Birmingham to Worcester Great British Railway Journeys

'For Victorian Britons, George Bradshaw was a household name.

'At a time when railways were new,

'Bradshaw's guidebook inspired them to take to the tracks.'

I'm using a Bradshaw's Guide to understand how trains transformed

Britain, its landscape,

its industry, society and leisure time.

As I crisscross the country 150 years later,

it helps me to discover the Britain of today.

I'm embarking on a journey that will take me

from England's Midlands to moorlands,

beginning in a region that produced reforms and new ideas

alongside manufactured goods.

Bradshaw will how me to understand how the trains spread not only

the products of industry but arts and education too.

'This week I'm starting my journey in Britain's second-largest city,

'before following the path of the River Severn south past

'great cathedrals to the ancient spas and ports of the south-west,

'ending up in one of Britain's glorious national parks.

'Today's leg starts in the mighty metropolis of Birmingham

'and continues to the carpet town of Kidderminster,

'before arriving in the Roman city of Worcester.

'On this journey I have a blast in Brum...

BLOWS WHISTLE

Brilliant. That's the sound of the railways, isn't it?

'..pay homage to a magnificent organ that inspired a great composer...

The city fathers were very proud of this instrument

so it was a feather in their cap that somebody like Mendelssohn

should deign to play on it.

'..and get a dose of quack doctors and their bizarre remedies.'

There's one here called simply The Ills Of Humanity.

And Pink Pills For Pale People.

My journey will begin in Birmingham.

My guidebook remarks that "it's the great centre of the metal trades,

"scarcely a street being without its manufactory,

"carried on in small workshops."

I'm on my way and, as they say,

every rail journey begins with a whistle.

'On its journey from Saxon village to vast conurbation,

'Birmingham underwent its biggest growth spurge

'during the 19th century, when the population reached

'half a million and it was granted city status by Queen Victoria.

'It's success as a manufacturing centre was thanks in large part

'to its transport systems, the network of canals

'and Birmingham New Street station, which opened in 1854.

'As I arrive, it's being restructured

'so I'm escaping the noise and dust

'by heading to an area with more sparkle.'

Birmingham's Jewellery Quarter was known traditionally

as the City of 1,000 Trades

and even today it is the UK's largest centre

for the manufacture and retail of jewellery.

It now has its own railway station on the Birmingham Metro

and it's come to my ears that they make whistles here,

which is worth a peep.

'J Hudson and Company is the maker of the world-famous Acme whistle

'and has been manufacturing whistles here in the Jewellery Quarter

'since 1884.

'Joseph Hudson, the founder, was originally a farm worker

'from Derbyshire who, like many others during the Industrial

'Revolution, moved to Birmingham where he trained as a toolmaker.

'An inventor at heart,

'he tinkered away in the converted washroom of his back-to-back terraced house

'where he came up with the idea for a particularly powerful whistle.

'To find out more, I'm going to meet Holly Occhipinti,

'the company's development manager and resident historian.'

I imagine that whistles have been around for ever and a day,

so how was it that Joseph Hudson made a business of it in the 19th century?

Joseph Hudson managed to spot an opportunity in the public sector,

where a form of communication was needed over long distances

and so he thought about sound and how sound travels

and he came up with the whistle.

'Until then, whistles had been used as toys or musical instruments

'but Hudson spotted that a modernised version could appeal

'to a whole new market.'

And I suppose one of the early clients would have been the police force.

They were indeed. Here we actually have an 1883 Metropolitan police whistle.

This whistle is still produced in exactly the same way

-and is used by the police force today.

-That's extraordinary.

Now what characteristics do you need in a police whistle?

It needs to be very easy to blow

because of picturing the Bobby on the beat chasing after criminals.

It needs to travel over long distances

and be heard over vehicle noise.

Well, I just walked up your stairs, so I'm a little bit out of breath.

BLOWS WHISTLE

Splendid sound, isn't it?

Now, what about my favourite subject, the railways.

Did they always know that they needed whistles?

Joseph Hudson certainly made sure in 1860 they knew they needed whistles.

Here we actually have an original that would've been

handmade by Joseph Hudson himself in his workshop in 1860.

This is a buffalo horn stationmaster's whistle.

