Читать книгу The Times Great Victorian Lives - Ian Brunskill - Страница 8

IT IS WITH much concern that we announce the decease of Mr. George Stephenson, the celebrated engineer. He died at his establishment in Derbyshire on Saturday last, aged 67. Few men have obtained, or deserved, a higher reputation. He rose from the humblest life from the elasticity of his native talent overcoming the obstacles of narrow circumstances and even confined education. In his profession he was as happy and ingenious in his discoveries as generous in imparting the benefit of them to the world. In the history of railroad enterprise and movement the name of George Stephenson will live.

This relatively short notice of Stephenson, who had died on 12 August at Tapton House, Chesterfield, is fulsome in its praise but singularly brief in detail about his considerable engineering achievements. His death was ascribed to a cold caught while inspecting the beloved green-houses which he had erected on his estate in the hope of eclipsing those of Chatsworth. The most adulatory contemporary study of Stephenson’s career, Samuel Smiles’s Life of George Stephenson, was to appear in 1859.