The Pirate Omnibus

In January 1868, Thomas Herron, also known as Viscount Ranelagh, was brought before Clerkenwell Magistrates Court. This noble Lord was being prosecuted for an action he thought hardly criminal; smoking on the Metropolitan Railway.

The Metropolitan Railway had opened in 1863 and was (along with its younger sister the District) the only railway in the country where smoking on board trains was prohibited (it had been exempted under the 1868 Regulation of Railways Act which obliged railways to offer smoking accommodation). The special conditions surrounding the Metropolitan, it being a short distance, high capacity underground railway, were argued by the Directors of the company to make it impractical to offer smoking compartments on trains.

Ranelagh put forward a guilty plea, but as he was being fined, decided to claim that he wasn’t a law-breaker after all, but rather pleaded guilty to save his time and wanted to offer some observations. Faced with this clear claim of innocence the Magistrate obliged him to remove his guilty plea and call evidence. The evidence did not help Ranelagh’s case. On the 20^th December 1867 Ranelagh had been travelling on the 10.55pm train. According to the train’s guard, Ranelagh was smoking at Aldersgate Station (now Barbican) and he asked him to stop. At the next station, Farringdon, the guard once again found Ranelagh smoking. The guard again asked him to desist at which point Ranelagh ‘said there was no one there to annoy, and he would smoke and be damned to me’.

Lord Ranelagh in 1870 (Vanity Fair, Wikimedia Commons)

Ranelagh argued that when the no smoking regulations had been conceived smoking had been the exception, but now it was the rule. Most other railways offered smoking accommodation and as such the Metropolitan should permit smoking. The Magistrate decided that this wasn’t a particularly valid point of law and fined the erstwhile Lord 20 shillings. Ranelagh paid immediately.

This seems like a random incident, but the debate over smoking on the underground grew surprisingly large. In 1869 the MP for Dudley moved in the House of Commons that the Metropolitan be forced to provide smoking accommodation for each class of passenger, the House dividing in favour 175 to 167. However, the legislation was not immediately successful, and the company only offered smoking accommodation in 1874.

The subject was exceptionally divisive. A season ticket holder wrote angrily to The Times in 1870 to explain that despite the smoking ban he had

‘been much annoyed by the habit which now prevails of smoking at all the stations on the line, and in all the waiting rooms, refreshment-rooms and carriages. Pipes and cigars are puffed by all classes of passengers beneath the very noses of the railway officials, whose indifference makes us wonder at the fate of the passenger whose fine of 40 s is held up as a warning at the stations.’

A similar complaint was raised in 1868 by ‘John Bull’ who argued that

‘No one but a drunken man would attempt to smoke inside an omnibus, and if he did the conductor would very speedily eject him. But in a railway compartment, much more confined in space, smokers seem altogether to forget themselves…’

He added that smoking was practiced by gentlemen as well as ‘roughs’ and the staff did little to prevent it. ‘I have even seen a clergyman quietly smoking, and when I remonstrated with him he only laughed and said the guards all knew him’.

But the smoking lobby was a vociferous one. Writing in reply to ‘John Bull’, ‘M.J.B.’ contended that smoking compartments should be provided given that smoking was something to be grateful for ‘just after breakfast’ and ‘again in the evening after an abstinence of many hours’. He also added that the majority of passengers were actually smokers.

It was even thought that smoking on the Metropolitan was good for you. Henry Sheridan, the MP who moved the smoking bill, claimed in 1868

‘Medical men and others assert that smoking would counteract the effect of the sulphurous vapours which have been so complained of, and which are still as bad as ever, between the Edgware Road and Kings Cross stations…’

Of course, in reality, both smoking and the atmosphere of the steam run underground was liable to ruin your health, despite the claims of certain parties that it was like being in a spa.

The other problem was that the other railway companies who shared parts of the Metropolitan offered smoking accommodation. Trains from the Great Northern, Midland, and Great Western railways used stretches of the Metropolitan between Paddington and Moorgate. In 1871 Mr Arthur Bennet found himself in front of the Magistrates charged with smoking on the Metropolitan. However, Bennet had been riding in a Great Western train in the smoking compartment. When the train started at Ealing, smoking was allowed, but when it reached Paddington (and the Metropolitan), smoking was now prohibited. The gentlemen, despite his protestations that he was a Great Western customer and had nothing to do with the Metropolitan or their regulations, found himself fined ten shillings.

