Now! Then! Experts tell the High Court that electromagnetic interference from Leeds’s 1891 overhead electric tramway to Roundhay – the nation’s first – has brought down the local telephone service

14 December 1892: Experts tell the High Court that electromagnetic interference from Leeds’s 1891 overhead electric tramway to Roundhay – the nation’s first – has brought down the local telephone service

The Thomson-Houston system of trolley wire suspension, as implemented for the Roundhay tram (Anon 1894).

Leeds Mercury. 1892/12/15. The Leeds Electric Tramway and the Telephones. Leeds. Get it:

Excerpt

Lord Kelvin said that while the trams were running it was almost impossible to hear by means of the telephone. It was not necessary for the successful working of the Leeds tramway system that a single insulated wire overhead should be used. He did not know of any other tramway either in England or in Europe which worked on the single wire system. He was acquainted with the Budapest system, which did not involve any other separate rail being laid except the two rails on which the tramways ran. There would not be any difficulty in constructing and working a tramway at Leeds on the Budapest system. If, instead of taking the telephone wire to earth at the subscriber’s end, it was doubled back to the exchange and taken to earth there, the disturbances would be diminished, but not cured. With a complete insulated metallic return for the tramway, the disturbances due to induction from the working of the trams and to telegraphic wires would be practically got rid of. Sir Frederick Bramwell said that having a single wire, and having a return partly by the rails, partly by an intermediate wire which was not insulated, and partly by the earth itself, was likely to have the effects spoken of. The contact of the trolley and the overhead wire was also likely to cause the disturbances. [The National Telephone Company has no grounds for an injunction or for damages!]

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.
Abbreviations:

ER: East Riding
GM: Greater Manchester
NR: North Riding
NY: North Yorkshire
SY: South Yorkshire
WR: West Riding
WY: West Yorkshire

Comment

See also the report in The Times in January 1893 and the complicated judgment issued in February by Mr Justice Kekewich:

MR. JUSTICE KEKEWICH said,- As between the National Telephone Company, whom I shall treat as the sole plaintiffs, although another is associated with them, and the Leeds Corporation, whom I shall treat as the real defendants, although not appearing on the record, there is no question of title and no question but that each is lawfully exercising undoubted rights. Nor is there any question but that the acts of the defendants interfere with the exercise by the plaintiffs of their lawful rights. This would, I believe, have been undoubtedly true if the case had been thrashed out on evidence without the advantage of Mr. Macrory’s report; but that report renders it unnecessary to deal with the evidence on this point. And the interference is of a serious character, so that, if actionable, the remedy would properly be by injunction rather than by damages. The real and only question in the case is whether the interference is actionable. It was practically admitted by the plaintiffs, and my own view certainly is, that, if they can maintain the action against the defendants at all, it must be on the application of the principle now well known as that of Fletcher v. Rylands” (L.R., S, H. L., 330). That principle,, for the purposes of application to the case in band, may conveniently be stated by reference to the second of four propositions set out in the fifth chapter of Mr. Garrett’s book on the Law of Nuisance,” which I have consulted in connexion with more than one point in this case, and gladly take this opportunity of mentioning as a work of uncommon merít.. The proposition is, I think, capable of improvement by the substitution for “non-natural” of extraordinary,” which is the term employed by Lord Kingsdown in defining somewhat analogous water rights in his well-known judgment in Miner v. Gilmour” (12 Moore’s P. C. Cases, 131). The land into which the plaintiffs and defendants alike discharge their electric current does not belong to either of them; but, for the reasons above indicated, there cannot, as between them, be any question that the principle ought to be applied (if it be applicable at all) on the basis of their being absolute owners. That principle has never yet been applied in English law to such a matter as is now under consideration; and perhaps it would not be too much to say that those who enunciated the law in Fletcher v. Hylands,” and have commented on and followed it in other cases, never had present to their minds the application of the doctrine to an electric current and the possible consequences of its discharge into the earth. The question has been carefully considered in America, and I have studied with deep interest the case of Cumberland Telephone and Telegraph Company v. United Electric Railway” (42 Federal Reporter, 273). The judgment of the Court in that case, though in nowise binding on me, has commanded my earnest attention and respect, and but for one circumstance I should not hesitate to allow my own conclusion to be guided by the powerful arguments there set forth. That one circumstance is the want of full adoption of the principle of “Fletcher v. Rylands.” American law apparently holds the owner of land used for a non-natural or extraordinary purpose responsible for the consequences of such user to his neighbour only when they result from that owner’s negligence, and if he can satisfy the Court that he has not been guilty of negligence, the resulting damage to his neighbour is not actionable. It seems to me that, if the principleof “Fletcher v. Bylands” had been fully adopted in America, the conclusion of the Court m the ease just cited must have been different. 1 believe that in Scotland, too, the principle of Fletcher v. Rylands ” has not been accepted and is not regarded as consistent with justice between man and man. It does not fall to me to consider so large a proposition. The principle is thoroughly weli settled here, and my duty is merely to consider whether it is applicable. It would be easy, of course, to point out differences between all the cases to which it has hitherto been applied and the present; and I have already said that injury arising from such a case as the discharge of electric current can scarcely have been contemplated by any Judge in previous cases. But, after reflecting much on the novelty of the case, on the arguments addressed to me, and on the peculiarity of an electric current as distinguished from every other power, I fail to see any reason why the principle should not be applied to it. I cannot see my way to holding that a man who has created, or, if that be inaccurate, called into special existence, an electric current for his own purposes and who discharges it into the earth beyond his control, is not as responsible for damage which that current does to his neighbour as he would have been if, instead, he had discharged a stream of water. The electric current may be more erratic than water, and it may be more difficult to calculate or to control its direction or force, but when once it is established. that the particular current is the creation of, or owes its special existence to, the defendant and is discharged by him, I hold that, if it finds its way on to a neighbour’s land and there damages the neighbour, the latter has a cause of setion. At any rate I think that if a distinction is to be taken between this and other forces for this purpose, that distinction must be made by a higher tribunal and not by a Judge of first instance. It was endeavoured to be argued on behalf of the defendants that the current injuring the plaintiffs was only part of the general body of electricity which may be now said to exist everywhere and to be proceeding in every direction; but the effect of the defendants operations is to collect a particular: portion of this body and to discharge it into the earth at a particular spot; and there can be no doubt bat that the disturbance of the plaintiffs’ telephonic system is caused by the particular quantity thus discharged. Assuming the action to be maintainable on the principle of Fletcher v. Rylands,” the defendants rely on two answers to the plaintiffs’ claim. First, they say that the plaintiffs might, by an alteration of their system-that is, by the adoption of what is known as the ” metallic return”-prevent the disturbance complained of; and, secondly, they say that they, the defendants, are acting under statutory powers, and that if, in the proper exercise of those powers they injure the plaintiffs, they are free from blame. The first answer is, to my mind, without foundation. The man who complains of his land being thrown out of cultivation by the incursion of water escaping from his neighbour’s reservoir must not be told that he has no right of action because, if he had interposed a wall, or otherwise taken care to protect himself, the water would not have reached his land. He is using his land in a natural way, is not bound to take extraordinary precautions, and is entitled to rely on his neighbour also using his land in a natural way, or, if he uses it otherwise, taking extraordinary precautions to prevent damage to others therefrom. There is, no doubt, a body of evidence to show that a system different from that adopted by the plaintiffs has been adopted elsewhere with advantage and may possibly prove to be the most convenient though more expensive for them; but the evidence also proves that their present system has been largely adopted and is received with favour by many competent to form an opinion. It also has the merits of economy. They are carrying on their own business lawfully and in the mode which they deem best, and I cannot oblige them to change their system because they might thereby possibly enable the defendants to conduct their business without the mischievous consequences now ensuing. True it is that the analogy, introduced. above fails to this extent, that the plaintiffs are using the law for an extraordinary purpose, but admittedly it is a lawful purpose; and though under an obligation to obviate mischief from their own operations to their neighbours, they are under none, in my judgment, to protect themselves from the defendants or others. The outflow from one reservoir might easily destroy another; but, so far as I am aware, there is no principle or authority in English law for rejecting a claim for damage by the owner of the latter on the ground that his user as well as that of his neighbour, is extraordinary.

