JOHN WILLIAMS AND SUBWAYS
Subways, to take services below the streets,
have long been a subject of study to those interested in what goes under. Often
quoted in this context is An Historical Account of Subways in the Metropolis
by John Williams.[i]
This paper is an attempt to find out more about him.
Most of what is known about Williams is gleaned
from his own writings, the very commonness of his name makes him difficult to
research. He said he was a 'patentee of
account books'. This patent might have been the one taken out in 1799 'for
binding books' by John and Joseph Williams of Holywell Street, St. Clement
Danes.[ii]
They were music publishers and perhaps he was one of the family. By 1802 his
stationery business was at 20 Cornhill.
In 1802 John Williams, then of Portsmouth, took out a patent for 'disengaging horses from carriages safely'.[iii] Later, from Cornhill, he patented ways of 'preserving the equilibrium',[iv] 'covering'[v] and 'making carriages stable and commodious'.[vi] Thus evincing an early interest in road safety.
Before 1811 Williams became one of an elite
group of supporters of the first ever gas company. The use of inflammable gas
for lighting had evolved towards the end of the eighteenth century. The idea of a centralised public supply gas
factory emerged in London via a very eccentric German, Frederick Albert Winsor.
In 1804 he promoted 'The New Patriotic Imperial and National Patent Company for
establishing sundry manufactories to make ..... inflammable Air .. to the
purposes of Lighting...'.[vii]
He gathered up a group of promoters, of which John Williams was one. These
first subscribers were 'Gentlemen of great respectability and science'[viii]
including members of the aristocracy and elite business classes. This raises a
problem, as we will see there is no indication that Williams was ever
particularly wealthy and it is likely that he was, at least, under thirty at
this time. Does this mean that Winsor's list of promoters was not all that it
was made out to be?
Williams later claimed his influence in ensuring
that from the earliest trials of gas lighting that pipework went underground
where possible, and he complained when the local authorities insisted that
pipes, laid for demonstration purposes, were removed. We have only his word for
this.
The first public gas works was set up in 1812;[ix] Williams seems to have had very little more to do with it although he supplied their first set of minute books.[x] The last heard of Williams and the early gas industry is when, in 1822, he had his gas supply disconnected. By then other gas companies had been set up and were squabbling over areas of supply. Williams signed up to buy gas from a rival, the City of London Gas Company, and caused a minor furore in the process.[xi]
By 1822 Williams' mind was
elsewhere. In 1817 he had written to Michael Angelo Taylor a Member of
Parliament with a known interest in street improvements. Williams asked him for
help in lobbying to achieve the subject of his recent patent; 'a method to
prevent the frequent removal of the pavement and carriage paths'. Thus were his ideas for street subways
initiated, apparently springing from his experiences in the early gas industry.
The patent embodied ideas from which he never really deviated - understreet
passages, connected to houses.[xii]
He proposed a line for his first subway which was very close to that which
eventually became the District Railway.
Initially he promoted this
scheme by calling a public meeting. Although this was 'by no means numerously
attended', it brought the subject into the public eye. Later a committee was
set up to continue the promotion and included a young architect, Henry Willey
Reveley, son of a more famous father. Willey produced drawings of the proposed
subways, before leaving to continue his career in South Africa.[xiii]
Williams attracted a number of interested parties to his meetings, there was always someone who reminded him
that subways were first done in ancient Rome, as well as well known eccentrics
like Baron Berenger.[xiv]
The Committee issued a
prospectus for a London Subway Company. They petitioned Parliament, and busied
themselves by writing to the water and gas companies to ask for support,
receiving no replies. They seem to have received some support from interests in
the City of London and for a while a City Alderman chaired their meetings. They
were delighted when a Parliamentary Committee was appointed to look into the
management of the various Sewer Commissions. However this Committee's report
did not examine subways at all. Williams petitioned Parliament again but this
petition was mislaid. He began to protest, but was persuaded by the City
Remembrancer, that Parliament must not be inconvenienced. It seemed that the authorities really did not
intend to take an interest. He began to petition against the Acts of Parliament
which enabled newly formed gas companies to open the pavements. However, he did
not attend these Parliamentary Enquiries and his petitions seem never to have
been heard.
