A QUEER PIECE OF GROUND IN A FOG: “IF WE GET OVER THE RAILS, WE SHALL BE IN A UGLY FIX.” After C. B. Newhouse.
The pitcher goes oft to the well, but at last it is broken; and so likewise the coachmen who, winter and summer, storm or shine, had driven for almost a generation over the same well-known routes, at length met their death on them in some unforeseen manner. A striking instance of this was the sad end of William Upfold—“unlucky Upfold”—who was coachman of the “Times” Brighton and Southampton Stage, a coach which ran by way of Worthing and Chichester, he was a steady and reliable man, fifty-four years of age, and had been a coachman for thirty-five years, when fatal mischance slew him on a February night, 1840. A singularly long series of more or less serious accidents had constantly attended him from 1831. In that year his leg was broken in an upset, and he had only just recovered and resumed his place when the coach was overturned again, this time through the breaking of an axle. The injuries he received kept him a long time idle. Again, in January 1832, at Bosham, the furies were eager for his destruction. He got off at the wayside inn, and left the reins in the hands of a passenger, who very foolishly alighted also, a minute or so later. When Upfold saw him enter the inn he hastily left it; but the horses had already started. In trying to stop them he was kicked on the leg, and fell under the wheels, which passed over him and broke the other leg.
Poor Upfold recovered at last, and might have looked forward to immunity from any more accidents; but Fate had not yet done with him. When nearing Salvington Corner, one night in February 1840, he was observed by Pascoe, a coachman who was with him, to pull the wrong rein in turning one of the awkward angles that mark this stretch of road.
“Upfold, what are you at with the horses?” he asked.
“I have pulled the wrong rein,” said Upfold.
“Then mind and pull the right one this time,” rejoined Pascoe; but scarcely had he said it when the coach toppled over. Nearly every one was hurt, but Upfold was killed. His pulling the wrong rein was inexplicable. The unfortunate man knew the road intimately, and the witnesses declared he was absolutely sober; and so the country-folk, who knew his history and how often accidents had come his way, were reduced to the fatalistic remark that “it had to be.”
1841. November 8th.—Rival coaches leaving Skipton started racing on the Colne and Burnley road. The horses of one grew unmanageable and ran away. The passengers, alarmed, began to jump off, and a Manchester man, name unknown, who had been sitting beside the coachman, laid hold of the reins to help the coachman pull the horses in. In doing so, he pulled their heads to one side, and they dashed with appalling force into a blank wall. He was killed on the spot. All the passengers who had jumped off were more or less seriously injured; but a woman and a boy, who had remained quietly in their seats on the roof, were unhurt.
1842. January 17th.—The “Nettle,” Welshpool and Liverpool coach, overturned by a stone near Newtown. Mr. Jones, of Gorward, Denbighshire, a Dissenting minister, going to live at Kerry, Montgomeryshire, was thrown off the roof. He died two days later of his injuries, in great agony.
December 28th.—The Mail, coming south from Caithness-shire, broke an axle at Latheronwheel Bridge, and Donald Boss, the coachman, was dashed from his box over the bridge into the rocky burn, thirty feet below, and killed. The guard had a narrow escape. Fortunately, there were no passengers.
1843. February 18th.—The Cheltenham and Aberystwith Mail left the “Green Dragon,” at Hereford, on its way, and proceeded as usual to St. Owen’s turnpike-gate. The gate was open, as a matter of course, for the Mail, but the boisterous wind blowing at the time sent it swinging back across the road as the Mail passed. It hit the near wheeler a violent blow and broke the trace and the reins. Then rebounding, it struck the body of the coach with such force that Eyles, the coachman, was thrown off the box and killed. The horses, thoroughly terrified, then ran away, and, meeting some donkey-carts on the road, ran into them, injuring some old women driving from market. One of them subsequently died from her hurts.