Morton Peto

Peto, Sir (Samuel) Morton, first baronet (1809–1889), contractor for railways and public works, was born on 4 August 1809 at Whitmoor House, Woking, Surrey, the eldest son of William Peto (d. 1849) of Cookham, Berkshire, farmer, and his wife, Sophia, daughter of Ralph Alloway of Dorking. Educated first at a Cobham village school, he then spent two years at Jardine's boarding-school at Brixton Hill, Surrey.

Apprenticeship

When he was fourteen he was apprenticed to his uncle, Henry Peto, public works contractor, with whom he lived at 31 Little Britain, City of London. He also attended a technical school. His talent for drawing was developed by a draughtsman, George Maddox of Furnival's Inn, and an architect, either Charles or Samuel Beazley. Under his uncle, he learnt the practical side of building in the carpenter's shop and as a bricklayer and mason, before acting as a superintendent, work that gave him ‘an insight into the mechanism of labour … [and] the idiosyncrasy of the English mechanic’ (Men of the time).

On his uncle's death in 1830, Peto and his cousin Thomas Grissell each inherited a half share in his business and heavily mortgaged estate. As partners they conducted one of the leading firms of public works contractors, in a period when competitive tendering for lump-sum contracts was becoming the norm for major building works. Their control of a wide range of building trades, even leasing their own stone quarries, enabled them to win contracts on terms that their close site controls made profitable to them. Their 1832 tender for Hungerford Market, London (designed by Charles Fowler) was, at £42,400, only £400 below their nearest competitor. It was the first in a notable series that included Charles Barry's Birmingham grammar school (1833), the Reform (also Barry, 1836), Conservative (1840), and Oxford and Cambridge (1836–8) clubs, Samuel Beazley's Lyceum (1831–4, in sixteen weeks) and St James's (1835, in thirteen weeks) theatres, and his Studley Castle, Warwickshire (1834), Bushall's Olympic Theatre (1849), and Nelson's Column (1843). They also constructed Fowler's St John's Church, Hyde Park Crescent (1830–31).

Peto recalled that:

our ordinary business coming regularly from the large breweries and fire offices, and the work of our own connection with the architects, netted on the average £11,000 or £12,000 a year, and with only £50,000 capital engaged in that department. (Peto, 13)

Well placed to benefit from new contracting opportunities, they engaged in railway construction, beginning with two stations in Birmingham, followed by the Hanwell to Langley section of the Great Western (1840)—where Peto successfully referred his disputed £162,000 account directly to the determination of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the engineer—as well as the Woolwich graving dock. But their most celebrated work was the superstructure of Barry's houses of parliament, begun in 1840 on a lump-sum contract for the river front, and continued in a series of contracts based on their schedule of prices. Young men in their employ included George Gilbert Scott and the Lucas brothers, Charles Thomas and Thomas.

Railway building

Peto was more enthusiastic than Grissell about developing the risky but profitable railway-building side of the business, which had the added advantage that he would then be able to stand for parliament, from which as a government contractor he was barred. He dissolved the partnership on 2 March 1846, taking over the railway works (including some in Norfolk), a substantial ‘clear capital’ and £25,000 worth of plant. He was returned as MP for Norwich in July 1847. Among his contracts were those for portions of the South Eastern Railway adjoining others being executed by Edward Ladd Betts, who in 1843 had married Peto's sister. Having run into difficulties with the Saltwood Tunnel, where Betts had the contract for the permanent way, in 1846 they agreed to join forces, and subsequently formed a partnership that lasted until Betts's death in 1872. Peto worked on securing contracts, raising finance, and carrying out a modern company chairman's role, while Betts performed that of chief executive, actually conducting the works.

Peto and Betts's highly organized operations covered many parts of England, but especially the east, with contracts for the Great Northern loop line through Boston to Doncaster, the East Lincolnshire, and the Eastern Counties Railway for which alone their several contracts totalled over £1.12 million. Writing from Boston in 1847, Peto referred to the thirteen engines and 8000 men they had on the works. As a feeder for East Anglia, they developed the London, Tilbury, and Southend Railway (1854–6), which they also leased as operators, a costly speculation. They were also responsible for the London, Cambridge, and Ely line; the Oxford and Birmingham Railway (contracts including the Harbury cuttings, the largest in the country, requiring the removal of 1.5 million cu. yd of soil); and the Oxford, Worcester, and Wolverhampton. Other contracts included the Dorset sections of the London and South Western (at a cost of £420,000, partly paid in shares), and the Hereford, Ross and Gloucester, as well as for the Severn Valley and the Chester and Holyhead railway companies of which Peto was chairman. In the 1840s Peto had thirty-three railway contracts worth £20 million, the largest number held in the kingdom; according to Brunel he was the largest contractor in the world.

Beyond the scale of his operations, Peto's insistence on paying his men weekly in cash was unusual. He recommended this practice to the select committee on railway labourers in 1846, and it was endorsed in their report. In 1854 Peto, supporting an amendment of the Truck Act, claimed always to have paid in cash the wages of the 30,000 men his firm had employed throughout the world. Peto was also interested in the physical and moral well-being of his employees, building barrack huts for them where necessary, each under the charge of a married couple, and paying for chaplains, Bibles, and uplifting tracts. His system of management combined ‘discipline, personal freedom, moral admonition reduced to practice, and a total avoidance of ostentatious pietism’ (Men of the time).

Several of Peto's undertakings were ‘contractors' lines’, projected ‘not because the district wanted a railway, but because the contractor wanted a job’ (The Times, 25 April 1868, 9). Such companies paid their contractors by issuing them with stock at a discount, to sell at a profit when possible. Peto's name was a byword for this practice. In 1857, after parliament sanctioned the London, Chatham, and Dover Railway, an author going under the pseudonym ‘Tooth of the Dragon’ published a pamphlet, Petovia, attacking ‘Petoism’: ‘There was concoction of companies by contractors in order to make their own terms for construction of the works, or, bribery of directors in order to sacrifice the shareholders’ (Popplewell, 9). As early as 1847, having been paid extensively in securities, Peto was experiencing serious cash flow difficulties, eventually resolved by the connection he developed with the Quaker Gurney banks in Norfolk and thence with the discounting house of Overend Gurney. In the late 1840s and early 1850s Peto's plans were largely focused on developing Lowestoft as a port for Norwich and its hinterland, and its establishment as a holiday resort.

