Alice Tredwell

Alice Tredwell (née Pickering; 1823 – 14 June 1867) was an English railway contractor and photographer. She is best known for the completion of the Bhor Ghat section of the Great Indian Peninsular Railway line between Mumbai and Pune in 1863.[1]

Portrait of Alice Tredwell (1823-1867), contractor on the Great Indian Peninsular Railway

Alice Pickering was born in Leek, Staffordshire, in 1823.[2] She married Solomon Tredwell, a railway contractor, in Leeds in 1846.[1] Awarded the construction of the Bhor Ghat section of the Great Indian Peninsular Railway, Alice and Solomon arrived in India in 1859. Solomon died of dysentery or cholera within a month.[3][4]

Alice Tredwell took up the contract with a remarkable "degree of spirit and judgment",[4] assigning the Railway's engineers Swainston Adamson and George Louis Clowser to manage the construction. The construction was completed by 1863.[5][6]

Tredwell photographed much of the Bhor Ghat landscape and the development of the line.[7]

Adamson and Clowser continued to work for Tredwell's company, extending the Peninsular railway towards Madras, constructing the section between Sholapur and Gulbarga.[8]

Alice Tredwell returned to England in 1860. She had inherited £70,000 from her husband.[4] Her only surviving daughter Alice Martha Elizabeth got married in 1866.[9]

Tredwell died in Ryde on the Isle of Wight on 14 June 1867.[10][11]

References
  1. "Alice Tredwell". Grace's Guide to British Industrial History. Retrieved 31 January 2018.
  2. "Solomon Tredwell". Instone Family Tree. Retrieved 31 January 2018.
  3. Christian Wolmar (2017). Railways and The Raj: How the Age of Steam Transformed India. Atlantic Books. p. 53. ISBN 978-1-78239-766-3.
  4. Jon Wilson (2016). India Conquered: Britain's Raj and the Chaos of Empire. Simon & Schuster UK. p. 205. ISBN 978-1-4711-0127-4.
  5. Ian J. Kerr (2007). Engines of Change: The Railroads that Made India. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 45. ISBN 978-0-275-98564-6.
  6. "The Bombay Mail". The Times. 6 June 1864. p. 10.
  7. "Alice Tredwell". VADS. Retrieved 3 February 2018.
  8. The Railway News and Joint Stock Journal. 3. 1865. p. 377.
  9. "Marriages". The Morning Post (28731). London. 11 January 1866. p. 8.
  10. "Deaths". Illustrated London News (1432). 22 June 1867. p. 618.
  11. "Alice Tredwell, deceased". The Times (25892). 17 August 1867. p. 4.
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