BLOWS WHISTLE.

-Very shrill for a station.

-It certainly would startle you.

-Mm.

Afraid that people might fall onto the tracks in fright,

Hudson produced a lower tone for his railway whistle

by making the cavity larger.

The Thunderer whistle was born.

WHISTLE

-And so that's an improvement, is it, that one?

-This is.

This is a Thunderer from 1884

and is now the most popular stationmaster's whistle used today.

-We've produced around ten million.

-Ten million whistles?

-Ten million.

Let's give it a go.

BLOWS WHISTLE

Brilliant. That's the sound of the railways, isn't it?

'The manufacturing process of the Thunderer has barely

'changed in 100 years

'and it remains the most used whistle in the world,

'beloved of sports referees, partygoers and, of course,

'railway officials.'

So, I want to make a whistle and we start by stamping it.

-The name of the company there.

-Yeah.

-And what do you put on the side here?

We do a Great Western Railway, East African Railway

and we can pretty much put anyone else's name on it.

-Maybe my name today?

-Your name, yeah? We could do.

-So what do I do? Pop it in there?

-Just place it in.

-Yeah.

-And give it a stamp?

-Yeah.

'After the two halves of the whistle have been assembled,

'it's then soldered together...

-Now, can you see the solder just starting to melt on the side?

-I can.

-I can see that.

-Just give it a slight shake and tilt it up.

'..before being polished back to a high shine.'

-Already beginning to look very nice.

-Yep.

Ah, that's lovely.

-Colin.

-Hi, Michael.

-Hello. Good to see you.

My whistle is taking shape but it still doesn't sound right.

BLOWS WHISTLE

-That's not going to start a train, is it?

-No, not really.

-So we need to put something in it.

-Yes.

-A pea.

-A cork.

-A cork.

-Is that what's steaming away over there?

-Yes, it is.

So what you need to do is, we take the dish,

put them in the dish because it's really hot in there, to be honest.

Why do you heat these corks, Colin?

Just to make them soft and it's just easier for them

to actually push into the whistle itself.

So with any luck that is going to go in there.

There we are. It's inside.

The 9.47 is about to go.

BLOWS WHISTLE

Brilliant.

-Now I need to find a real train. Thank you, Colin.

-Thank you.

-All the best.

-Thank you, Michael.

'But before I head back to the station,

'I'm following my Bradshaw's past the 20th century brutalism

'and the heavy Victorian civic architecture

'to one of Birmingham's most remarkable buildings,

'which has, at its heart, a rare treasure.'

"The Town Hall at the top of New Street," says Bradshaw's,

"is a beautiful Grecian temple

"surrounded by rows of Corinthian pillars 40-feet high.

"It is a splendid public hall at one end of which

"is the most famous organ, one of the finest in Europe."

'Hoping for a glimpse of this marvellous to instrument,

'I'm going inside the grand auditorium to meet Richard Hawley,

'head of artistic programming.'

Richard, this fine building is called the Town Hall

but I think it was never intended to be the seat of city government, was it?

No, not at all.

It was envisaged to be the home of the music festival,

the Birmingham Triennial Festival,

that had been going since the late 1700s,

mainly to generate funds to build a hospital

and the spaces that the festival was using never quite matched

the aspirations of the people organising the festival,

and they championed for a specific purpose-built hall to be built,

which is why we have Town Hall.

Is it successful musically? Does it produce a fine acoustic?

It's a fantastic acoustic.

It was recognised immediately as one of the significant halls in Europe.

'With a world-class venue at their disposal,

'the organisers of the Triennial Music Festival

'set out to attract excellence.

'One of the most popular composers of the day

was the German Felix Mendelssohn,

'a leading light of the Romantic movement,

'whose triumphant Wedding March has been played

'for many a happy bride and groom.'

Joseph Moore, who was one of the leading figures behind the Triennial Festival,

contacted Mendelssohn the instant this building was open,

and Mendelssohn came to the festival in 1837,

and over the course of the next decade

he was convinced to premiere a major work,

a commission of Elijah,

which took place here in 1846.

And was he swayed at all by the presence of the organ,

which according to Bradshaw's, was very, very exceptional?

