Chapter 5 of 14 · 3928 words · ~20 min read

CHAPTER V

A GREAT CARRYING FIRM: THE STORY OF PICKFORD AND CO.

To the incurious public, who are as familiar with the name of “Pickford’s” as with that of their favourite morning newspaper, and to whom the sight of one of Pickford’s vans is a mere commonplace of daily life, this great carrying firm is just a part of our modern commercial system. To suggest to that favourite abstraction--the “average man”--so commonly cited, that Pickford’s is a firm whose origin is to be traced back two hundred and fifty or three hundred years would be a rash thing. He would tell you that this is a firm of railway carriers, and that, as railways are not yet a hundred years old, Pickford’s certainly cannot be two centuries older.

Thus do later changes overlie and conceal earlier methods of business.

Our average citizen would be wrong in two things: in his premisses, that the firm is wholly one of railway carriers; and in his conclusions, that it came into existence with railways themselves. The origin of Pickford’s is, indeed, lost in the mists that gather round the social and commercial life of the early seventeenth century; for the beginnings of the business go back to that time when the original firm of packhorse carriers was established, to whose trade the Pickfords succeeded, by purchase or otherwise, about 1730. Traditions only survive of those long-absorbed carriers, whose packhorse trains originally plied on the hilly tracks between Derby and Manchester “about two hundred and fifty or three hundred years ago,” as we vaguely learn. No documentary or other evidence exists on which to found an account of them. What would we not give to be able to recover from the romantic past the story of those old-time carriers, contemporary with the famous Hobson himself, beyond comparison the most celebrated of all these old men of the road!

But all records have been destroyed. When the several changes were made that from time to time altered the constitution of the business, the papers and documents relating to past transactions were cast aside as waste-paper, and there was none among the people of those times who thought it worth while, for the interest and instruction of posterity, to set down what he knew of the current history of the concern. That this should have been the case is no matter for surprise. The past or the future interests many to whom the present is only something from which to escape, as commonplace and dull. That man who is not glad, when the business day is done, to leave for home and straightway dismiss all thoughts of his business from his mind is rare indeed; and still more rare he who finds interest, beyond mere money-getting, in the daily commerce by which he lives and prospers.

About 1770 Matthew Pickford, the representative, in the second or third generation, of that family in this olden firm, is found established in Manchester, a town then making rapid industrial progress, and affording great scope for the carrying trade, already, for some years past, conducted by waggons; but we do not obtain any details of his business until November 16th, 1776, when he issued the following advertisement, afterwards inserted in _Prescott’s Manchester Journal_ for Saturday, January 4th, 1777:--

“THIS is to acquaint all Gentlemen, Tradesmen, and Others, that Mat. Pickford’s Flying Waggons to London in Four Days and a Half

Set out from the Swan and Saracen’s Head, in Market Street Lane, Manchester, every Wednesday, at Six o’clock in the Evening, and arrive at the Swan Inn, Lad Lane, London, the Tuesday noon following; also set out every Saturday at the same Hour, and arrive there on Friday noon following. Set out from London every Wednesday and Saturday, and arrive at Manchester every Tuesday and Friday; which carry goods and passengers to and from Manchester, Stockport, Macclesfield, Leek, Blackburn, Bolton, Bury, Oldham, Rochdale, Ashton-under-Line, and places adjacent.

“N.B.--M. Pickford will not be accountable for any Money, Plate, Watches, Jewels, Writings, Glass, China, etc., unless entered as such, and paid for accordingly.

“Constant attention at the above Inns in London and Manchester, to take in Goods, etc.”

It will be noticed that these “four days and a half” trips, although performed by “Flying Waggons,” and presumably much swifter than some earlier ones of which we have no record, were only four and a half days in a very special sense, and by the exercise of some peculiar method of reckoning whose secret has not descended to us. It might seem, to the person of ordinary intelligence, that these were really itineraries of rather more than five days and a half; but the Sunday was doubtless a day of rest for the waggoners, as for most others in those times.

In 1780, according to the evidence afforded by an old billhead, still preserved, Matthew Pickford was carrying on business in conjunction with Thomas, his brother, and in this partnership they continued to trade for many years.

Meanwhile, the manufacturing industries of Lancashire and the north-west had grown enormously, and canals were already being dug to aid the transport of goods. We have no means of knowing in how far the Pickfords took advantage of the early canals in the Midlands, but that they availed themselves very greatly of the opportunities afforded by them of extending their business seems unlikely, in view of the position in 1817, when they admitted Joseph Baxendale as a partner into the concern.

