Samuel Peto, who speaks so evangelically here, was born 52 years before, in 1809, at Whitmore House, Sutton in Surrey, where his father William was a tenant farmer. Samuel's grandfather, James, lived nearby in Cobham, where Samuel first went to school. After James's death the family moved to Marlow, Buckinghamshire, where Samuel continued his education, doing well in most subjects.
At the age of 12, he started at a boarding school at the top of Brixton Hill run by a Christian gentleman called Alexander Jardine (1788-1848), an Independent. The teaching was basic but included drawing lessons, something Peto was very good at. He also won a prize for a prose translation of the Latin hymn The Cross the Way to the Crown. His uncle. Henry Peto, a builder, regularly gave prizes for essays on religious subjects. Preachers such as William Jay (1769-1853) of Bath and John Leifchild (1780-1862) of Craven Chapel, Regent Street, often preached at joint meetings with the nearby girls school run by Mr Jardine's sister. A biographer says that Peto “well remembered going to Surrey Chapel and hearing Mr Jay preach … Rowland Hill's funeral sermon from the text: Howl, ye fir-trees, for the cedar is fallen!” Peto would have been in his early twenties by that time.
When he was 14, he was apprenticed to Uncle Henry with whom he lived at 31 Little Britain. In this period he rubbed shoulders with workmen and learned various aspects of the building trade. including bricklaying. at which he was most competent. A later writer says “He familiarised himself with what can be called the idiosyncrasy of the English mechanic” something that would stand him in good stead in days to come.
Henry Peto (1774-1830) seems to have been a strict but godly man. In 1830 he died, leaving the business to 21 year old Samuel and his cousin Thomas Grissell (1801-1874), who had been Henry's apprentice, then his partner. This was the first of a series of business partnerships that Peto entered into. In this period, he was involved in building the old Hungerford Market, where Charing Cross Station now stands; Nelson's column; several theatres and clubs and many private dwellings. He also built churches, including one for the evangelical churchman Henry Blunt (1794-1893). They nearly lost the contract for Hungerford Market as Peto was thought to look too youthful to be competent. There was also a good deal of work on the Great Western (for Brunel), South Eastern, London and South Western and Eastern Counties Railways (well over 200 miles of track). This period lasted from 1830 until 1846 when he and Grissell began the work on the new Houses of Parliament that still stand today.
Entrepreneur
After 1846, railway work dominated the agenda. Grissell was not happy about the risks involved with this and the partnership was eventually dissolved. Peto worked firstly with his brother-in-law Edward Ladd Betts (1815-1872), then (from 1854) with Betts and Thomas Brassey (1805-1870), then Brassey, Betts and William Jackson (1805-1876) and finally with Betts and Thomas Russell Crampton (1816-1888). He was involved in work on railways all over England and beyond - in France, Italy, Germany, Scandinavia, Austria, Spain, Russia, North Africa, Argentina, Canada and Australia.
Peto was twice married. In 1831 he married his partner's older sister Mary Grissell (1811-1842). Their children were Mary, Annie and Sophia (born in 1832, 1834, 1836) and Samuel and Henry (1839, 1840). Sophia was only 20 when she died.
On Mary's death, Peto published for family and friends a 40 page memorial containing many extracts from her diary and notebooks. An Anglican, she was clearly a spiritually minded woman. In 1842, he remarried, to Sarah Ainsworth Kelsall (1821-1892) of Rochdale. They had six sons and four daughters. She is often cited as the one who persuaded him to take up Baptist beliefs although he had already become an admirer of the open communionist and mild Calvinist William Brock (1807-1875) of St Mary's Baptist Church, Norwich. In 1846 he became co-treasurer of the Baptist Missionary Society. Peto himself claimed that his loan to them of Alfred Henry Baynes (1838-1914), as secretary, was the greatest service he ever rendered the BMS. From 1855 to March 1867, he was sole treasurer. He was also Chairman of the Dissenting Deputies, “the premier non-conformist group for protecting civil rights”, 1853-1855 and again 1863-1867. He resigned from these roles after being made bankrupt in 1866.
The article appeared in Reformation Today
