The great development of the last half of the nineteenth century is due
to the railway works at New England, and to the Great Northern Line
making Peterborough an important railway centre. In 1807 the entire
population of the city and hamlets was under 3,500. In 1843 it was just
over 5,500, and when the railway was laid it was not much more than
6,000. It has since gone up by leaps and bounds. In 1861 the population
exceeded 11,000. By 1911 it had grown by steady increments to 33,578.
The private diary of a resident of about 1850 would read like an old
world record. The watchman in the Minster Precincts still went his
rounds at night and called out the time and the weather; sedan-chairs
were in use; the corn-market of the neighbourhood was held in the open
street; turnpikes took toll at every road out of the town; a weekly
paper had only just been started on a humble scale, being at first
little more than a railway time-table with a few items of local news at
the back; a couple of rooms more than sufficed for the business of the
post office.

In 1874 a charter of incorporation was granted, not without some
opposition; it had been, up to that time, the only city in England
without a mayor, except Ely and Westminster.

An account of the church which is now the cathedral church of a diocese
that was only constituted in 1541, must of necessity trace its history
for some centuries before it attained its present dignity, and when it
was simply the church of an abbey. Three centuries and a half of
cathedral dignity have not made its old name of Minster obsolete; it is
indeed the term usually employed.[2]

The village was first known by the name of Medeshamstede, the homestead