James Cropper, Liverpool Docks and the Liverpool & Manchester Railway

Abstract

James Cropper was a director of the Liverpool & Manchester Railway. Some historians have depicted him as resisting the forces of progress personified by George and Robert Stephenson. On the evidence presented here Cropper was intelligent and progressive, George Stephenson in some respects reactionary. Cropper had been instrumental in grubbing out corruption in dock construction work. He attacked the Stephensons because they appeared to be using the same methods as a corrupt dock surveyor, famously castigated by Telford. They may not have been acting corruptly, but Cropper had every reason for suspicion