When the major domestic routes had been completed, Peto and Betts looked abroad: in co-operation with Thomas Brassey, their only equal, they extended their operations into Norway (1851) and Denmark (in 1853, 1860, and 1863, totalling 350 miles). They even undertook projects in Canada from 1852, embarking on the Grand Trunk Railway (539 miles in length); this required the bridging of the St Lawrence River at Montreal, which proved so expensive that they had to be rescued by the Canadian government. Peto found one-third of the £270,000 capital for their Birkenhead Canada works to provide the metal parts and rolling stock needed. Other enterprises in which they joined Brassey included the Lyons and Avignon Railway (1852) and extensive lines in Australia (from 1859), and at home, the Victoria docks, London, in 1852 at a cost of £870,000. In the Crimean War, Peto offered to construct a railway at Balaklava at cost, but this necessitated his resignation of his parliamentary seat in December 1854; he was compensated with a baronetcy the following February. Peto and Betts were also responsible for the Algiers to Blidah line, the first railway in Algeria, and the Algiers quays; the Dünaberg and Vitebsk Railway in Russia (220 miles long); the Buenos Aires to Rosario; and a land drainage scheme in the Netherlands. At Sir John Rennie's suggestion, the firm made an agreement in 1857 for building the Coimbra to Oporto line, abandoned after disputes with the Portuguese government; Rennie thought that the real cause ‘was that their resources were swallowed up by a great variety of speculations’ (Rennie, 366).

Bankruptcy

It was, however, essentially their involvement at home with the controversial and insecure London, Chatham, and Dover Railway (LCDR) that brought about their collapse. Peto and Betts, in partnership with the engineer T. R. Crampton from 1862, concluded a lump-sum contract at £5.979 million (including more than £1 million for land) for its metropolitan extension into Victoria Station. They were to be paid not in cash, but in shares and debentures of the heavily indebted company, to which in December 1863 Peto offered his services as financial adviser. He undertook to fund a floating debt of £1.25 million which enabled the company to issue more stock, taken by Peto at a heavy discount. By improperly certifying that the majority of this stock had been subscribed for, the company was then able to raise cash on debentures, a not unusual, but illegal, proceeding. It was exposed by Peto's borrowings, and on 11 May 1866 the partners went down, following their bankers, Overend, Gurney & Co., with liabilities estimated at £4 million. Though denouncing the essential unsoundness of ‘contractors' lines’, The Times lamented:

It is not without a sense of national humiliation that we contemplate the failure of a house which is identified with some of the grandest mechanical achievements of the present century. Perhaps no one, save Mr Brassey, has filled so high a position among English contractors as Sir Morton Peto … a leading pioneer of the railway system, and a great master in the art of organizing labour. (26 July 1867, 9)

Gladstone and Disraeli alike paid him similar tributes in the Commons.

In the subsequent bankruptcy proceedings, the transactions between Peto and the LCDR were left undetermined: although the firm's books ‘had been admirably kept’ according to the LCDR's solicitor (The Times, 7 July 1868, 11), another viewpoint was that the accounts ‘were both contradictory and most difficult to unravel’ (Peto, 47). The firm claimed a balance due to them of £380,000, and the LCDR counter-claimed for £6,661,941. The affairs of the partners, too, were almost inextricable: £800,000 belonging to Peto, Betts, and Crampton had been applied to discharge Peto and Betts's liabilities, leaving a deficiency of over £1 million. The LCDR received a dividend of 1s. 10d. from the bankrupts' estate on their discharge. Peto had meanwhile resumed his parliamentary activities, being returned first for Finsbury in 1859 and then becoming member for Bristol in 1865, but as a bankrupt was once again obliged to step down, which he did in April 1868. Nevertheless he evidently had hopes of re-election, and his election committee in June 1868 rejected his offer to resign as a candidate; his subsequent ‘involved and prolix exposition’ to his former constituents of his affairs ‘obscured rather than elucidated’ in the view of The Times (7 July 1868), which thought that the ordinary reader would conclude that in Peto's opinion there were people involved who were more to blame than himself (a view shared by The Builder); but he could not ‘be held as irresponsible as he claims’ (The Times, 25 Oct 1868, 6). Peto did not, however, again contest Bristol.

Family life and religious activities

On 18 May 1831 Peto married Thomas Grissell's oldest sister, Mary (c.1811–1842); the couple, who had two sons and three daughters, lived in Albany Terrace, York Road, Lambeth. After her death he married, on 12 July 1843, Sarah Ainsworth (1821–1892), eldest daughter of Henry Kelsall of Rochdale, a textile manufacturer and leading Baptist layman; they had another six sons, of whom Harold Ainsworth Peto became a partner in the leading architectural practice of Sir Ernest George and Peto, and four daughters.

Peto, who had been brought up an evangelical Anglican, joined the Baptists about 1844, influenced by his second wife; from the mid-1840s until his bankruptcy he was the leading Baptist layman, serving in 1853–5 and again in 1863–7 as chairman of the dissenting deputies. He was treasurer of the Baptist Missionary Society from 1846 to 1867. Peto's omnibus, conveying family and servants (the sexes segregated) to worship in Bloomsbury, was a familiar Sunday sight between 1849 and 1873. He was in favour of complete religious freedom for every denomination, and this was one of the few topics on which he spoke in the Commons.

