How the Victorians Built London’s Underground by Hand

In the long reign of a single queen, Victorian inventions changed the world. Queen Victoria came to the throne in 1837. By the time she died in 1901, the modern world had been formed. It was a time of outstanding engineering, remarkable innovation, all of it driven by ambitious pioneers. It shaped the world we live in today. Efficient and fast new transport systems allowed people to move freely for the first time. You get a real sense in here of Victorian engineering. It's wonderful. Giant feats of ingenuity saved lives. The Victorians had ambition, they thought big and they got on with it. Amazing inventions revolutionized our domestic lives. What I'm holding in my hand changed our homes forever. Automation transformed mass production. Factories could now produce goods at a rate never imagined before. The change is like a nuclear weapon going off. This is the story of how the Victorians built Britain. This time I learn how a radical new transport system was carved out of London. They must have had a couple of cranes, but other than that all of it was done by hand. How engineers wrestled to run steam trains underground. It must have been Dante's Inferno. And how a clever idea transformed affordable transport. Of course. When Queen Victoria came to the throne in 1837, the landscape of Britain was being transformed. London was the most prosperous city in the world, with a population of around two million. It was a very crowded place. Most were living within two miles of the Thames. Judith Flanders has spent years writing about Victorian Britain. Judith, what would the streets of London have been like at the start of the Victorian era? They would have been noisier and more confusing and more terrifying than this. We've got traffic, we've got buses, we've got vans, we've got cars, bicycles. What we don't have is them all going in all directions at once. There were no rules of the road. Everyone walked, everyone rode, everyone drove all in the same space and in both directions. The confusion was phenomenal. And smelly. Beyond smelly. There would have been sheep driven in, donkeys pulling carts, cattle being driven to market because most markets slaughtered the meat where you were. So just imagine the produce of those animals. And then they were slaughtered. So the gutters would be running with blood and fat. Blood and excrement, all those animals. I read somewhere, I think, that 1,000 tonnes of horse dung a day ended up on London streets. Does that sound about right? It sounds a little low to me, actually. They measured how many cartloads of dung that they picked up between Piccadilly Circus and Oxford Circus, just along Regent Street, and it was dozens of cartloads every 12 hours. Most early Victorian transport relied on horsepower. You only need to look at a list of pub names in London from 1851 to realise their importance. 21 pubs were named after Queen Victoria, but 54 were named the White Horse, and another 27 the Horse and Groom, and the list goes on. But most people couldn't afford the horse-drawn transport that was available. How did people get around? On foot. Basically, if you wanted to go anywhere, you walked. In the morning, you have what were called these black rivers of clerks, shopkeepers, all walking in to work. They would walk along like we have our phones. They would walk along reading newspapers. A survey in the 1850s showed that on average, 200,000 people walked into the city each year. The relative luxury of a horse and carriage was not for them. But for the middle classes who didn't want to walk, there was another option. It's one that's far more familiar to us today, the omnibus. Omnibuses, the ancestor of the bus. They were horse-drawn. They could take 12 people inside. You had a coachman on the front. You had a conductor, or a cad, stepping up on the back. A cad, hence the word for a rotter. Yes, exactly. They had a slightly dubious reputation. And actually, they didn't. They had a completely dubious reputation. You could have two people sitting up with the coachman, and those were very favored seats. And he would keep those for the men who were regulars and who tipped well, because inside was horrible. It was dark, it was damp, it was smelly. To make matters worse for the passengers, conductors would take their money and usher them on board before they'd had time to realise there was barely enough room inside. The drivers would therefore leap around other buses to try and get ahead to get the next passenger. And we see court case after court case of what was known as furious driving as they raced each other to get to the next passenger. So it was kind of the Wild West of buses. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Fares started at a costly shilling, but soon dropped to sixpence. Even then, it would have cost an office clerk more than two days' wages just to get the omnibus to work each day. Forcing them to remain living within walking distance of their jobs. In just two decades, the population of London had grown by a further half million people. This was only set to rise, and it was all down to one thing. A frenzy of railway construction that had spread across Britain. Just over a decade, they were transporting millions of people across the country. By 1852, more people could access the capital. Via major train stations like Euston, Paddington, Waterloo and King's Cross. There was fierce competition to drive even more lines into London. A royal commission had ruled that no mainline stations could be built within the city centre. Anyone arriving into one of these stations had to continue their journey by road. The number of omnibuses doubled as a result and soon the streets of central London were overwhelmed with traffic. One man, Charles Pearson, decided something must be done. Solicitor to the City of London and something of a social reformer, he felt the railways themselves held the answer. Charles Pearson was a man on a mission. He had this radical idea for solving the chaos on London's streets. He put forward a proposal that was to lead to one of the defining projects of the century. His idea would transform London and the way we get round the city to this day, the London Underground. But creating the first Underground Railway was a massive gamble and no one had any idea if it would be a success. During the early Victorian period, inner-city travel was limited to horsepower for those with money. And if you didn't earn a decent wage, you walked everywhere. Charles Pearson was keen to improve London and the chaos on its streets. He put forward a radical idea for an underground railway. For years his idea was ridiculed. The Times described it as an insult to common sense that people would prefer to be driven through the foul subsoil of London. Pearson wouldn't give up and eventually his persistence paid off. In 1853 the House of Commons approved a bill for the construction of an underground railway, the first to be built anywhere in the world. A company was set up called the Metropolitan Railway. Construction on the first stretch of line began in 1860. It was named the Metropolitan Line and it ran steam trains through its underground tunnels. This is North Weald Station, part of the Epping Ongar Heritage Railway in Essex. This centre houses a collection of historic trains and buses and is currently the home of a very special locomotive. It's the last Metropolitan Underground line steam locomotive in the country that's still in working order. Morning Alan. Morning Michael, nice to meet you. So this is it? This is it, 120 years old nearly. Welcome aboard. Okay. That's lovely. Then you've got a wonderful vista along the front. Oh yeah. Alan Coppin is one of the volunteers here at the centre and is one of the team responsible for the Metropolitan steam loco. Okay, so if you want to screw that off if you want to. Here we go. Get all the way off. How's that? Marvellous. If you want to blow the hood out. Oh! Whoa! There you go. I've always wanted to do that. Simple stuff. Get your iPhone out. Clear my side. There we go then. This locomotive, the Metropolitan One, used to carry people through the underground tunnels. It was still running on open stretches of the underground west of London to Chesham, right up until 1961. So what does it mean to you? I've always loved railways and particularly steam. Yeah. To be on this one particularly, I always find a great privilege. The early Victorian drivers would have had their name in the cab. It wasn't unusual for them to come in on their days off just to look after their loco. They were polished like your best silver service. You get a real sense in here of Victorian engineering. Wonderful. Can you just play the whistle there, Michael, for the crossing? You can make them sing. I don't know. The first section of the Metropolitan line ran from Paddington, taking in three major train stations, Paddington itself, Euston and Kings Cross, before ending at Farringdon. One of the first underground stations to be built on that initial stretch was Baker Street. Is this Baker Street station much as it was as it was built in the 1860s? Absolutely, this was part of the original Metropolitan Railway, opened just over 150 years ago in 1863, and this particular station has been kept more or less in its original condition. You can practically see the people with top hats, can't you? Absolutely, absolutely. To construct the first underground, they used a method called cut and cover. Where possible, engineers followed the roads to avoid knocking down buildings. Sealing off a portion of the road, they dug a giant trench straight along it. The sides of the trench were shored up with wooden planks before being lined with bricks. And finally, the top was roofed over with a brick arch and the road reinstated above. Being just below street level, these shallow tunnels are called subsurface lines. What would it have been like down here when they were really in the throes of building it? There would probably have been A couple of hundred men at least on this one station doing very physical things because they had virtually nothing to help them mechanically, they must have had a couple of cranes with steam engines, but other than that all of it was done by hand. Some of the spoil was taken to West London where it now forms part of the embankment at Chelsea Football Club. The workmen digging these tunnels were called navvies, an earlier term that was used for the men who built the navigation canals a century earlier. A lot of them were Irish because in the early and mid-19th century the Irish economy was very poor. A lot of men came over and the boom activity at the time was railway construction. They were tough guys. It was a sort of hard-living, hard-drinking area, and there were lots of reports of fights, both between themselves