present, if not justify the insertion of the new as a betterment of the old. Supplementing the myth of a radical rupture with the past was, therefore, an understanding of the city’s history predicated on the need to prepare for the future. One of the clearest illustrations of this is the photographs by Charles Marville, himself engaged in the work of the Commission. ‘When photographing streets with curved or irregular paths’, Maria Morris Hambourg has reminded us, Marville ‘did not select a high vantage [point] to achieve the longest or most inclusive view, he chose the angle that would most emphasize the obstacles and irregularities’. Leaving behind a body of work that recorded the before, during and after of the modern boulevard, Marville preserved for us something like a semblance of Vieux Paris now long gone: As a group, the pictures of Old Paris record the insalubrious, dank, darkness which would be opened to light and air; the accidents which would be corrected by plan; the picturesque heterogeneity which would disappear beneath crisp-edged homogeneity; the historic heritage which would exist in the future only as archival documents.8 We know what the monetary cost was: 2.5 billion francs by 1870. But it was also a cost for the future that the Parisians of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries experienced as their present: A city in debt, with over 35 per cent of the city’s budget going to loan charges in 1893 alone, a lower sum, nonetheless, than the 40 per cent and above of the 1860s and 1870s. The debt that Haussmann’s ‘creative accounting’ or his comptes fantastiques, as his critics, Jules Ferry chief among them, put it, was paid at last only in 1929.9 More prominent and, to many, positive is the aesthetic legacy that the Paris boulevard stands for, adopted widely in cities across the world ever since. When we look at the dozens if not hundreds of plans put forward in the interest of transforming Paris using railways rather than boulevards, we see a future that is different. Someone like de Kérizouet, for example, recognised that one important consequence of the way in which railways had been built was the transport costs in basics such as fuel and food. Not only would a more orchestrated development combining railway termini and tax-collection points have been more efficient, but it would also have helped to reduce the price that Parisians paid for coal, wine and other essentials. Yet such reorganisation never happened. The reasons are many, not least the perception of railway companies as foreign, the bearers of the national rather than municipal interest, something that became central to how the Métropolitain materialised in the end.

256  Modernities or Remembering Future Events And so, at one level, the lesson is relatively straightforward: There was nothing inevitable or natural about how Paris and London changed. While this probably sounds trivial to historians, it isn’t to those who search in the past for lessons that allow them to inform decisions in the present, much in the same vein as Haussmann himself did. The key claim here is that central to remembering past futures are the routes not taken and what they tell us about urban change. One salient example is the integration between transport and housing, of continued relevance to this day, in London and Paris, and in cities everywhere else. Remembering future events is also a way of qualifying the relationship of past, present and future in a way that counters ideas about a radical break with the past, the pervasiveness and limitations of which we know well not least through Haussmann. It is also a way of qualifying the threshold that we might consider modernities to be by reference to a relationship that is less radical and more sustaining. At a second level, the lesson concerns the very practice of urban history and how we might relate it to futures that are seen as increasingly urban. Over 35 years ago, Theodore Hershberg captured some of the key elements of what it means for urban historians to study the relationship between the past and the future. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Hershberg wrote, observers of urban prospects were virtually unanimous in predicting that the great industrial cities of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries had outlived their usefulness. The urban future was to be one of dispersion, low density and scattered-site housing and activities. Now, amidst the energy crisis, the efficiencies of these older cities, with their systems of mass transit and their concentrated jobs, housing and amenities, make them valuable entities to emulate and preserve. If the urban future assumes the characteristics of the urban past, then the lessons we learn from urban history about how the city’s fundamental building blocks –work, residence and ­transportation – were systematically interrelated will be more than historical niceties. The lessons learned will help us not only to understand the operation of basic urban processes, but also to choose more adeptly among the policy alternatives that will affect the fate of cities and their people in the years ahead.10 There are many building blocks we could add to the city’s fundaments – leisure, open spaces and natural features, notably rivers, governance and administration – but Hershberg’s key message is clear. The study of the urban past places us in the unique position of providing the service of what might be called navigation, namely, the way in which we navigate the past and the understanding that comes from it can both be put to the service of navigating the future. Navigating urban futures, rather than

Modernities or Remembering Future Events  257 predicting them, is very important, especially at a time when the future is seen as one of disruption, apocalypse, catastrophe and crisis. Also in the mid-1980s, Eric Hobsbawm warned historians about the risk, disappointment and necessity of looking into the future. Trying to access the future involves recognising the relationship between the future and the past as one that restricts what is possible, shapes likely outcomes and informs the kinds of predictions that can be made in the present: The structures of human societies, their processes and mechanisms of reproduction, change and transformation are such as to restrict the number of things that can happen, determine some of the things that will happen, and make it possible to assign  greater or lesser probabilities to much of the rest.11 In 2017, the Société du Grand Paris described the future of the city as one that combines sustainability, inventiveness and solidarity (durable, inventive et solidaire). The Nouveau Grand Paris involves upgrading the existing transport infrastructure, the building of circa 70,000 new homes and the extension and construction of 200 km of railway lines, creating a regional metro or Grand Paris Express. The vision is not only for Parisians but for the region and its Franciliens. Who exactly are these Franciliens is unclear, not least because of important challenges around the governance required at all levels, from the local to the national and the global. In the view of former president Nicolas Sarkozy, it is the firstclass citizen of a global competitive city who is at the centre of which directions the future of Paris should take: In order to remain first-class, city dwellers needed to think a long way ahead, and to think big. Thus the Greater Paris project meant more than merely expanding beyond the boundaries of Paris -Greater Paris meant a willingness to envisage the Paris of the future in a much wider perspective than the constraints of the périphérique, much wider than the Petite Couronne ring of suburbs, and much wider even than the Île de France.12 In London, Phylis and Ada, two of the eight tunnel-boring machines used in the building of Crossrail, finished their journey in May 2015, three years after their ‘tunnelling marathon’ began. With a full through service due to open in December 2019, the line will run from Reading and Heathrow in the west to Shenfield and Abbey Wood in the east, covering a distance of over 60 miles (96 km), 26 of which (42 km) will be through new tunnels under London. Travel times will be reduced significantly as will be overcrowding, with a 10 per cent increase of rail capacity in Central London. Crossrail, ‘the 15-billion-pound railway’

258  Modernities or Remembering Future Events as called by the BBC series of the same name, is central to the future of London, especially to the city’s infrastructure plan 2050, which covers housing (49,000 new homes per year); transport; energy; green infrastructure; water supply; and waste disposal, reuse and recycling.13 The contrast between the two visions by the end of the second decade of the twenty-first century is both revealing and surprising. No doubt, there are continuities and important differences when we look at who is involved in thinking about the future of the two cities today and contrast that with the period covered here in this book.14 There are also extraordinary surprises which are, nevertheless, not entirely unexpected. The building of Crossrail has allowed archaeologists to uncover the remains of the Bedlam burial ground, beneath what will be Crossrail’s Liverpool Street Station. The findings shed a new light on key events in London’s history such as the Great Plague of 1665.15 The publics that the public benefit which Crossrail and the Grand Paris Express represent may have changed. Arguably, we are witnesses to a new modernity taking place before us. Visions of the future are, once again, a mirror which reminds us of past plans and, at the same time, mobilises change in directions the consequences of which future generations will be able to experience, realise and assess.

