Mr. William Huskisson …. tell us how you would like to be remembered?

Now, as any railway enthusiast knows, Mr. William Huskisson is commonly known as the world's first widely reported railway passenger casualty having been run over and fatally wounded by Robert Stephenson's locomotive Rocket” at the official opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway in 1830.

Dreadful Accident, 1830

And that is a distinction which I doubt he would have wished for, and not one his contemporaries would necessarily have recognized.

Instead, it is more likely that had he not come into contact with the passing railway locomotive, any obituary would have begun with recording that aged just 19 he was in the thick of the French Revolution.

In 1790 he delivered a speech on the policies of the new Revolutionary Government to address imminent bankruptcy which resulted in him being seen as an expert on finance, and pretty much soon after came to the attention of Henry Dundas, the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister, William Pitt the Younger.

Over the course of the next 40 years, he was MP for various constituencies, and held high office in a number of important Government posts, from Secretary of War and the Colonies, to Leader of the House of Commons, and President of the Board of Trade.  Although my favourite is the less important but delightfully named, First Commissioner of Woods and Forests.

But before I get carried away with Mr. Huskisson, I have to say he was a man of his class, and as such opposed a minimum wage for weavers in 1826 arguing that any legally binding contract would be an intrusion between employee and employer in regulating pay.

In the same year he proposed the revised Consolidated Slave Law, which sought to mitigate concessions to those who were held as slaves, which had been instituted after the slave revolt in Barbados, and effectively gave the slave owners what they wanted.

Mr. Huskisson's letter, 1826

And at a time when sections of the media and the present political class clamour for more immigration controls it was Mr. Huskisson who oversaw the introduction of the Aliens Act which sought to regulate and monitor those seeking asylum from the upheavals in Revolutionary France.

All of which brings me to this envelope dated 1826 which was connected to the said Mr. Huskisson and comes from the collection of David Harrop.

It is the nearest I will get to the man himself, and is a reminder that bits of the “great and good”  remain in circulation.

Taking the strain, 1830

But of course, for most of us it will be that “dreadful accident" which stays with us.

That said I wonder how many “dreadful accidents” occurred on those earlier railways which ferried coal and other heavy goods but were yet to acquire the glamour of steam locomotives or the prestige of the first passenger railway line.

Picture, from the Observer, 1830, the first passenger carriage in Europe, 1830, George Stephenson´s steam locomotive, Liverpool and Manchester Railway, envelope connected to William Huskisson, 1826, courtesy of David Harrop

*Dreadful Accident to Mr. Huskison, The Observer, September 20th, 1830