Stephenson, Robert

has biography | a une biographie: British railway engineer and locomotive designer in the nineteenth century.
Stephenson’s involvement in the development of the rail network in Britain overlapped with the final years of colonial slavery in the 1820s and 1830s. Some of those who had investments in slavery in the Caribbean began to invest their capital into rail infrastructure in this period. In the early 1820s, for example, Stephenson worked as a surveyor on behalf of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway. The company’s deputy chair was John Moss (1782-1858), who was a Liverpool banker, slave-owner, and promoter of some of the earliest railway schemes. Other railway projects Stephenson worked on, such as the London and Birmingham Railway, also attracted investment from figures involved in Britain’s slave economy, although the degree of investment varied between companies.

In addition to his work in Britain, Stephenson briefly worked between 1824 and 1827 in South America, where he was involved in mining projects in Gran Colombia as part of growing British industrial interests on the continent.
was born | est né: 16 October 1803
died in | est mort par: 12 October 1859
has nationality | a la nationalité: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
has type | est de type: depicted

is referred to by | est référencé par: Wikipedia; Art UK; National Portrait Gallery; Catherine Hall, Nicholas Draper, Keith McClelland, Katie Donington, and Rachel Lang, eds., Legacies of British Slave-Ownership: Colonial Slavery and the Formation of Victorian Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014); Entry for John Moss, Legacies of British Slavery database

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Items with "main figure depicted | personnage principal représenté: Stephenson, Robert"
Statue of Robert Stephenson, Euston Station