and with local communities. So the navvies were not popular, but they did the job in a way that probably nobody else could have done. A major challenge was avoiding the maze of pipes, drains and sewers that ran beneath the streets. Disaster soon struck when the wall of the Fleet Sewer burst. Its foul contents gushed out, smashing through the timbers and flooding a section of tunnel to a depth of 10 feet. The setback cost months of extra work and hundreds of thousands of pounds. But eventually, the first stretch of the Metropolitan Line opened in 1863. It was a huge achievement. There was great excitement when it opened. They even held a banquet down on the platform at Farringdon Station. Well, there was quite a fanfare there, and there were lots of people who went on the first trains. Apart from the celebratory trains where the notables came, the general public came very quickly and used it, and they kept using it as well. After the first year, the company receipts showed profits of over £100,000, which is the equivalent of around £9 million today. All testament to the vision of one pioneering Victorian, Charles Pearson. But constructing the Underground was only half the battle. The trains they ran on the tracks were leased from the mainline railway companies, trains that were never designed to run underground. See, there's a red line there, Alan. The idea... If it gets to there, we jump. Good job, good job. I'll be before you, I'll be right before you. No, you won't. You won't! Take us back to when... When this wonderful locomotive was actually on the Metropolitan Railway underground in Victorian times. Well, you've got this thing down here chuffing out this stuff and it must have been hell. It really must have been awful, you know. In those tunnels. In those tunnels. The soot, the smoke and the dirt, basically, and the sulphurous fumes. It must have been Dante's Inferno, you know. So what they've done, the earlier ones than this, this is a later one, they put condensing apparatus on them. How did that work? Well the idea was to reduce the smoke emissions from the chimney, obviously in the tunnels, by means of condensing. So what they did was they put pipes from the cylinders on a conventional locomotive, the exhausts are going up the chimney to the atmosphere, but in this case they came along the pipes into the top of the water tanks on the locomotive where the weight was condensed, turned into water and it reduced it to a fair extent, but it wasn't very successful. Clouds of smoke still engulf the underground tunnels. And what about the passengers? Well, that was their attitude in the early days. A lot of the early chemists, I understand, did make potions, you know, the metropolitan mixture. Well, for travelling on the underground. Yeah, buy our potion, we'll make a little bit of profit, you know, and it was supposed to cure like ailments and bronchitis and asthma, I'm not sure it did. And some of the crews asked for leave, a week's leave, to grow beards. Oh, really? Why? Well, they thought that the beards might help sort of stop some of the... Oh, filter the sulphur and all that for the... I don't think that might work. That didn't work. I can't see that work, no. No, but that's what they did. Despite the conditions being an engine driver on one of these trains was a good job to have and one they took pride in But it was a hard way to earn a living. What was it like for the crew? Long hours, very very dirty work I think you had to be You had to be a railwayman. I don't think it was a job for people I might try the railways I think your father was a railwayman, you know perhaps so you went on the railways and that's the way it was You know, but it was a back-breaking job I think they were a different breed of people. I think they were very tough people, yeah, and they were very... everything they've done was in my eyes, I think they were brilliant. I think you know they shaped Britain. The railways shaped Britain and certainly the early Metropolitan, you know, one of the first, and here it is 122 years later, it's great isn't it? Going marvellous, there's a contemporary account by a stoker called George Spiller, he said You could hardly breathe going through the tunnels. It was so hot. It was enough to boil you on the footplate It was a dirty, hot, sweaty job. It must have been tough. But just think back 150 years to the time when wonderful old locomotives like the Met One were transporting millions of people under the streets of London. Passengers weren't deterred by the smoky tunnels. The Metropolitan Railway continued to run steam locos on its tracks for the next 40 years until electric trains took over in the early 1900s. It was hugely successful. In the first year after it opened that line from Paddington to Farringdon carried 12 million passengers across London. It was the first underground railway in the world. The Metropolitan Railway proved that the idea was possible, and it paved the way for what was to come. But the next chapter was to push the success of the Underground to breaking point as a bitter feud threatened to jeopardise plans. And a new rival vehicle came to London that's largely been forgotten by history. We'll be right back. During the second half of the 19th century, Britain was in the throes of a major revolution. The sheer scale of the Victorian buildings, bridges and railway networks dwarfed anything seen before. New forms of transport