Notes 1 H. G. Wells, Anticipations of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon Human Life and Thought (New York and London: Harper & Brothers, 1902), 16–18; reference to the dangers of urban cycling is on pp. 27–28. 2 Wells, Anticipations, 31–34. 3 An insightful critique of this (male) fascination with new technologies is D. Edgerton, The Shock of the Old. Technology and Global History Since 1900 (London: Profile Books, 2008). 4 The brief description of the project says, ‘Il faut redessiner la région dans la logique d’un meilleur équilibre entre les territoires, entre l’est et l’ouest, entre Paris et la banlieue’. www.societedugrandparis.fr/projet/le-grand-paris/ ville-durable-inventive, accessed 15 December 2015. 5 W. Hausman, P. Hertner and M. Wilkins, Global Electrification: Multinational Enterprise and International Finance in the History of Light and Power, 1878–2007 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008). 6 For the composition and decrees to set up the Commission see L.-M.  ­Tisserand, Histoire Générale de Paris Collection de Documents Fondée avec l’Approbation de l’Empereur par M. Le Baron Haussmann, Sénateur Préfet de la Seine et Publiée sous les Auspices du Conseil Municipal. Introduction (Paris: Imprimerie Impériale, 1866), 211–213. On questions relative to heritage (patrimoine), including the work of the Commission, see P. Pinon, Atlas du Paris Haussmannien. La Ville en Heritage du Second Empire à Nos Jours (Paris: Parigramme, 2016), 176–179; and A. Sutcliffe, The Autumn of Central Paris: The Defeat of Town Planning, 1850–1970 (London: Edward Arnold, 1970), 179–212; for the founding of the 1837 Commission see p. 199.

Modernities or Remembering Future Events  259 7 G.-E. Haussmann, Rapport à l’Empereur, Tisserand, Histoire Générale de Paris, 8–9; for Napoléon III’s response see ibid., 13. 8 M. Morris Hambourg’s Introductory text ‘Charles Marville’s Old Paris’ to the catalogue of the 1981 exhibition Charles Marville Photographs of Paris 1852–1878. Catalogue edited by J. Chambord (New York: French Institute, 1981), 10; also quoted in D. Harvey, Paris, Capital of Modernity (London and New York: Routledge, 2003), 10. 9 Sutcliffe, Autumn of Central Paris, 76; see also 55–59. In 1870, the city’s debt charges made up 44 per cent of its budget, Harvey, Paris, 139–140. 10 Th. Hershberg, The Future of Urban History, in D. Fraser and A. Sutcliffe (eds.), The Pursuit of Urban History (London: Edward Arnold, 1983), 446–447. 11 E. Hobsbawm, Looking Forward: History and the Future, 1st David Glass lecture at the London School of Economics reproduced in New Left Review, January–February 1981, 4. 12 Speech at the Cité, reproduced in Le Monde, 30 November 2010; quoted in J.-P. Garnier, ‘Greater Paris’: Urbanization but No Urbanity – How Lefebvre Predicted Our Metropolitan Future, in L. Stanek, Ch. Schmid and À. Moravánszky (eds.), Urban Revolution Now Henri Lefebvre in Social Research and Architecture (Farnham and Burlington: Ashgate, 2014), 142. 13 On Crossrail see www.crossrail.co.uk/news/crossrail-in-numbers, accessed 10 April 2018. For an overview of the London Infrastructural Plan see the presentation by the Mayor of London, London 2050 Bigger and Better (London: Mayor of London Office, 2016). 14 A special issue of the Town Planning Review (2014) provides a very good contrast of recent developments, in light of a longer history of transport in the two cities; see, for example, M. Hebbert, Crossrail: The Slow Route to London’s Regional Express Railway, Town Planning Review 85, 2 (2014), 171–190; and A. Passalacqua, Reluctant Capitals: Transport Mobility and Tramways in London and Paris 1830–1950, Town Planning Review 85, 2 (2014), 203–216. 15 See www.crossrail.co.uk/sustainability/archaeology/liverpool-street/, accessed 15 December 2015. See also P. Dobraszczyk, C. López Galviz and B. L. Garrett, Digging Up and Digging Down: Urban Undergrounds, Journal of Contemporary Archaeology (online supplement) 2, 2 (2015), S26–S30.

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Archives Nationales (AN, séries F14 9181 and F14 9183) Archives de Paris (AP, séries V2 O8 7, V2 O8 8, and V3 O8 4) Bibliothèque Historique de la Ville de Paris (BHVP) Bibliothèque Nationale de France (BnF) British Library (BL) Guildhall Library, City of London (GL) Institute of Civil Engineers, London (ICE) London Metropolitan Archives (LMA) London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) London Transport Museum (LTM) Régie Autonome des Transports Parisiens (RATP) Senate House Library, University of London (SHL) UK Parliamentary Papers (also available online) (UKPP) Contemporary journals and newspapers consulted include: Annales des Ponts et Chaussées The Builder La Construction Moderne Contemporary Review Le Génie Civil The Graphic Illustrated London News L’Illustration Journal des Economistes Journal of the Society of Arts Journal of Royal Statistical Society La Nature Le Petit Journal Railway Gazette Revue Générale de l’Architecture et des Travaux Publics Revue Générale des Chemins de Fer La Revue Technique Annales des Travaux Publics et des Chemins de Fer et Annales Industrielles The Times The Tramway and Railway World

262 Bibliography Useful guides to historical sources and indexes are: Bancroft, Peter. London Transport Records at the Public Record Office ­(Alton: Nebulous Books, 1996). Cockton, Peter. Subject Catalogue of the House of Commons Parliamentary Papers 1801–1900. Vol. I–IV (Cambridge: Chadwyck-Healey, 1988). Corvol, Andrée. (sous la direction de) Les sources de l’histoire de l’environnement. Le XIXe siècle (Paris and Montréal: L’Harmattan, 1999). Jenn, Jean-Marie. (sous la direction de) Paris XIXe – XXe siècles. ­Urbanisme, Architecture, Espaces Verts (Paris: Archives de Paris, 1995). Ottley, George. A Bibliography of British Railway History (London: H.M.S.O., 1983). Zuber, Henri. (sous la direction de) Guides des Sources de l’Histoire des Transports Publics Urbains à Paris et en Ile-De-France XIXe–XXe Siècles (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1998). 1 Primary Sources References to archives and libraries are provided for unique works only (see initials in front of the titles below, for both English and French titles). 1.1 Maps, Including Modern Reproductions and Travel Guides (in chronological order) Laurie’s New Plan of London and its Environs, comprising the new buildings and recent improvements. Being an original survey by John Outhett (London, 1831). First edition by Richard Holmes Laurie, chart-seller to the Admiralty (1 Jan 1827). BL. Pigot’s New Plan of London (London, 1836). Davies B. R., A Street Map of London 1843, 3 ¼ inches to a mile. Reprinted and published by Old House Books, Devon, UK (1992). Plan à l’Appui d’un Projet de Chemin de Fer Destiné à Relier les Halles ­C entrales de Paris avec le Chemin de Fer de Ceinture (Paris, 1854). BnF Richelieu. H. Parizot and A.-V. Boileau, Guide-Album Historique et Descriptif du Bois de Vincennes et du Chemin de Fer de Paris à Vincennes et à La Varenne-SaintMaur (Paris, 1860). BnF. Itinéraire Officiel du Voyageur en Omnibus. Publié par la Cie. Gle, d ­ ’Affi­chage (Paris, 1862). BnF. Macaulay’s Metropolitan Railway Map (London, editions from 1859 to 1875). BL. Stanford’s A New Map of Metropolitan Railways, Tramways & ­Miscellaneous Improvements (London, editions from 1863 to 1914). BL. The “District” Map of London by Edward Stanford (London, 1874). Atlas Cantonal de Poche. Département de la Seine, avec index géogra­phique. By Lassailly Frères (Paris, 1876). BL. Environs de Paris. Dresses d’après les chasses d.coutans, et ses propres levés par Alexis Donnet, Géographe Ingénieur du Cadastre. Nouvelle Édition (Paris, 1878). BL.