He was. We are actually fortunate for his insights.

You can see that the organ is set back into an alcove.

That was Mendelssohn's idea.

The console juts out at Mendelssohn's suggestion,

so that whatever organist is performing can hear

the acoustics properly,

so Mendelssohn is very much part of this building.

'The last Triennial Festival took place

'just before the outbreak of the First World War

'but the organ is still regularly played by Birmingham city organist,

'Thomas Trotter.'

Bradshaw's is quite enthusiastic about this organ,

saying that it contains 4,000 pipes acted upon by four sets of keys.

Now, here we seem to have four sets of keys,

so what's the number of pipes now?

It's grown a bit since then.

It's now 6,000, so it's almost double the size it was in the 1860s.

But the city fathers were very proud of this instrument

so it was a feather in their cap

that somebody like Mendelssohn should deign to play on it.

We know that the third time that he was here

was when he came to conduct premiere of his oratorio Elijah.

And how does Elijah go?

Well, it so happens I have a little bit of it here

so I'll give you a taste.

This is the final fugue, the sort of culmination of the whole piece.

It's called Lord, Our Creator, How Excellent Thy Name.

'Only a year after the premiere of Elijah,

'Felix Mendelssohn died at the age of 38.

'But his great oratorio was played at every subsequent festival,

'sustaining the link between the composer and Birmingham Town Hall.'

You have set the Grecian temple trembling

and me a-tingling.

Organ, organist and Town hall at their finest.

Thank you very much.

'It's time to bid farewell to the city

'and to make my way to Birmingham's Snow Hill station.'

My next stop will beat Kidderminster, which the guidebook tells me

"is celebrated for its manufactures, especially carpets,

"which have promoted the trade, wealth and population of the town."

I'm travelling there post-haste to discover a native of the town

who left his stamp on the world.

'Not every visitor to Kidderminster

'shared Bradshaw's enthusiasm for the place.

'The famous architectural commentator Sir Nikolaus Pevsner,

'writing in the mid-20th century,

'dismissed it as devoid of visual pleasure.

'But it's old carpet factories

'and fine churches give a strong sense of its Victorian prosperity,

'during which era Kidderminster's most famous son

'had a brilliant idea that revolutionised the Royal Mail.'

This is Sir Rowland Hill.

There had been a postage service before him but people paid for

their letters on collection,

according to the distance that they had travelled.

His innovation was that there should be a flat rate

and that it should be prepaid with a postage stamp.

The first bore the head of Queen Victoria at the age of 21

and were known as Penny Blacks.

For the sheer simplicity of the idea,

it had all the others licked.

'I'll wait for the morning to slice open his story.'

'The next day dawns bright and clear and with a spring in my step

'I'm reporting for duty at Kidderminster's delivery office.'

-Good morning. Are you Rollo?

-I certainly am.

-I'm Michael.

-How do you do?

-Pleased to meet you.

-So, it's sorting the morning's post?

-Yes.

Is there anyway I can give you a hand with that?

-You're welcome to if you want to.

-All right. What do you have to do?

First of all, it's post-coded so obviously you've got coded areas.

-This is a DY10 frame.

-So now what do I do with the DY10s?

-That one there is Cookley and rural, that hole there.

-Cookley, rural.

-Again rural. That's a rural area, Churchill.

-Churchill.

-Vicar Street.

-That's Superdrug in the town centre.

How long does it take you to learn all this stuff, Rollo?

Everybody says, that works here, the best way to learn the sorting

-is by going out and doing every delivery.

-Ah, yes.

And that's how you pick it up.

Mind you, I'm born and bred Kidderminster so you know.

'The mail that Rollo and I are sorting has been through a machine

'that recognises postcodes and groups the letters accordingly.

'After Sir Rowland introduced uniform penny postage in 1840,

'the volume of mail doubled every 20 years until 1920,

'when a staggering six billion items passed through the postal system.'

Last night I visited the statue of Rowland Hill.

-Is he a bit of a hero of the postmen?

-Yeah.

I mean, born and bred in Kidderminster in Blackwell Street.

I know his remains, now, are in Westminster Abbey,

which says a lot for the guy.