As an MP, Peto acted independently on the radical wing of the Liberal Party, expressing his confidence in the fourth earl of Aberdeen's coalition ministry in June 1854, during the Crimean War. Membership of the Commons for him offered a means of promoting his interests; he did not seek a career in politics. Peto was naturally active in discussion of religious questions: in 1850 he secured a non-contentious Trustee Act to safeguard nonconformist chapel trusts, but in 1861 his Burials Bill (to allow nonconformist services in parochial graveyards) was rejected. He encouraged a non-aggressive attitude towards the Church of England but attacked compulsory church rates, arguing that they were unnecessary. Apart from religious and public works topics, his speeches principally concerned the condition of the working classes, on which he regarded himself as peculiarly well informed: he ‘believed he had been more extensively engaged with the industrious classes of this country than any Member’ (Hansard 3, 121, 1862, 698). He was indeed seen as a philanthropic employer, endeavouring to make all in his employ ‘feel that the interests of employer and employed are identical, … that the master cares for the comfort and welfare of his men, and is really … anxious that they should be helped in every way to rise in the world’ (Cassell's Illustrated Family Paper, 39–40). Peto set out his political views in seconding the Address in the Commons on 4 February 1851, when he praised the reduction of import duties and the repeal of the Navigation Acts; pointed to the thriving state of stock farming as a result of the consequent improved working-class living standards; urged the building of more railways to benefit Ireland, and to open up India as a market for cotton manufactures; approved anti-papal legislation; and recommended the universal registration of property deeds. He served on a number of select committees (including that on masters and operatives, 1860) and official commissions, particularly the metropolitan commission of sewers (1849), of which he was deputy chairman in 1851–2, and the royal commission for the 1851 exhibition.

Peto published, in addition to religious tracts, Observations on the Report of the Defence Commissioners, with an Analysis of the Evidence (1862); Taxation, its Levy and Expenditure, Past and Future (1863)—a 400 page criticism of British financial policy; and Resources and prospects of America ascertained during a visit to the States in the Autumn of 1865 (1866), a lengthy, generally admiring, analysis, but advocating the merits of free trade.

Although Peto spent liberally, his income was not as large as might be expected. In 1861 he said £10,000 was his best for seven years past, and in 1862 he realized assets in real estate worth several thousands annually. He was a generous benefactor to charity, funding the building of Bloomsbury Baptist Chapel (at a cost of £18,000) and, when repaid, buying the Regent's Park diorama for conversion to a chapel; he also restored the parish church on the estate he had bought at Somerleyton, Lowestoft, Suffolk, where he built a model village, with a school for the children of the men in his Lowestoft works. In 1850 he came forward as guarantor of the £50,000 required for the Great Exhibition of 1851.

In London, Peto and his family lived at 47 Russell Square, and then in 1853–63 in great style at 12 Kensington Palace Gardens (built by Thomas Grissell), supported by a governess, three male and twelve female indoor servants. In 1863–5, while he was temporarily living at 9 Great George Street, Lucas Brothers built him a new mansion on the adjoining garden plot, at a cost of nearly £50,000, complete with remarkable stables that accommodated nine coaches and twelve stalls. In consequence of Peto's bankruptcy, this house was bought by Thomas Lucas. At Lowestoft, Peto employed John Thomas to rebuild Somerleyton Hall for him (1844), described by Pevsner as ‘more Jacobean than any original Jacobean house’ (Buildings of England, Suffolk, 1961, 390). He became a JP and deputy lieutenant for Suffolk (and JP for Norfolk, and later Middlesex), but in 1862 moved to Chipstead, Sevenoaks, Kent. After his bankruptcy, Peto moved almost annually, until settling at Eastcote House, Pinner, Middlesex, in 1877. He moved for the last time in 1884, to Blackhurst, Tunbridge Wells, Kent.

After their discharge from bankruptcy in July 1868, the only contract undertaken by Peto and Betts was for minor works on the Metropolitan Railway. However, they had hopes of an abortive scheme for regulating the Danube at Budapest, where Peto spent much of 1868–9, moving on to Paris in hope of French contracts. After Betts's death he undertook construction of the Cornish mineral railways. His health deteriorated in the mid-1880s and he spent two winters at Cannes, but from November 1888 became increasingly ill. He died at Blackhurst on 13 November 1889, and was buried in Pembury churchyard, Kent. He was survived by his wife.

M. H. PORT

Sources H. Peto, Sir Morton Peto: a memorial sketch (1893) · J. L. Chown, Sir Samuel Morton Peto: the man who built the houses of parliament [1943] · ILN (8 Feb 1851), 106 · ‘Select committee on railway labourers’, Parl. papers (1846), 13.454ff., no. 530 · P. L. Cottrell, ‘Railway finance and the crisis of 1866’, Journal of Transport History, new ser., 3 (1975–6), 20–40 · L. Popplewell, Contractors' lines (1988) · Hansard 3 (1850–54); (1859–68) · The Economist (8 Sept–24 Nov 1866) · The Economist (19 Oct 1867) · The Economist (14 March 1868) · The Economist (25 April 1868) · The Economist (15–22 Aug 1868) · The Times (23 April 1868) · The Times (25 April 1868) · The Times (30 April 1868) · The Times (14 June 1868) · The Times (7 July 1868) · The Times (23 July 1868) · The Times (28 Aug 1868) · The Times (29 Aug 1868) · The Times (25 Oct 1868) · ‘A sore in the body politic’, The Builder, 25 (1867), 503–4 · ‘Railway boards, contractors, and shareholders’, The Builder, 26 (1868), 186–7 · The Builder, 26 (1868), 330–31 · census returns, 1841, 1861 · PICE, 99 (1889–90), 400–03 · Men of the time (1856) · J. Rennie, Autobiography of Sir John Rennie, FRS (1875) · Cassell's Illustrated Family Paper (1857)

Archives BL, letters

Likenesses W. H. Mote, stipple, pubd 1848 (after A. Wivell), NPG · C. Silvy, photograph, 1861, NPG [see illus.] · J. Beattie, carte-de-visite, NPG · G. R. Black, lithograph (after photograph by Mayall), NPG · H. Weigall, oils, Regent's Park College, Oxford · engraving, repro. in ILN (8 Feb 1851), 106 · photograph (in middle age), repro. in Peto, Sir Morton Peto · photograph (in middle age), repro. in Chown, Sir Samuel Morton Peto · prints, NPG · stipple, NPG

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

© Oxford University Press 2004–9 All rights reserved

M. H. Port, ‘Peto, Sir (Samuel) Morton, first baronet (1809–1889)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Sept 2004; online edn, May 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/22042, accessed 7 May 2009]

The Chartered Institute of Building (CIOB)

http://www.ciob175anniversary.co.uk/ConstructionLeaders

Although it is always important to place historical figures within the context of their time, perhaps the most noticeable thing about this eminent Victorian is the extent to which his views accord with those of today. While the terminology has changed – today we talk about ‘transparency’, whereas Peto was ‘anti-bribery’ – his attitudes were strikingly modern in many respects. A man who combined business with a long career in public life as a Member of Parliament, he consistently sought to raise standards of probity, welfare and business efficiency. As with so many great Victorian builders, his achievements were staggering and executed with a confidence and energy that reflected and defined the entrepreneurialism of the age.