Bibliography  263 Chromo Guide à l’Exposition Universelle 1878 (Paris, 1878). BL. Guide Illustré de l’Exposition Universelle de 1889 Comprenant 50 ­Gravures & 20 Plans (Paris, 1889). BL. Vingt Jours à Paris pendant l’Exposition Universelle 1889. Guide-Album du Touriste par Constant de Tours (Paris, 1889). BL. The District Railway Guide to the Royal Naval Exhibition (London, 1891). LTM. London Railways. First published in The Royal Atlas of England and Wales 1897. Reprinted by Old House Books, Devon, UK (c.2007). Exposition Universelle 1900. Colonies et Pays de Protectorats. Notice sur La Martinique (Paris, 1900). BL. Livret G. Goury. Guide du Métropolitain (Paris, 1908). BnF. 1.2 English works 1.2.1 Official Publications and Documents of Private Companies (in chronological order) Report of the Directors of the London Grand Junction Railway (London, 1835). SHL London Grand Junction Railway Bill (London, 1836). SHL Second Report from the Select Committee on Metropolis Improvements; with the Minutes of Evidence, Appendix, Index, and Plans (London, 1838). UKPP Fifth Report from the Select Committee on Railways (London, 1844). UKPP Report of the Commissioners appointed to investigate the various Projects for establishing Railway Termini within or in the immediate Vicinity of the ­Metropolis (London, 1846). UKPP Minutes of Evidence taken before the Commissioners appointed to ­Investigate the Various Projects for establishing Railway Termini Within, or in the ­immediate Vicinity of, the Metropolis (London, 1846). UKPP Report from the Select Committee on Metropolitan Communications (London, 1855). UKPP Minutes of Proceedings of the Metropolitan Board of Works (London, 1857). LMA Third Report from the Select Committee on Metropolitan Railway Communication (London, 1863). UKPP Metropolitan Inner Circle Completion Railway Bill (London, 1876). LMA Select Committee on Railway Bills 1876 (London, 1876). LMA City of London & Southwark Subway Company. Minute book 1, 1884–1889; 2, 1889–1892. LMA Report of the Joint Select Committee on the Electric and Cable Railways ­( Metropolis) (London, 1892). UKPP The Metropolitan District Electric Traction Company Limited. Directors ­M inute Book, 1901–02. LMA London Markets. Special Report of the Public Control Committee (London County Council, 1893). Report from the Joint Select Committee on London Underground Railways (London, 1901). UKPP

264 Bibliography 1.2.2 Works by Author Adcock, A. London’s Food Supply, in George R. Sims (ed.), Living London. Its Work and its Play, its Humour and its Pathos, its Sights and its Scenes, Vol. III (London: Cassell and Co., 1901), 293–299. Anonymous. City Improvements and Mr. Charles Pearson (London, 1853). BL Anonymous. Remarks upon some of the London Railway Projects of 1864, comprising Mr. Fowler’s Outer Circle and Inner Circle, Mr. Hawkshaw’s Lines, The Metropolitan Grand Union, &c (London, 1864). BL Anonymous. Near and Far: Pleasant Home Districts on the North Side of ­L ondon Served by the Metropolitan Railway (London: Metropolitan ­Railway, 1912). Baker, Benjamin. The Metropolitan and Metropolitan District Railways, in J. Forrest (ed.), The Metropolitan Railways (London, 1885), 3–35. Banton, Eric. Underground Travelling London, in George R. Sims (ed.), Living London. Its Work and its Play, its Humour and its Pathos, its Sights and its Scenes, Vol. III (London: Cassell & Co., 1901), 147–151. Barlow, Peter William. Improvements in Constructing and Working Railways, and in Constructing Railway Tunnels. Patent No. 2207 of 9 September 1864. LTM Barlow, Peter William. On the Relief of London Street Traffic, with a Description of the Tower Subway Now Shortly to be Executed (London, 1867). Barlow, Peter William. The Relief of Street Traffic. Advantages of the City and Southwark Subway, with Reasons Why the Proposed Connection of Street Tramways from the Elephant and Castle through the City is Unnecessary and Undesirable. Second Pamphlet (London, 1871). Barry, John Wolfe. The City Lines and Extensions (Inner Circle Completion) of the Metropolitan and District Railways, Minutes of Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers 81 (1885), 34–51. Bazalgette, Joseph W. Report upon Metropolitan Railway and Other Schemes of Session, 1865 (London: Metropolitan Board of Works, 1865). Beavan, Arthur H. Tube, Train, Tram and Car or Up-to-Date Locomotion (London: Geo. Routledge & Sons, 1903). Binnie, Alexander R. Report upon Railway and Other Schemes Affecting the County of London (London: London County Council, 1892). Booth, Charles. Improved Means of Locomotion as a First Step Towards the Cure of the Housing Difficulties of London (London: Macmillan and Co., 1901). LSE Booth, Charles. Life and Labour of the People of London. 8 Volumes (London: Macmillan and Co., 1904). de Amicis, Edmondo. Ricordi di Londra, 8th edition (Milan: Fratelli Treves, 1882). Translated as Memories of London by Stephen Parkin (Richmond: Alma Classics, 2014). Dickens, Charles Jr. Dickens’s Dictionary of London. An Unconventional Handbook (London: Charles Dickens, 1880). Dodd, George. The Food of London: A Sketch of the Chief Varieties, Sources of Supply, Probable Quantities, Modes of Arrival, Processes of Manufacture, Suspected Adulteration, and Machinery of Distribution, of the Food for a Community of Two Millions and a Half (London: Longmans, Brown, Green and Longmans, 1856).

