Yerkes Builds an Empire

[@cooperised]

"These days, rudeness is a tactic commonly adopted by stupid people because they think it makes them look clever." There's a lot to commend about this video but this quote is near the top of the list for me!

[@PokhrajRoy.]

Jago, I commend you for the research you’ve put into this Charles Yerkes story. It’s like soap opera IRL

[@NickyMitchell85]

I agree ☝️.

[@radicallyrethinkingrailwaysina]

I want a Dallas/Dynasty with Yerkes

[@roderickmain9697]

One cant help but be impressed with Yerkes. He is almost the definition of loveable rogue. He made things happen and got them done and those things benefited the public at large - even if his goal was to benefit himself. You can forgive people a lot if they've done things for the greater good. Nicely done, Jago. Your are the loveable rogue to my vague knowledge.

[@andrewweitzman4006]

Even his critics found him impressive. And Theodore Dreiser wrote an entire trilogy based on the man. Not so much loveable, at least among men. He had a talent rivaling that of dodgy finances of making enemies all over the place.

[@66PHILB]

Never mind the Tube Map, I need a flow chart of all of these railway companies and their amalgamations & takeovers. Superb video Mr H.

[@simonthompson9858]

A total tour de force re Yerkes. This is a KZbin classic. Nice one - very nice one - Jago

[@TheUluxian]

Your Yerkes stories have become some of my favorite content on your channel... (although everything you do is so entertaining, it really is hard to pick a fav)

[@huwshepheard3075]

How disappointing that Sir Edward Watkin had died in 1901. His observations on Yerkes would have been worth reading.

[@mattscudder1975]

They should do a TV mini series based on this guy. Or better yet a series based on the early days of the underground, like Downtown Abbey or Mr Selfridge.

[@nicksurface3513]

Or a Movie. BBC or Netflix would probably make Yerkes an out-right villain. Rich pioneers can only be antagonists nowadays.

[@stephengreenwald5271]

@@nicksurface3513 Tu be, or not tu be? Perhaps?

[@markignatiev7194]

Love this biography format, hope there is more to come.

[@supahas3821]

If we ever made a bingo on this channel, “Yerkes” should definitely be included

[@peabody1976]

I'm glad you highlighted how one Wright made several wrongs, as you highlight the final chapter of the Yerkes series. I hope you do a full series on Mr Charles Holden (if you haven't before, I haven't rechecked to see if you had done.)

[@MisterTea74]

Ah Yerkees and Whittaker Wright, my two favourite scoundrels. I’ve had the privilege of delivering to Witley Park and you can’t help but be impressed my the scale of the place and WW’s amassed fortune. Cheers Jago, you are the underwater ballroom to my ornamental lake.

[@michellebell5092]

Wow, that was an extremely complicated history, extremely well told. So many players in the drama which has clearly lead to the complex system that is TfL UndergrounD .

[@raverdeath100]

tbh, i'd like to see his statue outside one of the main stations with the caption - "Charles Tyson Yerkes - the Mad Lad who started it all"

[@BroonParker]

That would be great!

[@darylcheshire1618]

There IS a crater on the moon named after him, beat that!

[@iancarr8682]

Sir George White goes on to form the British and Colonial Aeroplane Co, later renamed Bristol Aeroplane Co.

[@neville132bbk]

Makers of the Bristol Freighter... of which at least one was until recently busy in NZ.

[@monotonehell]

Yerkes is pretty much the patron saint of this channel.

[@AFCManUk]

🎵 We're on a tube to nowhere Come on inside Takin' that ride to nowhere We'll take that ride 🎵 - Charles T. Yerkes.

[@snich63]

Jago has the smoothest segues into the sponsor’s message and back again.

[@onlycompetitions5083]

And of course, Charles Tyson Yerkes is responsible for a tremendous amount of mileage on the KZbin line

[@ttaibe]

What about a general overview with a sort of timelapse of train lines and companies (with colors) in Great Britain?