After two years Williams
was tired and feeling the strain of the cost and time to his family. He decided
to auction his patent at Garraways Coffee House - the results of the sale are
not known. Four years later his book on subways was published. He attributed his the scheme's failure to
competition from the many contemporary, and often fraudulent, speculative
'bubbles'.
For the next sixteen years
nothing was heard of Williams and his subways. His stationery business must
have done well and by 1846 he had moved to a 'patent ledger warehouse' in
Bucklersbury. He seems to have retired and was living in Ramsgate, Lewisham,
or, perhaps Devenport.
By the 1840s other, and
ultimately more successful, campaigns for underground services were in
progress. Williams began to lobby again. He was to write two more books[xv]
adding to the list of uses 'sub-arches' could be put. They would ensure, for
instance, that water could be kept clean, malaria would cease, the water supply
would not freeze. Railways could be carried through the subways, clean,
propelled by 'tracktion' and free because they would be subsidised by the rents
of associated shops. There would be a cattle station at Smithfield, also
underground as well as space for the telegraph.
Williams wrote busily to the national press explaining his system. It is
not clear if any of his letters were ever published. Something very similar to all this was being
put forward, and even implemented by others. There is no evidence that any of
these, more successful, promoters had ever heard of Williams.
One of the members of the
new Metropolitan Board of Works was Alexander Wright, a distinguished
consultant gas engineer. In 1857 he proposed that the Board give a prize to the
best scheme for subways. The competition duly took place and Williams wrote to
the to claim subways as his invention and asking for recognition. The Board
merely noted that he had no claims on them.[xvi]
By 1857 Williams must have
been an old man. Census and directory evidence from the towns to which he seems
to have retired have thrown up no conclusive identification. A will cannot be
traced. Perhaps he was the John Williams, living on stocks and shares in Lee
Park, Lewisham, in 1851, with his wife and son, or, perhaps he was the John
Williams, whose private income was supplemented by his wife's paying holiday
makers, in Ramsgate.[xvii] In either case, he had clearly declined from
the days when he was a 'Gentlemen of respectability' who had promoted the first
gas company.
[i].John
Williams, An Historical Account of Subways in the Metropolis for the flow of
pure water & gas into the houses of the inhabitants without disturbing the pavements, including the projects of 1824 & 1825, Carpenter,
London, 1828.
[ii].2355
[iii].2600.
[iv].3091
[v].3086
[vi].3091
[vii].F.A.Winsor,
New Patriotic Imperial , etc. London, nd.
[viii].Ibid
[ix].Most
histories of the early gas industry describe this, in particular see: Sterling
Everard, The History of the Gas Light & Coke Company 1812-1949,
Benn.Bros., London, 1949.
[x].Williams'
maker's mark can be found inside volumes in NT Gas Collection, GLRO.
[xi].Directors'
Minutes, Gas Light and Coke Co. (GLRO) and City of London Gas Co. (Guildhall
Library), 1822.
[xii].Details
of this, and connected events, were described by Williams in 'Historical
Account of Subways'.
[xiii].DNB
(entry for Reveley Sen.)
[xiv].For
Berenger see any one of the many biographies of Admiral Thomas Cochrane -
Berenger was 'the man in the white cockade'. Some amusing details of his later
life can be found in Gillian Tindall The Fields Beneath, Temple Smith,
1977.
[xv].John
Williams, Metropolitan Subarches Railway. An Entirely New System, 1854;
John Williams,Sub railways in london, 1844.
[xvi].Met.
Board of Works Minutes 1857-8.
[xvii].1851
Census information.
[xviii].Journal
of Gas Lighting. 2nd August 1859
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