Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 45.djvu/95

 another nephew, Thomas Grissell (1801–1874). The firm of Grissell & Peto during their partnership, 1830–47, constructed many buildings of importance. The first was the Hungerford Market (1832–3)—after a public competition—for 42,400l.; there followed the Reform (1836), Conservative (1840), and Oxford and Cambridge (1830) club-houses, the Lyceum (1834), St. James's (1835), and Olympic (1849) theatres, the Nelson Column (1843), all the Great Western railway works between Hanwell and Langley (1840), a large part of the South Eastern railway (1844), and the Woolwich graving dock.

It was during the construction of the railway works that Grissell and Peto dissolved their partnership, on 2 March 1846, the former retaining the building contracts, including the contract for the houses of parliament, which had been commenced in 1840 by the firm, and the latter retaining the railway contracts. Among the works taken over by Peto was the construction of a large portion of the South-Eastern railway, that between Folkestone and Hythe, including the viaduct and tunnel and the martello towers. He also made a large portion of the Eastern Counties railway between Wymondham and Dereham, Ely and Peterborough, Chatteris and St. Ives, Norwich and Brandon; the sections between London and Cambridge, and Cambridge and Ely (1846), the Dorsetshire portion of the London and South-Western railway (1846), and the works in connection with the improvement of the Severn navigation under Sir William Cubitt.

Edward Ladd Betts (1815–1872), who had undertaken the construction of the South-Eastern railway between Reigate and Folkestone, entered, in 1846, into partnership with Peto, which lasted. The works undertaken by the firm of Peto & Betts between 1846 and 1872 embraced the loop line of the Great Northern railway from Peterborough through Lincolnshire to Doncaster; the East Lincolnshire line connecting Boston with Louth; the Oxford, Worcester, and Wolverhampton railway (1852); the first section of the Buenos Ayres Great Southern railway; the Dunaberg and Witepsk railway in Russia; the line between Blidah and Algiers, and the boulevards, with warehouses underneath, at the latter place; the Oxford and Birmingham railway; the Hereford, Ross, and Gloucester railway, 1852; the South London and Crystal Palace railway, 1853; the East Suffolk section of the Great Eastern railway; the Victoria Docks, London (1852–5), the Norwegian Grand Trunk railway between Christiania and Eidsvold; and the Thames graving docks.

In connection with Thomas Brassey [q. v.] and E. L. Betts, Peto executed lines of railway in Australia, 1858–63; the Grand Trunk railway of Canada, including the Victoria Bridge (opened October 1860); the Canada works at Birkenhead; the Jutland and Schleswig lines, 1852 (Illustr. London News, 11 Nov. 1854); the railway between Lyons and Avignon, 1852; and the London, Tilbury, and Southend railway, 1852.

Peto, Betts, and Thomas Russell Crampton were in partnership in carrying out the contracts of the Rustchuk and Varna railway, and the metropolitan extensions of the London, Chatham, and Dover railway, 1860; Peto and Betts constructed the portion between Strood and the Elephant and Castle (‘Memoir of E. L. Betts,’ in Min. of Proc. of Instit. Civil Engineers, 1873, xxxvi. 285–288). Peto's last railway contract was one for the construction of the Cornwall mineral railway in 1873.

Peto was a member of the baptist denomination, and a benefactor to it by providing the funds for the erection of Bloomsbury (1849) and Regent's Park chapels. But his tolerant disposition led him also to restore the parish church on his estate at Somerleyton, Suffolk. A staunch liberal in politics, he entered parliament as member for Norwich in August 1847, and sat for that constituency until December 1854. From 1859 to 1865 he represented Finsbury, and lastly he was member for Bristol from 1865 until his resignation on 22 April 1868. During his parliamentary career he was the means of passing Peto's Act, 1850, which rendered more simple the titles by which religious bodies hold property, and he advocated the Burials Bill in 1861, 1862, and 1863 (Peto's Burial Bill, by Anglicanus Presbyter, 1862).

On 26 Feb. 1839 Peto had been elected an associate of the Institution of Civil Engineers, and on 1 Sept. 1851 he became deputy chairman of the metropolitan commissioners of sewers. He aided in starting the Great exhibition of 1851 by offering a guarantee of 50,000l., and was subsequently one of her majesty's commissioners. During the Crimean war he suggested to Lord Palmerston that he should construct a railway between Balaclava and the entrenchments. A line of thirty-nine miles in length was accordingly laid down by him in 1854–5, and proved of much service to the army before Sebastopol. Peto and Betts presented vouchers for every item of expenditure, and received payment without commission. The contract being under government, though without profit, obliged Peto to resign his seat in parliament, but for his services he was created