− research has shown that Alzheimer’s sufferers experience less  40

Test 1
16
READING
READING PASSAGE 1
You should spend about 20 minutes on 
Questions 1–13, which are based on Reading 
Passage 1 below.
The development of the London underground railway
In the first half of the 1800s, London’s population grew at an astonishing rate, and the central 
area became increasingly congested. In addition, the expansion of the overground railway 
network resulted in more and more passengers arriving in the capital. However, in 1846, a Royal 
Commission decided that the railways should not be allowed to enter the City, the capital’s 
historic and business centre. The result was that the overground railway stations formed a ring 
around the City. The area within consisted of poorly built, overcrowded slums and the streets were 
full of horse-drawn traffic. Crossing the City became a nightmare. It could take an hour and a half 
to travel 8 km by horse-drawn carriage or bus. Numerous schemes were proposed to resolve these 
problems, but few succeeded.
Amongst the most vocal advocates for a solution to London’s traffic problems was Charles 
Pearson, who worked as a solicitor for the City of London. He saw both social and economic 
advantages in building an underground railway that would link the overground railway stations 
together and clear London slums at the same time. His idea was to relocate the poor workers who 
lived in the inner-city slums to newly constructed suburbs, and to provide cheap rail travel for 
them to get to work. Pearson’s ideas gained support amongst some businessmen and in 1851 he 
submitted a plan to Parliament. It was rejected, but coincided with a proposal from another group 
for an underground connecting line, which Parliament passed.
The two groups merged and established the Metropolitan Railway Company in August 1854. The 
company’s plan was to construct an underground railway line from the Great Western Railway’s 
(GWR) station at Paddington to the edge of the City at Farringdon Street – a distance of almost 
5 km. The organisation had difficulty in raising the funding for such a radical and expensive 
scheme, not least because of the critical articles printed by the press. Objectors argued that the 
tunnels would collapse under the weight of traffic overhead, buildings would be shaken and 
passengers would be poisoned by the emissions from the train engines. However, Pearson and his 

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