ACCIDENTS AND CONSERVATISM.
The four accidents which have been referred to, including that of
April 17, 1836, upon the Manchester & Liverpool road, belong to one
class. Though they covered a period of forty-two years they were all
due to the same cause, the sudden derailment of a portion of the
train, and its subsequent destruction because of the insufficient
control of those in charge of it over its momentum. In the three
earlier cases the appliances in use were much the same, for between
1836 and 1874 hardly any improvement as respects brakes had either
forced its own way, or been forced by the government, into general
acceptance in Great Britain. The Wollaston disaster, on the other
hand, revealed a weak point in an improved appliance; the old
danger seemed, indeed, to take a sort of pleasure in baffling
human ingenuity. The Shipton accident, however, while one of the
most fatal which ever occurred was also one of the most fruitful
in results. This, and the accident of April 17, 1836, upon the
Manchester & Liverpool road were almost precisely similar, though no
less than thirty-eight years intervened between them. In the case
of the first, however, no one was killed and consequently it was
wholly barren of results; for experience has shown that to bring
about any considerable reform, railroad disasters have, as it were,
to be emphasized by loss of life. This, however, implies nothing
more than the assertion that those responsible for the management of
railroads do not differ from other men,--that they are apt, after
some hair-breadth escape, to bless their fortunate stars for the
present good rather than to take anxious heed for future dangers.
At the time the Shipton accident occurred the success of the modern
train-brake, which places the speed of each of the component parts
of the train under the direct and instantaneous control of him who
is in charge of the locomotive, had for years been conceded even
by the least progressive of American railroad managers. The want
of such a brake and the absence of proper means of communication
between the parts of the train had directly and obviously caused the
murderous destructiveness of the accident. Yet in the investigation
which ensued it appeared that the authorities of the Great Western
Railway, being eminently "practical men," still entertained as
respected the train-brake "very grave doubts of the wisdom of
adopting [it] at all;" while at the same time, as respected a means
of communication between the parts of the train, it appeared that
the associated general managers of the leading railways "did not
think that any [such] means of communication was at all required, or
likely to be useful or successful."
Though quite incomprehensible, there is at the same time something
superb in such an exhibition of stolid conservatism. It is British.
It is, however, open to but one description of argument, the _ultima
ratio_ of railroad logic. So long as luck averted the loss of
life in railroad disasters, no occasion would ever have been seen
for disturbing time-honored precautions or antiquated appliances.
While, how ever, a disaster like that of December 24, 1874, might
not convince, it did compel: in spite of professed "grave doubts,"
incredulity and conservatism vanished, silenced, at least, in
presence of so frightful a row of corpses as on that morning made
ghastly the banks of the Cherwell. The general, though painfully
slow and reluctant, introduction of train-brakes upon the railways
of Great Britain may be said to have dated from that event.
In the matter of communication between those in the train and those
in charge of it, the Shipton corpses chanced not to be witnesses
to the precise point. Accordingly their evidence was, so to speak,
ruled out of the case, and neither the utility nor the success of
any appliance for this purpose was held to be yet proven. What
further proof would be deemed conclusive did not appear, but the
history of the discussion before and since is not without value.
There is, indeed, something almost ludicrously characteristic in
the manner with which those interested in the railway management
of Great Britain strain at their gnats while they swallow their
camels. They have grappled with the great question of city travel
with a superb financial and engineering sagacity, which has left
all other communities hopelessly distanced; but, while carrying
their passengers under and over the ebb and flow of the Thames and
among the chimney pots of densest London to leave them on the very
steps of the Royal Exchange, they have never been able to devise any
satisfactory means for putting the traveller, in case of a disaster
to the carriage in which he happens to be, in communication with the
engine-driver of his train. An English substitute for the American
bell-cord has for more than thirty years set the ingenuity of Great
Britain at defiance.
As long ago as the year 1857, in consequence of two accidents to
trains by fires, a circular on this subject was issued to the
railway companies by the Board of Trade, in which it was stated
that "from the beginning of the year 1854, down to the present time
(December, 1857) there have been twenty-six cases in which either
the accidents themselves or some of the ulterior consequences of
the accidents would probably have been avoided had such a means of
communication existed."[1] As none of these accidents had resulted
in any considerable number of funerals the railway managers wholly
failed to see the propriety of this circular, or the necessity of
taking any steps in consequence of it. As, however, accidents from
this cause were still reported, and with increasing frequency, the
authorities in July, 1864, again bestirred themselves and issued
another circular in which it was stated that "several instances
have occurred of carriages having taken fire, or having been thrown
off the rails, the passengers in which had no means of making their
perilous situation known to the servants of the company in charge of
the train. Recent occurrences also of a criminal nature in passenger
railway trains have excited among the public a very general feeling
of alarm." The last reference was more particularly to the memorable
Briggs murder, which had taken place only a few days before on July
9th, and was then absorbing the public attention to the almost
entire exclusion of everything else.