Can you imagine the situation before his innovation,

that people used to go to their local post office,

pick up the letter,

pay for it according to what distance it had travelled.

And, apparently, sometimes people used to put the message

on the outside of the envelope

and once they'd read the message they'd say,

-"Oh, no, I don't want that. I'm not going to pay for it."

-Blimey.

THEY LAUGH

'The next stage of the process is delivery.

'Rollo has invited me to join him on his round,

'provided that I'm properly attired.'

Rollo, do you ever go to the railway station to pick up mail these days?

No, that's a long time ago.

They did when I first started on the job about, erm...

Well, I've been doing the job 32 years.

You used to have to meet the mail bags,

pick them up in the old cloth bags

and I still think that was a quicker system than the roads.

'The first mail train started running in 1838

'with postal workers onboard sorting the letters in transit.

'The railways transformed the speed

'and efficiency of the Royal Mail service,

'crisscrossing the country while the nation slept

'and inspiring the great WH Auden to write one of his most famous poems.'

"This is the Night Mail crossing the border,

"Bringing the cheque and the postal order,

"Letters for the rich, letters for the poor,

"The shop at the corner and the girl next door,

"Pulling up Beattock, a steady climb,

"The gradient's against but she's on time."

NEWSREEL ANNOUNCER: Thousands are still asleep,

dreaming of terrifying monsters.

'The last mail train was withdrawn in 2004

'but no substitute has been found for the postman delivering to your home.'

Here you go, Michael.

-The first one I've got is number four.

-That's it.

'At the height of the Victorian period,

'there was a vast number of uniformed postman

'working in the United Kingdom.'

No dogs at that one so we're all right.

'In London there could be up to 12 deliveries a day,

'allowing correspondents to exchange letters back and forth within hours.'

Morning. I'll pop it in the letterbox for you.

-Morning, Rollo. All right?

-Yeah.

-Do I know you from somewhere?

-Yes, you do, I think.

-Where's that then?

-I was a train driver.

I picked you up at Derby one day and brought you down to Burton on Trent.

-How nice to see you again.

-Nice to see you again.

-So have you left the railway?

-Three years ago, yeah.

-What was it, the journey with me that made you give it up?

-No, no.

-Very nice to see you again.

-Nice to see you again.

'Prepaid, flat-rate postage

'revolutionised the United Kingdom mail service

'and the idea then spread around the world.

'A Victorian concept that remains sacrosanct to this day.'

Well, Rollo, I'll never forget your name because it reminds me

of Sir Rowland Hill,

but I believe it is a serious crime to hold up the Royal Mail.

I will hold you up no longer. There are your letters.

Thanks ever so much, Michael. It's been a pleasure.

-A great pleasure for me.

-Thank you.

'Handing back my cap and bag.

'it's time to return to the day job,

'which means embarking on the next stage of my journey.

'I'm boarding a train that will take me south through

'the West Midlands to Worcester.'

'The Victorian age was a time of great progress,

'not least in the medical profession

'and Bradshaw's notes that Worcester was well provided for.'

"I'm told that there are several charitable institutions here

"amply endowed, such as Queen Hospital for 29 women,

"St Oswald's for 28 women,

"Judge Barkley's for 12 persons

"and the General Infirmary."

I'd like to investigate how Victorians improved

and certified the standards of doctors and their remedies.

'Alighting at Worcester Foregate Street,

'I emerge in the heart of the old city.

'With my Bradshaw's to guide me

'I take in the magnificent brick-built Guildhall...

'..the 17th century almshouses...

..and, towering over everything,

the breathtaking Saxon cathedral.

'But my focus is on Victorian Worcester

'and specifically matters medical.

'So I'm heading to the university campus,

'which used to be the old Worcester Infirmary,

'to meet Caroline Rance, who is an expert on quackery.'

-Hello, Caroline.

-Hello.

We meet in somewhat macabre surroundings.

Do you think in the 19th century patients were quite

susceptible to false remedies and false doctors?

They were, much like they are today, in fact.

There was a range of different quack remedies, as they were called,

and sometimes people were what we might now consider gullible,

but also, in a lot of occasions, it was quite a logical choice to make

if you wanted to go and buy a patent remedy

from a newspaper advert or from a chemist.

