[411] State v. G. T. R., 4 Am. Rep. 258; 58 Me. 176.
[412] Jeffersonville, etc., Rw. v. Riley, 39 Ind. 568.
CHAPTER X.
PLATFORMS AND ALIGHTING.
Right to Safe Ingress, Egress, and Regress.—Defective Platforms.—The Englishman and the C’mum cat’or.—Getting out of Cars.—Train not at Platform.—Calling out Name; is it Invitation to alight?—Ladies jumping.—Hoop-skirts.—Must have Safe Place to alight.—Leaving Train in Motion.
“Well, here we are at last at H.,” said my friend who was learned in the law.
“Yes, now we have a chance of getting some grub (carefully collated from the plates of those who were here before us), and taking the epidermal covering off the interior of our mouths with a scalding decoction dignified by the name of tea,” I replied.
“Ding-dong-all gone—come along—one-all,” sounded forth the bell of the refreshment-room, as the train drew up to the platform, and all the weary travellers sprang up eager to stretch their limbs and to replenish the inner man. Out they rushed. Night had thrown her sable mantle (she has no other except for moonlight wear) over nature’s tired bosom, so some of our fellow travellers, in the gloom, were precipitated into a hole in the platform, which the company carelessly suffered to be there—yawning open-mouthed—unmindful of the fact that passengers have the same rights to safe ingress, egress, regress, and progress over the stations and platforms at the intermediate places where the trains stop for refreshment, as they have at the termini of the line;[413] although it would appear that where a stoppage is made only for the purposes of the railway, and people are not expected to get in or out, the rights of the travelling public and the liability of the company are both greatly curtailed.[414] As soon as one procures a ticket he is to be regarded as a passenger, and is entitled to a safe passage to his seat.[415]
Though the unfortunates kissed mother earth, they were not seriously damaged; one indeed—as a medical witness afterwards put it—suffered “from a severe contusion of the integuments under the left orbit, with a great extravasation of blood and ecchymosis in the surrounding cellubas, having also a considerable abrasion of the cuticle,” or, as the judge in common-place Anglo-Saxon expressed it, “had a black eye.” Soon comestibles of all sorts, kinds, and descriptions were vanishing rapidly by means of down grades into sub-waistcoat and sub-bodice regions.
When we had finished our repast, the train still seemed quiescent,—appeared as motionless as a painted ship upon a painted ocean,—so it was suggested that a little of something slightly stronger than tea might not be unpalatable; but, alas! spirits were tabooed on the line, so there was nothing for it but to make a foray into the adjoining neighborhood for additional stimulants. A porter kindly showed the way to a public house on the opposite side of the highroad passing the station. We were soon all practising with great success at the bar, but while enjoying ourselves to the full, the engine-bell rang out sharp and clear on the frosty air. Off we all rushed helter-skelter, and to save time, instead of returning by the way we came, we took what we thought was a bee-line for the station lights (but which turned out to be the engine’s) across some unfenced ground. Before we well knew where we were we were all tumbling pell-mell, one over the other, into a wide ditch some three feet deep. However, we gained the cars in time, and then one of our chance acquaintances—who, having been leading in the race, went down first and was trampled upon by the rest—found that his arm was badly hurt; so the Q. C. and myself tried to console him with the assurance that he was safe to recover a verdict against the company if he only entrusted his case into the hands of either of us, for a railway company is bound so to fence its station that the public will not be misled, by seeing a place unfenced, into injuring themselves by passing that way, it being the shortest road to the platform.[416] (Though by the way, a Canadian court has considered that companies are not responsible if parties come to grief through taking short cuts, if the proper way of ingress and egress to the station is safe, convenient, and well-lighted;[417] but in another case a man who broke his leg in two places by falling into a culvert, constructed by the company in the highway, while leaving the station on a dark and stormy night, got $2,000 damages.)[418] The neglect properly to light a station, or to have a sufficient corps of servants to aid passengers in alighting at night, is evidence of negligence.[419]
Thinking that the man was an American citizen, I told him that Mr. C. J. Dillon, of the State of Iowa, had said on a comparatively recent occasion that “railway companies are bound to keep in a safe condition all portions of their platforms and approaches thereto to which the public do and would naturally resort, and all portions of their station-grounds reasonably near to the platforms, where passengers, or those who have purchased tickets with a view to take passage in their cars, would naturally or ordinarily be likely to go.”[420]