Joseph Baxendale was thirty-two years of age when he became partner in the firm of Pickford & Co. He was born in 1785, the son of Josiah Baxendale, of Lancaster, and had already seen something of business as partner in the concern of Swainson & Co., calico-printers at Preston, whose firm he left to seek those wider activities for which his active mind longed. For there was something adventurous in his blood, which would by no means permit him merely to take the sedentary part of a capitalist in any enterprise in whose fortunes he might acquire a share. An opportunity thoroughly suited to his temperament was this which offered, of becoming a partner in the already old-established firm of Pickford’s. We have now no means of knowing precisely on what terms he joined the two brothers, but whatever the pecuniary consideration may have been, enough survives to tell us that his youthful activities and his keen business intelligence were prominent in what he brought into the firm. For many years Matthew and Thomas had borne the whole conduct of the business, and it was now desirable, both by reason of their advancing years and the natural growth of the commercial activities of the country, that they should have, allied with them, one who, alike by inclination and urged by business interests, would scour the country, supervising and organising, as they no longer found it possible to do.

Baxendale found plenty of work of this nature awaiting him. The staff of horses which the Pickfords had found sufficient for their needs in bygone years had been little, if at all, increased, although a period of great trade-expansion had set in; and a total lack of efficient supervision over agents and carmen had resulted in the carrying business being dilatory and untrustworthy. Under these circumstances, it is not surprising that rival firms had begun to threaten the very existence of Pickford’s, declining under the nerveless rule, by which the needs of the time were not understood.

It was soon impressed upon the new partner’s active and penetrating intelligence that the requirements of the time, and still more the requirements of the succeeding years, imperatively demanded a thorough reorganisation--more thorough, perhaps, than the old partners were altogether ready to concede. He soon acquired entire control, and the Pickfords, unable or unwilling to meet new times with new methods, left their already historic business and its destinies in his hands.

He speedily altered the aspect of affairs. Soon he had close upon a thousand horses, all his own, on the great roads between London and the north-west; while advertisements were issued, announcing “Caravans on Springs and Guarded, carrying Goods only, every afternoon at 6 o’clock,” from London and Manchester, taking only 36 hours to perform the 186 miles.

To this, then, the “caravan” had come at last. Travellers from the Far East had originally brought the word to England. They had seen the Persian _kārwāns_ toiling under those torrid skies--covered waggons in whose shady interiors the poor folks travelled; and when the first stage-waggons were established in England, they were often known by an English version of that name. Some of the caravans of the late seventeenth century were, however, by no means the rough-and-ready affairs generally supposed, if we may judge from the description of one offered for sale in the _London Gazette_ of May 6th, 1689. This, according to the vendors, was:--

“A Fair easie going Caravan, with a very handsom Roof Brass Work, good Seats. Glasses on the sides to draw up; that will carry 18 Persons, with great Conveniency for Carriage of Goods, so well built that it is fit for Carriage of all manner of Goods--to be sold.”

But there was one more change before the caravan in 1817. Already the popular voice, unwilling to enunciate three syllables when one could be made to serve, had clipped the name to “van,” and as vans all covered vehicles of the kind have been known ever since.

At the time when Baxendale appeared upon the scene the headquarters of the business were still at Manchester, and the London establishments had been for many years past at the “Castle,” Wood Street, and the “White Bear,” Basinghall Street. To the first house, then a galleried inn of the ancient type, at the corner of Wood Street and what is now Gresham Street, but was then Lad Lane, the London and Manchester waggons and caravans resorted; and to and from the “White Bear” went the Leicester and Nottingham traffic.

Coming with a fresh mind to the carrying problems that confronted the firm, the new partner decided that London, and not Manchester, ought to be its central point, and so soon as he obtained control he accordingly removed the head offices to the Metropolis. Canal-traffic, too, engaged his earnest attention, and the scope of the firm’s activities were extended enormously in that direction. The Regent’s Canal was opened in 1820, and when that opening took place the newly built wharves of Pickford & Co. were ready, beside the City Basin. To and from that point came and went the water-borne trade, in the fly-boats of the firm, simultaneously with the fly-vans on the roads.

These developments brought other changes, and in 1826 the existing headquarter offices of Pickford & Co. were built in Gresham Street, adjoining the “Castle” Inn.

[Illustration: JOSEPH BAXENDALE.

_From the portrait by E. H. Pickersgill, R.A._ ]

It will be interesting to see what was the cost of carriage of goods at this period. It was the carriers’ Golden Age, when, for distances of a little over a hundred miles from London--as, for example, Leicester and Birmingham--the carriage of goods by waggon or caravan could be charged at 5s. per cwt., or £5 per ton; when by coach the rates for small parcels were 1d. a pound; and even by canal--that last effort in cheap transport before railways--the charges were 2s. 9d. per cwt., or £2 15s. per ton.

