The Times in 1834 offered a list of 'Omnibus Law' that included: 'Do not spit on the straw. You are not in a hog-sty but in an omnibus travelling in a country which boasts of its refinement.' And 'Refrain from affectation and conceited airs. Remember you are riding a distance for sixpence which, if made in a hackney-coach would cost you as many shillings.'
Cartoon postcards took up this mood, for example: 'Passengers left behind may get there first.' And 'Passengers desirous to sleep should instruct the conductor at what time they are to be awakened'.
Horses and horse food (corn and hay) were the main forms of urban traction and its fuel throughout the nineteenth century. There was not much that William Turton did not know about either.
The years 1830-1914 have been called 'The Age of the Train'. But in fact for inner-city and suburban transport the period 1825-1903 is 'The Horse-drawn Era'. It is coincident with the life of William Turton. It was a risky and expensive business. Starting aged nineteen in 1844 Turton built up his corn and hay business which was his main source of wealth until his death. He also acquired a livery and cab stable and eventually ran the largest bus service in Leeds.
In 1872 he was a founder director of the Leeds Tramways Company, one of first in England. He was Chairman for twenty years until 1895 when, as the contract required, LTC transferred by sale to Leeds Borough Council. At the time of sale the LTC had 368 horses valued at £35 each, 69 cars and 26 steam engines. It ran 485,337 miles in 1891 carrying 4,986,384 passengers. The LTC was capitalised at £160,000 with £10 shares owned by 720-780 shareholders at any one time. Biennial dividends ranged from nil to 6%.
So along the way this machine maker's apprentice had adopted the steam traction engine for trams. He was a founding shareholder and director of Thomas Green and Son Engineers who made many of the cars and engines bought by Turton's numerous tramway companies. Turton also had a successful coal business; as far as fuel went any competition between horse and steam was a win-win situation for him. His companies also began to adopt electric and combustion engine traction in the late 1890s.
The horse-drawn tram linked the suburbs in spoke-like fashion to the centre, while buses ran between these lines to form a spider's web of transport. Turton owned most bus routes and ran the monopoly tram service.
Gordon Stowell in his semi-fictional story of the part of Chapeltown in which he grew up (The History of Button Hill 1929) calls the area 'a horse-power suburb' linked to the centre by the tram as if it were 'an umbilical cord'. 'Without the tram Button Hill would have had no history. For social evolution depends largely on the history of transport, and it was the invention of the road-tramway which made practicable the modern middle-class suburb.' Lord Rosebery's lordly put down remark that trams were 'the inconvenience of the opulent and the luxury of the poor' was not far from the mark.
By 1895 William Turton was said to have been 'the most senior director in the transport industry' and 'the most experienced and respected figure in urban transport in the North of England'. He was a transport visionary and entrepreneur. Until his death in 1900 William Turton was still Chairman of Bradford Tramways and director of others. Together with Daniel Busby he had pioneered tramways in more than ten northern towns including: Blackburn, Bradford, Dewsbury, Leeds, Leicester, Liverpool, Manchester and Salford, Newcastle, Nottingham, Sheffield and South Shields.
William Turton was an elected Councillor for some 12 years. There are pen portraits of the outstanding Mayors with whom he served: John Barran and Henry Marsden, as well as engineers Joseph Kincaid and Major-General Charles Hutchinson RE.
Turton witnessed, and in some cases was a victim of, a number of cases of electoral bribery and corruption, insider dealing and other criminality. He was particular active as Chairman of the strategic 'Sanitary Committee' or what we would call Public Health and Environment. The man and the transport are contextualised within the city as they reflect and in turn create each other.
William Turton left an estate valued at over £190,000 which in today's money would be between £10-15 million. There were fewer than 100 millionaires in Britain 1894-1914, none of them in corn or road transport. With sub-division and the effects of the Depression, little of this wealth remained by the Second World War.
Turton's youngest son Robert took over the coal business. His older son George continued the corn business and ran it successfully until his death in 1920 when the firm began to pass out of the family into other hands. It was still trading as 'William Turton Leeds: Corn and Hay Merchant' until the 1960s.
'The strength of this book is that Mr Turton has managed to provide a tremendous amount of detail alongside salient interpretation of the facts. By putting these facts into a wider context he has created a fascinating read. Mr Turton has managed to write a transport history book, focusing on his own family, that provides an illuminating and comprehensive account of an important aspect of Victorian Britain.'
- Christian Wolmar, transport journalist and author