Bibliography  265 Dunhill, Thomas. Health of Towns. A Selection of Papers on Sanitary Reform (London, 1848). BL Fitzgerald, Percy. London City Suburbs As They Are To-day (London: Leadenhall Press, 1893). Forrest, James. (ed.), The Metropolitan Railways (London: Institution of Civil Engineers, 1885). Gray, Thomas. Observations on a General Iron Rail-way, or Land Steam-­ Conveyance; To Supersede the Necessity of Horses in All Public Vehicles: Showing its Vast Superiority in Every Respect, over All the Present Pitiful Methods of Conveyance by Turnpike Roads, Canals, and Coasting-Traders, 5th edition (London, 1825). ICE Greathead, James H. The City and South London Railway; with some Remarks upon Subaqueous Tunnelling by Shield and Compressed Air (London: The Institution of Civil Engineers, 1896). BL Guyot, Yves. The Municipal Organization of Paris, Contemporary Review 43 (January–June 1883), 439–456. Haywood, William. Traffic Improvements in the Public Ways of the City of London (London: Printed by M. Lownds, 1866). Hollingshead, John. Underground London (London, 1862). BL Hopkinson, Edward. Electrical Railways (London: Minutes of Proceedings of the Institute of Civil Engineers, 1893). Jerrold, Blanchard. The Cockaynes in Paris or “Gone Abroad”, with sketches by Gustave Doré (London, 1871). Jerrold, Blanchard. London: A Pilgrimage, illustrated by Gustave Doré ­(London: Grant & Co., 1872). Lardner, Dionysius. Railway Economy: A Treatise on the New Art of ­Transport, its Management, Prospects, and Relations, Commercial, ­Financial, and ­Social: with an Exposition of the Practical Results of the ­R ailways in ­Operation in the United Kingdom, on the Continent, and in America ­(London: Taylor, Walton and Maberly, 1850). Leach, Henry. Railway London, in George R. Sims (ed.), Living London. Its Work and its Play, its Humour and its Pathos, its Sights and its Scenes. Vol. III (London: Cassell and Co., 1901), 3–9. Lloyd Wise, W. On Gas-lighting by Electricity and Means for Lighting and ­Extinguishing Street and Other Lamps, Journal of the Society of Arts, XXI (7 March 1873), 288–294. Loftie, W. J. History of London Vol II, 2nd edition, revised and enlarged ­(London: Edward Stanford, 1884). Mayhew, Henry and Cruikshank, George. 1851: or, The Adventures of Mr and Mrs Sandboys and Family, Who Came Up to London To Enjoy Themselves and To See the Great Exhibition (London: George Newbold, 1851). Mayhew, Henry. London Labour and the London Poor: The Condition and Earnings of Those that Will Work, Cannot Work, and Will Not Work. 4 Volumes (London: Griffin, 1861). Mayhew, Henry (ed.) The Shops and Companies of London and the Trades and Manufactories of Great Britain. 2 Volumes (London, 1865). Miller, Thomas. Picturesque Sketches of London, Past and Present (London: Office of the National Illustrated Library, 1852).

266 Bibliography Moncel, Compte Th. du and Preece, Henry. Incandescent Electric Lights, With Particular Reference to the Edison Lamps at the Paris Exhibition (New York: D. Van Nostrand, 1882). Moore, Henry Charles. Tram, Bus, and Cab London, in George R. Sims (ed.), Living London. Its Work and its Play, its Humour and its Pathos, its Sights and its Scenes. Vol. II (London: Cassell & Co., 1901), 94–99. Pearson, Charles. Brighton Railroad […] the Substance of a Speech Deli­vered […] before the Committee of the House of Lords […] in Opposition to ­Stephenson’s Railroad Bill, etc. (London, 1836). LSE Pearson, Charles. City Central Terminus. Address to the Citizens (London, 1852). GL Pearson, Charles. The Substance of Several Speeches […] Developing a Project […] for the Purpose of Effecting Great Street Improvements in the City and Suburbs of London, in Combination with the Erection of Spacious Railway Stations in Farringdon Street, etc. (London, 1852). LSE Pearson, Charles. A Twenty Minutes’ Letter to the Citizens of London, in ­Favour of the Metropolitan Railway and City Station (London, 1859). GL Preece, William H. Electric Lighting at the Paris Exhibition, in Moncel, Compte Th. du & Preece, Henry. Incandescent Electric Lights, with Particular ­Reference to the Edison Lamps at the Paris Exhibition (New York: D. Van Nostrand, 1882), 123–176. Price Williams, R. On the Increase of Population in England and Wales, Journal of the Statistical Society 43 (1880), 462–496, followed by a discussion of the paper, pp. 497–508. Robinson, J. Clifton. Electric Traction: London’s Tubes, Trams, and Trains, 1902, Journal of the Society of Arts, L (21 March 1902), 408–424. Rutland, Arthur. Round London’s Big Markets, in George R. Sims (ed.), Living London. Its Work and its Play, its Humour and its Pathos, its Sights and its Scenes. Vol. I (London: Cassell & Co., 1901), 318–325. Ryan, P. F. William. Going to business in London, in George R. Sims (ed.), ­Living London. Its Work and its Play, its Humour and its Pathos, its Sights and its Scenes. Vol. I (London: Cassell & Co., 1901), 196–202. Sekon, G. A. Illustrated Interviews, Mr. Thomas Chellew Jenkin, The Railway Magazine V (July–December 1899), 1–16. Sims, George R. Terminus London, in George R. Sims (ed.), Living London. Its Work and its Play, its Humour and its Pathos, its Sights and its Scenes. Vol. I (London: Cassell & Co., 1901), 94–99. Tebb, W. Scott. The Chemical & Bacteriological Condition of the Air on the City & South London Railway (London, 1905). Thornbury, Walter. Old and New London. Volumes 1 and 2 (London: Cassell, Petter & Galpin, 1878). Wells, H. G. Anticipations of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon Human Life and Thought (New York and London: Harper & Brothers, 1902). Wells, H. G. Mankind in the Making (London: Chapman and Hall, 1906). Wilkinson, W. A. Metropolitan Railway Terminal Accommodation, and its ­Effect on Traffic Results, Journal of the Statistical Society 21, 2 (1858), 156–169.

Bibliography  267 Yeatman, H. J. To the Metropolitan Board of Works (London, 1857). LMA Young, Desmond. Lighting London, in George R. Sims (ed.), Living London Its Work and its Play, its Humour and its Pathos, its Sights and its Scenes. Vol. II (London: Cassell & Co., 1901), 274–280. 1.3 French Works 1.3.1 Official Publications (in chronological order) Chemin de Fer Circulaire de la Banlieue de Paris. Memoires et Annexes (Paris: Département de la Seine, 1872). RATP Rapport de la Commission Spéciale sur l’Étude des Chemins de Fer et des Tramways d’Intérêt Local à Établir dans les Département de la Seine (Paris, 1872). BnF Album de Statistique Graphique (Paris: Ministère des Travaux Publics, 1879–1906). Les Travaux de Paris. 1789–1889. Atlas. Sous la direction de M. A. Alphand, inspecteur général des Ponts et Chaussées, directeur de Travaux Publics (Paris, 1889). BnF Richelieu Conseil Municipal de Paris, Rapports et Documents (Paris: Imprimerie Municipal, 1883–1907). Conseil Municipal de Paris, 1894–1900 (Bound volume including reports, ­notices, deliberations, etc.). RATP Conseil Municipal de Paris, Procès verbal (Paris: Imprimerie Municipal, 1896– 1900). RATP Conseil Municipal de Paris, Commission du Métropolitain. Procès-Verbaux de 1895 à 1907. RATP 1.3.2 Works by Author André, F. Notes sur les Variations de la Circulation dans les Rues de Paris de 1872 à 1887 (Paris: Imprimerie Nouvelle, 1888). Anonymous. L’Avant-Projet du Chemin de Fer Métropolitain de Paris, Revue Générale des Chemins de Fer, V (April 1882), 272–275. Anonymous. Untitled note extracted from Journal des Économistes. Revue de la Science Économique et de la Statistique, Série 4, Vol. 35 (July–September 1886), 148. Anonymous. Les Métropolitains de Londres, Journal des Économistes. Revue de la Science Économique et de la Statistique, Série 4, Vol. 40 (October–­ December 1887), 265–268. Baltard, Victor and Callet, Félix. Monographie des Halles Centrales de Paris, Construites sous le Règne de Napoléon III et sous l’Administration de M. le Baron Haussmann (Paris: A. Morel, 1863). Baudouin, Marcel. Guide Médical à l’Exposition Universelle Internationale de 1889 à Paris (Paris: E. Lecrosnier et Babé, BnF, 1889). Bienvenüe, Fulgence, Chemins de Fer Urbains à Traction Électrique. Devis ­Descriptif et Estimatif, Conseil Municipal de Paris, 1894–1900 (Paris, 20 February 1896). RATP