Born in 1809, Peto showed a talent for drawing and handwriting during his early schooling – the latter skill making him much in demand among the school’s servants for his services as a letter writer. He retained an interest in education throughout his life, regretting his limited linguistic skills as a businessman with global interests. In his sixtieth year, during a stay on the continent, he wrote of “the absolute necessity of our boys being thoroughly up in French and German. I find the boys here and in Vienna far better linguists and better mathematicians, and better acquainted with scientific matters generally, than our English boys, and the area is really so much enlarged in the race of competition that what was a good education formally for a man to make his way with in the world, is now only a very second-rate affair.”

Peto’s education, however, would serve him well enough – both in his outstanding feats of construction and his unusually enlightened understanding of the enormous workforce he employed. At the age of 14, he was apprenticed to his uncle, the respected builder Henry Peto. For the next seven years, he worked alongside the tradesmen during the day before learning about architecture and the theory of construction in the evening. By the end of his apprenticeship, he was entrusted with site supervision and – according to his son – could lay 800 bricks a day.

His son, the author of a ‘memorial sketch’ in his memory, quotes a commentator of 1851 who noted that: “He worked…..not as the relative and future heir of one of the leading contractors of the kingdom, but as if he was destined during his lifetime to earn his livelihood as a journeyman ……and there cannot be a question that, besides the inestimable utility he derived from the insight thus voluntarily acquired into the mechanism of labour so essential to his calculations in its employment in vast organized masses, he also thus became familiarised with what may be called the idiosyncrasy of the English mechanic, and he has thus become enabled to convert such knowledge to the accomplishment of the moral results observable in his works.”

In other words, the insights Peto gained ‘on the tools’ gave him both an understanding of the practicalities and logistics of immense projects, and an abiding empathy with the workers. This concern with their welfare would remain throughout his career.

Just as Morton came of age in 1830, his uncle died, leaving the business to him and another nephew, Thomas Grissell. In their early days in business together, they put in the lowest tender (by £400) for Hungerford market, but the Earl of Devon, Chairman of the Committee, asked Morton to withdraw on account of his youth. According to his son, the young Peto told them that “if they would wait he would fetch his partner, who looked old enough for anything; adding that if his juvenile appearance was so much against him he must take to wearing spectacles.”

The cousins won the contract and built on the reputation already established by their uncle earlier in the century, when the firm had worked on the London Coliseum. They went on to win several other important projects, including the rebuilding of the prison at Clerkenwell. Based on the new Pentonville jail, this was a ‘model prison’ and an important part of the changing attitudes towards the treatment of prisoners. Although the new system would not stay in vogue for long – its emphasis on silence and segregation had a detrimental effect on the mental health of too many prisoners – it was significant because it marked the beginning of a new emphasis on improving, rather than just punishing, criminals. Built at a cost of £28,000 “on the model of Pentonville but in a rougher and less expensive style of architecture”, contemporary accounts stress that the demolition of the previous edifice formed a substantial part of the project.

Around this time, the cousins also won contracts for the Reform Club and the Lyceum Theatre, and on 6th April 1840 submitted the lowest tender for the construction of a new London landmark, Nelson’s Column. Their price of £17,860 beat their nearest competitor by a mere £80. “The pillar is to be 50 feet higher than the Duke of York’s column, and the figure of Nelson will be without a cloak,” it was reported.

The column was being funded by public subscription, which raised £17000, and reports in contemporary magazines reflect the public interest in the project. Despite this, the Memorial Committee ran out of money during the construction. Amid fears that the half-built column represented a threat to public safety, and a concern about “damage, particularly to the new National Gallery, that may be done if it fell”, the government was obliged to step in with funding.

As well as winning and constructing one of the most prestigious projects of the day, Grissell and Peto took a keen interest in new building technologies. During their work on this great London landmark, Grissell won a Telford Medal in silver from the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) for his paper “Description and Model of the Scaffolding used in erecting the Nelson Column”.

1840 also saw them commence work on the new Houses of Parliament. The old palace at Westminster had been destroyed in a fire six years previously, so the landmark we know today was bequeathed to us by the early Victorians. The cousins won major building contracts “for the range of buildings fronting the river from Westminster bridge to Abingdon street, the speaker’s residence and the libraries being included. The second contract was for the houses of lords and commons, the Victoria Hall, Great Central Hall, Royal Gallery and House of Commons Office. The third was for St Stephen’s Hall and porch.”

According to the records at ICE, they were also early adopters of a novel technology for hauling bricks up scaffolding. The report remarks on the efficiency and beneficial effect on the safety of labourers of this “brick-raising machine”, reporting that “Mr Grissell approved of the machine, and had found it very serviceable at the Houses of Parliament.”

They were becoming extremely well-known. A contemporary limerick ridiculing liars ends with the claim that the reprobates “raised stories faster than Grissell and Peto”, a reference that suggests the builders had become household names.

However, the partnership between the cousins was to cease during the building of the parliament buildings. They had already worked successfully under Brunel on the Great Western Railway line from Hanwell to Langley, and this had given Peto a taste for the high-risk, high-reward world of railway building. Grissell, being more in the mould of his risk-averse and older contemporary William Cubitt, preferred to stay with more predictable contracts. The cousins decided to work apart, although the split was of a most amicable nature.

“Between the cousins there was perfect accord,” Peto later wrote. “It is a great source of satisfaction to me to reflect that during the six and a half years we…..never had an unpleasant word or misunderstanding. I cannot speak too highly of him either in our connections of business or friendship.”

Indeed, after their joint business accounts were closed and it was found that Peto was owed an extra five thousand pounds, he wouldn’t hear of having the accounts re-opened. Grissell never forgot this, and would leave the same sum in his will to Peto’s son.

