Sir Daniel Gooch  
THE TIMES
Wednesday, Oct 16, 1889

Obituary
DEATH OF SIR DANIEL GOOCH  
 
  Sir Daniel Gooch chairman of the Great Western Railway Company, died at 2 o'clock yesterday afternoon at his Berkshire residence, Clewer Park, near Windsor. Sir Daniel, who was 73 years of age, and had been indisposed for sometime, was removed from London a few weeks ago to Clewer, where his health apparently improved, and he was able to take a drive occasionally. With, the advent of cold weather, however, a relapse occurred, and he ultimately succumbed to gout at the heart. During his illness he was attended by Dr. Ellison, surgeon to the Queen's household, and visited by Dr. Pavy, his London medical adviser, while Dr. Fairbank, surgeon to Prince Christian, remained in Clewer Park through out Sunday and Monday nights. Sir Daniel Gooch was twice married - first, to Margaret, daughter of the late Mr. Henry Tanner, of Bishopwearmouth, by whom he had several children, including a son, Henry Daniel, born in 1841, who succeeds to the baronetcy; and, secondly, to Emily, daughter of the late Mr. John Burder, of Norwood, who survives him.
  "Month by month," writes the author of a book which we reviewed a few weeks back,"month by month the last survivors of the men who made the history of our early railways are dropping off." Today we have to record the death of one of the most famous amongst them, Sir Daniel Gooch, the chairman of the Great Western Railway. Had he been a Judge or Bishop he would hardly have passed as an old man; he was only 78. But few men reach great age who are exposed to the constant strain of railway work, and if he was not a very old man, he was, at least, a very old railway servant, for he was appointed locomotive superintendent of the embryo Great Western more than 52 years ago. He was, it might almost be said, born on a railway, for his birthplace was Bedlington in Northumberland, where it was his delight as a child to wander about among the machinery of the Bedlington Iron Works, whose proprietor, Mr. Birkinshaw, had just patented a new system of rolling malleable iron rails; and where George Stephenson, his mind busy with improvements in "Puffing Billy," and surveys of the Stockton and Darlington line which should not violate the sanctity of "the Duke's fox covers," was a frequent visitor at his father's house, walking over, doubtless, from Killingworth, only some ten miles off. It was at Stephenson and Pease's Forth-street Works in Newcastle that the young Daniel served his apprenticeship to practical engineering, and it was under Robert Stephenson that he was employed in the locomotive works at Warrington when, at the early age
of 21, Brunel recommended him to the directors for the appointment of locomotive superintendent of the Great Western Railway.
That appointment Daniel Gooch held for 27 years. Young as he was when he obtained it he took rank from the first as one of the leaders of his profession. His "North Star" still to be seen at Swindon, is a marvel of symmetry and compactness to have been turned out over 50 years back. The engines that work the broad-gauge expresses today are practically unaltered from what they were, when he put the first of the class, the "North Briton," on the road as long ago as 1846. Nor has the speed that the "North Briton" and her companions attained been bettered since, though the "Race to Edinburgh" of 1888 was almost as keen a fight as the "battle of the gauges" 40 years earlier. It is to Daniel Gooch that the engineering world owes the most accurate information that has yet been obtained as to atmospheric resistance, internal friction, rolling friction, and all the other items which go to drag down expresses from the theoretical perfection of a mile a minute. Had he not been one of the most retiring of men he could have told tales without end of the early history of railways; of Brunel's experiments with the "Hurricane" with her 10 foot driving wheel, and with the machinery and the boiler on two separate carriages; of the Bristol and Exeter tank-engines, with their 9ft wheels and their authentic speed of 80 miles an hour; of the South Devon atmospheric system, its scientific success and its commercial failure. But he never published a line, and his unique knowledge will be buried with him.
In 1864, Mr. Gooch as he then was, retired from the service of the Great Western, in order to devote his attention to the establishment of telegraphic communication between England and America. As we all know, he succeeded; it was he who despatched the first telegraphic message across the Atlantic, and his success was rewarded with a baronetcy. But though he remained till his death chairman of the Telegraph Construction and Maintenance Company and director of several other cable undertakings, all this has as little to do with the main current of his life as the fact that he was a magistrate and deputy-lieutenant for Wiltshire, a leading Freemason, or that he sat in Parliament for 20 years as member for Cricklade. It is better worth notice as a proof of his financial shrewdness that he was one of the very few people who ever had anything to do with the unfortunate Great Eastern without regretting it. But during the years the great ship was employed laying submarine cables she returned her owners, or whom Sir Daniel was one, a steady 20 per cent.
Sir Daniel had only been away from the Great Western for a twelvemonth when he was summoned back to assume the position of chairman, and rescue the company from imminent bankruptcy.

It is difficult for us nowadays, with Great Western stock quoted at over 160 and Great Western 4 per cent debentures standing at 135, to realize that little more than 20 years ago Great Western stock was at 38 ½, the general manager (the late Mr. Grierson) fully expected that "next Monday morning the railway will be in the hands of a receiver," and it was esteemed a triumph of management when the new chairman succeeded in staving off the most pressing creditors by the issue of 6 per cent, debentures at a heavy discount. That the Great Western has emerged from this distressful plight, that it has absorbed the Bristol and Exeter, the South Devon, the Cornwall, and 20 railways more, till today it stands forward not only as the largest, but as one of the most compact and prosperous of English railways, is owing very largely to tie upright and able (though at times perhaps somewhat over-conservative) management of Sir Daniel Gooch. The Severn Tunnel more especially, which has done wonders to knit together the scattered members of the Great Western family, would never have been made but for the dogged perseverance and unconquerable faith of the chairman. His portrait hangs in the Board-room and his bust faces that of Brunel in the shareholders' meeting-room at Paddington, but his place can never be filled. To his successor it must fall before long to sweep away the last relics of the broad gauge and to preside over a future of the line perhaps more evenly prosperous than its past. But with the old familiar broad gauge carriages gone, with the stately old-world-looking "Iron Duke" and. "Prometheus" and their fellows consigned to the scrap-heap, the Great Western will no longer be the Great Western of our childhood. Perhaps it is well that Sir Daniel Gooch has not been spared to see the change.