organ provided, and an Allon scholarship established.
Besides the works already mentioned, and numerous sermons and pamphlets, Allon was the author of: 1. ‘The Vision of God, and other Sermons,’ London, 1876, 8vo; 3rd edit. 1877. 2. ‘The Indwelling of Christ, and other Sermons,’ London, 1892, 8vo. He edited in 1869 the ‘Sermons’ of Thomas Binney [q. v.] with a biographical and critical sketch. A number of Allon’s letters to Reynolds are printed in ‘Henry Robert Reynolds; his Life and Letters,’ edited by his sisters in 1898.
Allon’s son, Henry Erskine Allon (1864–1897), musical composer, born in October 1864, was educated at Amersham Hall School near Reading, at University College, London, and at Trinity College, Cambridge. He studied music under William Henry Birch and Frederic Corder. Besides two cantatas, ‘Annie of Lochroyan’ and ‘The Child of Elle,’ and many songs, he published several sonatas and other pieces for the pianoforte, and the pianoforte and violin. His work showed originality and power. He was one of the promoters of the ‘New Musical Quarterly Review,’ to which he frequently contributed. He died in London on 3 April 1897, and bequeathed his library of musical works to the Union Society of Cambridge University (information kindly given by Mr. L. T. Rowe).
[Harwood’s Henry Allon, 1894 (with portrait); Memorials of Henry Allon (with portrait), 1892; Congregational Year Book, 1893, pp. 202–5 (with portrait); Historical Sketch, prefixed to Sermons preached at the dedication of Union Chapel, Islington, 1878; Burrell’s Memoirs of T. Lewis, 1853; Waddington’s Congregational History, 1850–1880, pp. 426–46; Congregationalist, May 1879 (with portrait); J. Guinness Rogers in Sunday Magazine, 1892, pp. 387-91.]
ALLPORT, Sir JAMES JOSEPH (1811–1892), railway manager, born at Birmingham on 27 Feb. 1811, was third son of William Allport (d. 1823) of Birmingham by Phœbe, daughter of Joseph Dickinson of Woodgreen, Staffordshire. His father was a manufacturer of small arms, and for a time prime warden of the Birmingham Proof House Company. James was educated in Belgium, and at an early age, on the death of his father, assisted his mother in the conduct of her business.
In 1839 he entered the service of the newly founded Birmingham and Derby Railway as chief clerk, and after filling the post of traffic manager was soon appointed manager of that railway. While in this employment in 1841 he was one of the first to advocate and propose the establishment of a railway clearing-house system. On the amalgamation of his company with the North Midland and Midland Counties Railway on 1 Jan. 1844, Allport was not selected as manager of the joint undertaking, but through the influence of George Hudson [q. v.], who had marked his ability, was appointed manager of the Newcastle and Darlington line. This line prospered under his six years’ control, and developed into the York, Newcastle, and Berwick Railway. He was next chosen in 1850 to manage the Manchester, Sheffield, and Lincolnshire, then little more than a branch of the London and North-Western; and three years later, on 1 Oct. 1853, he was appointed general manager of the Midland Railway. At this period the Midland Company only possessed five hundred miles of railroad, consisting of little more than an agglomeration of local lines serving the midland counties, and was in a position of dependence on the London and North-Western. The extension of his railway system and its conversion into a trunk line were the first great objects of the new manager, and the policy of securing independent approach to the centres of population was now inaugurated, and henceforth consistently followed. In 1857 this work began by the completion of the Midland line from Leicester to Hitchin, which now, instead of Rugby, became the nearest point of connection with London. In this same year Allport was induced to accept the position of managing director to Palmer’s Shipbuilding Company at Jarrow, and resigned his office in the Midland on 25 May 1857, but was elected a director on 6 Oct. 1857. Three years later it was, however, found to be to the interest of the Midland to recall him to the post of general manager, and his services were almost immediately successfully employed in opposing a proposed bill which would have enabled the London and North-Western, the Great Northern, and Manchester, Sheffield, and Lincolnshire Railways by far-reaching agreements seriously to handicap traffic on the Midland. In 1862 the act of parliament was secured by means of which the company was enabled to reach Lancashire through the Derbyshire dales, and in the following year powers were granted to lay down the line between Bedford and London. Not satisfied with this rapid extension, Allport in 1866 was mainly responsible for the introduction of the bill into parliament authorising the creation of the Settle and Carlisle line. Great perseverance and determination on the part of the manager
