George Walter - first manager of the Greenwich Railway

 

Well I thought it was about time I came back and did another episode of the series I've been doing on the setting up of the Greenwich Railway and the work on it by George Landmann. The last episode I did was about the first meeting of the London and Greenwich Railway Company and described some of the other people involved – the ones who attended that meeting.  However the person who worked most closely with Landmann on the railway wasn't at that meeting and so I didn't say anything about him. So perhaps I should do that now. This was George Walter and there are several biographical articles on him on the net and I hope I'm able to say something additional to them – however in doing that I am going to have leave out a lot from the eighteen pages of notes I have accumulated!

George Walter was to play a crucial role in managing much of the construction and setting up of the railway.  He was what I suppose we should describe as a businessman. He was 40 years old in 1830; the son of the Rev. Edward Newton Walter, a clergyman whose family are said to have lost money in the South Sea Bubble. In George’s childhood they were based in Somerset but later moved to Leigh on Sea. Strangely a public baptism is recorded for him along with his brothers and sisters when he was nine years old.

George’s father was a descendant of the Barbadian  slave owning Alleyne family and it is thought that George spent time as a young man living with relatives in Jamaica.  Both Abel Rous Dottin, the first Chairman of the London and Greenwich Railway, and Robert Johnston, one of the first directors, were George Walter’s cousins. They were members of a large and complex family some of whom lived in Barbados and some in England but who could all trace back to 17^th century slaver ancestors. When I wrote about Abel Dottin here a few weeks ago I was not aware of his, or other family members, ownership of slave plantations. Johnston was also a slave owner. Clearly this is a subject which needs more investigation in order to establish if any money derived from slave ownership was invested in the railway. 

George Walter joined the Royal Marines just before 1810. In 1811 he became 2nd Lieutenant in the 133rd Company and was posted to HMS Chatham as Lieutenant of Marines. The ship was taken out of commission in 1815 and he was placed on Reserve at half-pay. He is described in many later reports as a ‘half pay lieutenant in the Royal Marines’.

By the early 1820s George Walter was working in the City and a member of the Stock Exchange from 1823. In 1824 he was married in Lewisham Parish Church and seems to have moved to Blackheath at around that time. Marriage was quickly followed by the birth of Abel and then Charlotte, the first two of his twelve children. Five years later in March 1829 a third child, George, was born but, sadly, only a few weeks later George's wife Mary died, followed  a few days later by three year old Abel.  The family was then living in Montpelier Cottage which was roughly on the corner of what is now Weymiss Road and Montpelier Row and it is long since demolished.

In 1829 he founded the General Annuity Endowment Association. This was a form of tontine  - in which members have an interest in outliving all the others. It appears that this provided George Walter’s City office where Greenwich Railway directors sometimes met. He seems not to be associated with this company by the 1840s by which time his business interests seemed to concentrate on transport companies.

He was involved with several of what we would describe as ‘infrastructure development’ projects; all of them privately promoted. One of these, in 1825, was the Portsmouth to London Ship Canal project, described as a ‘stupendous national undertaking before which all other canals sink into mere ditches’. It was to take the largest East Indiamen and ‘ships of the line of battle’. I would be riveted to know where exactly ‘down from Deptford’ they had found space for a canal which would take battleships. The scheme was soon abandoned. In 1831 he was one of the promoters of the unsuccessful Southampton and London Railway and Dock Company, with Abel Rous Dottin and Robert Johnston.

Walter became Secretary of the London and Greenwich Railway from the 1^st October 1831. Following a quick visit to the Manchester and Liverpool railway to find out how to do it, he was then working flat out on the management of the project-  its finances, construction and the first years of its working. Details will be in future articles.

He was also involved in promoting the numerous extensions and associated lines being promoted as an extension to the railway - in particular the Gravesend Railway. This is of particular interest to Greenwich since it involves the viaduct which was proposed to go through Greenwich Park. This is a subject I will come back to.  There were a number of other railways proposed including a major project  to the West Country - the Salisbury and Exeter railway. There was also a planned Calcutta Railway. I am curious about this link to Calcutta since I think it is possible that Walter went there in his youth – although references might be to someone with the same name. None of these railway extensions were ever in fact built, nor was a proposed locomotive manufacturing facility.

It's worth noting, although not relevant to Greenwich, that there was one completed railway in which Walter and Landmann were involved. This was the long closed Preston and Wyre Railway  - which I have walked the length of. It was part of the development of Fleetwood, the small seaside town which remains very down market but with Burton’s amazing architecture, real functioning trams and a pervading smell of Fisherman's Friends. George Landmann however seems to have made a real mess of his work on the harbour and railway there for Peter Fleetwood, who, it is worth noting, was a director of the proposed Kent Railway.

In 1835 Walter founded and subsidised the Railway Magazine. In 1836 he sold it to John Herapath. I wrote an article here last December about Percival Parsons which also involved his neighbour in Kidbrook Park Road. This  was John Herapath’s son and he eventually took over the magazine. If you want to check this out and any other of my past articles you can find them all at  https://maryswritegreenwich.blogspot.com/

By 1837 when the railway was partially opened questions began to be raised around the financing of the railway and an inquiry was called for. In July Walter resigned his appointment and Abel Dottin resigned as Chair. At a subsequent shareholders meeting Walter was refused admission and was forcibly restrained from entering by police.

Walter was to follow this up over the years with ‘a number of self justifying pamphlets’. However his contribution was appreciated in Deptford when in 1838 a dinner was given in his honour and he was presented with a silver chalice. Later a commemorative  ‘Railway Medal’ was produced for sale. In 1840 there was an attempt to get him appointed as one of the new railway inspectors –but these posts went to Royal Engineers.

Meanwhile Walter had another major interest. On Hope Wharf on Deptford Creek he was involved in setting up the Kamptulicon factory.  I wrote about this here in August  2021 and there are also some pages about it in my book on Deptford Creek.  In 1844 Walter became Manager of the works. This is, I am afraid another saga of publicity and dodgy share dealing. – plus a mysterious fire. He left this works in 1851

In his personal life George Walter was married for the second time in 1833 to Emma Woodman. This marriage took place at St James, Westminster, rather than Lewisham Parish Church which may indicate his increased status as a City entrepreneur. In this marriage he became the father of a large family of children. They moved house frequently and is known to have lived in Lewisham Terrace, Greenwich South Street, and Catherine Place.  There must be a reason for the frequent house moves. The 1851 census finds him at 6 Egerton Road with his wife, Emma, and seven children.

George Walter died in 1854 at Prittlewell at the back end of Southend. He had spent  periods of his life living near Leigh-on-Sea in Essex, where his father had been was the Rector – and where he was said to be involved with smugglers. On 15 July 1854, he had watched ‘the opening of the railway bisecting Leigh village’, and on 24 August, he died ‘of apoplexy, or stroke’. He is buried in the churchyard at Leigh on Sea.

Much of the material for this article has come from Ron Thomas  amazing book ‘London’s First Railway’ and from family history on WikiTree.  Slavery information from UCL database.