[@matthewgartell6380]

I have to say Jago, that was an excellent video. I learned so much. Never knew JPM had a hand in the underground. Ironic really that 21st century London relies on a transport network conjured up by victorian snake oil salesmen. With that said, I hope Yerkes has a blue plaque?

[@johnm2012]

I don't know about a blue plaque but there's a crater on the moon named after him, which is rather nice. There's also the Yerkes observatory in Wisconsin that he financed.

[@peterjohncooper]

What an interesting and well balanced analysis of our (anti)hero. History is all about context and you did a great job of showing what was going on around Yerkes' shennanigans. Time for a deep breath and start on the phenomenon of Railway Mania itself.

[@rogerwitte]

I've really enjoyed your series about Yerkes! I agree that How about doing something similar about Frank Pick? In my opinion the cultural identity of London today bears a huge debt to Messrs. Yerkes and Pick. The branding they commissioned to sell public transport, has become London's international brand

[@davidnicholls5528]

“Frank Pick’s London” by Oliver Green, published by the V&A, is an invaluable resource.

[@barneypaws4883]

Excellent video Jago, Bravo. The exploits of Mr C T Yerkes is worthy of a TV mini series

[@bigaspidistra]

If you read through the debates in Parliament on the various possible lines, Yerkes record in Chicago was common knowledge. There was also unease about "London's Tubular Lines" being controlled by a monopoly run by an American. Some wanted a Royal Commission on "London Locomotives" which probably would have meant nothing being built for another decade or 2.

[@norbitonflyer5625]

4:30 The South eastern & Chatham Railway did not exist in Yerkes; lifetime. Until 1907 it was two separate (and very much rival) companies - the South Eastern and the London Chatham & Dover. This is why much of SE Londion and Kent still to this day has such duplication of railways - Bromley, Canterbury, Catford, Maidstone all have two separate stations on different lines, and many other towns such as Ashford, Chatham, Dover, Orpington, Ramsgate and Sevenoaks have two separate routes to London. Charing Cross was the SER's west-end terminus - the LCDR used Victoria. (they also had City termini, at Cannon Street and Blackfriars respectively)

[@blameless_hyperborean8638]

'Yerkes, Yerkes, He's our man, If he can't cheat 'em, No-one can.'

[@ricktownend9144]

Another great video. I think your analysis of the 'network' envisaged by Yerkes is interesting and important - too often ignored by transport professionals since Yerkes. The essence is of simplifying travel around an area, by having frequent, consistent services; good interchanges with good signage, a clear system map, and one-ticket travel (buses and trams did operate in a network of sorts, but you bought a separate ticket for each journey). The tube network works, and is popular. On the main line railway, there was little of such co-ordination in London and its surrounds until Chris Green's Network SouthEast, and since privatisation that has been under attack - recently by the threat to withdraw the Travelcard. Main-line train timetables however have never had the simplicity of the tube (and OverGround) and are still made up mostly of a hodgepodge of half-hourly services, so that mostly you have to look up train times. I think there is a case for connecting more of the suburban services - Crossrail style, but less elaborately and expensively and running tube-style services; by linking the eight remaining termini, that would mean adding only four more lines to the tube map.

[@johnledingham852]

Love him or loathe him, yankee Yerkes is a part of London transit history. In fact, part of LONDON history. I would never have come to learn of his very existence had it not been for my unsatiable thirst for knowledge gained through the KZbin channel of one Jago Hazzard. I have forfeited my commercial television viewing time in favour of spending time watching the Jago chap's steady flow of captivating "Tales From The Tube". Jolly good stuff indeed!

[@itskdog]

This series needs its lwn playlist. I went to check the playlists to make sure I hadnt mossed a Charles Yerkes episode, and foind there isnt yet one.

[@tubegirl1013]

watching this while assisting a tube challenge attempt currently on his turf😬

[@Quebecoisegal]

Makes you wonder how the London subways would be without Yerkes industrial input, quite a character.

