When those in charge of the two trains at almost the same moment became aware of the danger, there was yet an interval of some eight hundred feet between them. The express train was, however, moving at a speed of some twenty-five or thirty miles an hour, and was equipped only with the old-fashioned hand-brake. In response to the sharply given signal from the whistle these were rapidly set, but the rails were damp and slippery, so that the wheels failed to catch upon them, and, when everything was done which could be done, the eight hundred feet of interval sufficed only to reduce the speed of the colliding locomotive to about ten miles an hour.
In the rear car of the accommodation train there were at the moment of the accident some sixty-five or seventy human beings, seated and standing. They were of both sexes and of all ages; for it was a Saturday evening in August, and many persons had, through the confusion of the trains, been long delayed in their return from the city to their homes at the sea-side. The first intimation the passengers had of the danger impending over them was from the sudden and lurid illumination of the car by the glare from the head-light of the approaching locomotive. One of them who survived the disaster, though grievously injured, described how he was carelessly watching a young man standing in the aisle, laughing and gayly chatting with four young girls, who were seated, when he saw him turn and instantly his face, in the sudden blaze of the head-light, assumed a look of frozen horror which was the single thing in the accident indelibly impressed on the survivor's memory; that look haunted him. The car was crowded to its full capacity, and the colliding locomotive struck it with such force as to bury itself two-thirds of its length in it. At the instant of the crash a panic had seized upon the passengers, and a sort of rush had taken place to the forward end of the car, into which furniture, fixtures and human beings were crushed in a shapeless, indistinguishable mass. Meanwhile the blow had swept away the smoke-stack of the locomotive, and its forward truck had been forced back in some unaccountable way until it rested between its driving wheels and the tender, leaving the entire boiler inside of the passenger car and supported on its rear truck. The valves had been so broken as to admit of the free escape of the scalding steam, while the coals from the fire-box were scattered among the débris, and coming in contact with the fluid from the broken car lamps kindled the whole into a rapid blaze. Neither was the fire confined to the last car of the train. It has been mentioned that in the block at Everett a locomotive returning to Salem had found itself stopped just in advance of the accommodation train. At the suggestion of the engine-driver of that train this locomotive had there coupled on to it, and consequently made a part of it at Revere. When the collision took place, therefore, the four cars of which the accommodation train was made up were crushed between the weight of the entire colliding train on one side and that of two locomotives on the other. That they were not wholly demolished was due simply to the fact that the last car yielded to the blow, and permitted the locomotive of the express train fairly to imbed itself in it. As it was, the remaining cars were jammed and shattered, and, though the passengers in them escaped, the oil from the broken lamps ignited, and before the flames could be extinguished the cars were entirely destroyed.
This accident resulted in the death of twenty-nine persons, and in more or less severe injuries to fifty-seven others. No person, not in the last car of the accommodation train was killed, and one only was seriously injured. Of those in the last car more than half lost their lives; many instantly by crushing, others by inhaling the scalding steam which poured forth from the locomotive boiler into the wreck, and which, where it did not kill, inflicted frightful injuries. Indeed, for the severity of injuries and for the protractedness of agony involved in it, this accident has rarely, if ever, been exceeded. Crushing, scalding and burning did their work together.
It may with perfect truth be said that the disaster at Revere marked an epoch in the history of railroad development in New England. At the moment it called forth the deepest expression of horror and indignation, which, as usual in such cases, was more noticeable for its force than for its wisdom. An utter absence of all spirit of justice is, indeed, a usual characteristic of the more immediate utterances, both from the press and on the platform, upon occasions of this character. Writers and orators seem always to forget that, next to the immediate sufferers and their families, the unfortunate officials concerned are the greatest losers by railroad accidents. For them, not only reputation but bread is involved. A railroad employé implicated in the occurrence of an accident lives under a stigma. And yet, from the tenor of public comment it might fairly be supposed that these officials are in the custom of plotting to bring disasters about, and take a fiendish delight in them. Nowhere was this ever illustrated more perfectly than in Massachusetts during the last days of August and the early days of September, 1871. Grave men—men who ought to have known better—indulged in language which would have been simply ludicrous save for the horror of the event which occasioned but could not justify it. A public meeting, for instance, was held at the town of Swampscott on the evening of the Monday succeeding the catastrophe. The gentleman who presided over it very discreetly, in his preliminary remarks, urged those who proposed to join in the discussion to control their feelings. Hardly had he ceased speaking, however, when Mr. Wendell Phillips was noticed among the audience, and immediately called to the platform. His remarks were a most singular commentary on the chairman's injunction to calmness. He began by announcing that the first requisite to the formation of a healthy public opinion in regard to railroad accidents, as other things, was absolute frankness of speech, and he then proceeded as follows:—"So I begin by saying that to my mind this terrible disaster, which has made the last thirty-six hours so sad to us all, is a deliberate murder. I think we should try to get rid in the public mind of any real distinction between the individual who, in a moment of passion or in a moment of heedlessness, takes the life of one fellow-man, and the corporation that in a moment of greed, of little trouble, of little expense, of little care, of little diligence, takes lives by wholesale. I think the first requisite of the public mind is to say that there is no accident in the case, properly speaking. It is a murder; the guilt of murder rests somewhere."
Mr. Phillip's definition of the crime of "deliberate murder" would apparently somewhat unsettle the criminal law as at present understood, but he was not at all alone in this bathos of extravagance. Prominent gentlemen seemed to vie with each other in their display of ignorance. Mr. B. F. Butler, for instance, suggested his view of the disaster and the measure best calculated to prevent a repetition of it; which last was certainly original, inasmuch as he urged the immediate raising of the pay of all engine-men until a sufficiently high order of ability and education should be brought into the occupation to render impossible the recurrence of an accident which was primarily caused by the negligence, not of an engineer, but of a conductor. Another gentleman described with much feeling his observations during a recent tour in Europe, and declared that such a catastrophe as that at Revere would have been impossible there. As a matter of fact the official reports not only showed that the accident was one of a class of most frequent occurrence, but also that sixty-one cases of it had occurred in Great Britain alone during the very year the gentleman in question was journeying in Europe, and had occasioned over six hundred cases of death or personal injury. Perhaps, in order to illustrate how very reckless in statement a responsible gentleman talking under excitement may become, it is worth while to quote in his own language Captain Tyler's brief description of one of those sixty-one accidents which "could not possibly," but yet did, occur. As miscellaneous reading it is amusing.
"As four London & North-Western excursion trains on September 2, 1870, were returning from a volunteer review at Penrith, the fourth came into collision at Penruddock with the third of those trains. An hundred and ten passengers and three servants of the company were injured. These trains were partly in charge of acting guards, some of whom were entirely inexperienced, as well in the line as in their duties; and of engine-drivers and firemen, of whom one, at all events, was very much the worse for liquor. The side-lamps on the hind van of the third train were obscured by a horse-box, which was wider than the van. There were no special means of protection to meet the exceptional contingency of three such trains all stopping on their way from the eastward, to cross two others from the westward, at this station. And the regulations for telegraphing the trains were altogether neglected."