Charles Pearson (politician)

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Charles Pearson

Charles Pearson (born October 4, 1793 in the City of London , † September 14, 1862 in Wandsworth ) was a British politician . As a member of the Liberal Party , he was a member of the House of Commons from 1847 to 1850 . He received far greater attention outside parliament as a reform activist. He campaigned against corruption in the judiciary, for criminal law reform and the abolition of the death penalty, as well as for universal suffrage .

Pearson used his position as solicitor (advocate) of the City of London to bring about improvements in transportation. First, he proposed a central train station for London, which would be used by several railway companies and bring commuters to the city. When this plan failed, Pearson used his political influence to advance the project of an underground railway line that would connect the capitals of the capital. The resulting Metropolitan Railway was the world's first underground and formed the nucleus of the extensive network of today's London Underground .

biography

family

Charles Pearson was born on October 4, 1793 at 25 Clement's Lane in the City of London . He was the son of the upholsterer and pen dealer Thomas Pearson and Sarah Pearson. He received his education at a boarding school in Eastbourne , after which he was employed by his father as an apprentice for a short time . However, he decided to study law instead and was approved as a solicitor in 1816 . The Worshipful Company of Haberdashers released him from his training contract in 1817 and he married the portrait painter Mary Martha Dutton . The couple had one child, a daughter born in 1820.

Political activities

Also in 1817 Pearson was elected councilman (councilman) of the City of London Corporation ; As such, he represented the Ward Bishopsgate until 1820 and again from 1830 to 1836. He was also from 1831 to 1833 the city health authority. In 1839 he gave up his law firm and was then solicitor of the City of London - a position he held until his death.

Despite his high-ranking background and his ex officio high social status, Pearson represented radical liberal views. All his life he was committed to progressive and reformist causes. In the course of the Catholic emancipation , he succeeded in having the inscription on the monument removed in memory of the Great Fire of London , which blamed the Catholics for the catastrophe. Other merits were the abolition of corrupt juries in political trials and the readmission of Jews as stockbrokers in the city. Pearson advocated abolishing the state church status of the Church of England and the abolition of the death penalty . He also supported universal suffrage and reforms in parliamentary constituencies. He tried unsuccessfully to break the local monopoly of the gas works by making the distribution network the common property of the consumers.

Pearson was a member of the Liberal Party and was elected MP for the constituency of Lambeth in the 1847 general election. His election campaign was shaped by the desire to express his views on criminal law reform in parliament. In August 1850, he gave up his House of Commons by being appointed steward of the Chiltern Hundreds .

Campaign for a subway

Pearson recognized the problem of increasing traffic congestion in the city and in the rapidly growing suburbs. In 1845 he published a leaflet calling for the construction of an underground railway line through the Fleet Valley to Farringdon . An atmospheric railway was planned in which trains would have been transported through the tunnels using compressed air. Although the proposal was mocked and received no approval (due to the inadequacy of the proposed technology, the project would have failed anyway), Pearson continued to lobby for various rail projects in the 1840s and 1850s.

Pearson's proposal for a central London train station with space for five rail companies (marked A, B, C, D, E)

With the support of the City of London Corporation, Pearson proposed the construction of a central railway station for London in the Farringdon district in 1846, at a cost of around a million pounds . The station, which was to be used by several railway companies, would have been connected from the north via a 24 m wide covered cut. Pearson's goal with the train station project was to improve the living conditions of the workforce by enabling them to build cheap houses outside of the city and to travel to their workplaces at discounted rates by rail. The royal commission for metropolitan terminus stations set up in 1846 rejected the proposal because they wanted to keep the central urban area free of railway systems.