Peto’s personal life took a sad turn in early 1842, when his wife Mary, the sister of Thomas Grissell, died weeks after childbirth. Maternal mortality rates were still high at that time, and Mary’s health had never been excellent. Peto published a private memorial in her memory, noting that “Frequent indispositions, and constant delicacy of constitution, had often excited many fears in the minds of

anxious relatives that their cherished flower might fade long ere the shades of evening closed around it.”

Now a widower with four children, Peto married Sarah Ainsworth the following year. She was the daughter of a prominent Baptist, and Peto converted to this denomination himself. Indeed, Peto’s second marriage seems to mark the beginning of a new phase in his career, which would become as notable for public service as it was for building.

He became treasurer of the Baptist Missionary Society in 1846, a post he would hold for 21 years. In this capacity, he financed five missions, including the liquidation of a debt of £9000 incurred in a mission to Jamaica. He also sent the Jamaican mission a temporary structure for use as chapel, and the surrounding area is still known as Mount Peto.

Peto also became a parliamentary candidate for Norwich in 1847. Unfortunately, navvies working for him on the eastern counties railway attacked a rival candidate. According to his son’s memoir, “Their aggressiveness cost Mr Peto £70. Two hundred, after regaling themselves freely, lost self-control and attacked Norwich men, armed with bludgeons.” To control the situation, “the navvies were decoyed into a train with no means of return until after the election”.

At the time, the Truck System, whereby labourers were paid in tokens that had to be spent at extortionate site shops, was common practice. The navvies and their families suffered enormous poverty as a result, and became notorious for alleviating their suffering through monumental drinking sprees and riotous behaviour. For this, they were almost universally despised, but Peto had the

humanity to put their behaviour in the context of their conditions. He said of the Irish labourer, “I know from personal experience that if you pay him well and show him you care for him, he is the most faithful creature in existence; but if you find him working for 4d a day, and that paid in potatoes and meal, can we wonder that the results are as we find them? “

With this in mind, his treatment of his own workers was exemplary by the standards of the time. As he embarked on his parliamentary career, he spared no exertion to improve the conditions of all ordinary workers on the railways. Speaking out against abuse of the navvies, he said: “I shall get the ill-will of every contractor, but for this I care nothing. I am serving the poor fellows, and promoting the cause of morality.”

This commitment to welfare was widely recognised and applauded. No less a person than the Bishop of Norwich was reported to have said “Mr Peto was a Dissenter, and he envied the sect to which he belonged the possession of such a man; he would gladly purchase him at his own price, and heartily he prayed that he would erelong become a member of the Church of England…….All down the line he had met with his agents, and had found them not merely giving direction and instruction, but also giving to the men religious and school books for the education of themselves and their children, and thus showing them that education can civilise the mind, reform the habits and elevate the understanding. The gin shops were left deserted, and the schools were full.”

The business grew rapidly and Peto quickly won the respect of the great railway engineer Robert Stephenson. With his new partner Edward Betts (who married his sister Ann), Peto was soon working on massive railway projects all over the world. The rewards were high, but in 1847 he found himself in a tenuous position due to the massive liabilities he incurred.

In 1847 he wrote, “I now have £200,000 owing to me, and get it I cannot, but I trust my way will be made clear without sacrifice; but it must be sometime before the clouds clear away, and it has been very anxious work – these things come perfectly unexpectedly, and are not to be guarded against in large affairs.”

The problem was that his debtors were not always as forthcoming with their payments as he was himself. It was not the last time that he would find himself vulnerable to cashflow problems, but on this occasion he managed to retrieve the situation.

His confidence is evident in a letter to his wife the following year: “I shall, as I am doing, pay off obligations I incurred from the want of good faith of those who are indebted to me, and from the gain in this and other works have much larger surplus than will cover any loss, and I am sure it is my duty to you and the children to do this.”

By the middle of the century, he was involved in a number of diverse projects: the Buenos Aires Great Southern Railway; Algeria’s first railway; the grand trunk railway of Canada; and the Victoria Bridge at Montréal. Also, his work on the Royal Danish railway was crucial to the country’s butter exports and earned him the lasting appreciation of the King of Denmark.

The importance of Peto’s railways to the development of national economies around the world also gained him private audiences with influential people. For example, Peto met the American President

of the time (Andrew Johnson, Lincoln’s successor) and found him to be refreshingly down-to-earth, while his meeting with the Emperor and Empress of France led to the following comment by the Emperor, who was delighted with the railway in Algiers, “I hope you will enjoy the consciousness that you are an instrument in advancing the civilisation and happiness of my people.”

Despite this success, Peto continued to be active in parliamentary affairs. Standing for re-election in Norwich in 1852, he and his fellow candidate for the Liberals, Edward Warner, took a stand against bribery. In the political system of the time, bribery was an entirely feasible way of winning votes, since the franchise was so restricted. Only men who met the requisite property qualifications were entitled to cast a vote, a system that excluded most working men, as well as all women. Despite this, Peto and Warner held numerous public meetings to gather support. Their ordinary followers, who could not vote themselves, undertook to patrol the streets of Norwich to ensure that no underhand transactions took place. The Norwich Mercury noted the “determination of the non-voters to keep watch and ward to prevent bribery.”

Through their efforts, both Peto and Warner were returned to parliament, unseating the eldest son of the Duke of Wellington. At the close of the election, the triumphant Peto said, “I rejoice beyond expression to say, that not one shilling has been spent in contravention of the law. The election has been conducted on independence and purity of principle.” This was so remarkable that it was suggested by one commentator that it might be “the first time, probably, a Norwich election has been conducted with purity”. In an age which took its non-secular beliefs with extreme seriousness, the example of conviction triumphing over corruption was seen as both a religious and a political victory. “The city has been redeemed, and the people have done it!” rejoiced the Norfolk News.

Peto’s commitment to his anti-bribery stance was such that he later relinquished the opportunity to build the Portuguese railway system, rather than provide what were believed to be the necessary bribes to the decision-makers.

