I wrote a three part article on John Wesley Hackworth for the Globe - Journal of the Stockton and Darlington Railway. This is Part 1.
About the Globe - See here https://www.sdr1825.org.uk/about-us/Read the whole of this issue on pdf Here https://www.sdr1825.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/13-The-Globe-Dec-2020.pdf
John Wesley Hackworth - (Inventor, Engineer, Advocate) Part 1 By Trev Teasdel
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John Wesley Hackworth 1820–1891cut a controversial figure in locomotive history and yet those who know of him, probably only know that he was Timothy Hackworth’s son, that he delivered to Russia its first successful steam locomotive and was caught up in controversy over the defence of his father’s reputation. What follows is a portrayal of his life and work and along the way I hope to highlight some areas that need further research. My lads are descendants of John Wesley Hackworth on their mother’s side. Their maternal grandmother was Joan Hackworth Weir (nee Parsons). Joan left a case of Hackworth material in her loft – letters, cuttings and much more, all of which I have put online. 1
1 Because there was nothing much on him on the internet,
2 I am currently working on a website for John Wesley Hackworth. 2
A Priceless Education!
John was born in Walbottle in 1820 and lived there with his parents Timothy Hackworth and Jane Hackworth, nee Golightly, until he was five. Timothy was Foreman of the Smith as he had been at Christopher Blackett’s Wylam Colliery. In 1824 he was prevailed upon by George Stephenson to go to the Forth Street Works at Newcastle as ‘a borrowed man’ to oversee, amongst other things the building of Active as originally named but later became known as Locomotion No 1. By the time John was five, Timothy had finally accepted a position as ‘Superintendent Engineer’ of the Stockton & Darlington Railway and the family moved first to Darlington and then in 1826 to a house in the first terrace built in New Shildon.
It was here that John’s education began. Robert Young says "He was a clever boy but no
student of books. While other children were spinning tops, he was spragging the wheels of
coal waggons as they reach the bottom of the incline or riding on the locomotives. He went
with the Royal George on its trip and knew as much about it as most of the men and a good deal more than some of them. He thus began his early training as an engineer and never dreamt of any other career. It was part and parcel of his existence and he was a born mechanic.” 3
John occupied a unique place in history, growing up and working/learning with his father,
Timothy Hackworth, the first Superintendent of the S & D Railway and creator of the Royal
George. John would later say of those days “I saw the Stockton and Darlington Railway
opened, was brought up upon it, knew every horse, every locomotive driver, and fireman,
every director, nearly all the shareholders, and every noteworthy incident that occurred
thereon for the first 20 years; and if any living man knows anything of its history, and working, I am the man!" 4
The First Russian Locomotive
In a paper from 1956, David Burke wrote that in 1836 “A 16-year old English boy (John
Wesley Hackworth) gave Russia her first railway locomotive. He (and his team) faced
blizzards, wolves, and misfortune, and at the end of his journey, crowds cheered him, priests blessed him, and he received the Tsar’s congratulations” 5
Ulick Loring (the great-great grandson of Timothy Hackworth) comments “for a young man
reared in the austerity of nonconformist north-east England, to be exposed to Imperial
Russian life must have been a heady experience. It is difficult nowadays to imagine the
contrast between English and Slavic religion and culture and how it could affect visitors from Western Europe. His locomotive was the first among several ordered from Western Europe, to arrive at St. Petersburg. This was on 3rd October 1836 (Russian Calendar).” 6
The need for a more efficient transport system in Russia had become urgent and
Czechoslovakian engineer, Franz von Gerstner, was appointed to oversee the project.
George Turner Smith tells us
“The first 15 miles of single track was laid down between St Petersburg and Tsarskoe-Selo
where the Tsar had his Summer Palaces. Seven locomotives would need to be purchased
from abroad, six from England and one from Belgium. The English contingent comprised four from Robert Stephenson’s works in Newcastle and two from the Vulcan Foundry at Newton-Le-Willows. However, because of outstanding commitments, Stephenson found that he could only supply two from Forth Street and Soho works was contracted to provide the rest.” 7
The duty of introducing the locomotive to Russia devolved upon Timothy Hackworth’s eldest son, John. Such a journey at that time was a perilous proposition and Timothy’s decision to send his son couldn’t have been taken lightly! It may have been because both Timothy and Thomas were under considerable pressure and Thomas had just got married to a French woman, Adele Celestine Hennon, but as Robert Young says John Wesley Hackworth was ‘a well set up youth, nearly as tall as his father, and a keen and clever engineer, absorbed in his profession and in appearance, much older than his years.’
