Yerkes Builds an Empire 

"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!

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

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

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.

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

Shady he may have been, and I'm not sure I'd call him a genius, but Yerkes was certainly an ambitious man, quite possibly a visionary one. Certainly, London owes him a considerable debt of gratitude for sorting out the mess Watkin, Staats-Forbes, Whitaker White and others had created, turning it into the beginnings of a cohesive network.

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

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.

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"

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

Yerkes is pretty much the patron saint of this channel.

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

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

Yerkes returns, fine Jago

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)

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

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.)

Godamn it Yerkes!

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

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 .

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

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

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

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.

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

Its that man again.... again.

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

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

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

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

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

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?

Battle of bushy Edwardian moustaches, what could be better?

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

Good old Charles Tyson Never fails to entertain 😊😊

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.

He was a man who trived on conflict, it made him feel alive and give him a sense of power. The time and passion you put into your videos borders on a work of love

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?

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.

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

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.

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…

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.

A yerkes miniseries?

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. :)

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

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)

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 RU-vid 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!

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

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.

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.

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

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.

Yep!! Charlie Boys Back!

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

Charlie is me Darling, me Darling, me Darling.

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

The end of Yerkes? Say it ain't so, Charles Tyson! 😢 (Sobs. Dabs eye with handkerchief.) Really enjoyed this potted biography approach. Thanks so much for these. And look after your kidneys.

Great video sir!

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

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

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

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.

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 😀

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Well done indeed on a tremendous video

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.

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

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.

Shots! shots! shots!

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

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.

Big moustache = Big crook

Great work 👍

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

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

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!!

Thrived on conflict.

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.

I remember when we had an Empire. Its a Cineworld Now

"Yerkes Builds an Empire" I remember this Animorphs book.

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

I’ve really enjoyed this series - fabulous story

More detailed convolutus - love it! 😊

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

#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!❤

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!!!

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.

Brilliant video (as ever). Can't help liking Yerkes, even if he was a bit of a chancery.

Reconnoitering on Hampstead Heath eh? \m/

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

Oh darling, we've all said things we dont mean afterwards on Hampstead Heath, in the heat of the moment.

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

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

16:06 Was Yerkes inspired to do all this by his right nostril - it _does_ rather look like a tube tunnel.