Introduction

This chapter discusses the railway town and the changing relationship between company and people, as found in Crewe's famous Works and in the town itself. The famous railway town of Crewe can, for it came into being on a cold, wet day on 10 March 1843, when the mighty Grand Junction Railway Company (GJR) settled some 221 of its employees and their families into the isolated railway colony. In fact Crewe was to become 'the railway town par excellence'. Railway and Company impacted on more than just the economy and physical form of the emerging town, however, for the influence of the Company and its paternalism on the railway town's people was immense, creating, according to the historian Patrick Joyce, a population of 'deferential' railway servants. A new town created in a key era and dominated by a single employer, 19th-century Crewe presents a case study where, theoretically, company culture should be total, its control over work and politics immense.