[1] The bell-cord in America, notwithstanding the theoretical
objections which have been urged to its adoption in other countries,
has proved such a simple and perfect protection against dangers
from inability to communicate between portions of trains that
accidents from this cause do not enter into the consideration of
American railroad managers. Yet they do, now and again, occur. For
instance, on February 28, 1874, a passenger coach in a west-bound
accommodation train of the Great Western railroad of Canada took
fire from the falling of a lamp in the closet at its forward end.
The bell-cord was for some reason not connected with the locomotive,
and the train ran two miles before it could be stopped. The coach
in question was entirely destroyed and eight passengers were either
burned or suffocated, while no less than thirteen others sustained
injuries in jumping from the train.
As no better illustration than this can be found of the extreme
slowness with which the necessity for new railroad appliances is
recognized in cases where profit is not involved, and of the value
of wholesale slaughters, like those at Shipton and Angola, as a
species of motive force in the direction of progress, a digression
on the subject of English accidents due to the absence of bell-cords
may be not without value. In the opinion of the railway managers the
cases referred to by the Board of Trade officials failed to show
the existence of any necessity for providing means of communication
between portions of the train. A detailed statement of a few of
the cases thus referred to will not only be found interesting in
itself, but it will give some idea of the description of evidence
which is considered insufficient. The circumstances of the Briggs
murder, deeply interesting as they were, are too long for incidental
statement; this, however, is not the case with some of the other
occurrences. For instance, the Board of Trade circular was issued on
July 30th; on July 7th, a year earlier, the following took place on
the London & North Western road.
Two gentlemen took their seats at Liverpool in one of the
compartments of the express train to London. In it they found
already seated an elderly lady and a large, powerfully built
man, apparently Irish, respectably dressed, but with a lowering,
suspicious visage. Though one of the two gentlemen noticed this
peculiarity as he entered the carriage, he gave no thought to it,
but, going on with their conversation, he and his friend took their
seats, and in a few moments the train started. Scarcely was it out
of the station when the stranger changed his seat, placing himself
on the other side of the carriage, close to the window, and at the
same time, in a menacing way, incoherently muttering something to
himself. The other passengers looked at him, but felt no particular
alarm, and for a time he remained quietly in his seat. He then
suddenly sprang up, and, with a large clasp-knife in his hand,
rushed at one of the gentlemen, a Mr. Warland by name, and struck
him on the forehead, the knife sliding along the bone and inflicting
a frightful flesh wound. As he was in the act of repeating the blow,
Warland's companion thrust him back upon the seat. This seemed to
infuriate him, and starting to his feet he again tried to attack
the wounded man. A frightful struggle ensued. It was a struggle for
life, in a narrow compartment feebly lighted, for it was late at
night, on a train running at full speed and with no stopping place
for eighty miles. The passenger who had not been hurt clutched the
maniac by the throat with one hand and grasped his knife with the
other, but only to feel the blade drawn through his fingers, cutting
them to the bone. The unfortunate elderly woman, the remaining
occupant of the compartment, after screaming violently in her
terror for a few moments, fainted away and fell upon the floor.
The struggle nevertheless went on among the three men, until at
last, though blinded with blood and weak from its loss, the wounded
Mr. Warland got behind his assailant and threw him down, in which
position the two succeeded in holding him, he striking and stabbing
at both of them with his knife, shouting loudly all the time, and
desperately endeavoring to rise and throw them off. They finally,
however, got his knife away from him, and then kept him down until
the train at last drew up at Camdentown station. When the ticket
collector opened the compartment door at that place he found the
four passengers on the floor, the woman senseless and two of the
men holding the third, while the faces and clothing of all of them,
together with seats, floor, windows and sides of the carriage were
covered with blood or smeared with finger marks.
The assailant in this case, as it subsequently appeared upon his
commitment for an assault, was a schoolmaster who had come over
from Ireland to a competitive examination. He was insane, of
course, but before the magistrate he made a statement which had in
it something quite touching; he said that he saw the two gentlemen
talking together, and, as he thought, making motions towards him;
he believed them to be thieves who intended to rob him, and so he
thought that he could not do better than defend himself, "if only
for his dear little ones at home."
This took place before the Board of Trade circular was issued, but,
as if to give emphasis to it, a few days only after its issue, in
August, 1864, there was a not dissimilar occurrence in a third class
carriage between London and Peterborough. The running distance was
in this case eighty miles without a stop, and occupied generally an
hour and fifty minutes,--the rate being forty-three miles an hour.
