Overlooked Britain Lucinda Lambton
After revelling in the delights of discovering the ‘French Renaissance’ beauties of Slough railway station, go to Platform 5. There, somewhat lost amid the detritus of modern railway life, stands a miraculous-in-its-survival 120-year-old dog. Stuffed and standing proud in a glass case, he is ‘Station Jim’, the lone extant example, in situ, of Britain’s 19th-century Railway Canine Collectors. These were dogs harnessed with money boxes who from the 1860s to the 1960s would ‘work’ the platforms and trains for charitable funds. Trained to bark their thanks whenever a coin was given, some had learned the added tricks of responding to the weight of monies: merely bowing when receiving a penny and barking, wagging their tails and offering a paw when a gold sovereign was dropped into their box. When they died they were usually preserved so as to continue their good offices from the rarified eminence of a glass case fitted up with a collection box. In his heyday, Jim collected for the Great Western Railway Widows and Orphans Fund. Most marvellous to say, he is still amassing funds today and only recently collected £500, which was given to the Samaritans, who are always on hand to help with Slough’s railway fatalities.
Thousands of pounds were raised by this select canine army; it was so renowned that many of the dogs warranted
obituaries in the Times. ‘Wimbledon Nell’ was a ‘sagacious’ golden retriever who would ‘work’ the trains rattling her money box; Bruce of Swindon was renowned for his energy, travelling many thousands of miles on the trains and raising money for such worthy causes as the families of victims of the Titanic. ‘Bristol Bob’, ‘Grace of Dalston’ and ‘Jack of Reigate’ were some of the others, and ‘Laddie of Wimbledon’ was an Airedale terrier who collected for the London and South Western Railway orphanage.
Enveloped by modern developments, Slough station, with its lofty chimneys and French pavilion domes smothered with fish scale tiles, is a great surprise. Oeil-de-boeuf windows pierce through the curvaceous roofs and ornate cast-iron cresting, with finials of bunches of flowers, delicately spring forth along the skyline. Built of bright brick with handsome stone dressings, it was designed in 1882 by John Danks, architect and engineer for the Great Western Railway, no doubt fancied up to the nines thanks to the pedigree of the place. From 1840–1849, this had been the station for Windsor Castle. The head master of Eton – between Windsor and Slough – had decreed that no station should be built nearer to the school, ‘fearing that it would interfere with the discipline … the studies and amusements of the boys’. So it was that Slough became the Royal Station. It was from this earlier one that Queen Victoria – accompanied by Isambard Kingdom Brunel – made the first ever railway journey by a British monarch. In 1876 the Empress of Austria had been forced by a snowstorm to shelter in Slough station, where she had eaten the stationmaster’s lunch of stout and beef; the Queen had given her no food at Windsor. ‘The shabby manner in which the Queen receives foreign potentates’, thundered the public prints, ‘has long been the source of vexation to her subjects; and the climax is capped by the Empress of Austria having to beg the Slough stationmaster for food within ten minutes of leaving Windsor Castle’. Slough station played host to dignitaries and royalty galore; most especially of course Queen Victoria, who having bidden farewell to Station Jim, was on her way to see Paddington Tim. Is it any wonder that the town saw fit to build an impressive new station in 1882?
Compliments should also be showered today on Slough railway station staff for preserving Station Jim. Only three or four Canine Collectors survive and they are in museums; the rest of this valiant and brilliantly British brigade have been destroyed. How could this be?