were beginning to shape our towns and cities across the country, and none more so than the London Underground The Metropolitan Railway had always planned on extending its initial stretch of line, but the next stage of construction wouldn't be as straightforward as they'd hoped. And the Metropolitan Railway wasn't the only one to see an opportunity in expanding the underground. The promoters of these lines were very entrepreneurial. So they might see a small town or little village that was sort of two or three miles outside London. They said, well, we'll link that into the underground network And so they spread out in a rather higgledy-piggledy random fashion From the outset, there was always a plan to build a circle line that would connect some of the mainline railway stations and allow passengers to navigate London as a whole. Two companies were tasked with building it, the Metropolitan Railway and a new company, the District Railway Who were the key figures in all this? There were two key players in this, running the District, James Forbes, and the Metropolitan, Edward Watkin. Two rivals who actually disliked each other refused to have any negotiations and so built kind of bits of the underground that were not really connected to each other. Why do you think they hated each other so much? There were very different types. James Forbes was urbane, kind of relaxed, kind of witty, rather charming, an art collector. Edward Watkin was this very kind of focused, Empire builder, entrepreneur, only interested in money and I think that their personalities actually clash quite apart from the fact they were just traditional capitalist rivals. It took 21 years for the Circle line to be completed, largely because the two men never found a way to work together, and even then their rivalry continued. The Metropolitan Railway actually had the contract to run the trains in the clockwise direction and the District had the contract to run them in the anti-clockwise and if a passenger was foolish enough to go to the wrong ticket office, because they had two ticket offices at each of the stations, and buy a ticket that might involve travelling around 17 or 18 stations in the wrong direction, instead of one that might just take you five stations in the correct direction, they wouldn't bother. They would just take the money and say, oh yes, that's the long way around, that's the way you have to go. And what are the consequences of that rivalry for people using the underground today? One of the great examples of this is the fact that where we are at Hammersmith at the moment there are actually two stations and one was built by the District Railway which is over there and the other was built by the Metropolitan which is over there and the two did not connect at the time and still more than 150 years later they still don't connect and you have to cross a busy road to get from one to the other. Despite its ups and downs, the London Underground was still a marvel of its time. London was the great city of the world at the time, so it's not surprising that it developed an underground system 30 or 40 years before any other country actually developed one. So New York, Paris, Berlin, they all developed systems starting around 1900, which was 35, 40 years after we built our system. The Victorians deserve their reputation as the great inventors and innovators of the period. By the mid-1870s, an estimated 60 million passengers were travelling on the underground every year. As the Metropolitan line expanded, the company tried to limit the amount of damage that the construction caused, particularly in wealthy areas like here in Bayswater. The residents didn't want an ugly railway cutting through their elegant terraces. So, the solution was this, a frontage, that's in keeping with the rest of the street, round the back, it's a different story. Having demolished a whole house, the railway company built a brand new facade to fill the gap and hopefully keep the residents happy. New postmen were sometimes handed letters to deliver to this non-existent address, just as a joke. The Underground Railway opened up travel options around London and capitalised on offering what they called workman's trains with cheaper fares. But there were still lots of people who still couldn't afford to use it. But another kind of transport was about to put in an appearance in the city. It took its inspiration from the railways and it would revolutionise transport for the masses. It's a vehicle that today has largely disappeared from cities across Britain. The tram. It's similar to an omnibus but with a key difference. Its wheels ran on rails that were built along the roads. An original Victorian example is held here at the London Transport Museum. Tram was introduced in this country by an American called George Train. Wonderful name. And he set up three routes in London, but none of them actually prospered. The rails that carried the trams were slightly raised above the level of the road, which for Londoners was unacceptable. Other vehicles constantly bumping over these things, including the carriages of the mayors and aldermen and MPs who actually had the authority to allow tram systems. They hated the things. Everything changed in 1868. A company in Liverpool obtained a local act to introduce tram lines to their city. They did this by working out a way to lay the rails flush with the road surface. Once that happened, Trams had