[@PMA65537]

7:32 In 2006 TV series Hustle had a character called James Whittaker Wright III played by Richard Chamberlain.

[@ttaibe]

I am a flamboyant man with a moustache. Am I a) a thief B) a Yerkes wannabe C) just a man to lazy to shave my upper lip D) a liar

[@BroonParker]

You are on my Monopoly game.

[@Blade_Daddy]

More detailed convolutus - love it! 😊

[@TrainFreakCow12]

Thankyou. I live on the other side of the world and find your videos very informative. Here in Australia at the moment is tube mania . Currently being built . Thankyou keep up the good videos

[@zachp.3509]

at 2:30 I was like "is he ever going to stop?"

[@telemachus53]

It strikes me, JH, that you should make a board game. It'll be all about the development of transport in London at the turn of the 20th century. The players could be called White or Yurkes, or Speer or... Around the board would be the various lines in their various locations and with projected profit potential. I would buy it for sure.

[@kaitlyn__L]

Ticket to Ride: Victorian London edition?

[@illyasvielemiya9059]

Godamn it Yerkes!

[@JaapFilius]

It is always a pleasure to watch your history lessons. Thank you again for this one.

[@chazzyb8660]

Seems to me we owe the network to Mr Yerkes, despite his best/worst intentions. And he not only gave you a great deal of excellent and amusing material Jago, but also one of the best drinking games on 'the youtubes'. Cheers Mr Yerkes! I wonder why his kidneys gave out - ah - well - perhaps I won't take that final drink…

[@marvintpandroid2213]

Its that man again.... again.

[@timmyphillips6264]

Good old Charles Tyson Never fails to entertain 😊😊

[@Illvillainy]

never has a man been so lucky by dying at the exact right time

[@ZGryphon]

Offhand, the only other roughly contemporary candidate I can think of is President Warren G. Harding (1865-1923), who was one of the most popular U.S. presidents in his day, but died in office only a few weeks before the catastrophic levels of corruption and incompetence endemic to his administration became known to the public.

[@kaitlyn__L]

I like your icon :)

[@LauraValcarcelRodriguez]

Amazing story! I certainly admire determination on people (for bad or for good). I can't imagine anything like that done in the present, not even the big corporations and investment holdings would be able to do what an individual like Yerkes did in the past. I hope there are more Yerkes videos in the future, I'm kind of fond of his moustache now ❤or maybe a JPM spin-off 😀

[@robk7266]

A man from Chicago built the London Underground, and a man from London built the Chicago Elevated

[@ZGryphon]

Personally, I think ol' CTY was one of those people who prove that a person can be a con artist _and_ a genius. He strikes me as similar to Guglielmo Marconi, who had only a vague idea what he was doing a lot of the time, but who combined good instincts with the ability to _appear_ supremely confident in his works regardless of how far out in the weeds he actually was. It worked for him, and it would've worked for Yerkes too, if he'd lived long enough. :)

[@darylcheshire1618]

There is a crater on the moon named after him, he didn’t plan that but he built Yerkes Observatory in Chicago, there is a 1949 photo of Einstein who visited the observatory.

[@phaasch]

" ...on Hampstead Heath, he was reconnaitring with the company's vice chairman". I've heard it called many things.

[@timhubbard8895]

Excellent stuff Jago! There are plenty more important personalities to make videos on. No less than the Father of London Transport, that jelled it all together, Frank Pick.

[@martynlockhart4386]

I like the longer video! I think your videos are amazing but you pack so much amazing content very quickly into such a short space of time it’s hard to process it all as your research is so good trying to fit it all into a short clip.

[@paultidd9332]

Surely this cannot be the end of the Yerkes series? And I hope you put it together as a playlist, it certainly is your PHD thesis and seemingly life’s work thus far, take Leave to Supplicate! I suppose the only hypothesis to consider would be what if there had been no Yerkes?