Ever a friend to the ordinary people, Peto became an ardent advocate of the 1854 Payment of Wages Bill to stop the Truck System. Although an accepted practice at the time, Peto found it abhorrent. He is quoted as saying that “from twenty-five years experience he could conceive of no reason why there should be a departure from the rule that a man’s wages should be paid in the current coin of the realm. . . . .he never paid wages other than in money, and always took care that the men had it in sufficient time to derive the full benefit of it for their families.”

Equally as important, he provided the impetus to construct the first military railway. British troops were beleaguered and starving in the Crimea, and the situation was becoming a national disgrace. Peto was certain that a railway could provide the British with the strategic advantage they needed, so he convinced the Duke of Newcastle to approve the building of the Crimean railway. Then, he resigned his parliamentary seat in order to accept the government contract with the necessary propriety. He and his partners then made an undertaking to build it at cost.

The future General Gordon, then a young lieutenant, wrote: “The civil engineers of the railways have arrived, and we hope soon to see the navvies and the plant. No relief that could be named will be equal to the relief afforded by a railway. Without the railroad, I do not see how we can bring up guns and ammunition in sufficient quantities to silence the guns of the enemy.”

Speed was of the essence, and seven miles of track were laid in as many weeks in early 1855. They cut corners where necessary, as the line was intended to be temporary, and supplies were soon travelling up the line. In addition, the sick were being evacuated to the hospital ships bound for Scutari and the heavy guns that could go by rail were being transported. This allowed the British to make a decisive contribution to the war, with the Russians being particularly fearful of their bombardments.

In the words of Cooke, a historian of the period, “The war at the beginning had been fought as the Napoleonic Wars had been fought…The end was settled by bloody and overwhelming artillery bludgeoning made infinitely easier by the railway…In a few short months, Morton Peto and Beatty [the engineer] and their men had enabled the art of war to be taken from Waterloo to the Somme.”

There is, of course, a darker side to any improvement in the efficiency of warfare, and heavy casualties resulted from this advancement. Nevertheless, Peto’s actions saved British troops from unbearable suffering in the freezing Crimean winters, and enabled the evacuation of wounded soldiers from the front.

Interestingly, it also did nothing but good for the ordinary navvies and their perception in the eyes of the British public. Their efforts had been crucial in turning around the course of the war and improving the welfare of the troops. To quote Cooke once more, “The once-feared navvy had suddenly become a hero.”

Peto gained a baronetcy, thus becoming Sir Morton Peto in recognition of his services to the Crown. With his government contract finished, he also stood for parliament once more, and in 1859 was returned as MP for Finsbury.

His massive business interest in the construction of international railways never prevented him from taking an intelligent interest in politics and national affairs. For example, in 1861 he tried – and failed – to get a bill passed that would allow dissenters from the Church of England to be buried in churchyards. As a Dissenter himself, he objected to being classed with suicides and the excommunicated. He argued that a universal belief in The Bible meant there was no reason to deny a Dissenter burial within the Church.

Peto’s position was both practical and humane, but in an age when theological differences were a foremost concern, his attempt provoked a flurry of angry rebuttals – some still preserved in pamphlet form – and the Bill was defeated.

He also advocated the building of iron, rather than wooden, ships “and argued that by contracting with builders of unquestioned reputation, for the construction of iron hulls at fixed and certain prices, there would be much economy, and that the present costly establishments in our dockyards might be greatly and permanently reduced.” His views on the defence policies of the day, and their cost to the taxpayer, were farsighted but out of step with the views of the majority; Peto was once again the subject of the indignant pens of Victorian pamphleteers.

Now well into late middle-age, Peto took on one last – disastrous – contract with Betts. They took shares instead of money for the Metropolitan extension of the London, Chatham and Dover Railway. Peto’s own liability – effectively giving him control of the railway – was huge, and he was relying on borrowings from one of the foremost banks of the day, Overend, Gurney and Co. Unfortunately for Peto, this bank (historically a cautious Quaker concern –the celebrated Quaker prison reformer Elizabeth Fry came from the Gurney family) had taken to high-risk speculations promising massive returns. After these profits failed to materialise, the bank suspended payments. It was May 1866 and many firms were bankrupted in the fallout, including Peto’s. As in his previous financial crisis, he was solvent on paper; owed more by his debtors than he owed to his creditors. Nevertheless, he was discharged as technically bankrupt.

Peto’s affairs were subjected to a thorough investigation, but once more his character remained unblemished. As one correspondent wrote to him in a spirit of congratulation, “after a most searching and hostile inquisition, the imputations which have for two years beclouded your good name have been dispelled and the wound has not left a scar. The most violent of your assailants, the Daily Telegraph, is now among the foremost to express satisfaction at the result of the investigation.”

He had a similarly comforting letter from an eminent preacher, the Reverend Spurgeon, who wrote that “A little time ago I thought of writing to condole you in the late tempests, but I feel there is far more reason to congratulate you than to sympathise. I have been all over England in all sorts of society, and I have never heard a work spoken concerning you in connection with late affairs but such as showed profound esteem and unshaken confidence I do not believe that this ever could have been said of any other man placed in similar circumstances.”

Nevertheless, Peto had to resign from his seat in Parliament and from the Society of Builders, and could no longer compete in business on the scale he had once enjoyed. Talk of work on the Danube and in Russia came to nothing, and a lack of confidence was believed to have lost him the work. When Betts died in 1872, Morton undertook his last job, the construction of the Cornwall Minerals Railway.

He retired to Eastcote, Pinner, where he continued to serve the wider community as a Justice of the Peace and Deputy Lieutenant. He spent his final years in Tunbridge Wells.

Although the final years of his career were not a success in worldly terms, Peto could look back on a lifetime of achievements and energetic exertions on behalf of the less fortunate. In addition to his tireless commitment to the welfare of his workers, he contributed generously to asylums and orphan schools. Also, he had been pivotal in ensuring the success of the Great Exhibition of 1851 by providing a guarantee of half a million pounds.

He was also remembered for small kindnesses, such as the story told by one colleague to Peto’s son. While working with Peto on the American railways, the colleague had been amazed to find that, on hearing he had no pocket photo album of family pictures such as the one Peto himself treasured, Peto had immediately dispatched one to his colleague’s wife with instructions to send some keepsakes for the long contract abroad.

