74 HEROES OF INVENTION AND DISCO VER Y. 



Robert Stephenson was meanwhile receiving as good an 

 education as his father could afford. After the village school 

 of Long Benton had done something for him, he was sent to 

 Bruce's Academy, Newcastle, to which place he rode backwards 

 and forwards on a donkey. To his home, near West Moor Pit, 

 Killingworth, which originally consisted of but one apartment 

 on the ground floor, Stephenson gradually added until he 

 made it a comfortable four-roomed dweUing. In the garden 

 attached, it v/as his pride to cultivate gigantic leeks and large 

 cabbages. In his leisure time he was still fond of displays ot 

 feats of strength and agility, at which he often distanced his 

 competitors. In 1812, the engine- wright at Killingworth was 

 killed by an accident, when George Stephenson was promoted 

 to his post at a salary of ^-/^loo a-year. This relieved him from 

 the routine of manual laljour, but his brain and his hands were 

 kept as busy as ever. The first winding-engine for drawing the 

 coals out of the pit, and the first pumping-engine erected by 

 him for Long Benton Colliery, were both successful. In some 

 evidence which he gave before a select committee of the House 

 of Commons in 1835, he thus spoke of his life at this time: 

 "After making some improvements in the steam-engines above 

 ground, I was then requested by the manager of the colliery to 

 go underground along with him to see if any improvement 

 could be made in the mines by employing machinery as a 

 substitute for manual labour and horse-power in bringing the 

 coals out of the deeper workings of the mine. On my first 

 going down to Killingworth Pit, there was a steam-engine 

 underground for the purpose of drawing water from a pit that 

 was sunk at some distance from the first shaft. The Killing- 

 worth coal-field is considerably dislocated. After the colliery 

 vvas opened, at a very short distance from the shaft, one of 



