James Joseph Allport

[1] He joined the Birmingham and Derby Junction Railway in 1839 as the traffic agent at Hampton in Arden, becoming Chief Clerk, then General Manager in 1843.

He was the first to appreciate the importance of the third-class passenger as a source of revenue, and accordingly, in 1872, he inaugurated the policy, subsequently adopted more or less completely by all the railways of Great Britain, of carrying third-class passengers in well-fitted carriages (at the uniform rate, decreed by Parliament, of one penny a mile on all trains).

[1] The diminution in the receipts from second-class passengers, which was one of the results, was regarded by some authorities as a sign of the lack of wisdom of his action, but, to him, it appeared a sufficient reason for the abolition of second-class carriages, which therefore disappeared from the Midland system in 1875, the first-class fares being at the same time substantially reduced.

[3] Allport was sponsor of an Act of Parliament in 1883 to install a network of high-pressure cast iron water mains under London.

Allport died at the Midland Grand Hotel, St. Pancras, on 25 April 1892, from acute inflammation of the lungs, the result of a chill.