When Peto died at the age of eighty, the funeral address was given by Dr Angus, the principal of Regent’s College (one of the many worthy institutions to benefit from Peto’s generosity). Dr Angus was able to comment on Peto’s devout character, telling the congregation that he “had known Sir Morton for nearly fifty years amid prosperity and adversity. He found it hard to say in which condition he admired him most, for he had been faithful in both.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Morton_Peto

Sir Samuel Morton Peto, 1st Baronet (4 August 1809 – 13 November 1889) was an English entrepreneur in the 19th century. Initially he constructed prestigious buildings in London before becoming one of the major contractors for the growing railways of the time.

He was born in Woking, Surrey, and was apprenticed as a brick-layer to his uncle who ran a building firm in London. When the uncle died in 1830, Peto and his cousin Thomas Grissell went into partnership. The firm of Peto & Grissell built many well-known London buildings, including the Reform Club, the Oxford & Cambridge Club, the Lyceum, and St James's Theatre, Hungerford Market, as well as Nelson's column and the London brick sewer.

In 1834 Peto saw the potential of the newly developing railways, dissolved the connection with his uncle's building firm and became a railway contractor. The first railway work was to build two stations in Curzon Street, Birmingham. The first line built was the Hanwell and Langley section of the Great Western Railway which included the Wharncliffe Viaduct[1]. Grissell became increasingly nervous of the risks taken by Peto and so dissolved the partnership in 1846. Peto then entered into partnership with Edward Betts, who had married his sister, Ann[2].

Between 1846 and 1855, the firm carried out many large railway contracts both at home and abroad, among them the South-Eastern Line and the London, Chatham & Dover lines, and in partnership with Thomas Brassey the London, Tilbury & Southend line and the Grand Trunk Railway of Canada[3]. In the late 1850s he helped to build the first railway in Algeria and accompanied Napoleon III to the official opening of the line[4].

In 1854 during the Crimean War Peto, Betts and Brassey constructed the Grand Crimean Central Railway between Balaklava and Sevastopol to transport supplies to the troops at the front line[5]. In February the following year he was made a Baronet, of Somerleyton Hall in the County of Suffolk, for his services.

Peto became co-treasurer of the Baptist Missionary Society in 1846 and sole treasurer in 1855 until March 1867 when he resigned.[6]

He was elected a Liberal Member of Parliament for Norwich in 1847 to 1854, for Finsbury from 1859 to 1865, and for Bristol from 1865 to 1868. During this time he was one of the most prominent figures in public life. He helped to make a guarantee towards the financing of the Great Exhibition of 1851, backing Joseph Paxton's Crystal Palace[7].

However, he became involved in the financial crisis of 1866, was declared bankrupt and in 1868 he had to give up his seat in Parliament, despite having the support of both Benjamin Disraeli and William Gladstone. He exiled himself to Budapest and tried to promote railways in Russia and Hungary. When he returned to England he tried to launch a small mineral railway in Cornwall, which failed, and he died in obscurity in 1889[8].

Peto had bought Somerleyton Hall in Suffolk in 1843. He re-built the hall and constructed a school and more houses in the village, before turning his attention to Lowestoft. He built a railway to connect the town to the rest of the rail network, as well as a harbour for 1,000 ships and some luxury hotels for the burgeoning holiday trade.

Sir Samuel had several children, of whom:

  1. Sir Samuel's eldest son, Sir Michael Peto inherited his title as 2nd baronet.

2. Another son Harold Ainsworth Peto (1854-1933), the celebrated Edwardian landscape gardener, renowned for turning Italian exotica into even more ornate Japanese gardens before the Great War. (Source: Mowl, T Historic Gardens of Wiltshire, Tempus publishing: London 2004.)
3. His seventh son Basil (1862-1945) was created a Baronet in his own right in 1927. His grandson Sir Christopher Peto, 3rd Bt. was a Conservative politician. (Source: 107th edition of Burke's Peerage, Baronetage and Knightage, published: London 2004).
4. Mary married Penruddocke Wyndham, a grandson of Colonel Wadham Wyndham, in 1852 and had two daughters.
5. Helen Agnes married a Magistrate of Somerset, Lawrence Ingham Baker, son of the former Liberal MP for Frome. They lived at Wayford Manor, near Crewkerne, Somerset.
[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Joby, p. 59.

2. ^ Faith, pp. 103-104.
3. ^ Helps. p. 109.
4. ^ Faith, p. 105.
5. ^ Cooke, pp16-64
6. ^ Stanley, Brian (1992: 218) The History of the Baptist Missionary Society 1792-1992 1992 Edinburgh, T. & T. Clark
7. ^ Faith, p. 105.
8. ^ Faith, p. 106.
[edit] References

   * Brooks, Edward C. Sir Samuel Morton Peto Bt: eminent Victorian, railway entrepreneur, country squire, MP Bury Clerical Society, 1996 ISBN 0950298826

* Cooke, Brian The Grand Crimean Central Railway, Cavalier House, Knutsford, 1990 ISBN 0-9515889-0-7
* Faith, Nicholas The world the railways made The Bodley Head, London, 1990 ISBN 0-370-31299-6
* Helps, Arthur The Life and Works of Mr Brassey, 1872 republished Nonsuch, 2006 ISBN 1845880110
* Joby, R S The Railway Builders: Lives and Works of the Victorian Railway Contractors, David & Charles, Newton Abbot, 1983, ISBN 0-7153-7959-3
* Stacey, Tom Thomas Brassey: The Greatest Railway Builder in the World, Stacey International, London, 2005, ISBN 1905299095
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somerleyton_Hall

---

PETO, Sir SAMUEL MORTON (1809–1889), contractor and politician, eldest son of William Peto of Cookham, Berkshire, who died on 12 Jan. 1849, by Sophia, daughter of Ralph Allowoy of Dorking, was born at Whitmoor House, parish of Woking, Surrey, on 4 Aug. 1809. While an apprentice to his uncle Henry Peto, a builder, at 31 Little Britain, city of London, he showed a talent for drawing, attended a technical school, and later on received lessons from a draughtsman, George Maddox of Furnival's Inn, and from Mr. Beazley, an architect. After spending three years in the carpenter's shop he went through the routine of bricklayer's work, and learnt to lay eight hundred bricks a day. His articles expired in 1830. In the same year Henry Peto died, and left his business to Samuel Morton and another nephew, Thomas Grissell (1801–1874). The firm of Grissell & Peto during their partnership, 1830–47, constructed many buildings of importance. The first was the Hungerford Market (1832–3)—after a public competition—for 42,400l.; there followed the Reform (1836), Conservative (1840), and Oxford and Cambridge (1830) club-houses, the Lyceum (1834), St. James's (1835), and Olympic (1849) theatres, the Nelson Column (1843), all the Great Western railway works between Hanwell and Langley (1840), a large part of the South Eastern railway (1844), and the Woolwich graving dock.