[@beachman8106]

Another great video. You are the Readers Digest Condensed Book to my disorganised knowledge of railway history. 👍👍👍⭐️⭐️⭐️ from 🇦🇺

[@ktipuss]

1.55 The soil south of the Thames is looser alluvial soil rather than clay, which was not friendly to tube tunnel building for a long time; not impossible, but very expensive. Hence the predominance of trams in south London for so long.

[@Sarahbryson321]

A yerkes miniseries?

[@stephenlee5929]

Yerkes Minories, sort of a gateway?

[@johncamp2567]

PROFESSOR HAZARD: No matter how many dozens of your videos that I watch, I am continually impressed with the level of detail in your research, and the professionalism of your presentation!! Your knowledge is unbounded, and you manage to make what might seem like minutia, to some, into great stories of intrigue and misrepresentation. Awesome, stuff, sir!!

[@andrewmarch7891]

Talk about complex data and history; thanks Jago for all your hard ward work on this epic piece of work.

[@adrianrutterford762]

Yep!! Charlie Boys Back!

[@highpath4776]

What the tube did , to some extent, was make the hills of (North) London irrellevant opening up an ardious slog into a swift journey, a tube doesnt care if it 50 foot below ground or 250ft (other than lift shaft length). this was the key compared even to the struggles trams would have.

[@isashax]

What an amazing story! Thanks so much for this! Now we need a Yerkes shirt or something! ;)

[@757Spy]

See you at the pub for a Jago/Yerkes toast (or two)!

[@vmv2000]

What a story! A real saga of tragedy, entrepreneurship, planning, greed and fury! 😂😮😊 Amazing research 💪

[@cjf97]

Jago, wonderful as always. Do we think Yerkes could have got some ideas from George Hudson on how to do business?

[@teecefamilykent]

Great video sir!

[@Charstring]

Maybe Mr. Hazzard should pop across the pond and visit Mr Yerkes' imposing mausoleum in the Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn? Yerkes' widow must have had an interesting life as well, a very rich woman after his death she married (and rapidly divorced) a younger man who it turned out was a pretty exuberant and rambunctious con-artist.

[@herseem]

"You are the suspect loan to my suspiciously profitable company" : LMAO - best.... I don't know what to call those bits... ever.

[@boohaka]

A wonderful piece of work here! You’re a master of your craft!

[@ianthomson9363]

This video was posted on the 21st of June. It's now the 22nd, 116 years to the day of the opening of the Charing Cross, Euston and Hampstead Railway. I refuse to believe that this is unintentional, Jago's too good and the only reason it wasn't posted today instead is that he wanted to keep to the schedule.

[@charlesmoss8119]

I’ve really enjoyed this series - fabulous story

[@daveayerstdavies]

Battle of bushy Edwardian moustaches, what could be better?

[@JoseMorales-lw5nt]

#JagoHazzard: Meanwhile, we New Yorkers have an early 20th Century anti-hero who forever altered traffic flow in our fair city, as well. You might have heard of him. A man from New Haven, Connecticut by the name of.... Robert Moses. Let's just say, what Yerkes was to urban mass transit, Moses was to the automobile industry. Safe to say, the obsession he had with cars was detrimental to our subway system. You might wanna look up THE POWER BROKER by Robert Caro. It's a must-read for transit enthusiasts like yourself. Cheerio!❤

[@MrPete1x]

Thanks again Jago

[@eastlancsesteem]

We needed another person similar to Charles Yerkes in Southeast and Southwest London in the 1920s, because inflation throughout the 20th century hugely affected our chance from having tube stations in 1950-2023.

[@mattheweagles5123]

Well done indeed on a tremendous video

[@andrewrevans8496]

Surely the reason he chose to run to Golders Green was because it was a good place to emerge from tunnel and build a depot on the surface?