He who reorganised the old business of Pickford’s demands extended notice in these pages. A portrait of him, a three-quarter length, painted by Pickersgill, R.A., about 1847, has the illusion common to all three-quarter-length portraits of giving an appearance of great stature. Mr. Baxendale was a man of broad shoulder, and not above the middle height. While in many respects a good portrait of him, it is said by those who knew him best to fail in not giving expression to the native kindliness and humour that underlaid his keen business instincts. “Cheerful and witty in conversation,” says one who knew him well, “he ever had a word of encouragement for the youngsters, and was universally beloved by those whom he employed.”

To those who served him to the best of their ability he was a never-failing friend, and, at a time when business firms did not usually trouble themselves about the comfort of their servants, took pains to secure their well-being. In the galleries of the old “Castle” Inn he constructed a coffee- and club-room for his carmen, and provided similar conveniences at his other establishments. The old inn has long been demolished, but the headquarters of the firm still remains next door, and adjoins the modern Railway Goods Receiving Office of the “Swan with Two Necks,” built on the site of the old coaching establishment of Chaplin’s.

Never was such a man for improving maxims as Joseph Baxendale. He was a great admirer of _Poor Richard’s Almanack_ and its racy maxims, written by Daniel Webster, and carefully caused a broadsheet containing a selection of them to be printed. He also tried his own hand at composing pithy sentences on the virtues of punctuality and method, and caused leaflets of these, together with _Poor Richard’s_ homely literature, to be circulated and posted in all conspicuous places in the establishments of Pickford & Co. in London and the provinces, and on the roads and canals where his vans travelled or his fly-boats voyaged. Here is one of his compositions in this way:--

[Illustration:

METHOD is the very Hinge of Business; and there is no Method without Punctuality. Punctuality is important, because it subserves the Peace and good Temper of a Family: The want of it not only infringes on necessary Duty, but sometimes excludes this Duty. The Calmness of Mind which it produces, is another Advantage of Punctuality: A disorderly man is always in a hurry; he has no time to speak to you, because he is going elsewhere; and when he gets there, he is too late for his business; or he must hurry away to another before he can finish it. Punctuality gives weight to Character. “Such a man has made an Appointment:--then I know he will keep it.” And this generates punctuality in you; for, like other Virtues, it propagates itself. Servants and Children must be punctual, where their Leader is so. Appointments, indeed, become Debts. I owe you Punctuality, if I have made an Appointment with you: and have no right to throw away your time, if I do my own.

Of course, this good advice and insistence upon its being followed would have been of little avail had the author of it not been continually alert to see that his instructions took root. _He_, at any rate, practised what he preached, and rose early, was diligent all day, and went late to bed. As a business man whose business was conducted over a large stretch of country--extending chiefly in a diagonal line two hundred miles long, between London and Liverpool--he knew that only by personal supervision and by great and unwearied exertions in travelling could his subordinates be kept in a state of efficiency; and he accordingly was always travelling. By post-chaise or by private carriage he flew, day and night, along the great roads between London and Holyhead, and London, Derby, Manchester and Liverpool; appearing, suddenly and unexpectedly, at some great town-warehouse of the firm, or some wayside office or place of call, and often springing, as it were, out of the void, to encourage some diligent servant, or (it is to be feared) more often to reprimand a lazy and inefficient one. None could predicate his movements or where he might be at any given time; save indeed those with whom he had made appointments, and they knew, after only a short acquaintance, that the sun was scarce more likely to rise and set according to the calendar than Joseph Baxendale was to redeem his promise of any such assignation.

Forsaking for awhile the roads and his establishments along them, he would next appear on the canals of whose sullen waters his fly-boats flew, and pay flying visits of inspection to the many wharves along their course. These water expeditions were made in a vessel especially constructed--a “canal-yacht” called the _Lark_, whether significantly named in allusion to the early-rising habits of its owner we do not know. It was this boat, according to the still surviving tradition, he lent to the Earl of Derby on an occasion when Lady Derby was in London, too ill to travel by road to Knowsley, where, according to the doctor’s advice, she should be removed. In it she travelled all the way down to Lancashire, along the canals.

Another surviving tradition, and one that speaks well for the quality of the horses that drew the fly-boats--and perhaps even better for the keenness of the sporting instincts of the official concerned---tells how Mr. Baxendale, on coming to Braunston, a Northamptonshire village on the Grand Junction Canal, discovered that the man who should have been in charge of his wharf there had gone hunting, mounted on one of the firm’s towing-path steeds. Records of that time do not tell us of that sportsman’s return, or of the reception that met him.