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Bibliography  269 Horeau, Hector. Nouvelles Observations sur le Projet d’Agrandissement et de Construction des Halles Centrales d’Approvisionnement pour la Ville de Paris (Paris, April 1846). Houssaye, Arsène. Les Confessions. Souvenirs d’un Demi-Siècle. Vol. 4 (Paris: E. Dentu, 1885). Hubault, Edgard. Omnibus, Tramways, Métropolitain, Nord-Sud: Supplément au Recueil Annoté de Lois, Décrets, Ordonnances, Arrêtés, Décisions Concernant les Transports en Commun, etc (Paris: Imprimerie Municipale, 1910). Huber, Michel, Le Recensement de la Population Française en 1911, Journal de la Société Statistique de Paris 53 (1912), 141–148. Huet, E. Les Chemins de Fer Métropolitains de Londres. Étude d’un Réseau de Chemins de Fer Métropolitains pour la Ville de Paris. Mission à Londres en Mai, 1876 (Paris, 1878). Huet, E. Métropolitain Urbain à Traction Électrique: Rapport du Directeur Administratif des Travaux, plus, Annexe au Rapport, Conseil Municipal de Paris, 1894–1900 (Paris, March 2 and 23 1896). RATP Husson, Armand. Les Consommations de Paris (Paris: Corbeil, 1856). Juglar, Clément. Les Consommations de Paris et l’Octroi (Paris: Guillaumin, 1870), extract from the Journal des Economistes (March 1870). Larpent, C. Projet d’un Chemin de Fer Métropolitain Parisien (Paris: A. ­Gaignault, 1887). BnF Lavalley, A. and Rostand, A. Projet de Chemin de Fer Métropolitain. À Messieurs les Membres du Conseil Général du Département de la Seine (Paris, 5 April 1872). RATP Lavollée, C. Les Omnibus à Paris et à Londres (Paris: Compagnie Générale des Omnibus de Paris, 1868). Le Chatelier, L. La Question du Métropolitain (Paris: Libraire Polytechnique, Baudry et Cie Éditeurs 1888). RATP Le Hir, Jean-Louis. Réseau des Voies Ferrées sous Paris. Transports Généraux dans Paris par un Réseau de Voies Ferrées Souterraines Desservant les ­Principaux Quartiers et les Mettant en Communication avec les Gares des Chemins de Fer et par un Service Complémentaire de Voitures à Chevaux (Paris: Imprimerie de Guiraudet et Jouaust, 1856 and 1857). Ledoux, Claude-Nicolas. L’Architecture Considérée sous le Rapport de l’Art, des Moeurs et de la Législation Tome Premier (Paris, 1804). Letellier, Antoine-Emile. Avant-Projet d’un Réseau des Chemins de Fer dans Paris (Paris, 1872). BnF Letellier, Antoine-Emile. Les Chemins de fer Projetés dans Paris (Atlas, 1875). BnF Martin, Alfred. Étude Historique et Statistique sur les Moyens de Transport dans Paris avec Plans, Diagrammes et Cartogrammes (Paris: Ministère de l’Instruction Publique et des Beaux-Arts, 1894). Mercier, G. La Ligne de la Rive Gauche, La Revue Technique Annales des Travaux Publics et des Chemins de Fer et Annales Industrielles, XVIII, 22 (November 1897), 515–519. Meynadier, Hippolyte. Paris sous le Point de Vue Pittoresque et Monumental ou Éléments d’un Plan Général d’Ensemble de ses Travaux d’Art et d’Utilité Publique (Paris: Dauvin et Fontaine, 1843).

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Index

Alice 1, 14, 252 Alphand, J.-C.-A. 154, 158, 163, 267 art nouveau 218–9 Asnières 137–8, 234 Auteuil (line) 26, 143, 147, 149, 155, 160, 161, 174, 219–20, 221, 230 Avenue: de l’Opéra 186; Friedland 218; Northumberland 189; Shaftesbury 203 Baker, B. 104, 191, 238 Baker Street, 126, 128, 141, 172, 182, 203, 205, 242 Bakerloo 183, 203, 205–6, 241, 242 Baltard, V. 55–6 Bank (City of London) 34, 119, 179, 192, 197, 198, 200, 210, 215 bank holidays 146, 162, 163 bankruptcy 203 banks 185, 187 banlieue 216, 234, 258; annexation of 148–9, 157; grande 162–3; petite 19, 162–3 Barlow, P. W. 190, 208, 220 Barry, J. W. 134, 141 Baudelaire, Ch. 9, 11–2, 168 Bazalgette, J. 111, 118–9, 125 Beavan, A. 192–3 Bercy (Rapée) 147, 149, 182 Berlier, J. B. 182, 220–1, 223, 226, 229, 232 Bienvenüe, F. 182, 227–9, 233 Blackwall (railway) 33, 35, 36, 61, 77, 119, 126 Board of Trade 30–2, 170, 195, 200, 206 Boulevard: de Sébastopol 65, 155; de Strasbourg 62, 64, 65, 96, 230; des Italiens 186; Haussmann 218 boulevard(s) 1, 20, 56, 57–8, 61, 66–7, 90–1, 96–7, 101, 141, 142,

145, 151, 155–6, 162, 166, 168, 179, 185, 212, 214, 216, 218–9, 221, 226, 233, 251, 254, 255; concentriques 34; extérieurs (outer) 52, 58, 142, 161, 223, 227, 229; intérieurs (inner) 52, 58, 72, 154, 155, 156, 218 Boulogne, Bois de 60, 143, 146, 147, 156, 220, 242 Bourse (Paris) 96, 155 Brame, E. 65–6, 67, 96, 175 canal(s) 23, 24–5, 27, 28, 30, 51, 57, 58–60, 66, 73, 80, 107, 111, 169; de l’Ourcq 25; Grand Surrey 43; Regent’s 25, 73, 90, 137; St Denis 52; St Martin 52, 58, 242 capital(ists) 4, 16, 20, 28–9, 30, 43, 61, 74, 86, 88, 91, 93–4, 124, 127, 132–3, 145, 146, 156, 177, 183, 187, 197, 198, 199, 201, 203, 204, 220, 230–1, 235, 252 Ceinture (chemin de fer) 26, 27, 65, 143, 147, 151, 154–5, 156–7, 162, 163, 164, 174, 176, 182, 220, 221, 223, 225, 226, 228, 234; locomotives 217 Central London 92, 121, 132, 140, 257 Central London Railway 16, 183, 196–9, 200, 203, 215, 227, 233, 235, 252 centrifugal 3, 15, 110, 122, 135, 155, 167, 183, 226 Chrétien, J. 212, 218–20, 221 circle(s) 13, 15, 37, 83, 85, 87, 97, 114, 121–4, 125–6, 140, 152, 153, 156, 158, 166–8, 183, 194, 195–6, 207, 221; see also inner circle; middle 110, 134, 196; outer 110, 114–8, 120, 121, 125–6, 140, 167, 196, 210

