Edward Pease, a woollen manufacturer from Darlington, England, was the main promoter of the Stockton and Darlington Railway, which opened in 1825.
Background
Pease was born on 31 May 1767, the eldest son of the Darlington woollen manufacturer Joseph Pease and his wife, Mary Richardson. Edward boarded at a school in Leeds run by Joseph Tatham the elder, and then joined his father"s woollen business at the age of 15. On 30 November 1796, he married a fellow Quaker, Rachel (died 1833), daughter of John Whitwell, of Kendal.
Career
He is sometimes referred to as the "Father of the Railways". This was abandoned in favour of a railway. Meanwhile, Pease introduced into the scheme the steam engine maker George Stephenson, and an initial act of Parliament for a horse-drawn railway was immediately superseded by one for a steam-hauled line.
Also prominent was a cousin of his, the Darlington banker Jonathan Backhouse, and in promoting steam, Nicholas Wood, the engineer and manager of Killingworth Colliery.
The scheme was approved by Parliament in 1821. Stephenson was put in charge of the project and the line opened on 27 September 1825.
The company initially provided only the track, which was hired out to whoever wished to run a train, hauled either by horses or by steam. The transition to standard railway management was a gradual one, spurred on by frequent disputes between drivers about right of way and by the dangers of the higher speeds of steam locomotives.
Edward Pease had extensive connections among the Quaker banking community, which helped considerably in promoting the railway.
He also invested strongly in 1823 in Stephenson"s new company for building locomotives in Newcastle upon Tyne. He retired from business in 1833, but not from religious life as a Quaker. He died of heart failure in Darlington on 31 July 1858, and was buried in the Quaker burial-ground in Skinnergate.
Samuel Smiles described Pease as "a thoughtful and sagacious man, ready in resources, possessed of indomitable energy and perseverance." An edition of his diaries appeared in 1907.