Robert Stephenson - Other Aspects of His Life

Other Aspects of His Life

He served as Conservative Member of Parliament for Whitby from 1847 until his death. Within the Tory party, he sat on right-wing, at that time hostile to free trade, and Stephenson appeared anxious to avoid change in almost any form . He was a commissioner of the short-lived London Metropolitan Commission of Sewers from 1848. He was President of the Institution of Civil Engineers, for two years from 1855.

Robert’s father George died in 1848 aged 67. Robert died on 12 October 1859 at his London home aged 55. Brunel had died one month earlier on 15 September 1859. Robert was buried in Westminster Abbey next to Thomas Telford. Queen Victoria gave special permission for the cortege to pass through Hyde Park and 3,000 tickets were sold to spectators. In his eulogy, he was called ‘the greatest engineer of the present century’. In his will he left nearly £400,000 .

Stephenson was well respected by his engineering peers and had a lifetime friendship with Joseph Locke, a rival engineer during his career a fact reflected in Locke being a pallbearer at his funeral. Another such friendship was with Isambard Kingdom Brunel, who often helped Stephenson on various projects, as did Stephenson for Brunel. The two were however diametrically opposed on one issue: that of Brunel’s advocacy of atmospheric railways; trains without a locomotive, driven by a piston sliding inside an evacuated pipe mounted between the rails. The pipe was to be kept evacuated by stationary steam-driven pumps at intervals along the railway, and Stephenson was convinced that the idea could not work. After Brunel's proposal was piloted on a small scale and proved unworkable, Stephenson was proven right.

The Stephenson Railway Museum in North Shields is named after George and Robert Stephenson.

He was god-father to Robert Baden-Powell, whose full name was Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell, the first two in honour of his godfather, the third his mother's maiden name.