The next disaster on our list was caused by a drunken coachman’s dazed state of mind. Early on a Sunday morning in June, 1837, the Lincoln and London Mails met and came into collision at Lower Codicote, near Biggleswade. The driver of the up mail, Thomas Crouch, was in a state of partial intoxication at the time, and owing to a curve in the road, and the wandering state of his faculties, he did not observe the approach of the other mail. The result was that, although the coachman of the other made room for him to pass, the two coaches came into violent collision. The coach driven by Crouch was turned completely round, ran twenty or thirty yards in a direction opposite to that it was originally taking, and finally settled in a leaning posture in the ditch. Crouch was so injured that he died a few hours afterwards. The passengers were not much hurt, but two horses were killed.
On September 8th, a coachman named Burnett was killed at Speenhamland, on the Bath Road. He was driving one of the New Company’s London and Bristol stages, and alighted at the “Hare and Hounds,” very foolishly leaving the horses unattended, with the reins on their backs. He had been a coachman for twenty years, but experience had not been sufficient to prevent him thus breaking one of the first rules of the profession. He had no sooner entered the inn than the rival Old Company’s coach came down the road. Whether the other coachman gave the horses a touch with his whip as he passed, or if they started on their own accord, is not known, but they did start, and Burnett, rushing out to stop them, was thrown down and trampled on so that he died.
Of another kind was the fatal accident that closed the year on the Glasgow Road. On the night of December 18th, the up Glasgow Mail ran over a man, supposed to have been a drunken carter, who was lying in the middle of the highway.
1837. August.—The up Glasgow Mail, the up Edinburgh Mail, the Edinburgh and Dumfries, and the Edinburgh and Portpatrick Mails all upset the same night, at different places.
1838. August.—The London to Lincoln Express met a waggon at night, at Mere Hall, six miles from Lincoln. The coachman called to the waggoner to make room, and a young man who, it is supposed, was asleep on the top, started up, and rolled off. The waggon-wheels went over and killed him.
September.—The Edinburgh and Perth “Coburg” was the subject of a singular accident. Passengers and luggage were being received at Newhall’s Pier, South Queensferry, when the leader suddenly turned round, and before the coachman and guard, who were stowing luggage, could render assistance, coach and horses disappeared over the quay-wall. Some of the outsides saved their lives by throwing themselves on the pier, but the four insides were less fortunate. Two of them thrust their heads through the windows, and so kept above the sea-water; the other two—a Miss Luff and her servant—were drowned. One outside, who had been flung far out into the sea, could fortunately swim, and so came ashore safe, but exhausted. Nine years later, February 16th, 1847, a similar accident happened to the Torrington and Bideford omnibus, when the horses took fright and plunged with the vehicle into the river from Bideford Quay. Of the twelve passengers, ten were drowned.
October.—The “Light Salisbury,” having met the train at Winchfield Station, proceeded to Hurstbourne Hill, between Basingstoke and Andover, where the bit of one of the horses caught in the pole and the coach was immediately overturned. One passenger died the same afternoon, and another was taken to his house at Andover without the slightest hope of recovery. A young woman’s leg was broken, and two other passengers’ limbs were smashed.
The railway journals, which had even thus early sprung into flourishing existence, did not fail to notice the increasing number of coaching accidents, the Railway Times with great gusto reporting twenty in a few weeks. The prevalence of these disasters was a cynical commentary upon the “Patent Safety” coaches running on every road, warranted never to overturn and doing so with wonderful regularity, and on those coaching prints noticed by Charles Dickens—“coloured prints of coaches starting, arriving, changing horses; coaches in the sunshine, coaches in the wind, coaches in the mist and rain, coaches in all circumstances compatible with their triumph and victory; but never in the act of breaking down, or overturning.”
The last years of coaching were, in fact, even more fruitful in accidents than the old days. Especially pathetic were the circumstances attendant upon the disaster that overtook the “Lark” Leicester and Nottingham Stage on May 23rd, 1840. The coach was on its last journey when it occurred, for the morrow was to witness the opening of the railway between those places. Like most of these last trips, the occasion was marked by much circumstance. Crowds assembled to witness the old order of things visibly pass away, and Frisby, the coachman, had dolefully tied black ribbons round his whipstock, to mark the solemnity of the event. Unfortunately, that badge of mourning proved in a little while to be only too appropriate, for the well-loaded coach had only gone about a mile and a half beyond Loughborough when Frisby, who had been driving recklessly all the way, and had several times been remonstrated with, overturned it at Coates’ Mill. A Mr. Pearson and another were killed. Pearson, who had especially come to take part in this last drive, was connected with the “Times” London and Nottingham coach. He had been seated beside Frisby, and had several times warned him, without avail. His thighs were broken, and he received a severe concussion of the brain, from which he died at midnight. Frisby himself was crippled for life.