290 Index circulation 2, 3, 6, 15, 19, 21, 50–4, 56–7, 63–4, 67, 74, 82–3, 86–7, 94–7, 114, 123, 150–2, 155–6, 159, 183, 214, 216–7, 227, 251; urban 57, 64, 87, 110, 114, 146, 150, 155, 163, 223 City and South London Railway 26, 27, 183, 191, 209, 215 City of London 2, 10, 18, 21, 24, 73, 78, 94, 124, 186–7, 195, 200, 205 Clichy 138–9, 147, 174, 186, 232, 253; Avenue de 147 Commission des Embellissements (Paris) H. 62–5, 67; see also Siméon H. Commission Municipale des Travaux Historiques 254–5 Commissioners of Sewers (City of London) 124, 134, 167, 200 commune(s) 19, 30, 35, 52, 148–9, 162, 174, 216; Paris (Commune) 107, 110, 150, 153, 157, 216 Compagnie: d’Orléans 36, 147, 183, 230; de l’Ouest 101, 147, 155, 160, 183, 226, 231, 232, 242 Compagnie Générale des Omnibus (Paris) 26, 67, 145–6, 154, 159, 163, 177, 221 Crossrail 2, 13, 253, 257–8, 259 cut-­and-cover 190, 194, 196, 231; see also tunnelling Daly, C. 52 de Kérizouet, Fl. 15, 56–61, 62, 66, 67, 70, 83, 95–6, 223, 255 Deligny 163, 223–7, 229 density 21, 34, 153, 161, 188–9, 221, 234–5, 253, 256 docks (river) 15, 18, 21, 24, 25, 57–62, 66, 77, 82–3, 86, 89, 118, 127 du Camp, M. 185 East End (London) 36, 189, 199 East London Railway 119, 126, 127, 134 édicules 219 Edison, T. A. 4, 184, 186, 191, 197, 238 electric: architecture 179; circuits 182, 227, 252; lighting 184–7, 190–1; locomotives 183, 187, 191, 193, 197–8, 199–200, 227;

magneto-­184; railway 179, 188–9, 193–4, 202, 218–9, 233, 240; substation(s) 182, 211, 218, 228, 230; traction 4, 10, 16, 182–4, 187–8, 191, 194–8, 203–6, 218–21, 227–9, 231, 234–5; tramway(s) 187–8, 221, 223 electricity 2, 184–9, 194, 210, 217, 227–31, 250, 251–2 embankment (river) 73, 242; Seine 55, 142, 146, 223; Thames 80, 90, 189; see also riverbanks embellissements 33, 50, 62–5, 67; see also Commission des Embellissements Empain, Baron 231 enceinte(s) 19, 21, 25, 34, 42, 148, 151, 222–3 Farringdon Street 76, 80–1, 88, 119, 238; station 253; terminus 80, 82, 119 Flachat, E. 65–6, 67, 96, 175 Forbes, J. S. 120, 122, 123–4, 132 Fourier, Ch. 52; Fourierists 52–3, 54, 55 Fowler, J. 89, 91, 93, 140, 190 future(s) 1–3, 6, 10–14, 23, 51, 91, 94, 114, 132, 133, 161, 184, 195, 203, 204, 211, 220, 235–6, 248–50, 254–6; city (London and Paris) 10–14, 27, 67–8, 87, 91, 96–7, 148, 233; events 1, 16, 248, 252, 256; hope for 37, 206; Métropolitain 160, 162, 228; past xiv, 1–37, 249, 256; traffic 194, 199; urban 256–7; vision(s) of the 9, 37, 96, 233, 258 garden city 14, 71; see also Howard E. Gare: d’Austerlitz 35, 63, 144; de L’Est 60, 62, 63, 65, 242; de Lyon 58, 63–4, 147, 231, 246; d’Orléans 58, 70, 157, 164, 174, 230; du Nord 63, 68, 144, 157, 223, 230; Montparnasse 63, 183, 220, 232, 242; St Lazare 63–4, 127, 143, 147, 155, 157, 160, 164, 174, 183, 221, 231, 232, 242 gare concentrique 58, 70 Garnier, Ch. 214, 218, 219 gauge 64, 159, 188, 228–9, 231; broad 120; narrow 225, 229; standard 149, 223, 225, 226, 228, 231

Index  291 General Electric 16, 197–8, 233, 252 General Post Office (London) 18, 73, 88, 89, 92, 111 Grand Paris 3, 13, 250, 253, 257–8 Great Eastern Railway 115, 119, 122, 159, 171, 197, 234 Great Northern Railway 80, 85, 87, 88, 90, 91, 112, 126, 203; and City 183, 198, 210 Great Western Railway 25, 31, 33, 73, 76, 81, 88–9, 91, 120, 129, 130, 131, 136, 172; Hotel 92 Greathead, J. 26, 182, 190–1, 192, 195, 220, 253 Greenwich Railway 33, 36, 73, 77, 119 Guimard, H. 219 Guys, C. 12 Hampstead 112; garden suburb 207; junction (railway) 118, 125, 127; tube 183, 199, 206–7 Haussmann, G.-E. 1, 9, 64, 65, 67, 94, 96, 106, 148, 151, 152, 156, 167 252, 254–5, 256 Hawkshaw, J. 90, 133–4 Histoire Générale de Paris 254 Hopkinson, J. 191, 238 Horeau, H. 55–6, 96 Hôtel de Ville 21, 33, 52, 61, 62, 98, 155, 185, 217, 242 housing 60, 66, 83, 112–3, 133, 145, 256, 258; affordable 15, 66, 84, 110, 206, 223; crisis 194; (housing) of: artisans and mechanics 15, 85–6; the poor 195, 206, 249; the working classes 15, 68, 95; salubrious 19, 85, 130; see also overcrowded; transport (including railways) and 15, 16, 37, 51, 87, 91, 131–2, 167, 195, 233–4, 249, 256 Houssaye, A. 96, 106 Howard, E. 71, 87 Huet, E. 127, 157–9, 171, 228–9, 230 improvement(s) 3, 18, 21, 50–1, 52, 53, 62, 77, 85, 94–7, 114, 183, 206; metropolitan 37, 43, 51, 62–3, 80, 83, 87, 118; street 2, 15, 33, 62, 67, 76, 78–9, 81, 89–91, 92, 111, 121, 123–4, 133–4, 156, 167, 251 infrastructure 14, 23, 28, 30, 51, 54, 67, 79, 91, 137, 156, 222, 225–6, 227, 230, 252, 258; public 64;