It was during the construction of the railway works that Grissell and Peto dissolved their partnership, on 2 March 1846, the former retaining the building contracts, including the contract for the houses of parliament, which had been commenced in 1840 by the firm, and the latter retaining the railway contracts. Among the works taken over by Peto was the construction of a large portion of the South-Eastern railway, that between Folkestone and Hythe, including the viaduct and tunnel and the martello towers. He also made a large portion of the Eastern Counties railway between Wymondham and Dereham, Ely and Peterborough, Chatteris and St. Ives, Norwich and Brandon; the sections between London and Cambridge, and Cambridge and Ely (1846), the Dorsetshire portion of the London and South-Western railway (1846), and the works in connection with the improvement of the Severn navigation under Sir William Cubitt.

Edward Ladd Betts (1815–1872), who had undertaken the construction of the South-Eastern railway between Reigate and Folkestone, entered, in 1846, into partnership with Peto, which lasted. The works undertaken by the firm of Peto & Betts between 1846 and 1872 embraced the loop line of the Great Northern railway from Peterborough through Lincolnshire to Doncaster; the East Lincolnshire line connecting Boston with Louth; the Oxford, Worcester, and Wolverhampton railway (1852); the first section of the Buenos Ayres Great Southern railway; the Dunaberg and Witepsk railway in Russia; the line between Blidah and Algiers, and the boulevards, with warehouses underneath, at the latter place; the Oxford and Birmingham railway; the Hereford, Ross, and Gloucester railway, 1852; the South London and Crystal Palace railway, 1853; the East Suffolk section of the Great Eastern railway; the Victoria Docks, London (1852–5), the Norwegian Grand Trunk railway between Christiania and Eidsvold; and the Thames graving docks.

In connection with Thomas Brassey [q. v.] and E. L. Betts, Peto executed lines of railway in Australia, 1858–63; the Grand Trunk railway of Canada, including the Victoria Bridge (opened October 1860); the Canada works at Birkenhead; the Jutland and Schleswig lines, 1852 (Illustr. London News, 11 Nov. 1854); the railway between Lyons and Avignon, 1852; and the London, Tilbury, and Southend railway, 1852.

Peto, Betts, and Thomas Russell Crampton were in partnership in carrying out the contracts of the Rustchuk and Varna railway, and the metropolitan extensions of the London, Chatham, and Dover railway, 1860; Peto and Betts constructed the portion between Strood and the Elephant and Castle (‘Memoir of E. L. Betts,’ in Min. of Proc. of Instit. Civil Engineers, 1873, xxxvi. 285–288). Peto's last railway contract was one for the construction of the Cornwall mineral railway in 1873.

Peto was a member of the baptist denomination, and a benefactor to it by providing the funds for the erection of Bloomsbury (1849) and Regent's Park chapels. But his tolerant disposition led him also to restore the parish church on his estate at Somerleyton, Suffolk. A staunch liberal in politics, he entered parliament as member for Norwich in August 1847, and sat for that constituency until December 1854. From 1859 to 1865 he represented Finsbury, and lastly he was member for Bristol from 1865 until his resignation on 22 April 1868. During his parliamentary career he was the means of passing Peto's Act, 1850, which rendered more simple the titles by which religious bodies hold property, and he advocated the Burials Bill in 1861, 1862, and 1863 (Peto's Burial Bill, by Anglicanus Presbyter, 1862).

On 26 Feb. 1839 Peto had been elected an associate of the Institution of Civil Engineers, and on 1 Sept. 1851 he became deputy chairman of the metropolitan commissioners of sewers. He aided in starting the Great exhibition of 1851 by offering a guarantee of 50,000l., and was subsequently one of her majesty's commissioners. During the Crimean war he suggested to Lord Palmerston that he should construct a railway between Balaclava and the entrenchments. A line of thirty-nine miles in length was accordingly laid down by him in 1854–5, and proved of much service to the army before Sebastopol. Peto and Betts presented vouchers for every item of expenditure, and received payment without commission. The contract being under government, though without profit, obliged Peto to resign his seat in parliament, but for his services he was created a baronet on 14 Feb. 1855. He spent the autumn of 1865 in America, and published next year ‘The Resources and Prospects of America, ascertained during a Visit to the States.’

On 11 May 1866 Peto & Betts suspended payment, owing to the financial panic, with liabilities amounting to four millions and assets estimated at five millions. This disaster obliged Peto to resign his seat for Bristol in 1868, when Disraeli and Mr. Gladstone paid tributes to his character, the latter referring to him as ‘a man who has attained a high position in this country by the exercise of rare talents and who has adorned that position by his great virtues’ (Hansard, 27 March 1868 p. 359, 22 April p. 1067). He bore his reverse of fortune with great resignation. He for some time lived at Eastcote House, Pinner, and then at Blackhurst, Tunbridge Wells, where he died on 13 Nov. 1889. He was buried at Pembury.

He married, first, on 18 May 1831, Mary, eldest daughter of Thomas de la Garde Grissell, of Stockwell Common, Surrey; she died on 20 May 1842, leaving a son—Henry Peto (b. 1840), M.A., barrister-at-law—and three daughters. Peto married, secondly, on 12 July 1843, Sarah Ainsworth, eldest daughter of Henry Kelsall of Rochdale, by whom he had issue six sons and four daughters.

---

Much information can be found on the net. these notes are purely for my benefit.

Samuel Morton Peto son of William Peto of MARLOW IN BUCKINHAMSHIRE was apprenticed for seven years to Henry Peto in the sum of five shillings in 1824