Thus, the carelessness of any one of his many servants might mean a very serious thing to a coach proprietor. In those days the old Anglo-Saxon Law of Deodand was not only in existence, but in a very nourishing and aggressive condition. Indeed, coaching had practically rescued it from neglect. It was a law which, in cases of fatal injuries, empowered the coroner's jury to levy a fine, which might vary from sixpence to a thousand pounds, upon the object that caused the mischief.
The very multiplicity of tribunals before whom the personally unoffending coach proprietor was liable to be haled was in itself terrifying. There was the already-mentioned coroners jury; the jury on the criminal side in trials at the Assizes for manslaughter, and the other "twelve good men and true" who assessed damages in the Sheriff's Court.
How even the most well-meaning of men might thus suffer is evident in the case of a proprietor who was cast in damages from excess of caution. For additional security, and in order to protect it from road grit, he had a part of an axle incased in wood. One day this axle broke and a serious accident happened, resulting in an action against him for damages. He lost the day; the judge ruling that, although no proof of a defective axle was adduced, a flaw might have existed which a proper daily examination would have detected had the extra precaution for safety not been adopted.
IX
What Aldgate might now have been had the original intention of the Eastern Counties directorate to place their terminus there been successful, we need not stop to inquire. But, as a good deal has already been said on the subject of coaches and coaching, it will be of interest to learn what were the views of the projectors of the Eastern Counties Railway. With their original prospectus was issued a map of the proposed railway from London to Norwich and Yarmouth, by which it appears that, instead of going to the left of the road from London, as far as Seven Kings and Chadwell Heath, it was originally intended to construct the line on the right of the road so far. Between Romford and Chelmsford the line has been made practically as first proposed, but onwards, from Chelmsford to Lexden, it is again on the other side of the highway; and, north of Colchester, goes wide of the original plan all the way to Norwich.
In many ways this document is very much of a curiosity at this time, as also are the hopes and aspirations of the directors at the first General Meeting of the company. The chairman, for instance, confidently anticipated dividends of 22 per cent., upon which one of the confiding shareholders replied that the report was most satisfactory and the prospects held out by no means overcharged. "If this understanding," said he, "fails in producing the dividend of 22 per cent., calculated upon in the report, then, I must say, human calculations and expectation can no longer be depended upon." O! most excellent man. But better is to come.
"Should I live to see the completion of this and similar undertakings," he resumed, "I do believe I shall live to see misery almost banished from the earth. From the love I bear my species, I trust that I may not be too sanguine, and that I may yet witness the happy end that I have pictured to myself." His was, you think, the faith that might have moved mountains; but it did not produce that promised 22 per cent., nor, although we now have many thousands more miles of railway than he ever dreamed of, has the millennium yet arrived. Even the most far-seeing have not yet discovered any heralds of its approach. Let us drop the tribute of a tear to the sorrows of this excellent person, whose love of his species and touching anticipation of 22 per cent. dividends were so beautifully blended, and so cruelly disappointed.
For some years small (very small) dividends were paid. Hudson, the "Railway King," paid them out of capital. "It made things pleasant," he said, when charged with such financially immoral practices. Alas! poor Hudson, you lived before your time, and went to another world before such "dishonest" doings as yours were sanctified in principle by Acts of Parliament which authorise payments of dividends out of capital in the case of railways under construction.
In 1848 the Eastern Counties Railway was in Chancery, and its very locomotives and carriages were seized for debt; while for years afterwards its name was a synonym for delay. The satirists of that period were as busy with the Eastern Counties as those of our own time are with the South-Eastern Railway. Every journey has an end; "even the Eastern Counties' trains come in at last," said Thackeray, very charitably.
In 1862 it was amalgamated with several minor undertakings, and re-named the "Great Eastern Railway"; "great in nothing but the name," as the spiteful said.