superstructure (and) 230; transport 24, 37, 58, 80, 95, 166–7, 217, 219, 257; underground 232; urban 1, 7–8 inner circle 13, 110, 114–8, 119, 120, 121, 125–6, 133–5, 141, 166–8, 195–6, 203, 210, 222, 249, 250, 251; metropolitan 120, 123, 170; trains 134, 141, 205 intra-­muros 18, 58, 64, 146, 148 journey(s) 27, 40, 54, 119, 122, 128, 129, 143, 162–3, 166, 182, 188, 190, 191, 192–3, 196–7, 234, 251, 253, 257; metropolitan 188, 235; number of 26, 112, 141, 221; long-­distance 112; regular 163, 166; short-­ distance 87 junction (railway) 24, 58, 73–4, 77, 101, 114, 118, 125–6, 127–8, 140, 144, 152, 158, 164, 174, 195, 199, 217, 226, 229, 231, 242, 245, 250 La Villette 25, 52, 65, 67, 70, 143, 148, 149, 156 land 12, 19, 20, 24, 30, 33–7, 73, 86–7, 92, 121, 124, 131–2, 133, 161; compulsory purchase of 30, 83, 86, 92, 123; freehold 83, 240; ownership 24, 33, 34, 37, 95, 101; use 34, 37 Lavalley, A. 155–6, 157, 160, 175 Le Hir, L. 66–7, 72, 96 Legrand étoile 29, 52, 151 Les Halles 15, 21, 53–4, 55–6, 58, 59, 60, 65–6, 67, 68, 100, 157, 159, 164, 242; see also market(s) London and North Western Railway 73, 76, 81, 87–8, 120, 125–6, 127, 134, 159 London Brighton and South Coast Railway 46, 88, 119, 126, 127 London Central Electric Railway 238 London Chatham and Dover Railway 119, 120, 126, 127, 136 London County Council 2, 17, 18, 189, 194, 195–6, 199, 201–2, 203, 206, 207, 233–4 London Grand Junction Railway 24, 73–4 London United Tramways 202 Lots Road Chelsea 182, 204, 211

292 Index manumotive 190 market(s) 8, 16, 19, 20, 22, 24, 25, 30, 47, 58, 60, 62, 67, 68, 69, 73; central 21, 51, 53, 55–6, 59, 61, 64, 94, 156, 157, 159; financial 91, 96, 124; food 2, 15, 24, 83, 88; housing 133, 145; labour 24, 42, 58, 60, 164, 165; livestock 15, 51, 64–6, 80, 92, 105 Marville, Ch. 66, 255 Mayhew, H. 82 Metro-­Land 133 Métropolitain (Paris) 15, 72, 141, 144, 151–3, 155–7, 159–60, 162–5, 166, 167–8, 182, 183, 211, 213, 215, 216, 217, 220, 223–33, 234, 249, 251, 255; true (veritable) 152, 155, 164 Metropolitan Board of Works 2, 17–8, 89, 110, 111, 118, 124, 134, 135, 167, 168, 189, 194, 251 Metropolitan District Electric Traction Company 204 Metropolitan District Railway 13, 27, 110, 118, 120–2, 128, 132–5, 167, 195, 198, 231 Metropolitan Improvement Society 78 Metropolitan Inner Circle Completion Railway 123–4; see also inner circle(s) Metropolitan Railway (Company) 1, 13, 15, 27, 89, 90, 91–4, 96, 110, 116, 118, 132–5, 140, 141, 184, 187, 253 metropolitan railway(s) 16, 64, 125, 162, 167–8, 177, 188–9, 194, 202, 212, 215, 217, 221–2, 224, 231, 233, 235–6, 249, 251; communication 114, 117; district 114, 117–8, 167, 250; journey 40, 166; see also journey(s); network 15, 127, 159, 182–3, 206–7, 229; system 74, 165, 189, 203, 207, 228; traffic 124, 125, 141 Meynadier, H. 53–4, 56, 99 Midland Railway 36, 73, 120, 126, 171, 203 modernité 11; modernities 8, 10–1, 14, 16, 97, 236, 248–9, 252, 256; (urban) modernity 1, 5, 6, 8–14, 96, 207, 232, 233, 254, 258 Montparnasse (district) 164; see also Gare Montparnasse myth 1, 8–10, 255

Napoléon III 1, 5, 9, 62, 63–4, 65, 68, 96, 154, 167, 254–5 network(s) 6, 8, 10, 16, 52–3, 63, 222, 223, 227–8, 230; canal 25, 57; omnibus 145–6, 154; railway 15, 29, 66–7, 72, 81, 88, 107, 125–6, 127, 150–1, 153, 154, 155–6, 157, 158–60, 161, 195, 250; road 55, 57, 96, 148; tramway 146, 163; Tube 210; see also metropolitan railway(s) New Cross Junction 127, 128, 134, 140, 207 Nord-­Sud (Paris) 183, 215, 220, 232, 233, 246, 252 North Metropolitan Railway 88 octroi 18, 19, 51, 57, 59–60, 61, 148–9, 153, 222, 225, 226, 250; see also tax(es) omnibus 25, 27, 60, 74–5, 81, 91, 110, 114, 116, 119, 125, 148, 153, 155–6, 163, 182, 190, 202, 216, 221, 223, 248; London General (Company) 26; see also Compagnie Générale des Omnibus Opéra (Paris) 144, 216, 218–9, 230; see also Place de l’Opéra overcrowded: area(s) 21, 123; housing 10, 85, 93; streets 91, 130, 193; trains 3, 128 Paddington 25, 73, 76, 81, 85, 88, 92, 112, 116, 119, 121, 129–30, 132, 134, 137, 253 Paris-­Orléans railway 36, 59, 64, 147, 154, 183, 224, 226, 230, 246 Paris-­St Germain railway 33, 35, 147 Paxton, J. 90–1, 95, 187 Pearson, Ch. 71, 80–8, 89, 90, 92–4, 95–6, 114, 133, 194 percements 156 Pereire, G. 222–3, 224, 226 Perreymond 52, 54–5 Place: de la Concorde 33, 224, 232; de l’Opéra 214, 219, 224 pneumatic 2, 187 police 4, 18, 73, 107, 149; Prefect (Paris) 19, 67, 145, 153 Ponts et Chaussées (engineers) 13, 19, 28–9, 33, 52, 66, 67, 150, 151, 152, 158, 160, 161, 163, 220, 227, 229 post office 2, 24, 92, 187, 198; see also General Post Office Preece, W. H. 184, 186

Index  293 promenade(s) 34, 60, 91; de Paris 158 public(s) 3, 28, 32, 50, 97, 110, 135, 160, 163, 167, 183, 233, 235, 249, 251, 258; benefit 2–3, 24, 27–33, 75–9, 89, 92, 94, 105, 119, 122, 135, 152, 167, 258 Quai de la Rapée (Paris) 147, 174 Rambuteau, Comte 62 regulation 8, 31, 50, 62–3, 67, 121, 154, 170, 249; Railways Act (1844) 31, 61; urbanism of 94 Rennie, G. 73–4 Rimbaud, A. 40, 166 riverbanks 33–4, 51, 250; Seine 35, 52, 53, 54, 63–4, 138, 142, 147, 151, 156–7, 164, 183, 218, 223, 224, 226, 228–9; Thames 35–6, 76, 88, 95, 112, 118, 125–6, 134, 190, 192, 193 Rostand, A. 155–6, 157, 175 Rothschild Baron 93 Royal Commission on Metropolitan Railway Termini 14, 41, 75–8, 80–1, 88, 92, 95, 104, 111, 114–5, 116; see also termini Saint Simon, H. 52; Saint Simonians 52–3, 55 Sceaux (district) 17, 147 Seine (de la): Conseil Général 154, 157, 159; Département 17, 146, 153, 154, 157, 158, 163; Prefect/ure 2, 17, 19, 21, 62, 64, 67, 96, 148, 152, 154, 160, 165, 229; river 25, 57, 58, 72, 138, 146, 151, 164, 183, 227, 230; see also embankment and riverbanks Seine-­et-Oise 162 Select (Parliamentary) Committee on: Electric and Cable Railways 194–6, 197; London Underground Railways 199–201; Metropolitan Communications 89–91, 92; Metropolitan Railway Communication 114–8, 167 sewer(s) 6, 7, 10, 18, 65, 66, 67, 118, 125, 221, 226; see also Commissioners of Sewers (City of London); sewerage 118, 149, 230 Shaftesbury, Lord 114, 115 Siemens, A. 196; brothers 4, 184, 188, 189, 191, 237, 239; Halske-­188 Siméon, H. 62–4, 67, 148