Two engines were outsourced to the Hackworth’s Soho works, New Shildon but only one was built, and this was the first to be delivered to Tsar Nicholas 1. George Turner Smith says, “In effect, the engine was a typical Stephenson 2-2-2 ‘Patentee…The engine was crated up and transported on a modified flat-bed wagon, along the S&D rails to Port Darlington in Middlesbrough…The locomotive was loaded on to the brig – Barbara.” 8
On the 17th September 1836, The Durham Advertiser reported -
"On Thursday, 15th September, a large and powerful locomotive engine, built by Timothy
Hackworth of New Shildon for the Emperor of Russia was shipped on board the 'Barbara' at Middlesbro'. This engine is constructed on an improved principle and finished in the best
manner. She has been tried on the premises and propelled at the rate of 72 miles per hour.
It is said that this machine and the similar one built at Newcastle, will on their arrival at St.
Petersburg, have cost the Emperor upwards of £2,000 each. Who, a few years ago, would
have dreamed of the exportation of machinery from the River Tees? This engine is for
travelling on the railroad from St. Petersburg to Pavlovsky where stands one of the country
palaces of his Imperial Majesty." 9
The locomotive arrived at Port Darlington, Middlesbrough along with Hackworth’s team of
engineers. It is assumed the Barbara would be a brig but nothing much is known about it. For any Middlesbrough historians wanting to do some research on the ship, the records from Customs House, Middlesbrough, are now in Teesside archives.
Hackworth’s locomotive for Russia 1836. Image from the Joan Hackworth Weir Collection
It was previously surmised that John Wesley Hackworth travelled with the team from Shildon to Middlesbrough but in searching the Hackworth archive we discover that John Wesley Hackworth was travelling to London with his father, on business and intended to board a ship in London to catch up with the team in Hamburg. He missed his initial connection but managed to board a later ship and reunite with the team.
A description of the Letter from Timothy Hackworth (Guild Hall Coffee House) to Jane
Hackworth 22nd September 1836 reads “we were to [sic] late in reaching London the vessel had been gone 15 minutes. One Mr Kitching from Lancashire has to go to St Petersburg to fix two weighing machines, he together with his niece and son John all go on board on Friday night and sail for Hamburg on Saturday morning and I think of coming home by Majestic…….’ 10
At that time, the Baltic was frozen over so the team had to travel from Hamburg through 500 miles of frozen desolate country with wooden sledges, before the spires of St. Petersburg came into view. David Burke, who had sight of the lost John Wesley Hackworth diary of the trip, quoted it saying “Blizzards nearly blinded them, wolves attacked them and only by whipping the horse teams into a frenzy did young Hackworth and his team escape the snapping jaws.” And Robert Young adds that “the weather was so severe that the spirit bottles broke with the frost.”
Clearly in 1836, delivering a locomotive was no easy task but it was by no means the end of their troubles. While assembling the locomotive in St. Petersburg, a cylinder cracked and with no workshops in the city capable of fixing it, Hackworth’s foreman George Thompson heroically took the cylinder from St. Petersburg to Moscow, a distance of some 600 miles, to the armoury where they made a pattern for the cylinder, got it cast, bored out and fitted, returned to St. Petersburg, and fixed it in the engine.
