Notes on Railroad Accidents

by Charles Francis Adams

In the matter of communication between those in the train and those in charge of it, the Shipton corpses chanced not to be witnesses to the precise point. Accordingly their evidence was, so to speak, ruled out of the case, and neither the utility nor the success of any appliance for this purpose was held to be yet proven. What further proof would be deemed conclusive did not appear, but the history of the discussion before and since is not without value. There is, indeed, something almost ludicrously characteristic in the manner with which those interested in the railway management of Great Britain strain at their gnats while they swallow their camels. They have grappled with the great question of city travel with a superb financial and engineering sagacity, which has left all other communities hopelessly distanced; but, while carrying their passengers under and over the ebb and flow of the Thames and among the chimney pots of densest London to leave them on the very steps of the Royal Exchange, they have never been able to devise any satisfactory means for putting the traveller, in case of a disaster to the carriage in which he happens to be, in communication with the engine-driver of his train. An English substitute for the American bell-cord has for more than thirty years set the ingenuity of Great Britain at defiance.

As long ago as the year 1857, in consequence of two accidents to trains by fires, a circular on this subject was issued to the railway companies by the Board of Trade, in which it was stated that "from the beginning of the year 1854, down to the present time (December, 1857) there have been twenty-six cases in which either the accidents themselves or some of the ulterior consequences of the accidents would probably have been avoided had such a means of communication existed."[1] As none of these accidents had resulted in any considerable number of funerals the railway managers wholly failed to see the propriety of this circular, or the necessity of taking any steps in consequence of it. As, however, accidents from this cause were still reported, and with increasing frequency, the authorities in July, 1864, again bestirred themselves and issued another circular in which it was stated that "several instances have occurred of carriages having taken fire, or having been thrown off the rails, the passengers in which had no means of making their perilous situation known to the servants of the company in charge of the train. Recent occurrences also of a criminal nature in passenger railway trains have excited among the public a very general feeling of alarm." The last reference was more particularly to the memorable Briggs murder, which had taken place only a few days before on July 9th, and was then absorbing the public attention to the almost entire exclusion of everything else.

As no better illustration than this can be found of the extreme slowness with which the necessity for new railroad appliances is recognized in cases where profit is not involved, and of the value of wholesale slaughters, like those at Shipton and Angola, as a species of motive force in the direction of progress, a digression on the subject of English accidents due to the absence of bell-cords may be not without value. In the opinion of the railway managers the cases referred to by the Board of Trade officials failed to show the existence of any necessity for providing means of communication between portions of the train. A detailed statement of a few of the cases thus referred to will not only be found interesting in itself, but it will give some idea of the description of evidence which is considered insufficient. The circumstances of the Briggs murder, deeply interesting as they were, are too long for incidental statement; this, however, is not the case with some of the other occurrences. For instance, the Board of Trade circular was issued on July 30th; on July 7th, a year earlier, the following took place on the London & North Western road.

Two gentlemen took their seats at Liverpool in one of the compartments of the express train to London. In it they found already seated an elderly lady and a large, powerfully built man, apparently Irish, respectably dressed, but with a lowering, suspicious visage. Though one of the two gentlemen noticed this peculiarity as he entered the carriage, he gave no thought to it, but, going on with their conversation, he and his friend took their seats, and in a few moments the train started. Scarcely was it out of the station when the stranger changed his seat, placing himself on the other side of the carriage, close to the window, and at the same time, in a menacing way, incoherently muttering something to himself. The other passengers looked at him, but felt no particular alarm, and for a time he remained quietly in his seat. He then suddenly sprang up, and, with a large clasp-knife in his hand, rushed at one of the gentlemen, a Mr. Warland by name, and struck him on the forehead, the knife sliding along the bone and inflicting a frightful flesh wound. As he was in the act of repeating the blow, Warland's companion thrust him back upon the seat. This seemed to infuriate him, and starting to his feet he again tried to attack the wounded man. A frightful struggle ensued. It was a struggle for life, in a narrow compartment feebly lighted, for it was late at night, on a train running at full speed and with no stopping place for eighty miles. The passenger who had not been hurt clutched the maniac by the throat with one hand and grasped his knife with the other, but only to feel the blade drawn through his fingers, cutting them to the bone. The unfortunate elderly woman, the remaining occupant of the compartment, after screaming violently in her terror for a few moments, fainted away and fell upon the floor. The struggle nevertheless went on among the three men, until at last, though blinded with blood and weak from its loss, the wounded Mr. Warland got behind his assailant and threw him down, in which position the two succeeded in holding him, he striking and stabbing at both of them with his knife, shouting loudly all the time, and desperately endeavoring to rise and throw them off. They finally, however, got his knife away from him, and then kept him down until the train at last drew up at Camdentown station. When the ticket collector opened the compartment door at that place he found the four passengers on the floor, the woman senseless and two of the men holding the third, while the faces and clothing of all of them, together with seats, floor, windows and sides of the carriage were covered with blood or smeared with finger marks.

