ACCIDENTS
One of the greatest objections urged by the coaching interest against
railways was their danger, and the certain loss of life on them in
case of accident. It was unfortunate that the opening of the Liverpool
and Manchester Railway was the occasion of a fatal mischance that
lent emphasis to the dolorous prophecies of coach-proprietors and the
road interests in general; for on that day (September 15th, 1830) Mr.
Huskisson, a prominent man in the politics of that time, met his death
by being run over by the first train. It seems to ourselves incredible,
but it was the fact, that there were those who ascribed this fatality
to the wrath of God against mechanical methods of travelling. Then
first arose that favourite saying among coachmen, “In a coach accident,
there you are; in a railway accident, where are you?” The impression
thus intended to be conveyed was that a coaching disaster was a very
trifling affair compared with a railway accident. But was it? Let us
see.
The Rev. William Milton, who in 1810 published a work on
coach-building, lamented the great number of accidents in his time,
and said that not a tenth part of them was ever recorded in the
newspapers. He darkly added that the coach-proprietors could probably
explain the reason. However that may be, the following pages contain a
selection of the most tragical happenings in this sort, culled from the
newspapers of the past. It does by no means pretend to completeness;
for to essay a task of that kind would be to embark upon a very
extensive work, as well as a very severe indictment of the coaching
age. Moreover, it may shrewdly be suspected that many drowsy folk fell
off the box-seats in the darkness, and quietly and unostentatiously
broke their necks, without the least notice being publicly taken. Mere
upsets and injuries to passengers and coachmen are not instanced here.
Only a selection from the fatal accidents has been made.
1807.--Brighton and Portsmouth coach upset; coachman killed.
1810.--Rival Brighton and Worthing coaches racing; one upset; coachman
killed.
1819.--“Coburg” (Brighton coach) upset at Cuckfield, on the up journey.
The horses were fresh, and, dashing away, came into collision with a
waggon. All the eleven outsides were injured. A Mr. Blake died next day
at the “King’s Head,” Cuckfield, where the injured had been taken.
1826. _April._--The Leeds and Wakefield “True Blue,” going down Belle
Hill with horses galloping, on the wrong side of the road, came into
collision with a coal-cart. The coachman’s skull was fractured, and he
died instantly. One outside passenger’s leg had to be amputated, and he
died the next day. The recovery of another passenger was regarded as
doubtful.
One of the more serious among coach accidents was that which befell the
London and Dorking stage, in April 1826. It was one of those coaches
that did not carry a guard. It left the “Elephant and Castle” at nine
o’clock in the morning, full inside and out, and arrived safely at
Ewell, where Joseph Walker, who was both coachman and proprietor,
alighted for the purpose of getting a parcel from the hind boot. He
gave the reins to a boy who sat on the box, and all would have been
well had it not been for the thoughtless act of the boy himself, who
cracked the whip, and set the horses off at full speed. They dashed
down the awkwardly curving road by the church and into a line of wooden
railings, which were torn down for a length of twelve yards. Coming
then to some immovable obstacle, the coach was violently upset, and
the whole of the passengers hurled from the roof. All were seriously
injured, and one was killed. This unfortunate person was a woman, who
fell upon some spiked iron railings, “which,” says the contemporary
account, “entered her breast and neck. She was dreadfully mutilated,
none of her features being distinguishable. She lingered until the
following day, when she expired in the greatest agony.” The gravestone
of this unfortunate person is still to be seen in the leafy churchyard
of Ewell, inscribed to the memory of “Catherine, wife of James
Bailey, who, in consequence of the overturning of the Dorking Coach,
April 1826, met with her death in the 22nd year of her age.”
[Illustration: A MIDNIGHT DISASTER ON A CROSS ROAD: FIVE MILES TO THE
NEAREST VILLAGE.
_After C. B. Newhouse._
]
1827. _December._--The up Salisbury coach was driven, in the fog
prevailing at the time, into a pond called the “King’s Water,” at
East Bedfont, on Hounslow Heath. An outside passenger, a Mr. Lockhart
Wainwright, of the Light Dragoons, was killed on the spot, by falling
in the water. The pond was only two feet deep, but it had a further
depth of two feet of mud, and it was thought that the unfortunate
passenger was smothered in it. The four women inside the coach had
a narrow escape of being drowned, but were rescued, and the coach
righted, by a crowd of about a hundred persons, chiefly soldiers from
the neighbouring barracks, who had assembled.