In 1874, however, the Metropolitan (because of the extensions it made beyond the tunnelled section that make up the northern part of the Circle Line) relented and smoking accommodation was allowed. One presumes Ranelagh’s reaction was something like this. The York Herald gleefully noted

‘The introduction of smoking carriages on the Metropolitan Railway under no other pressure than that of a feeling which operates so feebly upon most railway companies – consideration for the comfort of their passengers – is a step which merits the cordial approval of the public.’

But the move bought consternation from non-smokers and especially those who complained about the impact for female passengers, who were also considered non-smokers (read more about this in ‘Ladies first’). Such complaints were soon brushed aside. Indeed, the history of smoking on London’s underground was one of ever increasing provision up to the Second World War.

On the Tube, where smoking had always been allowed on trains, by 1926 around sixty per cent of carriages were smokers. In that year, however, it was decided this was still not enough. Eighty per cent of carriages were thus given over to smokers, with non-smokers exiled to the first and last carriages of the trains. Rules which had banned smoking in the station lifts were also abolished, giving smokers leave to puff on cigarettes, cigars, and pipes anywhere they pleased. Concerns that this amounted to over-provision, and arguments that smokers were a minority in smoking carriages and hence aggrieved the other passengers were casually brushed aside. Smokers were the kings of the Underground.

But all things must come to an end. As we shall see in next month’s post, the smokers found themselves on the defensive after the Second World War. A story of marginalisation and tragedy followed, and in direct contrast to Ranelagh’s claim in 1868 that smoking was the rule, not the exception, the post-war story was exactly the opposite.

‘I don’t know whether these young people pay the same fares as other passengers, or whether they pay at all; but granted that they do, their fares only purchase for them the right to travel – not to torture all the passengers in the carriage they select.’

So wrote a passenger travelling from Edinburgh to Glasgow in 1869. His target, the so-called ‘itinerant musician’, or, to the reader of the 21^st Century, the busker.

Busking is a fairly familiar sight to passengers on the modern railway, especially on the London Underground. In 2003 Transport for London altered its byelaws and made it legal for buskers to perform on special pitches, leading to a rapid infestation of Irish bands on the Circle line and this guy on his guitar. Certainly some are better than others, but to the railway companies of the 19^th century buskers were a recurring nuisance. The LNWR thought them worthy of the same disdain as beggars, vagrants, and prostitutes.

The LNWR, where no fun of any kind was apparently allowed.

Our Scottish passenger, writing under the pseudonym of An Observer, outlined his predicament to the Glasgow Herald.  Having been treated to one busker on his first train, he was bewildered to find that on his second train yet another busker, equipped with a ‘stringed instrument’ , bundled himself into the passenger compartment. In the compartment were not only our passenger, but three men and a woman, all of whom were in funerary dress and in some distress, having just come from an internment. Not content to add to the troubles of the recently bereaved through his performance, the busker then managed to get into an argument with the occupants of the next compartment, a group of half-drunken sailors, the resulting ‘roaring, stamping, and stumbling’ of which lasted over an hour.

An Observer demanded that something should be done about these “musicians”, but it is clear that the busker was becoming an increasing presence on the railways, and especially in suburban London.

One busker in particular was apparently something of a presence in East London. In 1894 Mr Phillip Rigluth was called up in front of West Ham magistrates. According to a railway inspector, Rigluth was in the habit of taking a two-pence ticket and then travelling for hours around the Great Eastern Railway playing a concertina. In fact his concertina playing wasn’t what had landed him in court, rather he’d tried to get onto another train for which his ticket wasn’t valid, been caught by an inspector, and found himself fined 40 shillings by the magistrate for the pleasure. But the fine didn’t put Rigluth off, far from it.

In 1898 Dr F Greenwood was travelling home from Liverpool Street to Leyton on an evening train. At Globe Road station a busker jumped into the carriage and started playing a concertina. Greenwood demanded the man stop, but the busker was encouraged by some passengers of ‘the rougher sort’ to play as hard as he could. At the next station Greenwood managed to get hold of a guard, who ordered the busker to stop playing. Unfortunately for Greenwood as soon as the train left the station the busker started up again, as ‘the roughs encouraged him with words and coppers’. At Stratford Greenwood tried to get out to make a complaint, but was forcibly restrained by the other passengers as the busker fled the carriage. The busker’s escape was, however, short lived, as he was known to the railway company. It was, of course, Phillip Rigluth, who found himself back in West Ham Magistrates Court and this time was fined 14 shillings, or a ten day prison sentence if he defaulted.