arrived, so from 1870 is when we have a tram system here in London. It actually made it fun to travel across London, which it had never, never been before. Pulling the tram on rails created less friction than wheels on a road, making them faster and smoother. A horse-drawn tram could pull up to 50 passengers, double the load of an omnibus. The rails were also simple and cheap to lay. Unlike the Underground, the tram companies didn't have to buy up land, which meant they could offer much cheaper fares. It meant that for the first time, and this is a crucial thing, for the first time you did not have to live within walking distance of where you worked. Just like the Underground Railway, the trams also offered workman's fares, making them overall the most affordable mode of transport. More working-class people could now move out to the suburbs, where they could have more space, even a garden, and a better quality of life. Paint me a picture of how it would change the lives of an ordinary woman. All right, well, suppose she was a milliner working in Oxford Street. She could actually live at home, travel to work, on a more or less predictable timetable, be there on time, come home late. Tram stops began appearing along residential streets. Householders soon saw an opportunity and began selling items like drinks and tobacco outside the front of their houses. People would often build this shop over their front garden. And there are entire districts in London where you can see that this has happened. The shop is one storey high, the building behind it is three. That is the origin of our suburban parades of shops they developed from those tram stops. So how much do you think did the trams, and by extension the Victorians themselves, contributed to the way we live now? Their habits of industry, education, culture, transport. are those that we still follow. We are walking in their footsteps. They created the modern world, there is no question about that. In 1875, nearly 50 million people travelled by tram across London. Elsewhere in Britain, their effect was even greater. Unlike London, in places like Liverpool, Edinburgh, Birmingham and Manchester, the trams were allowed right into the heart of the city centre. This meant whole tram networks enabled people to navigate right across town, opening up more possibilities for the masses to get around. Albert certainly looks very happy with his tram journey. Well, look how comfortable it is in here. Feels like a time traveller sitting in here, I know. taking us back to the age of the Victorians. For Londoners, though, the trams only took you so far. There was still the problem of how to get into the city centre, which for many involved getting across the Thames. Attention turned again to the Underground Railways. A young engineer had a radical solution, inspired by an invention of Isambard Brunel's father, Mark. This new idea opened a brand new chapter for the London Underground. During Queen Victoria's reign, Britain was the world's wealthiest nation. The population of London ballooned from two million to six million. To help get everyone moving, the London Underground was about to get a brand new line. A young engineer called James Greathead had a novel solution for how to build it. More people than ever before were living to the south of the river and getting across the Thames had become a nightmare. And so work began on the construction of what we now know as the Northern Line, the first deep underground tube line in the world. And the first section had to run right under the River Thames, starting there. In 1886, James Greathead and his team of navvies began constructing the first stretch of what would become the Northern Line. Trains still run through parts of that original Victorian tunnel. A legacy which today is undergoing a massive modern extension with works here at Kennington. Bloody hell. That's the shaft. There you go. That's a 25 meter drop. And that's the way they've been doing it for a hundred or more years? Yeah, absolutely. The only way to do it is going vertical. Keep talking. You're taking my mind off the drop. Drop. We're almost there. We're almost there. So far, so good. You're good. It's the size of a cathedral, isn't it? It's massive. It's a massive size, yeah. Look at that. How much earth did you have to shift to dig this out? It will be around 600 tonnes, more or less. 600 tonnes of earth? Yeah. Easy. So, it goes down here, does it? This is where the tube trains will run? That's when, in some years, the train will be running through here and connected to the Battersea Power Station. Let's go. Let's go. The key difference in 1886 between the Northern Line and the earlier underground metropolitan lines was that it went far deeper, avoiding the shallower pipes and sewers. In order to dig a deep tunnel, you first have to sink a shaft, essentially a giant hole, like this one at Kennington. It was the same for the Victorians. Once at the bottom, you can then start digging out the tunnels. Alejandro, we're right at the end of the line here, eh? Yes. So what's the process? So basically what they are doing right now is exposing clay. They are digging another metre of tunnel. How are they doing it? So basically what we do is with hand tools, with pneumatic tools, we dig the clay out with clay spades. And then after the face is exposed, we install timber. In order to construct the original Victorian stretch of