George Bradshaw (July 29, 1801 - August, 1853) was an English cartographer, printer and publisher and the originator of the railway timetable.
Bradshaw was born at Windsor Bridge, Pendleton, 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. His name was already known as the publisher of Bradshaws 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 railway timetable was published in Manchester. It cost sixpence and was a cloth-bound book entitled Bradshaws Railway Time Tables and Assistant to Railway Travelling, the title being changed in 1840 to Bradshaws 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 Bradshaws Monthly Railway Guide. From then on the book, in the meanwhile 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 George 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 only cost 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 June 1961.
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 alibi. Examples are Ronald Knox's The Footsteps at the Lock (1928) and novels by Freeman Wills Crofts.
In June 1847 the first number of Bradshaws Continental Railway Guide was issued, giving the time-tables of the Continental railways just as Bradshaws Monthly Railway Guide gave the time-tables 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 himself was a religious man. Although far from wealthy, when he was young his parents enabled him to take lessons from a minister who was devoted to the teachings of Emanuel Swedenborg. Later in his life, he 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.
George Bradshaw married in 1839. While touring Norway in 1853 he contracted cholera and died in August of that year without being able to return to England. He is interred in the cemetery adjoining the cathedral of Oslo.
Reprints of old Bradshaws are available, for example the April 1910 edition, originally published at the height of railway mania, and republished in 2002 by Orion Publishing (ISBN 1842125346).
External links
Last updated: 05-07-2005 17:57:41
Last updated: 05-13-2005 07:56:04