slum(s) 66, 84, 207; clearance 2, 10, 15, 111, 121 Smithfield 82, 92; market 69, 80, 82, 89, 92, 94, 130, 251 see also Farringdon Street Southwood Smith, Th. 51 Sprague, F. J. 197–8, 227, 233 St. Paul’s Cathedral 33–4, 73 suburb(s) 4, 8, 15, 17, 19, 82, 85, 87, 110, 112–4, 118, 119, 124, 127–8, 132–3, 147, 150–1, 152, 158, 166, 185, 205, 221, 234, 248, 250, 257; see also banlieue; garden 6, 14, 207 suburban: growth 3, 131, 135, 146, 201, 234–5; living 2, 20, 71, 95, 112, 209; railway ring see Ceinture; traffic 2, 111, 122, 130–1, 135, 166–7, 183, 188, 195–6, 219–20, 222; village 80 Suez Canal 155 Sunday 146, 161–2, 163, 166, 191; see also bank holidays tax(es) 18, 25, 59–60, 80, 133, 174; collection 2, 15, 19, 37, 56, 95, 148, 149, 255 termini (railway) 2, 12, 15, 23, 29, 33–6, 54, 57–60, 62–66, 67, 70, 72, 73, 75–6, 80, 82–3, 88–9, 92, 94–5, 111, 115–8, 122, 126–7, 145, 147, 149, 152, 156–7, 158–60, 168, 182, 185, 187, 199, 217, 222, 228, 231, 233, 250, 255 terminus (central) 33, 35–6, 51, 61, 73, 74, 75–6, 77, 79, 80–3, 87–8, 92, 93, 119, 134, 209, 210, 226, 253 Thames river 21, 25, 51, 73, 77, 80, 90, 189–90; Tamise de fer 61; tunnel 118, 119, 126, 134, 208 Thiers, A. 19, 28–9, 64, 145; see also wall(s) Third Republic 4, 29, 153, 158, 216, 222, 233 Thomson, W. (Lord Kelvin) 4, 182, 196–7 Tower Subway 190, 208, 220 trade(s) 19, 20, 25, 30, 83, 84, 92, 131, 152, 160; tradesmen 83, 85; see also Board of Trade traffic 33, 59, 80–1, 123–4, 125, 132, 195–6, 199, 201, 210, 212, 221, 225, 227, 234, 248; canal 25; circuits (electric) 4, 182, 227–8; congestion 59, 81–2, 91, 153, 193;

294 Index external 189, 195; flow(s) 51, 54, 82, 91, 134–5, 156; goods 25, 54–5, 61, 66–7, 75, 76–7, 79, 88–9, 92, 111–2, 117–8, 127, 143, 147, 242, 251; internal 189, 195, 202; local 2, 110, 118, 120, 124, 128, 135, 166; long-­distance 75, 110, 135, 146, 150, 153, 159, 160, 163, 166, 177; metropolitan 91, 122, 189, 194–5, 250; military 19, 62–3, 101, 147, 216; passenger 25–7, 54–5, 60, 61, 66–7, 75, 83, 84, 88–9, 90, 94, 111, 116, 119, 121, 127, 143, 147, 155, 157, 160, 171, 177, 203, 251; regional 2, 152, 162, 222; river (docks) 24, 118; short-­distance 75, 188; street 10, 50, 56, 76, 81; suburban 2, 110, 111, 122, 130–1, 135, 166–7, 183, 195, 219–20, 222; urban 2, 111, 155, 183, 195, 222 trains 2, 9, 11, 15, 51, 87, 90, 94, 107, 114, 120, 123, 126–7, 134, 136, 143, 182–3, 188, 190–7, 205, 207, 217, 219–20, 227–9, 231–2, 235, 251; excursion 162; express 162–3, 223, 225, 243; long-­distance 162; overcrowded 3, 128, 134; workmen’s 31, 60–1, 147, 149, 158–9, 200, 201 tramways 26–7, 110, 146, 148, 154, 156, 159–60, 161, 163, 202, 205, 206, 219, 223, 232, 234; electric 187–8, 197, 210, 221, 223; tubular see Berlier J. B. transport: (un)affordable 15, 37, 91, 95, 145–6, 162, 163, 167, 206, 251; suburban 188, 226; urban 1, 4, 7, 110, 145, 155, 161, 165, 182, 187–8, 194, 202, 220, 224, 226, 235 Travaux Publics (Paris) 19, 160, 163, 223, 228 tunnelling 2, 125, 191, 196, 200, 230, 257; shield 183, 189–90, 220, 253 underground 5–6, 56, 58, 76, 128, 157, 160, 213, 215, 218, 220, 223–4, 226, 229, 231, 233, 242;

infrastructure 232; line(s) 15, 16, 65, 121, 190, 199, 201; railway(s) (network) 5, 7, 10, 21, 61, 66, 107, 136, 179, 194; system 120, 190, 197, 199; travel 96; tunnels 65, 125, 164, 190, 217 Underground Electric Railways of London 183, 204–5, 206–7, 235, 251–2 universal exposition(s) (Paris) 26, 146, 147, 160, 183, 186, 224, 225, 226, 231, 232, 233, 249 utopian 6, 61, 221 Vallée, L. L. 52–3, 98; see also Ponts et Chaussées Vauthier, L.-L. 141–2, 149–52, 154, 155, 156, 163, 167, 175, 222, 223–5, 226–7, 229 Villain, P. 217–8 Vincennes (Bois de) 60, 72, 173, 220; Porte de 183, 229, 231 Voltaire 50, 97, 254 wall(s) (city) 2, 18, 34, 51, 56, 61, 65, 67, 84, 146, 150, 151–2, 155, 159, 162–3, 165, 167, 183, 189, 221, 223, 224–5, 226–7, 233, 234, 249, 250, 251–2; of Fermiers Généraux 18–9, 25, 34, 42, 64, 70, 141, 148, 151, 234; see also octroi Waterloo and City Railway 183, 198, 200, 210, 215 Watkin, E. 122, 132–3, 184, 197 Wells, H. G. 233, 248–9 West End (London) 5, 18, 25, 35, 76, 198, 199, 203, 207 Westbourne Grove 129–30 White Queen 1, 14, 252 Wilkinson, W. A. 88–9, 93, 168 world exhibition(s) 14, 125, 143, 184, 186, 187, 217, 224; see also universal exposition(s) Yeatman, H. J. 110–1, 168 Yerkes, Ch. 16, 182, 203–5, 206, 233, 235, 252; see also Underground Electric Railways of London