The assailant in this case, as it subsequently appeared upon his commitment for an assault, was a schoolmaster who had come over from Ireland to a competitive examination. He was insane, of course, but before the magistrate he made a statement which had in it something quite touching; he said that he saw the two gentlemen talking together, and, as he thought, making motions towards him; he believed them to be thieves who intended to rob him, and so he thought that he could not do better than defend himself, "if only for his dear little ones at home."

This took place before the Board of Trade circular was issued, but, as if to give emphasis to it, a few days only after its issue, in August, 1864, there was a not dissimilar occurrence in a third class carriage between London and Peterborough. The running distance was in this case eighty miles without a stop, and occupied generally an hour and fifty minutes,—the rate being forty-three miles an hour. In the compartment in question were five passengers, one of whom, a tall powerful fellow, was dressed like a sailor. The train was hardly out of London when this man, after searching his pockets for a moment, cried out that he had been robbed of his purse containing £17, and began violently to shout and gesticulate. He then tried to clamber through the window, getting his body and one leg out, and when his fellow passengers, catching hold of his other leg, succeeded in hauling him back, he turned savagely upon them and a desperate struggle ensued. At last he was gotten down by main force and bound to a seat. Meanwhile, notwithstanding the speed at which they were running, the noise of the struggle was heard in the adjoining compartments, and almost frantic efforts were made to stop the train. Word was passed from carriage to carriage for a short distance, but it proved impossible to communicate with the guard, or to do anything but thoroughly alarm the passengers. These merely knew that something was the matter,—what, they could only imagine,—and so the run to Peterborough was completed amid shouts of "stop the train," interspersed with frantic female shrieks. The man was suffering from delirium tremens.

About a year later, in December, 1865, a similar case occurred which, however, had in it strong elements of the ludicrous. A clergyman, laboring under great indignation and excitement, and without the slightest sense of the ridiculous, recounted his experience in a communication to the Times. He had found himself alone in a compartment of an express train in which were also a young lady and a man, both total strangers to him. Shortly after the train started the man began to give unmistakable indications of something wrong. He made no attempt at any violence on either of his fellow passengers, but he was noisy, and presently he proceeded to disrobe himself and otherwise to indulge in antics which were even more indecent than they were extraordinary. The poor clergyman,—a respected incumbent of the established church returning to the bosom of his family,—was in a most distressing situation. At first he attempted remonstrance. This, however, proved worse than unavailing, and there was nothing for it but to have recourse to his umbrella, behind the sheltering cover of which he protected the modesty of the young lady, while over its edges he himself from time to time effected observations through an apparently interminable journey of forty and more miles.

These and numerous other cases of fires, murders, assaults and indecencies had occurred and filled the columns of the newspapers, without producing the slightest effect on the managers of the railway companies. No attention was paid by them to the Board of Trade circulars. At last Parliament took the matter up and in 1868 an act was passed, making compulsory some "efficient means of communication between the passenger and the servants of the company in charge" of railroad trains. Yet when six years later in 1874 the Shipton accident occurred, and was thought to be in some degree attributable to the absence of the very means of communication thus made compulsory, it appeared, as has been seen, that the associated general managers did not yet consider any such means of communication either required or likely to be useful.

Meanwhile, as if in ironical comment on such measured utterances, occurrences like the following, which took place as recently as the early part of 1878, from time to time still meet the eye in the columns of the English press:—