Environmental & Architectural
Phenomenology Newsletter
Reading an Historical Text Phenomenologically: The Backhouse Letter
Matt Thompson
Thompson is the
Volunteering Coordinator at the National Railway Museum (NRM) in York,
England. He trained as an archaeologist before employment in the museum
sector. His major research interest is studying the coming of the
railways and their impact on people’s everyday lives.
The
letter by Englishman John Backhouse referred to in Thompson’s
interpretation is part of the NRM letters archive. The main body of the
letter deals with family matters; the passages that Thompson interprets
are drawn from are the letter’s first few sentences, which describe the
opening of the first intercity passenger railroad—the Stockton and
Darlington Railway (SDR), which ran between the County Durham towns of
Stockton-on-Tees and Darlington and included branch lines to several
local collieries. The railway began operations in 1825 and continued as
the SDR until 1863 when it was absorbed by the North Eastern Railway.
Backhouse’s drawing and passages from his letter are used with the
permission of the National Railway Museum. © 2008 Matt Thompson.
matt.thompson@nrm.org.uk. Originally published in vol. 19, no. 2
(spring 2008), pp. 5-6.
In the interpretation that follows, I explore John Backhouse’s experience of the opening of the Stockton and Darlington Railway not simply as an individual’s witnessing a single event—however momentous and significant historically—but as the revealing of a phenomenon, not exclusively to those who were present at the time but to a world that, in the beginning at least, had only an imperfect language to describe what was experienced.
I am fascinated with the ways in which we exist in and interact with the world in which we find ourselves. Through a phenomenological approach, we can better understand some of the complex relationships that exist in our lives and that constitute the lifeworld we experience. Is it possible, though, to research a phenomenon that did not reveal itself either to ourselves directly or to individuals, long since deceased, who can no longer recount their experiences to us? How might we understand lived experiences surrounding a phenomenon that unfolded almost two centuries ago?
This short paper is my first attempt to explore a phenomenon through an historic document, in this case, a letter that appealed to me because there were phrases that seemed to warrant a deeper reading. The document seemed an ideal subject for the application of a phenomenological approach. How successful my interpretation is depends on additional interpretations of other accounts and whether findings can be ‘triangulated’ in a way that identifies commonalities and significant underlying structures.
Written 10 October 1825, Backhouse’s letter is remarkable because it is a firsthand account of the beginning of a technology that fundamentally changed our Western way of life. Written to Backhouse’s sisters, the letter mostly discusses family affairs but includes, at its start, a young man’s effort to describe, in both words and drawing [reproduction, below], an event and experience that he obviously found significant and exciting.
What I want to address here is how this letter might tell us of a situation that was radically distinct and different from the everyday lifeworld and natural attitude of the time. There are two passages in particular that describe a lived experience penetrating far beyond a factual situation and pointing toward the phenomenon of “seeing something entirely new.”
The letter begins:
My Dear Sisters, Perhaps you may not under-/ stand what that drawing at the top means,/ it is meant to represent the opening of/ the Stockton & Darlington railway/ which took place on the 27 of September/ 1825.
This opening may not seem revelatory, but Backhouse’s assumption that his description requires explanation is telling. The drawing is well executed and, to our modern eyes, is a clear representation of a train. Admittedly, its form today may seem outmoded and there are elements that seem odd. But the rendering of a train is recognizable and belongs in that category of things that we today automatically take as “railway.”
My point is that our taken-for-granted understanding of “railway” was not available for Backhouse at that moment. Since 1825 we have had some 175 years to facilitate a visual and verbal vocabulary to categorize and to define the world of railways and trains. This vocabulary has, of itself, developed a precise syntax whereby one set of known things has come to be associated with considerably different things. For instance, a connected set of wagons and coaches headed by a locomotive eventually became known as a “train.”
Notice, however, that no such taken-for-granted vocabulary and syntax are present in Backhouse’s letter, thus he immediately assumes that the drawing is not self-evident and requires some form of explanation and explication. The fact that he offers not only a full description but a preface describing, at the most basic level, what the drawing is suggests that railways were not only new objects but, more importantly, new concepts for which an accurate language and syntax had not yet appeared.
The letter continues:
It was a very grand sight/ to see such a mass of people moving; on the/ road from D [Darlington] to S [Stockton] 600 were said to be in/ on & about the wagons & coaches! & the engine/ drew not less than 90 tons!!!!!
The key word in this passage is “mass.” “Mob” as a term for an unruly crowd had already been used for several centuries before 1825, but “mass”—while used from 1563 in the sense of “gathering in mass”—can be interpreted as an indication of the time’s expanding industrialization. Earlier railways existed before 1825 but transported physical stuff—for example, raw materials like coal. Backhouse did not have a word to depict a large number of people moved by machine. As a result, he draws on an ‘old’ word typically applied to inert things. He reinforces his meaning by emphasizing that “the engine drew not less than 90 tons!!!!!” In other words, he further commodifies the passengers by depicting them as “dead weight” rather than human beings.
In short, a new invention invokes a new sort of lived experience that, in turn, invokes a new language to depict that experience. This progression is borne out in Backhouse’s effort to describe people-as-passengers, of whom he speaks as a mass or weight that the train is able to haul. In fact, Backhouse does not refer to the passengers again as individuals until they have disembarked at their destination in Stockton to enjoy “an excellent dinner.” Arguably, Backhouse’s description might be interpreted as an early depiction of “mass transit,” where people rather than goods are the transported commodity.