British History-5
' Road, Canal, and Rail '
RHODA POWER
This afternoon Schools are to hear about transport in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In 1830, the year in which the Liverpool and Manchester Railway was opened, Macaulay wrote : ' Our bridges, our canals, our roads, our modes of communication, fill every stranger with wonder '.
Nearly thirty years later, in 1859, the year of Macaulay's death, the public were laughing over some amusing rules that were going the rounds. ' Rule 2-Never sit in any unusual place or posture..... If a second-class carriage, as sometimes happens, has no door, passengers should take care not to put out their leg..... Rule 9-Beware of yielding to the sudden impulse to spring from the railway carriage to recover your hat which has blown off'.
This shows the public attitude of the day towards steam trains.