The Launch of the Russian Locomotive
David Burke12 tells us “In November 1836 bells pealed in St. Petersburg, guns boomed, and the line was opened with great crowds cheering, gaping Russians who had never seen an ‘Iron horse’ before’. John Wesley Hackworth drove his puffing, hissing charge into Tsarskoye-selo where the Tsar Nicholas 1 and his family and generals waited to see him arrive. Not that the opening of the first railway in once Holy Russia was as simple as that – a score of orthodox priests descended on the engine with crosses, candles, censers, and holy water to perform the blessing ceremony”. “They splashed me in the process” Hackworth wrote in his diary."13
Robert Young elaborates “This was the baptismal ceremony of consecration according to the rites of the Greek Church done in the presence of an assembled crowd. Water was obtained from a neighbouring bog or “stele” in a golden censer and sanctified by immersions of a golden cross amid chanting of choristers and intonations of priests, while a hundred lighted tapers were held round it. This was followed by the invocation of special blessings upon the Tsar and Imperial Family, and fervent supplications that on all occasions of travel by the new mode, just being inaugurated, they might be well and safely conveyed. Then came the due Administration of the Ordinance by one priest bearing the holy censer; while a second, operating with a huge brush and dipping in the censer, dashed each wheel with the sign of the cross, with final copious showers all over the engine, of which John Hackworth was an involuntary partaker.” 14
Hackworth related in his diary how he was introduced to the Tsar who told him of a visit to
England in 1816, when he had witnessed the running of Blenkinsop’s engine on the colliery line from Middleton to Leeds. The Tsar added some complimentary remarks regarding the new locomotive, saying he ‘could not have conceived it possible so radical a change could have been effected within the last 20 years. The Tsar also told him that “It was an occasion of great progress and other ‘Iron horses’ would surely spread across the nation.”
John Wesley Hackworth’s Passport
On the 12th December 1836, John was granted a Russian passport for the homeward
journey, by the Tsar himself. The name on the passport read John William Hackworth,
because, as George Turner Smith remarks “his name was considered unsuitable for a visitor to Mother Russia.” Timothy Hackworth was a Methodist and named his son after
John Wesley but for the passport they changed Wesley to William so as not offend the
Russian Orthodox church. The passport was kept by John Wesley Hackworth’s
descendants until
2005 when Joan Hackworth Weir donated it to the Hackworth Archives at NRM, York.
The passport reads:
“By Edict of his Majesty, the Sovereign Emperor. Nikolai Pavlovitch, Autocrat of all the
Russias. To each and every person who it may concern, it is hereby announced that the
presenter of this document, a citizen of Great Britain, John William Hackworth, mechanical
engineer, is leaving this country via Lierandia and Kurlendia. In witness whereof and for
freedom of passage he is given this passport, which remains valid for three weeks, to pass
the bearer through the frontier. This passport is allocated by The St. Petersburg District
Governor General with the affixed seal of His Imperial Majesty at St. Petersburg 12th day of
December in the year 1836. No 3179 1560, Distinctive characteristics – Age 16, height
medium, hair light brown, face oval, forehead average, eyebrows bushy, eyes hazel, mouth
average, chin rounded.” 15
Timothy and the family were surprised and alarmed when John returned with a full Russian
beard, long before beards were popular in the 19th Century in the UK. However, it was a
keeper, and he sported the beard all his life!
In part two, next time, we will look at his life as an inventor, manufacturer, consultant
engineer and vigorous advocate of his father’s reputation.
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Notes
(1) https://joanhackworthweircollection.blogspot.com/
(3) Robert Young - Timothy Hackworth and the Locomotive. 1923 Chapter XIX
(4) Robert Young – Ibid
(6) Ulick Loring - A Railway Family - 2015
(7) George Turner Smith - Thomas Hackworth (Locomotive Engineer) 2015 p10
(8) Ibid P51
(12) Ibid
(13) Note – John Wesley Hackworth kept a diary of his Russian trip but its current whereabouts is not known. There are similar diaries by the other teams but not in the public domain.
(14) Robert Young 1923 Chapter XIX
Above, Joan Hackworth Weir (nee Parsons) in her 80's (right with hat and glasses),with Jane Hackworth Young (right), myself, Trev Teasdel and some of the Hackworth Grandsons, Kyle and Kristian Teasdel, from the Northern Echo 2005 when Joan presented to NRM the 'Blast Pipe letters' to Timothy Hackworth from George and Robert Stephenson, long held by the Hackworth family.
