Was the use of GMT really all down to the
Railways?
Or perhaps not!
Yes, it is true that the advent of the Railways, especially the East to
West lines of the GWR, forced the adoption of ‘Railway Time’ in 1840 – a time
system based on the Mean Time at Greenwich and circulated elsewhere by means of
the Electric Telegraph system then being built alongside the railway lines..
By the 1850s every railway had adopted the same practice and it is often
claimed that by 1855 UK Civil Time had been so standardised.
That was not the case in reality however and, following a decision in
1858 that Law courts must follow local time, local solar time persisted until
the 1880s when Victorian morality, electric clocks and the 1844 Factory Act
stirred things up.
In 1874 Parliament had debated the 1872 Licensing Act and
that identified the problem with ‘variable’ pub closure times. It was suggested
that Standard Greenwich time be used and many pub landlords in London thereafter
took a feed from the newly formed Standard Time Company for this to control an
electric clock and so avoid accusations of non-adherence to lawful drinking
hours. Finally in 1880 an Act was
passed making Greenwich Mean Time (and Dublin Mean Time) the official time
standards for all British legislation.
Then in 1902, a century after the first Factory Act had
been passed to protect children working in Lancashire’s cotton mills by
prescribing the hours children and adults could work, it was clear that the then
practice of merely using a ‘specified clock’ was insufficient. Unwittingly (or
perhaps sometimes not!) Factory Managers were being repeatedly prosecuted for
allowing illegal overtime.
Towns like Blackburn even installed a time ball and a Noon
Gun on their new Market Hall in 1878 to propagate knowledge of GMT throughout
the town.
By 1913 the Oldham
Cotton Spinners Association was the first to install electric clocks in
factories there and later across many of Lancashire’s mills, each set to
Greenwich Mean Time by an electrical signal from London.
The railways, the ideals of temperance and moral
engineering, the pub managers of London and the Lancashire mill owners were all
ones who led the way in keeping time for the entire nation and indeed the world.
Acknowledgements: ‘About Time’ by David Rooney. Penguin
Viking ISBN 978-0-241-37049-0.