I don’t know why Landmann resigned his commission but I believe he had orders for a posting which he did not want to take up = possibly to Ceylon. This may be an indication that there were reasons why the authorities wanted him out of the way. It is noticeable that in his life after he left the army he no longer seems to have contact with royalty and other elites - his whole lifestyle became much more down market. Remarkably the obituaries published after his death, some 30 years later, only describe his life up until the sale of his commission - there is never anything about his subsequent career and the building of two railways. This complete omission of his later life was continued in national biographies. After 1824 in official eyes he ceased to exist,
In 1821 his son Charles was born. Strangely his birthplace was a central London hotel - the Chedron Hotel in Leicester Square. He was later christened in the central London church of St Martin's in the Fields. I am convinced that these prominent locations were chosen to make some sort of statement - although I'm not entirely clear what it is. Landmann was not married to Charles’ mother – his wife and mother of Louisa and George was Harriett Dickinson - his new partner was Harriett Hayward, and her background is very interesting.
Harriett was 23 and had been born in Brandon, Suffolk. Her father was Philip Hayward and if you go to Brandon today you can see his house (https://www.brecsoc.org.uk/). There are many websites which describe him and how he set up the Brandon flint industry. In the late 18th century flint was increasingly needed in the manufacture of ordinance and it appears that originally it was sourced from chalk mines in the Swanscombe area, near Gravesend. Philip Hayward is said to have gone from there to Brandon in the 1790s to set up a flint knapping industry there which would provide huge amounts of flints for ordnance manufacture.
In the 1980s Stella, my then boss, had a house in the forest at Brandon and I spent a lot of time there and really got to know it. The whole town has reminders of the flint industry in names of houses, pubs and streets and all sorts of reminders of what was the major industry and a source of great changes in this small town.
Harriett Hayward appears to have been a respectable middle class young woman and maybe there was a scandal over Landmann’s relationship with her – although in the 1820s the moral climate was still – well – Georgian! They were to stay together, marrying in 1844 two months after his wife, Harriett Dickinson’s death.
In 1831 several other men became involved in setting up what became the Greenwich railway. So, before I start the actual story of the railway I need to look at the people who were involved at the start of it. In the early 19th century many, many companies were being floated and if you look at the newspapers of the day you will find many lists of these companies and proposals which include lists of the first investors and of those who want to launch the company. In the 1820s and 30s many of these flotations were about building new railways. I intend to look at these in the context of the Greenwich Railway but, first, there are more general issues involved.
So, back to Landmann and some of his contacts. After he resigned his commission in 1824 he apparently took off around Europe with William Congreve in order to try and sell gasworks to European cities, in which they were successful. They did this under the auspices of the London based Imperial Continental Gas Association. Congreve had been involved with a number of gas companies in London and , for example. had worked to bring the attention of royalty with a spectacular display at peace celebrations in 1814. He was involved in a number of gas companies - some with people who were less than honest.
The Imperial Continental Gas Association seems to have escaped some of these scandals and prospered, only being wound up in the 1980s – when some of the European gas industry was British owned, rather than the other way round. By chance when ICGA was in its last days I was in almost daily contact with its last Chair – he was a friend of Stella’s - and I was able to learn more about the history of the company through him.
One of the main promoters of the Imperial Continental Gas Association was Mathias Atwood who was a director and partner in Spooner Bank. Spooners became the bankers for the Greenwich Railway and Mathias Atwood was to become their Treasurer. Although most histories of the railway mention at Attwood as a prominent banker he was much more than that . The Attwoods were a large and interesting family who had spread from an iron works in the Black Country into to into chemicals and much else. Mathais’s father had made a fortune through a monopoly on Swedish iron. His brother was Thomas Attwood the Reformer and early Chartist. His son, Mathias Wolverley Attwood, was Member of Parliament for Greenwich. The fortunes of the Atwood family were very much based on the exploitation of new technologies – like ICGA and the Greenwich Railway.
In November 1831 notices appeared in the newspapers from a solicitor’s company announcing an application for an Act of Parliament to enable a railway to be built from London to Greenwich. This application resulted from the meeting of 25th of November of the group who were to constitute the first board, the body which would oversee the construction of the new railway. They were George Landmann himself with a George Walter, Abel Rous Dottin, Robert Johnston, Digby Neave. John Twells and A.K. Hutchinson . So who were they and what was their interest in the railway. They met in Dottin’s office
I think A.K. Hutchinson was the company solicitor and he was presumably present as an advisor.. George Walter was to becomer a major player in the construction of the early railway its construction but does not appear in the list of subscribers which was published soon after the notice of intention to go to Parlisment. I think he probably deserves quite a long piece about his background and activities –so you will have to wait for another week for that.
Abel Rous Dottin was the first Chair. He was by then in his
sixties and had had a past as a Captain in
the 2nd Life Guards . He is described as ‘a gentleman of ample means
and genial disposition - a fine old English gentleman’. (Hmm!). His family’s fortune
was based on Plantations in Barbados and In 1837 he was ro receive compensation
for estates there and 174 slaves.
In the 1830s Dottin was a
Member of Parliament for Southampton. Earlier however, in 1818, he had been MP
for Gatton - Gatton? At school when we learnt
about the 1832 Reform Bill we were told
about Gatton – the rottenmost of rotten Boroughs. It had a couple of electors who usually sold
their votes for cash. You can still see the ‘Town Hall‘ – basically a garden folly
in the grounds of a school.In the 1830s as MP for Southampton
Dottin was involved in the Southampton and London Railway and Dock Company and
later he was a Director of the London and South Western Railway.
Robert Johnson was another West Indies slave owner but one who
was widely travelled. He moved to the United States quite soon after his
involvement with the Greenwich Railway and so was not around to see it finished
and open.
Digby Neave seems have been
rather different. He was a Baronet with an
estate in the Romford area of Essex. He was also an artist exhibiting at the Royal Academy and a close friend of
Constable. He was related by marriage to Abel Dottin and late he was
also involved in the Dover Railway Company and New Gravesend Railway Companies.
John Twells was a partner in the Spooner Attwood Bank and related
by marriage to the Attwood family
Thus we can see that the steering committee of the Greenwich railway consisted
of middle aged and elderly men, some of them MPs and mostly Tories - with a strong element of
bankers and, I’m afraid, slave owners. Ron
Thomas pointed out in his history of the London & Greenwich that some of
them had service connexions in the army.
I will finish here with George Landmann and note the birth in
September 1832 of his daughter Helen Catherine – his second child with Harriett
Haywood. . We should also note that her
birth was in the Old Kent Road; an area into which Landmann had recently moved
and something which I will take up in a
future article. .She was however baptised, like her elder brother, at St Martin
in the Fields.
Helen is the most interesting of Landmann’s children and in fact
he seems to have done rather better with his daughters than with his sons. I have not yet detailed his eldest child,
Louisa, who by the time of Helen’s birth was 28 years old - and there will be more
to come about both of them.
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