Even this, however, did not dent our erstwhile busker’s enthusiasm. In 1900 he was caught again trying to get onto a train without a ticket, armed with his trusty concertina. Back in West Ham Magistrate’s Court for apparently the fourth time, Rigluth found himself fined 100 shillings (to put this in context, the average wage for a labourer at this time was around 20 – 25 shillings a week), the maximum penalty possible, with the threat of a month’s imprisonment if he defaulted.

Why was Rigluth so keen on busking? The information on him is scanty, but provides something of an explanation. Rigluth was an elderly man. He also claimed to be crippled. The combination of the two, he argued, meant that he was unable to work, so instead he eked out a living busking on the trains. Given he did so for at least six years, it seems a likely explanation, though slightly at odds with the account of his fleeing from the good Doctor two years previously. He was certainly a far cry from the ‘young people’ An Observer was so aggrieved by in 1869.

Whilst buskers were frequently complained about, from the concertina players to the ‘second rate vocalist’, they were a presence on the railways that was here to stay. They were typically male and usually found in the third class section of the trains. Indeed, An Observer remarked that such a commotion would never be allowed in first class, and  Lloyds Weekly wryly commented that among some long-suffering passengers was the suspicion that certain of the railway companies permitted the nuisance in order to drive them into paying more to travel in the busker-free second and first class carriages. Certainly, there are references to the lower railway officials (porters and guards) doing little to prohibit busking, and only when the busker could be prosecuted for travelling without a ticket did the railway companies take effectual action.

Rumours of railway company conspiracy aside, the itinerant musician had become part of the social fabric of the railways, and they remain annoying and entertaining people as much in the 2010’s as they did in the 1860’s.

In 1960 a man from Edgware was cross. So cross in fact that he wrote to The Times. Under the title ‘Mammoths of the Tube’ he outlined the reasons for his sudden burst of outrage;

‘Sir – One complains of the congested conditions prevailing today on the London Underground Railway system. Lately his condition seems to have been aggravated by various females carrying baskets, bags, and other articles which appear to me, a lay male, grossly oversized. These baskets would bring disgrace on a pack donkey.’

He demanded these items be prohibited. This letter is fascinating in certain respects. Firstly, it is one of those rare examples of an article that manages to conflate mammoths, a large prehistoric mammal, with handbags, which are neither prehistoric or mammals. Secondly, it underlines how certain groups on the London Underground have often been picked on by the rest.

“The rest” have usually been the male middle-class commuters. In my own Ph.D. work they (or the management on their behalf) usually pick on the male working-class passengers (who are invariably presented as a smoking, spitting, dirty, drunken hoard of menace bringing horror to everyday travel). But a quick look through the newspapers of yesteryear revealed another target; ladies.

I use the term ladies specifically. “Women” was a term typically applied to third-class working-class passengers (who were also referred to as work-women like their male counterparts were workmen). “Ladies”, however, usually referred to middle or upper-class individuals who travelled second and first-class. Complaints about working-class female passengers seem rather muted (in comparison to working-class men and middle-class women), but perhaps this is because they rarely shared the second and first class carriages with the male middle-class commuters so keen on writing off to The Times.

The initial problem seems to have emerged from the complicated system in force on Metropolitan trains from the 1860s. Not only were trains divided into three classes, but there was the added complication that certain carriages were smoking and non-smoking and briefly in 1874 – 5 some carriages were ‘Ladies only’.

The ‘Ladies only’ carriages unsurprisingly provoked waves of outrage. Typically they were empty, which during the rush hours raised the ire of many a male commuter trying to force his way into an overcrowded carriage. But perhaps more irritating for the lone commuting male was the idea that a lady could take a man onto the carriage ‘under her protection’, permitting husbands to travel with wives. The perceived double standard fed the anger, with one gentleman writing angrily that the ‘protection’ system was ridiculous and that lone married men and clergymen should be allowed on the carriages as well (presumably because they theoretically presented none of the dangers of single men). The ‘Ladies only’ restrictions soon disappeared.

In 1891 the periodical Moonshine published a short piece entitled ‘what you ought to do (if a lady on the Underground) – by one who knows’. It presents the lady passenger as utterly incompetent, beginning with ‘on presenting yourself at the booking office, be careful to reach the window from the wrong direction, and be the more careful to do this at stations where directions are painted up largely and plainly’. But the article, not a particularly inspired attempt at humour, reveals the main point of contention between male and female passengers – smoking.