1832. _February 19th._--Mr. Fleet, coachman and part-proprietor of
the Brighton and Tunbridge Wells coach, killed by the overturn of his
conveyance.
1832. _October 30th._--Brighton Mail upset at Reigate. Coachman killed
on the spot. The three outsides suffered fractured ribs and minor
injuries.
In 1833 the Marquis of Worcester, a shining light of the road in those
days, began that connection with the Brighton Road which afterwards
produced the “Duke of Beaufort” coach, made famous by the coloured
prints after Lambert and Shayer. He was passionately fond of driving,
and was so very often allowed by the complaisant professional coachmen
to “take the ribbons” that he at last fell into the habit of taking
them almost as a matter of right. Of course, the jarveys who had
relinquished the reins to him were always well remembered for their so
doing; but there were those to whom money was not everything, and in
whose minds the sporting instinct was less developed than a wholesome
and ever-present fear of the penalties to which coachmen were liable
if they permitted other persons to drive. There could have been no
objection on the score of coachmanship, for the Marquis was an able
whip; but the fact remained that he could not get the reins when he
wanted them, and so in revenge set up two coaches on the Brighton Road,
in alliance with a Jew named Israel Alexander. A paltry fellow, this
Marquis, afterwards seventh Duke of Beaufort, to enter into competition
with professional coachmen in order to satisfy a childish spite; not,
at any rate, the high-souled sportsman that toadies would have one
believe.
[Illustration: THE “BEAUFORT” BRIGHTON COACH.
_After W. J. Shayer._
]
The coaches put on the road by this alliance were the “Wonder” and
the “Quicksilver,” both with intent to run Goodman, the proprietor
of the “Times” coaches, off the route. The coachmen who tooled these
new conveyances were, of course, always to give up the reins when my
lord thought proper to drive, and so the revenge was complete. But
the “Quicksilver,” a fast coach timed to do the 52 miles in 4¾ hours,
had not been long on the road before it met with a very serious
accident, being overturned when leaving Brighton on the evening of
July 15th. A booking-clerk, one John Snow, the son of a coachman,
and himself a sucking Jehu, was driving, and upset the coach by the
New Steyne, with the result that the passengers were thrown into the
gardens of the Steyne, or hung upon the spikes of the railings in
very painful and ridiculous postures. Goodman had the satisfaction of
presently learning that the bad-blooded sportsman and his partner lost
some very heavy sums in compensation awards.
The “Quicksilver” was thereupon repainted and renamed, and, under the
alias of the “Criterion,” resumed its journeys. But ill-fortune clung
to that coach, for on June 7th, 1834, as it was leaving London, it came
into collision with a brewer’s dray opposite St. Saviour’s Church,
Southwark. A little way on, down the Borough High Street, the coachman
was obliged to suddenly pull up the horses to avoid running over a
gentleman on horseback, whose horse had bolted into the middle of the
road. The sudden strain on the pole, already, it seems, splintered in
the affair with the dray, broke it off. It fell, and became entangled
with the legs of the wheelers, who became so restive and infuriated
that attempts were made to put on the skid; but before that could be
done the coach overturned. Sir William Cosway, who was one of the
outsides, and was at that moment attempting to climb down, was pitched
off so violently that his skull was fractured, so that he died in
less than two hours afterwards. A Mr. Todhunter “sustained” (as the
reporters have it) a broken thigh.
1834.--The London and Halifax Mail came into collision with a bridge,
five miles from Sheffield. The coachman, Thomas Roberts, was killed.
The Wolverhampton and Worcester coach, in avoiding a cart coming down a
hill near Stourbridge, was upset, and a passenger killed.
_October._--A wheel came off one of Wheatley’s Greenwich coaches at
London Bridge, and one gentleman was killed.
1835. _August._--The Liverpool “Albion” fell over on entering
Whitchurch, through a worn-out linchpin. A lady inside passenger was
disfigured for life.
_June._--The Nottingham “Rapid” upset, three miles from Northampton,
through the breaking of an axle. A girl’s leg crushed, and afterwards
amputated.
_November._--The Newcastle and Carlisle Mail upset, two miles from
Hexham. Aiken, the coachman, killed.
_December 25th._--The down Exeter Mail upset on Christmas night, on
nearing Andover, through running against a bank in the prevailing fog.
