ABSTRACT
In the last thirty years of his life, the 1st Duke of Sutherland (who was Lord Stafford until 1833) had received a total income of £2,243,017 from the Bridgewater Trust. On his death in 1833 the income of the Bridgewater Trust had been detached from the main body of the Sutherland inheritance. It became the property of Lord Francis Egerton. His brother, the 2nd Duke, inherited the shares in the Liverpool and Manchester Railway in addition to the rest of the Sutherland fortune. Throughout the following years the ties of kinship and the skilful agency of James Loch reduced some of the tension implicit in the troublous world of rail and canal. The influence of the two brothers continued to operate in alliance even though their interests were ostensibly in opposition. In fact, it was in their mutual interest to prolong and foster the oligopolistic arrangement that spanned the coming of the railway. Not everyone regarded the influence as beneficial, and in 1842 James Loch and ‘this hermaphrodite connexion’ were publicly denounced as opponents of the railways. 1