That was possibly much cheaper than going to see a doctor

and so it was a reasonable choice for many people.

'Quacks got their name from an old Dutch word "kwakzalver",

'meaning a hawker of salve or ointment.

'In the Middle Ages "to quack" meant to shout,

'which was how many of these salesmen

'advertised their wares in the marketplace.'

Although there were some that were absolutely fraudulent,

there were others that it did just about manage to stay within

the law and one of those was a company called Sequah in 1887.

This was started by somebody called William Hartley,

who was born in 1857 in Liverpool,

but he pretended to be an American

who was bringing over the big entertaining style

American medical shows to the UK.

He would initially just go around with his wagon.

He would do very entertaining shows that involved drawing people's

teeth very quickly.

At one point he claimed to be able to draw eight teeth in a minute.

And he would get the crowd all very excited and on his side

and he would then use that to do a sales pitch to sell his medicines.

'Hartley relied on showmanship

'and evoked the Wild West to whip up enthusiasm

for Sequah's cures.

'Others trod an even more morally dubious line.'

I see there an advertisement for "drunkenness cured",

which sounds very promising.

This sort of advert was published in the very

early 20th century by a company based in London.

The idea was that people within the family of an addict

would be able to use these powders.

They would slip it into his coffee or into his whisky

and that was all done in secret.

He was not to supposed to know that he was being treated.

So it doesn't exactly match modern ethical standards?

No and in terms of informed consent of the patient,

it certainly doesn't.

'Eventually the general medical profession asserted itself

'to put down the charlatans and their snake oil remedies.

'The leader of the campaign was Worcester surgeon

'and philanthropist Charles Hastings.

'Just down the corridor is the place where it all started

'and where I'm meeting Andrew Dearden of the British Medical Association.'

-Andrew.

-Good morning, sir.

So, what is the significance of the old boardroom of the Infirmary in Worcester?

Well, this is where, in 1832,

Sir Charles Hastings led a meeting of about 50 doctors of his day

and established the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association

that later became the British Medical Association.

One of his concerns was that lots of doctors were working independently

but individually and what he wanted to do was to bring them together

to share and to expand their medical knowledge and information.

And I expect the oratory was pretty fine on that occasion.

"Gentleman, you will, at any rate, admit, that the objects

"I have thus hastily introduced to the notice of the meeting,

"are worthy of deep meditation.

"I cannot help indulging the delightful thought

"that the Association must have a direct tendency

"to extend the empire of knowledge

"and to increase our power over disease."

'The new Association worked towards the Medical Act of 1858,

'which commenced the end of quackery.'

What that did for the very first time

was to create a medical register.

So, when someone went to medical school, passed as a doctor,

they had to register themselves with the General Medical Council,

so any member of the public could see who was actually qualified

and could call themselves a doctor.

The other thing the British Medical Association did

was to publish a book in 1909 called Secret Remedies,

where many of the lotions and potions of the day

were examined by a well-known chemist

so that the public could actually see what it was that they were buying and taking.

Mother Seigel's Curative Syrup.

There's one here called simply The Ills of Humanity.

And Pink Pills For Pale People.

They don't sound altogether convincing, do they?

Not particularly.

I have to say the ingredients were not particularly convincing either.

So, it all began with 50 people. Where have you got to now?

Well, the British Medical Association now has over 156,000 members

both here in the UK and overseas.

-You couldn't fit all of them in this room, could you?

-Not any more.

The thunderous sound of the organ in Birmingham Town Hall

reminds me that the city deserves to be known as much for its music

as for its metal bashing.

I thoroughly enjoyed my time delivering letters

as a tribute to Sir Rowland Hill.

Other eminent Victorians made improvements to the

standard of delivering health care,

giving quack doctors and quack remedies the whistle.

BLOWS WHISTLE

'On the next part of my journey I come eye-to -eye with a needle...

That one has got four punches in. Two big ones, two small ones.

They are eyes of the needle.

'..get to grips with some of Gloucester's finest...

That's a lovely feel, isn't it? Being in contact with that gorgeous cheese.

Glorious Gloucester!

'..and raise the roof in tribute to one of Britain's great composers.'

# And did those feet in ancient time... #