the gin for some time at Dewley and Black Callerton, he was taken on as an assistant to his father in firing the engine at Dewley. This was a step of promotion which he had anxiously desired, his only fear being lest he should be found too young for the work. Indeed, he used afterwards to relate how he was wont to hide himself when the owner of the colliery went round, in case he should be thought too little a boy to earn the wages paid him. Since he had modelled his clay engines in the bog, his young ambition was to be an engineman; and to be an assistant fireman was the first step towards this position. Great therefore was his joy when, at about fourteen years of age, he was appointed assistant-fireman, at the wage of a shilling a day.
But the coal at Dewley Burn being at length worked out, the pit was ordered to be “laid in,” and old Robert and his family were again under the necessity of shifting their home; for, to use the common phrase, they must “follow the wark.” They removed accordingly to a place called Jolly’s Close, a few miles to the south, close behind the village of Newburn, where another coal-mine belonging to the Duke of Northumberland, called “the Duke’s Winnin,” had recently been opened out.
One of the old persons in the neighbourhood, who knew the family well, describes the dwelling in which they lived as a poor cottage of only one room, in which the father, mother, four sons, and two daughters, lived and slept. It was crowded with three low-poled beds. The one apartment served for parlour, kitchen, sleeping-room, and all.
The children of the Stephenson family were now growing apace, and several of them were old enough to be able to earn money at various kinds of colliery work. James and George, the two eldest sons, worked as assistant-firemen; and the younger boys worked as wheelers or pickers on the bank-tops. The two girls helped their mother with the household work.
Other workings of the coal were opened out in the neighbourhood; and to one of these George was removed as fireman on his own account. This was called the “Mid Mill Winnin,” where he had for his mate a young man named Coe. They worked together there for about two years, by twelve-hour shifts, George firing the engine at the wage of a shilling a day. He was now fifteen years old. His ambition was as yet limited to attaining the standing of a full workman, at a man’s wages; and with that view he endeavoured to attain such a knowledge of his engine as would eventually lead to his employment as an engineman, with its accompanying advantage of higher pay. He was a steady, sober, hard-working young man, but nothing more in the estimation of his fellow-workmen.
One of his favourite pastimes in by-hours was trying feats of strength with his companions. Although in frame he was not particularly robust, yet he was big and bony, and considered very strong for his age. At throwing the hammer George had no compeer. At lifting heavy weights off the ground from between his feet, by means of a bar of iron passed through them—placing the bar against his knees as a fulcrum, and then straightening his spine and lifting them sheer up—he was also very successful. On one occasion he lifted as much as sixty stones weight—a striking indication of his strength of bone and muscle.
When the pit at Mid Mill was closed, George and his companion Coe were sent to work another pumping-engine erected near Throckley Bridge, where they continued for some months. It was while working at this place that his wages were raised to 12s. a week—an event to him of great importance. On coming out of the foreman’s office that Saturday evening on which he received the advance, he announced the fact to his fellow-workmen, adding triumphantly “I am now a made man for life!”
The pit opened at Newburn, at which old Robert Stephenson worked, proving a failure, it was closed; and a new pit was sunk at Water-row, on a strip of land lying between the Wylam waggon-way and the river Tyne, about half a mile west of Newburn Church. A pumping engine was erected there by Robert Hawthorn, the Duke’s engineer; and old Stephenson went to work it as fireman, his son George acting as the engineman or plugman. At that time he was about seventeen years old—a very youthful age at which to fill so responsible a post. He had thus already got ahead of his father in his station as a workman; for the plugman holds a higher grade than the fireman, requiring more practical knowledge and skill, and usually receiving higher wages.
George’s duty as plugman was to watch the engine, to see that it kept well in work, and that the pumps were efficient in drawing the water. When the water-level in the pit was lowered, and the suction became incomplete through the exposure of the suction-holes, it was then his duty to proceed to the bottom of the shaft and plug the tube so that the pump should draw: hence the designation of “plugman.” If a stoppage in the engine took place through any defect which he was incapable of remedying, it was for him to call in the aid of the chief engineer to set it to rights.
But from the time when George Stephenson was appointed fireman, and more particularly afterwards as engineman, he applied himself so assiduously and so successfully to the study of the engine and its gearing—taking the machine to pieces in his leisure hours for the purpose of cleaning and understanding its various parts—that he soon acquired a thorough practical knowledge of its construction and mode of working, and very rarely needed to call the engineer of the colliery to his aid. His engine became a sort of pet with him, and he was never wearied of watching and inspecting it with admiration.
Though eighteen years old, like many of his fellow-workmen, Stephenson had not yet learnt to read. All that he could do was to get some one to read for him by his engine fire, out of any book or stray newspaper which found its way into the neighbourhood. Buonaparte was then overrunning Italy, and astounding Europe by his brilliant succession of victories; and there was no more eager auditor of his exploits, as read from the newspaper accounts, than the young engineman at the Water-row Pit.
There were also numerous stray bits of information and intelligence contained in these papers, which excited Stephenson’s interest. One of these related to the Egyptian method of hatching birds’ eggs by means of artificial heat. Curious about everything relating to birds, he determined to test it by experiment. It was spring time, and he forthwith went a birdnesting in the adjoining woods and hedges. He gathered a collection of eggs of various sorts, set them in flour in a warm place in the engine-house, covering the whole with wool, and then waited the issue. The heat was kept as steady as possible, and the eggs were carefully turned every twelve hours, but though they chipped, and some of them exhibited well-grown chicks, they never hatched. The experiment failed, but the incident shows that the inquiring mind of the youth was fairly at work.
Modelling of engines in clay continued to be another of his favourite occupations. He made models of engines which he had seen, and of others which were described to him. These attempts were an improvement upon his first trials at Dewley Burn bog, when occupied there as a herd-boy. He was, however, anxious to know something of the wonderful engines of Boulton and Watt, and was told that they were to be found fully described in books, which he must search for information as to their construction, action and uses. But, alas! Stephenson could not read; he had not yet learnt even his letters.
Thus he shortly found, when gazing wistfully in the direction of knowledge, that to advance further as a skilled workman, he must master this wonderful art of reading—the key to so many other arts. Only thus could he gain an access to books, the depositories of the wisdom and experience of the past. Although a grown man, and doing the work of a man, he was not ashamed to confess his ignorance, and go to school, big as he was, to learn his letters. Perhaps, too, he foresaw that, in laying out a little of his spare earnings for this purpose, he was investing money judiciously, and that, in every hour he spent at school, he was really working for better wages.
His first schoolmaster was Robin Cowens, a poor teacher in the village of Walbottle. He kept a night-school, which was attended by a few of the colliers and labourers’ sons in the neighbourhood. George took lessons in spelling and reading three nights in the week. Robin Cowen’s teaching cost threepence a week; and though it was not very good, yet George, being hungry for knowledge and eager to acquire it, soon learnt to read. He also practised “pothooks,” and at the age of nineteen he was proud to be able to write his own name.
A Scotch dominie, named Andrew Robertson, set up a night-school in the village of Newburn, in the winter of 1799. It