The second answer of the defendants to the plaintiffs’ claim has required more examination. Having recently had occasion, in Allison v. City. and South London Railway Company ” and again ia “Rapier v. London Tramways Company,” to consider such plea as is here put forward, and to consider many authorities, and, in particular, the cases of Metropolitan Asylum District v. Hill” (6 App. Ca., 193), and London, Brighton and South Coast Railway Company v. Truman ” (11 App. Ca., 45), and their application to different provisions and circumstances, I do not find it necessary again to state my view of the law or of the lines by which I ought to he guided in applying it to a particular case. Therefore I shall but briefly explain the reasons for my conclusion that the defendants’ plea is good in law, and that they are not responsible to the plaintiffs for the mischief caused by their works. The defendants’ authority is derived under a provisional order confirmed by Act of Parliament. Such provisional orders in connexion with tramways and many other undertakings of a public character are now common, and, I think, must be treated as a well-known and recognized class of legislation, equally as much as the Railway Acts, which were referred to in those terms by the Lord Chancellor in ” London, Brighton, and South Coast Railway Company v. Truman” (11 App. Ca., 58). The Railway Acts (again using the language of the Lord Chancellor in the same case) were assumed to establish the proposition that the railway might be made and used, whether a nuisance were created or not; and in my judgment a like proposition must be assumed to be established by the provisional orders, one of which is here under consideration. The defendants are expressly authorized to use electrical power; and the Legislature must be taken to have contemplated it and to have condoned by anticipation any mischief arising from the reason able use of such power. A distinction was endeavoured to be made between cases where extraordinary powers are directly sanctioned by the Legislature, and those where it is left to some other authority (in this instance the Board of Trade) to determine whether, if at all, they may be brought into operation. It is within the competence of the Legislature to delegate its authority; and when once that delegated authority has been properly exercised by the agent to whom it is intrusted, the sanction is that of the Legislature itself, just as much as if it had been expressed in the first instance in an Act of Parliament. The defendants relied on the 51st section of the provisional order. They argue that the exception there made in favour of the telegraphic, which would include telephonic, lines of the Postmaster-General indicates that interference with any other like lines was intended to be permitted. The reference supports the more general argument, and I have: therefore mentioned it; but I rest my decision more: on the established principle laid down in many cases, and ultimately ratified by the House of Lords in London, Brighton, and South Coast Railway Company v. Truman.” To this plea of statutory power the plaintiffs have a rejoinder. They say that such power cannot avail the defendants, unless they have acted reasonably in the exercise thereof and have done their best to avoid injury to their neighbours. The argument being sound in law, one is compelled to examine the facts. The defendants work their tramways on what is called the “single trolly system.” There are other systems which have from time to time been used, and, it seems, are still in use elsewhere, and there are at least some good reasons for the conclusion that, by the adoption of one or other of these systems, the defendants might wholly or partially avoid the mischief which they now occasion. There is a contest on the evidence whether any of these other systems can be regarded as good apart from comparison with that of the defendants; and there is a farther conflict of evidence whether, if good, they are comparable in merit with that of the defendants. My conclusion from the evidence is that the defendants system is, on the whole, the best which practical science has yet discovered, but there is no occasion really to go as far as this. It is enough to say – and about this I entertain no doubt – that it is at least as good as any other, and has been proved by experience, especially in the United States, where there have been larger opportunities for experiment and consideration, to be as likely as any other to meet the requirements of traffic, and the convenience of all concerned in the protection of the site of tramways for the use of legitimate purposes other than those of the tramway undertaking. It cannot be that in the application of the law which I am now considering the Court is bound to hold a railway or other company liable for the consequences of acts done under statutory powers, because it has not adopted the last inventions of ever-changing, ever-advancing, scientific discovery. It is surely impossible, with any regard to that common sense which after all is the foundation of this and many other branches of law, to say that a railway company which was not liable last year, last month, or even yesterday, because, until then, its undertaking was carried on according to rules acknowledged to be the best, it is liable now, not because those rules have been proved to be altogether wrong in practice or unscientific in principle, but because some diligent worker in this department has discovered what is held for the moment to be a large improvement, but may tomorrow turn out to be only a step in the progress of further advance, and yet this might be the necessary conclusion in many cases, and, indeed, might be the necessary conclusion here, if I were driven to support the plaintiffs’ claim on the ground that the single trolly system, so largely approved where it has been largely tried, does not avail the defendants as a proper exercise of their statutory powers because another system is in use, and apparently successful use, at Budapest or elsewhere. I do not wish to prejudice the question whether a charge of negligence in the exercise of statutory powers can be supported by cogent evidence that the company exercising those powers has failed to adopt alterations or precautions, which sufficient experience has shown to be of large, indisputable, and permanent value. That question may easily arise in many of the disputes which are likely enough from time to time to occur between public companies and those whom their operations injuriously affect; and it may even arise between the parties to this litigation. Suffice it to say that it does not arise now.

