James Cropper, Liverpool docks and the Liverpool & Manchester railway

Journal of Transport History, The, Mar 1998 by Jarvis, Adrian

The historical attack on Cropper has been fairly generalised, but one specific incident stands out as a prompt to supporters of the Stephensons. In October 1828 Cropper was one of a delegation sent to Darlington to investigate the relative merits of horse and locomotive haulage, and on his return he submitted to the board a report advocating the use of stationary engines.37 This was not as stupid as hindsight may suggest, and it might be well to remember that the angry response it elicited from the Stephensons had been written not by George (as used to be suggested) but by Robert.38 While Robert was safely out of the way in South America, George, the supposed advocate of the locomotive, had ordered a possibly significant alteration in the line as surveyed by the Rennie brothers. Their route had been gently graded, but George introduced a summit at the Rainhill level requiring two substantial and unnecessary inclines of 1 in 96, for the working of which he subsequently proposed the installation of two stationary engines.39 It has been suggested that his aim was to prevent anyone raising the possibility of the use of horses, but it is at least as likely that he was not as confident of the abilities of the locomotive as is usually asserted. Certainly no locomotive that he had designed or built would cope with those inclines if anything beyond walking speed was intended: the real gesture of faith in the locomotive came from Robert, with a design of sufficient power to overcome the problem.

Well before this manifestation of opposition to George Stephenson, Cropper had a powerful reason for hostility. Even before George Stephenson had been formally appointed Principal Engineer the directors had appointed a Principal Engineer in charge of the tunnel at a salary of 400 per annum. The man was described by Thomas as `Liverpool Docks Engineer; 1809, Secretary and Surveyor 1813, General Surveyor, Princes Dock'.40 Thomas has the wrong John Foster: this was the son of the man responsible for the corruption at Princes Dock, but John Jr was an architect, not an engineer, suggesting that his father's principles were alive and well. Cropper, the man who had put so much work into engineering John Sr's downfall, was now confronted with a Foster connection on the railway.

Cropper's victory in the Princes Dock affair had been consummated on 27 March 1824, when William Foster read a letter to the Dock Committee stating that his father had resigned. Three days earlier, Foster had acquired a deputy, Jesse Hartley. The conditions of appointment to the deputy's post had been carefully drawn up to exclude anyone with outside business commitments which might lead to the conflicts of interest which characterised the corruption of the Foster regime.41 In short, Hartley got the job because Cropper had already won. It was admitted that the affairs of the Dock Surveyor's department were an Augean stable, and he was set to clean it up.

John Jr did not take up the post on the railway. Thomas suggests that `it seems highly probable that differences of opinion soon arose between these two engineers' (i.e. Foster and Stephenson) and records that on 4 September 1826 Jesse Hartley was formally appointed as `Civil Engineer to the Company, and Inspecting Engineer and Arbitrator for the Tunnel'.42 Is there any reason to suppose that this man, who had been the engine of Cropper's vengeance on Foster Sr, was not now being employed in the same role to oust his son?