Sir Edward Watkin observed at the half-yearly meeting of the South
Eastern Railway Company, January, 1881:—“The result of this compensating
law under which the slightest neglect makes the company liable, and the
only thing to be considered is the amount of damages—the effect of this
unjust law is to create a new profession compounded of the worst elements
of the present professions—viz., expert doctors, expert attorneys, and
expert witnesses. You will get a doctor to swear that a man who has a
slight knock on the head to say that he has a diseased spine, and will
never be fit for anything again, and never be capable of being a man of
business or the father of a family. The result of that is all we can do
is to get some other expert to say exactly the contrary. Then you have a
class of attorneys who get up this business. We had an accident, I may
tell you, at Forrest-hill two years ago. Well, there was a gentleman—an
attorney in the train. He went round to all the people in the train and
gave them his card; and, having distributed all the cards in his
card-case, he went round and expressed extreme regret to the others that
he could not give them a card; but he gave them his name as ‘So and So,’
his place was in ‘Such a street,’ and the ‘No, So and So’ in the City.
That was touting for business. Now, there is a very admirable body
called the “Law Association.” Why does not the Law Association take hold
of cases of that kind? Well, you saw in the paper the case of Roper _v._
the South Eastern. Now that was a peculiar thing. Roper declared that
from an injury he had received in a slight accident at the Stoney-street
signal box, outside Cannon-street he was utterly incapacitated, and that,
for I don’t know how many weeks and months, he was in bed without
ceasing. The doctors, I believe, put pins and needles into him, but he
never flinched, and when the case came before the court we found that
some of the medical experts declared that it was just within the order of
Providence that in twenty years he might get better; but these witnesses
thought that the chances were against it, and that he would be a hopeless
cripple. So evidence was given as to his income; and the idea was to
capitalise it at £8,000. That man had paid 4d. for his ticket I think—I
forget the exact amount. Our counsel, the Attorney-General, went into
the thing, with the very able assistance of Mr. Willis, who deserves
every possible credit. We also had Mr. Le Gros Clarke, the eminent
consulting surgeon of the company, and Dr. Arkwright from the north of
England, and they told us that in their opinion it was a swindle. And it
was a swindle. The result of it was, the Attorney-General put his foot
down upon it, and declared that it was a swindle, and the jury
unanimously non-suited Mr. Roper. Well, singularly enough, when I say he
had paid 4d., I think it was not absolutely proved that he was in the
train at all. But although this was a case in which the jury said there
was no case, and where the Judge summed up strongly that it was a fraud,
and where the most eminent surgeon said it was an absolute delusion
altogether, and where, in point of fact, justice was done entirely to you
as regards the verdict, you have £2,300 to pay for costs of one kind or
another in defending a case of swindling, because when you try to recover
the costs the man becomes bankrupt, and you won’t get a farthing; and I
do mean to say I have described a state of the law and practice that
ought to excite the reprobation of every honest man in England.”