[@ThatScottishAtlantic57]

Great work 👍

[@tonymcmahon3390]

Brilliant 👏🏻 and for the record and in avoidance of any doubt whatsoever- I’m in the ‘He’s a Genius’ camp #Yerkesin

[@gregoryknight3873]

Thrived on conflict.

[@tamarab5751]

Went to Chicago last week & the 1st thing we saw outside the airport was a sign for Yerkes & Sons. Naturally we thought of you & the omnipresence of Charles Yerkes.

[@thatguyfromcetialphaV]

Yerkes would be the perfect person to stroke a fluffy white cat in a hollowed out volcano.

[@kaitlyn__L]

Aww, I bet Yerkes could’ve somehow scammed the Chunnel into existence almost a century early if he’d lived-on.

[@goldenclouds75]

I hope you never stop making videos about Yerkes and I feel I'm far from alone!

[@DavidShepheard]

You would have thought that someone would have made a movie about Tubemania and used CGI to make London look the way it looked back when Yerkes and his rivals were all trying to get rich off of the back of our city.

[@Del_S]

We need a Netflix show about Yerkes that gets cancelled after two seasons.

[@theenigmaticst7572]

I'm getting Moist Von Lipwig vibes from Charles Tyson Yerkes - that said, you can't get far in Underground history without meeting him - I'm sure Mr Hazzard would agree with this, since he keeps running into him wherever he goes!!!

[@robmortimer4150]

Loved this story

[@偉享林]

Shots! shots! shots!

[@Rog5446]

Charlie is me Darling, me Darling, me Darling.

[@adlam97531]

He seems to have been a very clever man, from a young age he had a head for business and lost out several times, but always came back. At the same time, he liked the high life and women, and that had to be funded, along with the bribes, so he was a rogue.

[@andrewweitzman4006]

An interesting background fact: he was a Quaker by birth.

[@CuoreGR]

Very glad you did something with my (and probably countless other people's) suggestion to use Yerkes' picture when talking about shady characters in an ad :)

[@jaakkomantyjarvi7515]

Charles Tyson Yerkes: Lovable Rogue or Magnificent Bastard?

[@baxtermarrison5361]

Back in the day, two men on Hampstead Heath build a railway, oh how times have changed! 😊

[@johng5474]

Overall I think that TfL/LUL should remember Yerkes as a man of vision who took a disparate collection of tracks and created the start of a network. He should get a proper memorial and recognition for his part in the history of London. Maybe name their new HQ after him as thats also built by foreign pirates.

[@johnjephcote7636]

George Hudson Mk II.

[@True_NOON]

I mean, before him there were 2 kings bitch fighting with worms wiglling between, yerkes made it into 1 company that had some organisation

[@Jimyjames73]

Here we go - our Friend Yerkes Strikes again!!!😉🚂🚂🚂

[@General_Confusion]

I recon Jago sports a dashing mustachio just like old Charlie Yerkes.

[@MarkDibley]

Wonderful!!!

[@rubysy2531]

They like using the same name for train stations, there was one on Birkenhead Woodside railway on the the Wirral. It got closed in 1967, there is a ferry called by it called Woodside ferry. It goes to Liverpool but at the moment it just pleasure cruise going up Mersey because there only Snowdrop boat in action. The Wirral is waiting new stock.

[@paveloleynikov4715]

This series demends its own playlist. Or conversion into hour long documentary

[@AFCManUk]

The plus-side of the Cut-and-Cover method was that it removed a lot of the slums.

[@highpath4776]

? most was under the roads. There were displaced persons from housing/ work from home units particulary at the Liverpool Street area when the Eastern Counties were extending

[@AFCManUk]

@@JP_TaVeryMuch True. It certainly helped plough through the slums of Knightsbridge/Kensington though. Used to be known as the Potteries and Piggeries around there, and it was Not a pleasant place.

[@mattevans4377]

It wouldn't surprise me if Yerkes made a business deal with God. His life, to save his project. It would just be very fitting for him, always betting everything on his ideas.