William James

William James (13 June 1771 – 10 March 1837) was an English land agent and surveyor

• 1771 James was born in Henley-in-Arden, Warwickshire, England, the son of a solicitor.

• After himself qualifying as a solicitor in Birmingham he returned to practice in his home town. A large part of his work was as a land agent for influential local clients and in this way he became involved in coal and canal interests in what is now the West Midlands.

• His connection with the engineer George Stephenson resulted from a visit to Killingworth Colliery to see the new steam locomotives at work. After entering a loose financial agreement with Stephenson for the sale of locomotives, James approached Joseph Sandars, a wealthy Liverpool merchant, offering to make the survey for a line to Manchester, partly at his own expense. Although he was assisted in the work by George Stephenson’s son Robert and his own son William Henry James, his route was not accepted by the promoters and it was George Stephenson who completed the line, using information from James’s survey.

• In 1823 James published a report describing in detail a scheme to link London with the strategically important ports of Kent, Sussex, and Hampshire ‘by a Line of Engine Railroad’.

• In 1823 he suffered bankruptcy and imprisonment.

• After he was discharged from prison he returned to his early profession as land agent, in Bodmin, Cornwall.

• 1837 He suffered from ill-health thereafter and he died with little money. It was not until after his death, when it had become plain that Britain would have a national network of railways rather than merely a collection of lines to serve local needs, was his work recognised: Robert Stephenson acknowledged his contribution to the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, a claim that George Stephenson had never accepted, and a public subscription, endorsed by such engineers as Brunel, Rennie and Locke, was eventually instituted to support his family.

Sources of Information

• [1] Wikipedia
• [2] DNB