Description:The letter featured above was written to James Loch by Robert Haldane Bradshaw in December 1824. Robert Haldane Bradshaw was Superintendent of the Bridgewater Canal. According to the will of Francis Egerton, the third Duke of Bridgewater (1736-1803), Bradshaw was entrusted with overseeing the management of the Bridgewater Canal. The Leveson-Gower family had a direct financial interest in the Bridgewater Canal. Granville Leveson-Gower, Marquis of Stafford (1721-1803) had invested in the construction of the canal which K. R. Fairclough describes as England’s ‘first arterial canal’. When the Duke of Bridgewater died in 1803 he bequeathed the income of the Bridgewater Canal to the Marquis’s first son George Granville Leveson-Gower who became the first Duke of Sutherland in 1833.
Professor Eric Richards describes Robert Bradshaw as being an extremely strict canal manager, exhorting high charges from canal users and ‘revelling in his profits’. Completely opposed to the railways, Bradshaw was reluctant to compromise by revising his management of the Bridgewater Canal to allow canals to function profitable alongside the new railways. As Professor Richards writes ‘Bradshaw was possessed by a total blind commitment to his canal…other forms of transport were unspeakable and unthinkable’.
In the letter above Bradshaw refers to a number of rumours he had heard concerning the Marquis of Stafford which troubled him. Bradshaw reports hearing stories that the Marquis of Stafford had decided to invest in the railways to ensure the income of his eldest son and make money from railway lines passing through his estates.
Bradshaw’s letter reflects his hostile view of the railways and their promoters, particularly where he describes the struggle between canal proprietors and railway promoters as a ‘War’. Opposed to the railways at all costs, Bradshaw’s letter indicates his anxiety that James Loch and the Marquis of Stafford would choose to support the railway promoters.
His sceptical view of the railways is evident where he refers to prospectuses issued by the railway promoters as ‘extraordinary assertions’ made by ‘the Dupes of these Schemes’. The detrimental effect which the railways were having on Bradshaw is apparent in the tone of the letter and also in the date on which the letter was written. At the conclusion of his letter Bradshaw reports that even at Christmas he had ‘people to see, and plague me’.
Click on the image on the left to see James Loch’s response to Bradshaw’s letter.
For in-depth contextual analysis of correspondence relating to the development of inland transport during this period, see Professor Eric Richards The Leviathan of Wealth: The Sutherland Fortune in the Industrial Revolution (Routledge, 1973) which has formed the basis for interpretation of the letters featured here.
For information about Francis Egerton, the third Duke of Bridgewater and the Bridgewate Canal, see K. R. Fairclough, ‘Egerton, Francis, third duke of Bridgewater (1736–1803)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/8584]