Helens comments – 463 words?
Porters
There have been porters – people to carry passengers’ luggage or to load and unload goods trains – for as long as there have been railways. Some of the earliest were on the Liverpool and Manchester Railway in the 1830’s. Many of the early railways carried the passengers’ luggage on the roofs of the carriages, so it was especially important that it was stored securely.
With large amounts of goods being moved by railway, porters were needed to shift it on and off the trains. By 1842, for example, the goods warehouses at Manchester’s Liverpool Road station had about 110 porters but by 1860 there were 17,954 porters on Britain’s railways and by 1948 the number had grown to 52,857.
Porters might also have many other jobs to do. At large stations they could be washing carriages, fixing oil lamps or sorting parcels. On the platforms they could be addressing passengers’ luggage, answering passengers’ questions or shutting carriage doors. In rural stations, with few staff, there were even more jobs for them to do that only had a few trains through the station each day and they may also have the signals to operate, so there was the job of porter/signalman. They were also used to sell and collect tickets, clean offices and waiting rooms, herding animals on and off trains, tending the flowerbeds or a host of other jobs. There were even “travelling porters” on the Great Western, who sat in an uncomfortable metal seat on the back of the engine’s tender, looking back over the train for detached wagons, fires or other problems.
A Victorian porter might earn about 17 shillings (85 pence) a week. Tips from grateful customers would be a valuable way of adding to their income. But some railway companies did not allow their porters to accept tips. Other companies said the porters should not solicit tips, which is not quite the same thing. The Great Western Railway does not appear to have had any such restriction (check).
Portering was traditionally been a male job but exceptions were made during the two World Wars. With so many men joining the forces, women were brought in to do a wide range of railway jobs, including porters. The only exceptions to where women could work seem to have been management or working on the footplate of the locomotives.
Drunkenness became a problem with some Great Western porters, and a pub called “The Mint” near Paddington station became a favourite place for them to meet. It was so bad the railway company put railway policemen on the door, to stop their staff going in. Strangely this seems to have added to the problem as they now had drunken policemen. The railway eventually bought the pub and turned it into a coffee tavern.