The Railways: Nation, Network and People

by Simon Bradley

Crucial to the levelling-up of standards was the steady rise in the proportion of travellers who took third-class tickets. The early railway decades showed that it was possible to upgrade the experience of travel for the lowest class considerably without discarding the principle of three-way classification. Yet there was quite a difference between shivering in an open pen and sitting in a glazed compartment, however cramped, with the consolation of a lamp somewhere overhead. Second-class traffic therefore tended to leak away to the improved thirds. By 1874, the last year before the Midland’s dual-class service began, 77 per cent of railway journeys were already by third class. Nor was first class immune; on the Great Northern its share fell from 7 per cent to 3.5 per cent of travel between 1872 and 1884, while second class slipped from 25 per cent to 6.5 per cent. By 1913, 96 per cent of all journeys were third-class, accounting for 85 per cent of passenger revenue. It should be stressed too that the ordinary British third-class carriage of the time was greatly superior to the Continental equivalent, where wooden seats were still standard. Baedeker’s guide thus assured overseas visitors that it was acceptable for ‘a superior class’ to go third, especially on longer journeys. This converging experience of travel is one of the greatest instances of social levelling in our history. It is hard to think of any parallel during the period. Living conditions improved, but housing ...