George Bradshaw

George Bradshaw (July 29, 1801 - September 6, 1853) was an English cartographer, printer and publisher and the originator of the railway timetable.

Biography

Bradshaw was born at Windsor Bridge, Pendleton, near Salford, Lancashire. On leaving school he was apprenticed to an engraver at Manchester, eventually setting up on his own account in that city as an engraver and printer, principally of maps. He was a religious man. Although his parents were far from wealthy, when he was young they enabled him to take lessons from a minister devoted to the teachings of Emanuel Swedenborg. He later joined the Society of Friends (the Quakers) and gave a considerable part of his time to philanthropic work. He worked a great deal with radical reformers such as Richard Cobden in organising peace conferences and in setting up schools and soup kitchens for the poor of Manchester.

He married in 1839. While touring Norway in 1853 he contracted cholera and died in September of that year without being able to return to England. He is interred in the cemetery adjoining the cathedral in Oslo.

Bradshaw's railway timetables

Bradshaw's name was already known as the publisher of "Bradshaw's Maps of Inland Navigation", which detailed the canals of Lancashire and Yorkshire, when, on October 19, 1839, soon after the introduction of railways, the world's first compilation of railway timetables was published in Manchester. It cost sixpence and was a cloth-bound book entitled "Bradshaw's Railway Time Tables and Assistant to Railway Travelling", the title being changed in 1840 to "Bradshaw's Railway Companion", and the price raised to one shilling. A new volume was issued at occasional intervals, a supplementary monthly time-sheet serving to keep the book up to date.

In December 1841, acting on a suggestion made by his London agent, William Jones Adams, Bradshaw reduced the price of his timetables to the original sixpence, and began to issue them monthly under the title "Bradshaw's Monthly Railway Guide". From then on the book, in the familiar yellow wrapper, became synonymous with its publisher: for Victorians and Edwardians alike, a railway timetable was "a Bradshaw", no matter by which railway company it had been issued and whether Bradshaw had been responsible for its production or not.

The eight page edition of 1841 had grown to 32 pages by 1845 and to 946 pages by 1898. In 1918 a Bradshaw would still cost only two shillings and in 1937 half a crown. When, in 1865, "Punch" praised Bradshaw's publications, it stated that "seldom has the gigantic intellect of man been employed upon a work of greater utility." At last, some order had been imposed on the chaos that had been created by countless rail companies whose tracks criss-crossed the country and whose uncoordinated network was rapidly expanding. Bradshaw's publications minutely recorded all changes and became the standard manual for rail travel for more than a century. The last Bradshaw, No. 1521, was printed in May 1961. This is according to the "Railway Magazine" of May 1961 which printed a valedictory article by Charles E. Lee.

In 1845 the issue number jumped mysteriously from 40 to 141. The publisher claimed this was an innocent mistake, but more likelyOr|date=July 2008 it wanted to gain advertising revenue by making its publication look longer-established than it really was.

Reprints of old Bradshaws are available, for example the April 1910 edition, republished in 2002 by Orion Publishing (ISBN 1-84212-534-6).

References in literature

19th century and early 20th century novelists make frequent references to a character's "Bradshaw". In particular, it was crime writers who were fascinated with trains and timetables, especially as a new source of alibis. Examples are Ronald Knox's "The Footsteps at the Lock" (1928) and novels by Freeman Wills Crofts. Perhaps the most famous example is by Sherlock Holmes in the Valley of Fear: "the vocabulary of Bradshaw is nervous and terse, but limited." Other references include the Sherlock Holmes story: The Adventure of the Copper Beeches, Lewis Carroll's long poem: Phantasmagoria and Bram Stoker's "Dracula", which makes note of Count Dracula reading an "English Bradshaw's Guide" for personal pleasure. There is also a reference in Death in the Clouds (1935) by Agatha Christie: "Mr. Clancy, writer of detective stories...extracted a Continental Bradshaw from his raincoat pocket...to work out a complicated alibi." It is also mentioned "The Secret Adversary" by Agatha Christie. In Daphne du Maurier's "Rebecca" (1938), the second Mrs. de Winter observes that "Some people have a vice of reading Bradshaws. They plan innumerable journeys across country for fun of linking up impossible connection" (chapter 2).

Although not a direct reference to the Bradshaw railway timetable, it is also worth noting the name of the character of Sir William Bradshaw in Virginia Woolf's "Mrs. Dalloway". Considering this character's association with rigorous quantitative measurement, it is highly unlikely that the name was not chosen deliberately by Woolf.

Bradshaw's Air Guide

In 1934 Bradshaw also began publishing a guide to the major airline routes both within Europe and those transcontinental flights that originated from Europe and the UK.

"Bradshaw's Continental Railway Guide"

In June 1847 the first number of "Bradshaw's Continental Railway Guide" was issued, giving the timetables of the Continental railways, just as "Bradshaw's Monthly Railway Guide" gave the timetables of the railways of the United Kingdom. The "Continental Railway Guide" eventually grew to over 1,000 pages, including timetables, guidebook and hotel directory. It was discontinued in 1914 at the outbreak of the First World War. Briefly resurrected in the interwar years, it saw its final edition in 1939.

Bradshaw's Today

In December 2007, the Middleton Press obtained the rights to print paper versions of the national rail timetable from Network Rail, who had discontinued the official ones in favour of electronic forms. As an appropriate tribute the new timetables are named the "Bradshaw-Mitchells Rail Times". The main timetable for Indian Railways is still known as Nizam's Indian Bradshaw.

Trivia

The first issue of Bradshaw's railway timetable was published on 19 October 1839, but the date printed on it is "10th Mo. 19th, 1839" as Bradshaw was a Quaker and refused to use the usual names of the months because of their pagan origins.

At least between the two world wars, the verb 'to bradshaw' was a derogatory term used in the RAF to refer to pilots who could not navigate well. An easy way to find your way across country is to follow railway lines.

External links

* [http://www.leytransport.i12.com/railcon.htm#ephemera Facsimiles of Bradshaw's timetables and railway maps]