Progress of the work—1886. ical department, had been with me for about fourteen years before the Severn Tunnel contract was entered into. Thoroughly careful and painstaking, it was amusing to try to pin Mr. Simpson to a promise to finish anything by a given date. He certainly had not the same opinion of the value of time as men of this generation are supposed to have. ‘Slow but sure’ was his motto, and not a bad motto either on such works.
The principal foreman on the Monmouthshire side was Joseph Talbot.
Joe came to me from some works abroad in the year 1865. He carried out a large part of the Metropolitan District Railway, doing the work from Gloucester Road Station to South Kensington, and afterwards doubling the South Kensington Station. He also did the works in front of Somerset House on the Thames Embankment. He was for some time on docks, then did the heaviest part of the East London Railway, and afterwards the tunnel on the Dover and Deal Line.
He was born in a tunnel on the South-Eastern Railway, not far from Dover, and has been engaged on tunnel-work all his life up to the present time. His father was a good miner before him, and five of his brothers also followed the same occupation.
Thoroughly at home in all that a miner had to do, the only complaint he ever made was against the hardness of the ground. He once gave it as his