minimal. Only tiny slits were placed high on the sides. It was also feared
that the passengers might panic at the sight of the walls of the tunnel rushing past them. The seats were quilted. So the carriages were known as “padded cells.” A guard stood at the end of each carriage, and announced the names of the stations en route; he also called out warnings. “Beware of card sharks on this train!” “It is forbidden to ride on the roof!” The novel insertion of tunnels into the London clay led to the notion of “the
tubes” under the earth; soon enough they became known as the Tube, a name that has persisted ever since. When theCentral Line was inaugurated in the summer of 1900 it became known as “the Twopenny Tube” because of the flat price of the tickets.
The building of these tunnels deep beneath the earth had dangers of its own; by the early years of the twentieth century they were bored by a rotary excavator that had knives at its front digging out the earth and depositing it onto a conveyor belt. Yet the atmospheric pressure at these depths was very high, and a report written in 1908 informed theInstitution of Civil Engineers that “a great deal of illness resulted among the
men, but there were not many fatal cases.” The workmen were suffering from the disorder known to deep-sea divers as “the bends.” On one occasion the air escaped through the bed of the Thames and boiled 3 feet high above the surface, overturning a boat.
Inside the “padded cell” of the City and South London Railway (illustration credit Ill.28)
The Fleet floods destroy the underground workings atFarringdon, 1862 (illustration credit Ill.29)
The trains on the Stockwell Line of 1890 were the first to be powered by electricity, and thus it became the first underground electric railway in the world. It also provided another innovation. There were no first classes or second classes in this new world. Alltickets were charged at the same rate, and all of the carriages were identical. It caused outrage in some quarters, and the
Railway Times
complained that lords and ladies would now be travelling with Billingsgate fishwives and Smithfield porters. Yet, as a reading of Dante would have suggested, all are equal in the underworld.
In the summer of 1867 a woman had dropped dead atBishop’s Road station on the Metropolitan Line, and an inquest resolved that she had died “by natural causes, accelerated by the suffocating atmosphere of the Underground Railway.” By 1898, 550 trains were passing beneath the surface of London every day. A driver told a parliamentary commission that “very seldom” was the smoke thick enough to obscure
the tunnels. One chronicler of the city recorded in his diary for 23 June 1887 that “I had my first experience of Hades today.” He was travelling betweenBaker Street andMoorgate, but the windows of the carriage were closed to lessen the effect of the smoke and sulphur in the tunnels. He added, however, that “the compartment in which I sat was filled with passengers who were smoking pipes, as is
the English habit”; as a result he was “near dead from asphyxiation and heat.” In 1897 one passenger was almost overcomewith the fumes, and was escorted up to the street and a nearby chemist’s. The chemist looked at him for a moment. “Oh I see,” he said, “Metropolitan Railway.” He poured out a glass of some remedial mixture. The passenger asked him if he had many such cases. “Why bless you,
sir,” he replied. “We often have twenty cases a day.” A proposal was made to place evergreen shrubs on the station platforms, to reduce the effect of carbonic acid, but it was not accepted.
Some claims were made that the atmosphere of the Underground had benign effects, just as the sewer workers of the period believed that their labours rendered them healthier. The underworld may be seen as a source of strength. The fumes were so beneficial thatGreat Portland Street station was
that the passengers might panic at the sight of the walls of the tunnel rushing past them. The seats were quilted. So the carriages were known as “padded cells.” A guard stood at the end of each carriage, and announced the names of the stations en route; he also called out warnings. “Beware of card sharks on this train!” “It is forbidden to ride on the roof!” The novel insertion of tunnels into the London clay led to the notion of “the
tubes” under the earth; soon enough they became known as the Tube, a name that has persisted ever since. When theCentral Line was inaugurated in the summer of 1900 it became known as “the Twopenny Tube” because of the flat price of the tickets.
The building of these tunnels deep beneath the earth had dangers of its own; by the early years of the twentieth century they were bored by a rotary excavator that had knives at its front digging out the earth and depositing it onto a conveyor belt. Yet the atmospheric pressure at these depths was very high, and a report written in 1908 informed theInstitution of Civil Engineers that “a great deal of illness resulted among the
men, but there were not many fatal cases.” The workmen were suffering from the disorder known to deep-sea divers as “the bends.” On one occasion the air escaped through the bed of the Thames and boiled 3 feet high above the surface, overturning a boat.
Inside the “padded cell” of the City and South London Railway (illustration credit Ill.28)
The Fleet floods destroy the underground workings atFarringdon, 1862 (illustration credit Ill.29)
The trains on the Stockwell Line of 1890 were the first to be powered by electricity, and thus it became the first underground electric railway in the world. It also provided another innovation. There were no first classes or second classes in this new world. Alltickets were charged at the same rate, and all of the carriages were identical. It caused outrage in some quarters, and the
Railway Times
complained that lords and ladies would now be travelling with Billingsgate fishwives and Smithfield porters. Yet, as a reading of Dante would have suggested, all are equal in the underworld.
In the summer of 1867 a woman had dropped dead atBishop’s Road station on the Metropolitan Line, and an inquest resolved that she had died “by natural causes, accelerated by the suffocating atmosphere of the Underground Railway.” By 1898, 550 trains were passing beneath the surface of London every day. A driver told a parliamentary commission that “very seldom” was the smoke thick enough to obscure
the tunnels. One chronicler of the city recorded in his diary for 23 June 1887 that “I had my first experience of Hades today.” He was travelling betweenBaker Street andMoorgate, but the windows of the carriage were closed to lessen the effect of the smoke and sulphur in the tunnels. He added, however, that “the compartment in which I sat was filled with passengers who were smoking pipes, as is
the English habit”; as a result he was “near dead from asphyxiation and heat.” In 1897 one passenger was almost overcomewith the fumes, and was escorted up to the street and a nearby chemist’s. The chemist looked at him for a moment. “Oh I see,” he said, “Metropolitan Railway.” He poured out a glass of some remedial mixture. The passenger asked him if he had many such cases. “Why bless you,
sir,” he replied. “We often have twenty cases a day.” A proposal was made to place evergreen shrubs on the station platforms, to reduce the effect of carbonic acid, but it was not accepted.
Some claims were made that the atmosphere of the Underground had benign effects, just as the sewer workers of the period believed that their labours rendered them healthier. The underworld may be seen as a source of strength. The fumes were so beneficial thatGreat Portland Street station was
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