Smoking had been banned by the Metropolitan Railway when it had opened in 1863. But, despite the numerous complaints about the sulphurous atmosphere the steam worked railway generated (indeed, to the extent the smoky atmosphere was killing people), the smoking lobby became increasingly vociferous about passengers being allowed to smoke on the system. By 1874 the Metropolitan and the slightly younger District Railway acceded to the demands (and legal obligation) and provided separate smoking carriages.

To the male passenger tucked up with a newspaper and a pipe in a smoking compartment nothing appears to have been worse than the arrival of a lady. Moonshine outlined that the lady passenger should ‘eventually dive into a first class [carriage], but be especially careful it is a “smoker.” Don’t discover the fact until the train is in motion, and then cough and choke in an alarming manner. Continue this until you have every pipe extinguished, and both windows open, and then get out at the next station.’

Smoking carriages were effectively a male space, ultimately because smoking was an activity largely restricted in public to men. This is perhaps why in the early 1920s the idea of the female ‘flapper’, a woman who showed apparent disdain at established social conventions, was often linked to the individual to being a public smoker, as this little 1922 cartoon depicts (along with what was clearly on the minds of certain repressed gentlemen).

Moreover, the carriages on the Metropolitan and District were compartmentalised (divided into sections), which meant passengers were sat in close and confined company with each other. It was seemingly felt that if a lady was present in the compartment then the men were usually obliged to stop smoking. Notably it was the First Class carriages which were the main setting of these complaints, reinforcing the idea that it was middle and upper-class men taking issue with women of the same social class.

The smoking issue appears to have been less of a problem on the tube railways, where carriages were open (you can walk up and down the whole carriage) and there were no class divisions. But on the Tubes there was apparently a bigger problem that women were bringing into the Underground; hat pins.

In 1914, a gentleman under the pseudonym ‘One for all’ complained bitterly to The Times about what was termed ‘A constant menace in the Underground’. He wrote;

‘Last night I entered the tube lift at the Post Office station [now St Pauls], just at the time when the crush of the people homewards bound is at its height. I saw two young girls entering the lift just in front of me, both wearing two or three hat pins protruding about three or four inches. While I was still contemplating on the very evident danger and trying in a pure sense of self-preservation not to come into touch with these uninviting necessities of the otherwise attractive toilette of the women of to-day, one of the young ladies moved, in conversation with her friend, her head to one side and one of her hat pins went right into the eye of a gentleman standing next to me.’

The incident was hardly isolated. Three weeks earlier a lady had been fined £3 through the Law Courts for inadvertently scratching another lady in the face with a hat pin. ‘One for all’ painted a scene of daily terror for passengers on the tube as hat pins waved maliciously about threatening to ‘give you a little souvenir’, and pointed out that on the London County Council’s tramways such was the perceived danger that signs were put up inside tramcars urging ladies to wear protected hat pins.

Notably the complaints regarding female passengers sent into the papers almost disappeared after the Great War. On my own brief survey of the newspapers, the only complaint subsequent to the 1914 hat pins is the 1960s ‘Mammoths of the tube’, which appears more the rant of one particular male suburbanite than a widespread issue. Perhaps the ebbing away of the complaints was largely due to women becoming an increasingly large presence on the Underground during and after the Great War, as the trailer for the 1928 film Underground suggests.

Women had been a minority on the Underground before the Great War; their presence was new and provoked comment because it was new. A similar issue arose with male working-class commuters, a group who also were complained about bitterly before 1914 when their travelling was something of a novelty. But both groups rarely gained such overt criticism after 1918, when complaints usually focused on the fact that everyone, women, men, working class, and middle class were all being squashed together during the rush hour.

Perhaps they also found someone else to pick on. For the regular Underground users of today (of all sexes, classes, and races) it’s often the utterly perplexed American tourist stuck at the ticket barrier gazing deeply into their Oyster card as if the card itself will suddenly perk up and inform the holder how it all works. Clearly a problem so bad they had to make this bewildering advice video.

But it wasn’t all stereotyping before 1914, as this piece from an 1894 article entitled ‘a lady to the rescue’ shows;

‘The lady in the smoking compartment has again come to the front. A smoker who entered a first class carriage on the Underground railway found himself joined by a young lady just as the train was moving off. Half afraid of the answer, he asked her if she objected to smoking. “Not at all” was the reply, and, the smoker placing his Havannah between his teeth, he produced his matchbox. Alas, it was empty! He had resigned himself to a smokeless journey, when, to his surprise, she handed him a dainty little sliver case well stocked with vestas.’