Stephenson's Marriage.

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appointed to act as the plugman of the pumping-engine there. While in this situation, he devoted himself assiduously to the study of the engine, taking it to pieces and examining its mechanism. He was thus acquiring skill in the kind of knowledge most useful to him, while as yet he knew not even the very rudiments of education. He was eighteen years of age before he learned to read, which at length he did by paying the sum of 4d. a week to get some little instruction at a nightschool. By the time he was nineteen, his education had so far advanced that he was able to boast of being able to write his

own name.

While working as fireman, Stephenson endeavoured to eke out his slender pittance by putting his mechanical skill to profitable account. It is stated that he mended clocks and watches, repaired shoes, and cut out pitmen's clothes. It was while working as brakesman of an engine at Black Catterton, with a salary of 18s. a week, that he managed to save his first guinea by mending the shoes of his fellow-workmen. He felt that he was now a rich man,' and consequently justified in marrying Fanny Henderson, a servant in a neighbouring farmhouse, to whom he had been for some time attached. This he did in his twenty-third year. Within two years after her marriage, his wife died, leaving behind her a son, Robert, who afterwards became the distinguished civil engineer whose name is so well known in the history of railway progress. It deserves to be recorded to the honour of George Stephenson, that he resolved that his son should not want those educational facilities from which he had been debarred. 'In the earlier part of my career,' he once said, 'when Robert was a little boy, I saw how deficient I was in education, and I made up my mind that he should not labour under the same defect, but that I would put him to a good school, and give him a liberal training. I was, however, a poor man; and how do you think I managed? I betook myself to mending my neighbours' clocks and watches at night, after my daily labour was done, and thus I procured the means of educating my son.'

After the death of his wife, in 1804, Stephenson accepted an invitation to become engine-driver at a spinning mill near Montrose. There, however, he did not long remain. At the end of a year, he returned to Killingworth, and resumed his former situation as brakesman at the pit. It was while thus engaged that he had an opportunity of showing conspicuously his acquaintance with the mechanism of the steam-engine. An engine made by Smeaton, for the purpose of pumping the water from the shaft, refused to do its work, 'On Saturday afternoon,' writes Mr. Smiles, Stephenson went over to the High Pit to examine the engine more carefully than he had yet done. He had been turning over the subject in his mind; and after a long examination he seemed to satisfy himself as to the cause of the failure. Kit Heppel, who was a sinker at the pit, said to him: "Weel, George, what do you mak' o' her? Do you think you could do anything to improve her ?" "Man," said George in reply, "I could alter her and make her draw: in a week's time from this I could send you to the bottom." Forthwith Heppel reported this conversation to Ralph Dods, the head viewer; and Dods, being now quite in despair, and hopeless of succeeding with the engine, determined to give George's skill a trial.' Stephenson willingly agreed to attempt to 'doctor' the engine, and he thoroughly succeeded. Within a week after he entered on his task, the engine cleared the pit of water. For his services, Stephenson was rewarded by a present of £10, and by being appointed engineman to the Killingworth engine. His fame as an 'engine-doctor' soon spread abroad, and, in 1812, the engine-wright at Killingworth having been accidentally killed, Stephenson was appointed to succeed him at a salary of £100 a year, and the use of a horse.

All the time he could spare from the duties of his new and congenial situation Stephenson devoted to the further study of the steam-engine, especially with a view to bring into use a locomotive. The few locomotives then at work he went to see, and examined carefully. After inspecting one at work at Wylam, he declared that 'he could make a better engine-one

Stephenson's First Locomotive.

387

that would draw steadier and work more cheaply and effectively.' Lord Ravensworth, the principal partner of the Killingworth collieries, advanced the money for the purpose of enabling him to do so; and, on the Killingworth railroad, on 25th July, 1814, an engine, constructed under the superintendence of George Stephenson, succeeded in drawing up a slight ascent eight loaded carriages, weighing about twenty tons, at the rate of four miles an hour. 'The first locomotive I made,' said Stephenson, speaking thirty-one years after the above date, 'was at Killingworth Colliery, and with Lord Ravensworth's money. Yes! Lord Ravensworth and Company were the first parties that would entrust me with money to make a locomotiveengine. That engine was made thirty-two years ago, and we called it "My Lord." I said to my friends there was no limit to the speed of such an engine provided the works could be made to stand.'

For some years Stephenson remained at Killingworth, improving the rail and the engine to the best of his ability. In 1819, the owners of the Hetton Colliery, in Durham, having decided to have their waggon-way constructed for locomotiveengines, invited him to act as their engineer. On November 18, 1822, he opened a line of railway about eight miles in length, from the Hetton Colliery to the shipping-place on the Wear. On it five locomotives of his design were used. They drew a train of seventeen coal-cars, weighing sixty-four tons, at the rate of four miles an hour. The people of the neighbourhood, who looked on the new machines with wonder and admiration, called them 'the iron-horses.'

In 1821, Edward Pease, of Darlington, and some other local gentlemen, obtained an Act of Parliament authorising them 'to make a Railway, or Tramroad, from Stockton to Wilton Park Colliery (by Darlington).' At the time when the Act was obtained, nothing had been arranged as to how the railway should be worked. In the hope of inducing Pease to adopt the locomotive, Stephenson, in 1821, paid a visit to him at Darlington. Pease was somewhat doubtful at first, but