tunnel, James Greathead used what became known as the Greathead Shield. It was a metal cylinder that protected the workers as they dug the tunnels, and it was based on an earlier model originally developed by Marc Brunel. As the men dug the tunnel out by hand, the shield was pushed forward by hydraulic screws. Cast iron segments were then placed behind to form the tunnel lining, giving it the distinct look that earned the nickname, The Tube, just like here at Kennington. But it's astonishing isn't it? 150 years after the Victorians did it, there are some guys with shovels. There will be always a requirement to do hand mining on tunnels. There always will be. Even with the latest technology, workers today use hand tools in areas that big machines can't access, or might damage any existing structures. How far can they put the tunnel in? A day, a week? Well, it depends on the guys as well. It depends how motivated they are, but they probably do around 5 to 8 metres a week. 5 to 8 metres a week? Yeah. Great Head's original line took four years to complete. Opening in 1890, it ran from a station called King William Street, heading south under the Thames to Stockwell. It was initially called the City and South London Railway. Later, it became the Northern Line. It was the first deep level tube line in the world. Do you think your tunnels will last as long as the Victorians? I will hope so, at least for 150 years more. You won't be around to see it. I don't think so. I'm going to go eat donuts. When the line opened, they couldn't run steam trains through such deep tunnels. They were too narrow, had no ventilation. Instead, they took a gamble. For the first time anywhere in the world, they ran electric trains through the tunnels. This is one of the original Victorian carriages that passengers traveled in on the Northern Line. It was called the padded cell, partly because of these rather wonderful old cushions, but also because there were no windows. These are mirrors. The designers thought that because they were going through tunnels, there was nothing to see, no point in looking out. Nearly five and a half million people traveled on the new line in its first year. By the end of Queen Victoria's reign, that had almost trebled. New modes of transport, like the Underground Railway and trams, were changing how people got about. But it wasn't just the big vehicles that could make a difference. There's one more vehicle that owes its existence to those pioneering Victorians. It's one that's had a huge revival in Britain over the last few years. The humble bicycle. Bikes, old and new, are celebrated in the annual Tweed Run event, including some Victorian examples. During the 19th century, they experimented with lots of designs for a sort of bicycle. Some were more successful than others. The penny farthing soon became a firm favourite. It's a fantastic experience because you get a great viewpoint from high up, but the penny farthing was a little bit hazardous to ride. If you fell off it, the consequences were pretty serious. But in the late 1880s, the penny farthing suddenly became obsolete. They'd found something much better. The safety bicycle. The introduction of the safety bicycle was really one of the most significant things in cycling history. Probably the most significant thing because it made cycling much safer for people. Unlike earlier experiments, the safety bike had some innovative features. It was lower, had almost equal sized wheels, was chain driven and easier to steer. Thank you. It wasn't just men that could ride it. Lots of women were keen to have a go too. Two. Many adopted what was called rational dress, such as bloomers and specially designed skirts, although not everyone approved. There's an awful lot of correspondence saying how disgusting it was that women were wearing these appalling creations. But there was a sort of hardcore of women that were very happy to adopt that type of clothing. Cycling had a huge effect on women's independence. They could travel wherever they chose, and without a chaperone. Just like the tram and underground before it, the safety bicycle opened up a wave of new possibilities. People could cycle to work, and in rural areas, travel and socialise beyond their communities. It became a form of transport for the masses. When Queen Victoria came to the throne, there was no such thing really as public transport. But by the end of her reign, everything had changed. People had options. People could get around in a way that they'd never been able to before. These brand new networks laid down by the Victorians were fundamental in shaping not just London, but the country as a whole. The legacy of the Victorians is everywhere you look. From engineering triumphs like the London Underground to simple vehicles like the tram that have transformed the layout of entire cities. Independent travel and our ability to get about is all thanks to the Victorians' immense determination to improve life for the people of Britain. Next time... I learn about the health crisis bringing Victorian Britain to its knees. Cholera killed hundreds if not thousands of people in each epidemic. How the great Victorians dug deep. To actually walk along a Victorian sewer and see how cleverly it's been built. It just amazes me every time I see it. And engineered a public health revolution. We've got to just take our hats off to the Victorians. They knew exactly what they were doing.