Holding on the above grounds that the plaintiffs cannot maintain an action, either for an injunction or for damages, against the defendants, I must order them to pay the general costs. If ever there has been or can be a case to which the distinction between the two scales of costs is properly applicable, this is the one; and the costs must be taxed on the higher scale. But it remains to make an exception, and that of some extent. I have already stated that the interference with the plaintiffs by the defendants is beyond doubt. I do not think that this ought to have been litigated. Mr. Macrory’s report shows that one fair experiment would have proved the facts about which there really was very little doubt, independent of his report, and that much time was uselessly spent on evidence. Not only must the plaintiffs be excused payment of the defendants’ costs of this issue, which must be defined to be the issue whether the plaintiffs’ telephonic system was in fact interfered with by the defendants’ operations, but the costs thus excepted from the general costs of the action must be borne by the defendants, and set off. Those costs will, of course, include those incurred in the experiments conducted at Leeds under Mr. Macrory’s superintendence. They must also include the fee payable to Mr. Macrory which it was agreed I should settle. I have communicated with him and ascertained the time occupied, and also the expenses incurred by him in railway journeys and the like, including the expenses of the gentleman (Mr. Cuninghame) whom he asked to assist him; and taking into consideration these items, I have fixed the fee at 50 guineas to cover all expenses, and also such fee as he thinks fit to pay Mr. Cuninghame. I am glad to think that the course pursued with the concurrence of both parties of sending him down to make experiments and report was not only successful in finally settling, an issue of fact, but also shortened the trial and saved the further costs, which further dispute on this point would necessarily have involved. There will be judgment for the defendants with costs modified in the manner above expressed. (Times 1893/02/06)

I haven’t checked whether this, like many of his rulings, was appealed, but as of 1960, the principal protective measures adopted in Great Britain against the frequent interference by high-power circuits in neighbouring low-power ones under such circumstances were the screening and the sheathing of railway cables, and the use of booster transformers with some form of return, rather than the protection of phone cables (p. 7) (Klewe 1960).

Unfortunately the issue and case don’t figure in Daniel Clark’s excellent contemporary account of the Roundhay line (Clark 1894).