It was perhaps a consequence of the strenuous rule then obtaining that, at a time when the great roads to the north were blocked by the historic snowstorm of Christmas 1836, when the stage-coaches and the mails were buried in the drifts, Pickford’s Manchester Flying Van was first through. We may suppose that the horses were better specimens than those pictured here, from an old painting, which represents the fly-van team as a very sorry one indeed, comparing badly with the sturdy animals who are seen drawing the van in the first picture.

It would be a mistake to think that Baxendale’s ways with his staff were merely those of the strict disciplinarian, only anxious to obtain the utmost from them. His kindliness was perhaps his strongest point, and Pickford’s under his rule began the practice of recognising the loyalty and hard work of their servants by pensioning them on their retirement--a policy that still does honour to the firm.

Under this vigorous sway Pickford’s grew and prospered, and by the time when railways first loomed threatening upon the horizon of the carriers’ and coachmen’s outlook, commanded the bulk of the goods traffic between London and the Midlands, alike by road and canal. That was a period above all others when a clear head was requisite. It appeared to many to be a choice between giving up business or fighting the encroachments of steam. To the few, of whom Baxendale was one, the issues were more varied and hopeful. He foresaw that railways must succeed, and that, since to fight them would be hopeless, the best thing to do would be to work with them as far as possible. The business need not be injured; indeed, he saw that it must needs share in whatever prosperity attended the railways. Only methods must be changed. But to reorganise a vast business only just, after thirteen years of unwearied effort, re-established on new and improved lines, must have seemed a hard necessity. However, when the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, the second line in the country, was about to be opened, in 1830, he perceived that although the road traffic must cease between the two terminal points of a railway, yet there must be some agency prepared to collect goods, and deliver them to or convey them from the railway stations. He saw, too, an inevitable increase in the volume of traffic, and very prudently resolved to obtain a share of it by throwing in his lot with the railway people, who were themselves not so assured of instant success as to repel so unexpected an offer, and welcomed the proposed alliance. The same attitude was adopted towards the Grand Junction Railway and the London and Birmingham. In this far-seeing policy Baxendale was at one with William Chaplin, who at an early period in the history of railway enterprise had called upon him and asked him what his views were on this vital question. Chaplin withdrew his coaches when the London and Birmingham Railway was opened, and Pickford’s fly-vans and fly-boats ceased to run. In return for these really valuable services, Pickford’s, and Chaplin and his coaching ally, Horne, who had been equally complaisant, acquired shares in the town and country carrying agencies for what in 1845 became an amalgamation of railway interests under the style and title of the “London and North-Western Railway.” Unused as these new railway people were to the business of handling goods, they were glad enough that Mr. Baxendale should organise that class of traffic for them, and, as we have already said, really welcomed the aid thus somewhat unexpectedly forthcoming, although outwardly adopting a self-sufficient and omnipotent attitude. He became organising goods-manager, and contributed the services of his staff to the work, but resigned when everything had been duly set going to devote himself to his own business. He it was who drew up the documents still used in the goods departments of railways to this day, in all essentials unaltered.

[Illustration: PICKFORD AND CO.’S ROYAL FLY-VAN, ABOUT 1820.

_From a contemporary painting._ ]

Meanwhile his anticipations were justified by the course of events, Railways did but alter the methods of the carrying trade. They not only did not destroy it, but, in the altered shape it took, increased it fifty-fold. No fewer than twenty-one district managers became necessary to the conduct of the business, which at length gave employment to between three and four thousand people.

The central figure of this successful reorganisation became, like William Chaplin, a power in the railway world. He was for some years Chairman of the South-Eastern Railway, and in that capacity strongly urged the purchase of Folkestone Harbour, an undertaking then in the market. His co-directors did not at the time agree with the proposal, but eventually came round to his way of thinking, and brought up the subject again. Meanwhile he had privately purchased the harbour. The high sense of duty that characterised him led to his considering that, as Chairman of the Railway Company, and as therefore trustee of the interests of the projectors, he could not retain the property, and he accordingly transferred it at the price he had given. He was at the same time a director of the Great Northern Railway of France, but was in 1848, in consequence of a severe illness, obliged to resign some of these activities, together with the detailed management of Pickford’s, which he then left in the hands of his three sons, but never gave up control of the business. He had in the meantime purchased an estate at Woodside Park, Whetstone, where he resided. He died there, March 24th, 1872, in his eighty-seventh year.

The portrait of him, as he was in the full vigour of his manhood, hangs amid the old-time relics still cherished in the Gresham Street offices--among the muskets and the blunderbusses carried by the guards of his fly-vans in the old days of the road.