While speaking of ladies and their attire I may mention that Mrs. Mary Poulin, while alighting from a Broadway car, with her youngest hopeful in her arms, caught her steel hoop-skirt upon a nail in the car platform; this threw her down, and she was dragged some distance, and seriously injured and greatly frightened. The company tried to escape liability by the ungallant plea that hoops were not a necessary article of female apparel and that if Mrs. P. was determined to wear such inflated skirts she ought to have exercised more care than is required of a brother in sit-upons; the court, however, differed from the company, and considered that the fair lady had been guilty of no negligence, and that if the railroad carried passengers adorned with crinolines they must see to their safety.[428]
Old Siner and his wife arrived in daylight at Rhyl Station and the carriage in which they were overshot the platform; the passengers were neither told to keep their seats nor to get out, nor did the train move until it started on its forward journey. After exhausting his stock of patience, S. following the example of his fellow travellers alighted, without asking the company’s servants to back the train to the platform or holding any communication with them whatever. The wife then, standing on the iron steps of the carriage, grasped both her husband’s hands and jumped down, straining her knee in the act. She did not use the footboard. There was no evidence of any carelessness or awkwardness except what might be inferred from these facts. In an action brought against the company for this injury, the court held (Kelly, C. B. diss.) that there was no evidence of negligence in the defendants, and that the accident was entirely the result of the woman’s own act in awkwardly and carelessly jumping.[429] The Foy case was distinguished, as there an express invitation to alight was given.
Where a gentleman, the corneas of whose eyes were far more convex than those of the generality of the genus homo, knowing well the station, got out of the train while the carriage in which he had been sitting was still in a tunnel, and in making his way to the platform stumbled over some rubbish and fell, breaking his leg and otherwise injuring himself so that he shortly died from the effects, it was held by the House of Lords (reversing the decision of the court below) that the train having come to a stand-still, the calling out the name of the place was an invitation to alight, and that the company’s servants calling out afterwards “Keep your seats,” showed that it had been improvidently uttered, and therefore furnished evidence of negligence, and that the personal representative of Mr. Bridges was entitled to recover against the company.[430] The shortsightedness of the deceased imposed no additional duties on the company. In another case the court thought that the conduct of a traveller, who fell down between the car and the platform, which curved gracefully back from the line, amounted to contributory negligence and so made absolute a rule to enter a nonsuit.[431]
In Bridges’ case it was unanimously held by the whole court, that the calling out the name of a station is not in itself an intimation to the passengers to alight; whether it is so or not must depend on the circumstances of each particular case. Willes, J., said, “Nobody who travels by rail who has a head on his shoulders would ever say that calling out the name was an invitation;” but many a man with a head on his shoulders, and with something in that head too, acts as if he did,—indeed C. J. Redfield says that Bridges only did what the great majority of men would have done under similar circumstances. (In fact Redfield considers that in the late cases the English courts have overstrained things in favor of the companies.)[432] Baron Cleasby thought that in reality the stopping of the train at the station is the invitation to alight. Bovill, C. J., said that whether calling out was a request to get out or not was a question for a jury.[433] In a late case Mr. Justice Blackburn gave it as his decided opinion, that calling out the name is merely an intimation to all on the train that the place at which the cars are about to stop is that particular station named; and he adds (most truthfully) that every person must have heard porters at stations call out something which, if the traveller happens to know the name of the place, is recognizable, but if the name is not known, no reliable information is gained from the porter’s cry.[434] In a still later case it was said that the train having overshot the platform and the name of the place having been called out, the omission of the company’s servants to caution passengers not to alight until the train had been brought up at the proper place was evidence of negligence, or according to Honeyman, J., negligence itself.[435]
Companies are bound to provide platforms, or safe places of deposit, for passengers to alight on at their stations and to deliver them there. If there is any difficulty in the passengers’ getting out, the officers should assist them to do so.[436] If the place where one is required to alight is in fact dangerous, it is his duty to request the train to be put in its proper place; and this is a request which no station-master would venture to refuse, knowing the risk he would incur if an accident happened through his refusal. If the defendants will not place the train properly, the plaintiff should stay in the carriage. So, at least, said the judges in Siner v. Great Western Railway (supra);[437] but we can well imagine the surprised look—tinged strongly with scorn—of a conductor upon any one of our Cis-atlantic railways, were he asked to move his train forwards or backwards merely for the convenience of his living freight.
If a man persists in getting off a train while it is in motion, especially if he has been warned by the conductor not to do so, he has no claim against the company for any damage he may receive in the act;[438] and so when one attempted to get on a train while moving and was killed in the attempt, it was held, as a matter of law, that no recovery could be had.[439] But otherwise where one lost his life in jumping off by the direction of the conductor.[440] The courts of Mississippi have laid it down clearly that it is the duty of railway companies to announce audibly in each car the name of the station reached and then allow sufficient time for the passengers safely to leave the carriages; and that on the other hand it is the duty of the passengers to use reasonable care, and to conform to the customs and usages of the company so far as they know and understand them.[441] If a company through neglect of their duty expose a passenger to obvious peril, or grave inconvenience, and the traveller to escape the threatened peril, or inconvenience, does something that is not obviously dangerous (although it may be the cause of the injury) the company will be liable.[442]
Where a man is so drunk that he cannot take care of himself, if the conductor is aware of it, he must bestow upon him the requisite degree of attention to save him from injury;[443] and so when a traveller is sick.
Ah me! I fear that this long dilating will cause my Diary to be sent
To bind a book, to line a box,
Or serve to curl a maiden’s locks.