In the compartment in question were five passengers, one of whom,
a tall powerful fellow, was dressed like a sailor. The train was
hardly out of London when this man, after searching his pockets for
a moment, cried out that he had been robbed of his purse containing
£17, and began violently to shout and gesticulate. He then tried
to clamber through the window, getting his body and one leg out,
and when his fellow passengers, catching hold of his other leg,
succeeded in hauling him back, he turned savagely upon them and
a desperate struggle ensued. At last he was gotten down by main
force and bound to a seat. Meanwhile, notwithstanding the speed at
which they were running, the noise of the struggle was heard in
the adjoining compartments, and almost frantic efforts were made
to stop the train. Word was passed from carriage to carriage for a
short distance, but it proved impossible to communicate with the
guard, or to do anything but thoroughly alarm the passengers. These
merely knew that something was the matter,--what, they could only
imagine,--and so the run to Peterborough was completed amid shouts
of "stop the train," interspersed with frantic female shrieks. The
man was suffering from _delirium tremens_.
About a year later, in December, 1865, a similar case occurred
which, however, had in it strong elements of the ludicrous. A
clergyman, laboring under great indignation and excitement, and
without the slightest sense of the ridiculous, recounted his
experience in a communication to the _Times_. He had found himself
alone in a compartment of an express train in which were also a
young lady and a man, both total strangers to him. Shortly after
the train started the man began to give unmistakable indications of
something wrong. He made no attempt at any violence on either of his
fellow passengers, but he was noisy, and presently he proceeded to
disrobe himself and otherwise to indulge in antics which were even
more indecent than they were extraordinary. The poor clergyman,--a
respected incumbent of the established church returning to the bosom
of his family,--was in a most distressing situation. At first he
attempted remonstrance. This, however, proved worse than unavailing,
and there was nothing for it but to have recourse to his umbrella,
behind the sheltering cover of which he protected the modesty of
the young lady, while over its edges he himself from time to time
effected observations through an apparently interminable journey of
forty and more miles.
These and numerous other cases of fires, murders, assaults and
indecencies had occurred and filled the columns of the newspapers,
without producing the slightest effect on the managers of the
railway companies. No attention was paid by them to the Board of
Trade circulars. At last Parliament took the matter up and in 1868
an act was passed, making compulsory some "efficient means of
communication between the passenger and the servants of the company
in charge" of railroad trains. Yet when six years later in 1874 the
Shipton accident occurred, and was thought to be in some degree
attributable to the absence of the very means of communication
thus made compulsory, it appeared, as has been seen, that the
associated general managers did not yet consider any such means of
communication either required or likely to be useful.
Meanwhile, as if in ironical comment on such measured utterances,
occurrences like the following, which took place as recently as the
early part of 1878, from time to time still meet the eye in the
columns of the English press:--
"A burglar was being taken in a third-class carriage from
London to Sheffield. When about twelve miles from Sheffield
he asked that the windows might be opened. This was no sooner
done than he took a dive out through the aperture. One of the
warders succeeded in catching him by a foot, and for two miles
he hung head downward suspended by one foot and making terrific
struggles to free himself. In vain he wriggled, for although his
captors were unable to catch the other foot, both held him as in
a vise. But he wore spring-sided boots, and the one on which his
fate seemingly depended came off. The burglar fell heavily on
the foot-board of the carriage and rolled off on the railway.
Three miles further on the train stopped, and the warders went
back to the scene of the escape. Here they found him in the
snow bleeding from a wound on the head. During the time he was
struggling with the warders the warder who had one hand free and
the passengers of the other compartments who were witnessing
the scene from the windows of the train were indefatigable in
their efforts to attract the attention of the guards by means of
the communication cord, but with no result. For two miles the
unfortunate man hung head downward, and for three miles further
the train ran until it stopped at an ordinary resting place."
A single further example will more than sufficiently illustrate
this instance of British railroad conservatism, and indicate the
tremendous nature of the pressure which has been required to even
partially force the American bell-cord into use in that country. One
day, in the latter part of 1876, a Mr. A. J. Ellis of Liverpool had
occasion to go to Chester. On his way there he had an experience
with a lunatic, which he subsequently recounted before a magistrate
as follows:--
"On Friday last I took the 10.35 A.M., train from Lime Street in
a third-class carriage, my destination being Chester. At Edge
Hill Station the prisoner and another man, whom I afterward
understood to be the prisoner's father, got into the same
compartment, no one else being in the same compartment. The
other person was much under the influence of drink when he
entered, and was very noisy during the journey. The prisoner
had the appearance of having been drinking, but was quiet. I
sat with my back to the engine, on the getting-out side of the
carriage; prisoner was sitting on the opposite side, with his
right arm to the window, and the other person was sitting on
the same side as prisoner, about the middle of the seat. I was
engaged reading, and did not exchange words with the prisoner.
