In 1863, the London underworld was revolutionised — not the crime statistics, but the literal underworld, when the first underground railway opened, with trains running, unimaginably, beneath the surface of the earth. This was, as the Times had pointed out when plans were first mooted, as silly as thinking of machines that could fly through the air, or of battles that could be fought in the sky, or trains running in tunnels under the Channel.
By 1865, it was possible to travel between Farringdon Street and Padding- ton without seeing daylight; within a decade areas as far north as Swiss Cottage, as far west as Kensington and Hammersmith, as far east as Liverpool Street, all had the new ‘Underground Railway’, and, from being unimaginable, underground travel was a daily method of transport for thousands of commuters and housewives, who made their decisions to travel based solely on the congestion of the London streets, and their ability to tolerate tunnels filled with coal-smoke and gas-fumes from the engines and carriage-lights.
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