George Bradshaw (29 July 1800 – 6 September 1853) was an English
cartographer,
printer and publisher. He developed
Bradshaw's Guide, a widely sold series of combined railway guides and
timetables.[1]
Biography
Bradshaw was born at Windsor Bridge,
Pendleton, in
Salford, Lancashire. On leaving school he was apprenticed to an
engraver named Beale in
Manchester, and in 1820 he set up his own engraving business in
Belfast, returning to Manchester in 1822 to set up as an engraver and printer, principally of
maps.[2]
He was a religious man. Although his parents were not exceptionally wealthy, when he was young they enabled him to take
lessons from a minister devoted to the teachings of
Emanuel Swedenborg. He joined the
Society of Friends (the Quakers) and gave a considerable part of his time to
philanthropic work.[2] He worked a great deal with radical reformers such as
Richard Cobden in organising peace conferences and in setting up schools and
soup kitchens for the poor of Manchester.[3]
It is his belief as a Quaker that is quoted as causing the early editions of Bradshaw's guides to have avoided using the names of months based upon
Roman deities which was seen as "pagan" usage. Quaker usage was, and sometimes still is, "First month" for January, "Second month" for February and so on. Days of the week were "First day" for Sunday and so on.
In 1841, he founded a high-quality weekly magazine, edited by George Falkner, called Bradshaw's Manchester Journal, described as "a 16-page miscellany of art, science and literature, to sell at the cheap price of a penny-halfpenny a week. ... After the first six months, it was renamed Bradshaw’s Journal: A Miscellany of Literature, Science and Art, and the place of publication moved to London, where the title was taken on by William Strange", but the journal survived only until 1843.[4]
He married Martha Derbyshire on 15 May 1839 and they had six children. While touring
Norway in 1853, he contracted
cholera and died in Kristiana (now
Oslo) on 6 September, a mere 8 hours after first showing symptoms of the disease.[5] As a local law prohibited the return of his body to England, he was interred in the
Gamlebyen cemetery, about a mile from
Oslo Cathedral. His gravestone is on the left by the gate near Oslo hospital.[6][7][8][9]
The George Bradshaw room at
Friends House, London, UK is named after him.[10]
Bradshaw's was a series of railway
timetables and travel
guide books published by W. J. Adams of London. George Bradshaw initiated the series in 1839. The Bradshaw's range of titles continued after his death in 1853 until 1961.[11][12]
In popular media
Former British politician
Michael Portillo used a copy of what was described as a Bradshaw's guide (the 1863 edition of Bradshaw's Descriptive Railway Hand-Book of Great Britain and Ireland) for Great British Railway Journeys, a
BBC Two television series in which he travelled across Britain, visiting recommended points of interest noted in Bradshaw's guide book, and where possible staying in recommended hotels.
The first series was broadcast in early 2010, and the series has returned annually. The success of the series sparked a new interest in the guides and
facsimile copies of the 1863 edition became an unexpected best seller in the UK in 2011. In the 14th episode of series 2, "
Batley to
Sheffield", Portillo met a great-great-granddaughter of George Bradshaw, who showed him part of the family archive.
At the end of 2012, a new series, Great Continental Railway Journeys, was broadcast with Portillo using the 1913 edition of Bradshaw's Continental Railway Guide to make journeys through various European countries and territories, prompting two publishers to produce facsimiles of the handbook. A second series was broadcast in 2013.[13] Further series covered
Asia,
Australia and
India.
Adams, Henry J. (17 January 1874).
"Who Invented Bradshaw?". The Athenæum Journal. No. 2413. London: John Adams. pp. 126–127 – via Internet Archive.
Rivington, John (1883).
"Bradshaw's Railway Guide". Notes and Queries. 8 (6th Series) (186). London: John C. Francis: 45–46.
ISSN0029-3970 – via Internet Archive.
Blanchard, E. L.; Peacock, Edward; Este; Hamilton, Walter; Solly, Edward; R. B.; Coleman, Everard Home; Symons, W. (1883).
""Bradshaw's Railway Guides"". Notes and Queries. 8 (6th Series) (188). London: John C. Francis: 92–93.
ISSN0029-3970 – via Internet Archive.
Guilcher, G. (2000). "La restructuration du temps par les chemins de fer, le Railway Time". Cahiers victoriens et édouardiens (in French) (51).
Montpellier:
Université Paul-Valéry: 61–86.
ISSN0339-2171.
Guilcher, G. (2001), "Les guides Bradshaw (Londres et Manchester 1844-1939), notes bibliographiques", Lettre du Marché du livre (in French), no. 79, Paris, pp. 6–9
Lomax, E S, "Bradshaw, the Timetable Man", The Antiquarian Book Monthly Review, vol II, N° 9 and 10 (Sept-Oct 1975), pp. 2–10 and 13–16, ill (extremely well-researched, contains the fullest list of Brashaw publications)
Rudolph, K. H. (1956). "Fun on Bradshaw". The Railway Magazine. Vol. 102. pp. 253–254.
Simmons, Jack (1994). "Bradshaw". The Express Train and Other Railway Studies. Nairn: David St John Thomas. pp. 173–193.
ISBN9780946537976.
Smith, G. Royde (1939). The History of Bradshaw: A Centenary Review of the Origin and Growth of the Most Famous Guide in the World. London: Manchester: Henry Blacklock & Company. (Official history sponsored by Bradshaw).
The importance of advertisements in the Bradshaw Guides should be stressed. They are an invaluable source of information on all trades of the time, not unlike John Murray's Handbooks, but on a much larger scale (hundreds of pages in a single volume).