"After we had passed over Runcorn bridge and through the
station, I perceived the prisoner make a start, and looking
toward him saw a white-hafted knife in his hand, about five
inches long, with the blade open. He held it in his right hand
in a menacing manner. Drawing his left hand along the edge of
the blade, he said, "This will have to go into some ----." At
that moment he looked at me across the carriage; he was on his
feet in an instant, and looking across to me, he said, "You
----, this will have to go into you," and made a bound toward
me. The other jumped up and tried to prevent him. The prisoner
threw him away; he made a plunge at my throat. I caught his
wrist just as he advanced, and struggled with him, still holding
fast to his wrist with both hands. We fell over and under one
another two or three times, and eventually he overpowered me. I
had fallen on my side on the seat, but still retained my hold
upon his wrist. While lying in that position he held the knife
down to within an inch of my throat. I called to the other man
to hold the prisoner's hand back which contained the knife, and
by that means he saved my life. I was growing powerless, and as
the other man restrained the prisoner from using the knife, I
jerked myself from his grasp, and knocked the knife out of the
prisoner's hand with my left hand.
"The prisoner eluded the grip of his father, and falling on his
knees began to seek for his knife. Failing to find the knife,
he was instantly on his feet, and made a spring upon me. If I
recollect aright, he threw his arms around my neck, and in this
manner we struggled together up and down the carriage for some
minutes, during which time he got my left thumb (with a glove on
at the time) in his mouth, and bit it. Still retaining my thumb
in his mouth, the other man struck him under the chin, when he
released it, and fell on his knees seeking the knife, which
he did not find. He was immediately on his feet, and again
made a spring upon me. We had then a very long and desperate
struggle, when he overpowered me and pinned me in a corner of
the compartment. At last he got my right thumb into his mouth,
holding my hand to steady it with both his hands while he bit
it. With a great effort he then bit my thumb off, clean to the
bone. I had no glove on that hand. I called to the other man to
help me, but he seemed stupefied. He called two or three times
to the prisoner, 'Leave the poor man alone. The poor man has
done thee no harm.' Though sitting within nine inches of my
knees he rendered me no help.
"When the prisoner bit my thumb off, he held it in his mouth; he
pushed his head through the glass, spat the thumb into his hand
and flung it out through the window. I then stood up and put my
left hand in my pocket, took out my purse and cried out: 'If it
is money you want take all I have.' He made a grab at the purse
and flung it through the window, on the same side as the thumb
was thrown out. From this act I inferred that I was struggling
with a maniac. I retreated to the other end of the compartment,
holding the other man between me and the prisoner, but he passed
the other man by jumping over the seat and again got hold of me.
Then he forced his head through the other window, breaking the
glass, and, loosing me for a moment, with his fists smashed the
remaining glass in the window. Addressing me he said: 'You ----,
you will have to go over;' at the same time he flung both his
arms around my waist. I put my leg behind his and threw him on
his back. I called upon the other man to help me and he did so.
"We held him down for some time, but he overpowered us and flung
us back some distance. He then laid hold of my travelling rug
and threw it through the window. Laying his hand on the bottom
of the window he cried out, 'Here goes,' and made a leap through
the window. I and the other man instantly laid hold of his legs
as he was falling over. I got my four fingers into his right
shoe, and, his father assisting me, we held him through the
window, hanging head downward for about half a mile. I then
fainted, and as I was losing my hold on his heels I have some
faint recollection that the prisoner's father lost his hold at
the same time, and I can't say what happened afterward. As I was
coming to myself the train was stopping, and I heard the other
man say, 'Oh, my son, my son.' When the train stopped I walked
from the carriage to the station, and Dr. Robinson, who was sent
for, came in about an hour and amputated my thumb further back."
While thus referring, however, to this instance of British railroad
conservatism, which with a stolid indifference seems to ignore
the teachings of every day life and to meet constantly recurring
experience with a calm defiance, it will not do for the American
railroad manager to pride himself too much on his own greater
ingenuity and more amenable disposition. The Angola disaster has
been referred to, as well as that at Shipton. If the absence of
the bell-cord had indeed any part in the fatality of the latter,
the presence in cars crowded with passengers of iron pots full of
living fire lent horrors before almost unheard of to the former.
The methods of accomplishing needed results which are usual to any
people are never easily changed, whether in Europe or in America;
but certainly the disasters which have first and last ensued from
the failure to devise any safe means of heating passenger coaches
in this country are out of all proportion to those which can be
attributed in England to the absence of means of communication
between the passengers on trains and those in charge of them. There
is an American conservatism as well as an English; and when it comes
to a question of running risks it would be strange indeed if the
greater margin of security were found west of the Atlantic. The
security afforded by the bell-cord assuredly has not as yet in this
country off-set the danger incident to red-hot stoves.