Discussion in one of the Mercury links about running off batteries

Opened 11/11/1891

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Original

THE LEEDS ELECTRIC TRAMWAY AND THE TELEPHONES,
THE NATIONAL TELEPHONE COMPANY v. BAKER.
LORD KELVIN AND SIR F. BRAMWELL CALLED AS WITNESSES.
Mr. Justice Kekewich continued the hearing of the action brought by the National Telephone Company Limited against Mr. Baker, in the Chancery Division of the High Court of Justice, yesterday. The plaintiff company asked for an injunction to restrain the defendant, the contractor, by whose directions electric tramways were being worked in Leeds, from so using his tramways as to interfere with the convenient and ordinary use of the telephones of the plaintiffs, which had been established for many years in Leeds, the allegation being that the overhead wires conducting the current to the trams caused such disturbances in the telephonic system as to at times render it useless. The counsel before stated were present.
Lord Kelvin, examined in support of the plaintiffs’ case by Sir Richard Webster, said he had investigated the question of the disturbance and interference of telephones at Leeds by tramway electricity. On the 3rd of June last, he went to Leeds for the purpose of examining into the question, and he found the disturbance very severe, and while the trams were running it was almost impossible to hear by means of the telephone.
May I take it that the present system of working the tramways at Leeds will seriously interfere with the commercial undertaking of the telephones? Yes.
Is the particular system adopted at Leeds, a single wire with the present method of connection, likely to produce serious disturbance? Yes.
Witness proceeded to say that the varying contact which was inevitable under the present system contributed materially to telephonic disturbance. It was not necessary, in his opinion, for the successful working of the Leeds tramway system that a single insulated wire overhead should be used. He did not know of any other tramway either in England or in Europe which worked on the single wire system. He was acquainted with the Buda-Pesth system, which did not involve any other separate rail being laid except the two rails on which the tramways ran. There would not, in his opinion, be any difficulty in constructing and working a tramway at Leeds on the Buda-Pesth system. He was not convinced that the mere duplication of telephonic wires would remove the disturbance set up by the working of the tramways system of Leeds.
Cross-examined by Mr. Bousfield, Q.C.-If, instead of taking the telephone wire to earth at the subscriber’s end, it was doubled back to the Exchange and taken to earth there, the disturbances would be diminished, but not cured. The disturbances would interfere with conversations over the telephones. With a complete insulated metallic return the disturbances due to induction from the working of the trams and to telegraphic wires would be practically got rid of. He thought the Leeds tramway could be worked with an underground conductor, such as that at Buda-Pesth, with a smaller slot for the gripper, say of 5/8 of an inch. There would be no difficulty in clearing out refuse from the trough beneath the ground by reason of the narrowness of the aperture.
Re-examined.-An electric tramway would require a much narrower slot than would a cable tramway.
Mr. Edward Hopkinson said he was managing director of Messrs. Mather and Platt, a firm of large electrical contractors. He prepared an estimate for the construction of the Leeds electric tramway in three different methods. The first tender was for £14,258, the second £12,698, and the, third £14,665, That in each case excluded builders’ work.
Sir Frederick Bramwell, in answer to Sir Richard Webster, stated that with the exception of Newcastle the single wire was used throughout the United Kingdom. He had been down to Leeds with Lord Kelvin. Listening from the Central Exchange in Commercial Buildings, the noise was extremely annoying and irritating, with the result that certainly half of the words were lost. He would not subscribe to a telephone if that was the condition on which it was carried on. He also tried the telephone at the call station at Roundhay, at the termination of the defendant’s line. There was nothing but noise to be heard in the telephone, which was useless in consequence. He had seen the system of electric tramways under which the defendant worked. It appeared to him that having a single wire, and having a return partly by the rails, partly by an intermediate wire which was not insulated, and partly by the earth itself, they were likely to have the effects spoken of; and without dealing with the scientific part of the question, the fact was, the disturbances were there. The contact of the trolley and the overhead wire was also likely to cause the disturbances. Cross-examined. – The plaintiffs used a metallic return on their trunk lines, and also from Leeds to Chapeltown among other places. When there were a number of wires grouped in one cable it was desirable to have a metallic return. Wherever it was found advisable to have a double wire the plaintiff company had one, but wherever they could avoid it they did so. Questioned as to the practicability of getting over the difficulty of crossings with a double conductor, Sir F. Bramwell stated that he had not thought the matter out, but he believed with double brushes fixed at the bottom of the car the crossings could be negotiated.
Mr. Charles Lupton, one of the plaintiffs in the action, carrying on business as a solicitor at Leeds, stated in cross-examination that he complained to the Telephone Company verbally, to the manager originally, and was in communication with the solicitor of the company in December, 1891. He told the manager that if the nuisance was not abated he should have to cease to subscribe.
Dr. T. W. Jessop, F.R.C.S., said he had practised as a surgeon at Leeds for thirty years, and had been a subscriber to the plaintiff company since the beginning.-Questioned by his Lordship, he said he knew that the cars made the noise, because when they ceased running the noise stopped.
Mr. Robert Middleton, engineer, of Leeds, having been examined, Mr. Warmington, in answer to the Bench, stated that he would not call more than three witnesses.
Mr. Bousfield admitted that there was a disturbance but, in any case, it was not so bad in its interference with the telephones as to make them useless. He would call his witnesses, and if his Lordship would come to a conclusion, it would save the trouble of an independent person being sent down.
After consideration, his Lordship then intimated that he would continue the hearing on the 11th of January.

1132 words.