In 1854 another royal commission was set up to consider numerous new proposals for railways in London. Pearson submitted a proposal for a train between the terminal stations and presented the results of the first traffic census carried out in London as evidence . This demonstrated the high degree of traffic jams caused by a large number of wagons , cabs and horse-drawn buses . Pearson commented:

“The overcrowding of the city is caused firstly by the natural increase in population and area of ​​the surrounding district, secondly by the influx of provincial passengers on the major railways north of London, and by the obstruction perceived in the streets by buses and cabs from their distant train stations to take provincial travelers to and from the heart of the city. Next, I point to the increase in what I call the migratory population: the urban population that now commutes between the countryside and the city, leaving the City of London every afternoon and returning every morning. "

Many of the proposed projects were rejected, but the commission recommended building a railway connecting the terminal stations to the docks and the General Post Office . A privately filed bill for the Metropolitan Railway between Paddington and Farringdon became final on August 7, 1854 after parliamentary deliberations. Although Pearson was neither a director nor a major shareholder of the Metropolitan Railway, he worked tirelessly for the success of the project in the years that followed. Through his influence it was possible to raise the capital of one million pounds needed for the railway construction. Pearson published a pamphlet promoting investment; he even persuaded the City of London to participate.

Construction site of the Metropolitan Railway at King's Cross (1861)

In 1860 the financing was secured and the exact route laid down, after which the construction work began. Pearson died of edema on September 14, 1862 . So he did not live to see the opening of the Metropolitan Railway on January 10, 1863, to whose realization he had made a significant contribution. He had always refused a reward from the grateful railway company, but shortly after the opening, the widow was awarded an annual pension of £ 250.

Author Christian Wolmar sees Pearson as the most likely person to have been the first to propose the construction of an underground train to deal with London's traffic problems. Michael Robbins states that the Metropolitan Railway, the world's first underground train, would probably never have come into being in this form “without Pearson's ongoing, sometimes annoying work”.

literature

  • FWS Craig: British parliamentary election results 1832–1885 . tape 2 . Parliamentary Research Services, Chichester 1989, ISBN 0-900178-26-4 .
  • Jim Harter: World Railways of the Nineteenth Century - A Pictorial history in Victorian Engravings . Johns Hopkins University Press , Baltimore 2005, ISBN 0-8018-8089-0 ( online ).
  • Charles Pearson: The Substance of an Address Delivered by Charles Pearson, Esq. at a Public Meeting on the 11th, 12th and 18th of December 1843 . Pelham Richardson & John Ollivier, London 1844 ( online ).
  • Christian Wolmar : The Subterranean Railway: How the London Underground Was Built and How It Changed the City Forever . Atlantic Books, London 2004, ISBN 1-84354-023-1 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Michael Robbins: Pearson, Charles (1793-1862) . In: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography . Oxford University Press , Oxford 2004, doi : 10.1093 / ref: odnb / 38367 .
  2. ↑ a b Wolmar: The Subterranean Railway. P. 8.
  3. ↑ a b c Wolmar: The Subterranean Railway. P. 17.
  4. ^ Pearson: The Substance of an Address Delivered by Charles Pearson. Pp. 26-27.
  5. ^ The General Election (Report of Pearson's election address in Lambeth). In: The Times , July 28, 1847.
  6. ↑ a b Craig: British parliamentary election results 1832–1885. P. 12.
  7. ↑ London Gazette . No. 21125, HMSO, London, August 9, 1850, p. 2183 ( PDF , accessed March 23, 2016, English).
  8. ^ Harter: World Railways of the Nineteenth Century. P. 503.
  9. ^ Grand Central Railway Terminus. In: The Times , May 12, 1846.
  10. ^ A b Metropolitan Railway Terms. In: The Times , July 1, 1846.
  11. ↑ a b Wolmar: The Subterranean Railway. P. 22.
  12. ↑ London Gazette . No. 21581, HMSO, London, August 11, 1854, pp. 2465–2466 ( PDF , accessed March 28, 2016, English).
  13. ↑ Wolmar: The Subterranean Railway. P. 32.
  14. ↑ Wolmar: The Subterranean Railway. P. 40.
  15. ↑ Wolmar: The Subterranean Railway. Pp. 8-9.
personal data
SURNAME Pearson, Charles
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British politician and railroad pioneer
DATE OF BIRTH October 4, 1793
PLACE OF BIRTH City of London
DATE OF DEATH September 14, 1862
Place of death Wandsworth