THE YOUTHFUL MUSE-1839
"We ought not to omit a passing notice of some poetical effusions in praise of steam, written by three pupils in St. Peter's School, Masters James Motley, Thomas Dewse, and T. C. Smyth, which were printed in the form of a small pamphlet, and distributed to the company at the breakfast. As these efforts of the youthful muse possess considerable merit, and much playful humour, we willingly transcribe such portions of each as our limits will admit, which will be found in another part of the paper." The above extract from the Yorkshire Gazette of 1st June, 1839, establishes a St. Peter's link, albeit slender, with an event which was to prove momentous in the history of York. The paragraph is culled from the Gazette's account of the ceremony which marked the opening, on the 29th May, 1839, of the first railway out of York—the York and North Midland Railway. Only the first part of the projected line had then been completed, from York to South Milford. A further year had to elapse before the whole line was in operation, from York to the hamlet of Altofts, near Normanton, where it was to link up with the North Midland, planned from Derby to Leeds. But it was a historic occasion, of more import perhaps than could have been appreciated by the little group of York worthies who first mooted the idea on the 30th December, 1833, at a meeting in Mrs. Thomlinson's hotel in Petergate ; and York celebrated it in no halfhearted fashion. The proceedings began with a breakfast at the Guildhall at 11 a.m. Thence there was a magnificent procession of the notables of the City to the temporary railway station, where 400 passengers embarked on the train and rode "with the speed of a race-horse" to South Milford, 14 miles away. All York was on holiday, flags were flying, the Minster bells ringing, cannon booming from the ships on the river, when thousands of citizens, crowded on the city walls, watched the iron horse start on its way at 1 p.m. At South Milford there was a wait of an hour or so, and the travellers were entertained by a band conveyed for this purpose in a special coach. The return journey was taken in more leisurely fashion to enable the passengers to view the moving countryside. After this hazardous adventure—the engine driver, appropriately named Nelson, touched 30 miles an hour— further sustenance was called for, and at 4-30 200 guests sat down to a grand banquet at the Guildhall, a gargantuan feast, which continued until 10 p.m. Similar entertainment was provided for the clerks, engineers, and lesser fry at the Windmill Inn. It says much for the stamina of our ancestors that even after the banquet with its endless speeches the festivities were not regarded as complete. A grand ball in the state room of the Mansion House was the next item on the programme, and the rejoicings finally ended at 4 a.m. the next day. From this small beginning sprang York's eminence in the railway world, and it is interesting to find St. Peter's indirectly associated with 20