Austin, the coachman, killed.
1836. _June._--The up Louth Mail nearly upset by stones maliciously
placed in the road by some unknown person, near Linger House bar.
Rhodes, the guard, was thrown off and seriously injured.
In September, 1836, a shocking accident befel the down Manchester
“Peveril of the Peak,” five miles from Bedford. The coach turned over,
and a gentleman named O’Brien was killed on the spot. The coachman lay
two hours under the coach, and died from his injuries.
The next disaster on our list was caused by a drunken coachman’s dazed
state of mind. Early on a Sunday morning in June, 1837, the Lincoln
and London Mails met and came into collision at Lower Codicote, near
Biggleswade. The driver of the up mail, Thomas Crouch, was in a state
of partial intoxication at the time, and owing to a curve in the road,
and the wandering state of his faculties, he did not observe the
approach of the other mail. The result was that, although the coachman
of the other made room for him to pass, the two coaches came into
violent collision. The coach driven by Crouch was turned completely
round, ran twenty or thirty yards in a direction opposite to that it
was originally taking, and finally settled in a leaning posture in the
ditch. Crouch was so injured that he died a few hours afterwards. The
passengers were not much hurt, but two horses were killed.
On September 8th, a coachman named Burnett was killed at Speenhamland,
on the Bath Road. He was driving one of the New Company’s London and
Bristol stages, and alighted at the “Hare and Hounds,” very foolishly
leaving the horses unattended, with the reins on their backs. He
had been a coachman for twenty years, but experience had not been
sufficient to prevent him thus breaking one of the first rules of
the profession. He had no sooner entered the inn than the rival Old
Company’s coach came down the road. Whether the other coachman gave the
horses a touch with his whip as he passed, or if they started on their
own accord, is not known, but they did start, and Burnett, rushing out
to stop them, was thrown down and trampled on so that he died.
Of another kind was the fatal accident that closed the year on the
Glasgow Road. On the night of December 18th, the up Glasgow Mail ran
over a man, supposed to have been a drunken carter, who was lying in
the middle of the highway.
1837. _August._--The up Glasgow Mail, the up Edinburgh Mail, the
Edinburgh and Dumfries, and the Edinburgh and Portpatrick Mails all
upset the same night, at different places.
1838. _August._--The London to Lincoln Express met a waggon at night,
at Mere Hall, six miles from Lincoln. The coachman called to the
waggoner to make room, and a young man who, it is supposed, was asleep
on the top, started up, and rolled off. The waggon-wheels went over and
killed him.
_September._--The Edinburgh and Perth “Coburg” was the subject of
a singular accident. Passengers and luggage were being received
at Newhall’s Pier, South Queensferry, when the leader suddenly
turned round, and before the coachman and guard, who were stowing
luggage, could render assistance, coach and horses disappeared over
the quay-wall. Some of the outsides saved their lives by throwing
themselves on the pier, but the four insides were less fortunate. Two
of them thrust their heads through the windows, and so kept above the
sea-water; the other two--a Miss Luff and her servant--were drowned.
One outside, who had been flung far out into the sea, could fortunately
swim, and so came ashore safe, but exhausted. Nine years later,
February 16th, 1847, a similar accident happened to the Torrington and
Bideford omnibus, when the horses took fright and plunged with the
vehicle into the river from Bideford Quay. Of the twelve passengers,
ten were drowned.
_October._--The “Light Salisbury,” having met the train at Winchfield
Station, proceeded to Hurstbourne Hill, between Basingstoke and
Andover, where the bit of one of the horses caught in the pole and
the coach was immediately overturned. One passenger died the same
afternoon, and another was taken to his house at Andover without the
slightest hope of recovery. A young woman’s leg was broken, and two
other passengers’ limbs were smashed.
The railway journals, which had even thus early sprung into flourishing
existence, did not fail to notice the increasing number of coaching
accidents, the _Railway Times_ with great gusto reporting twenty in a
few weeks. The prevalence of these disasters was a cynical commentary
upon the “Patent Safety” coaches running on every road, warranted
never to overturn and doing so with wonderful regularity, and on those
coaching prints noticed by Charles Dickens--“coloured prints of coaches
starting, arriving, changing horses; coaches in the sunshine, coaches
in the wind, coaches in the mist and rain, coaches in all circumstances
compatible with their triumph and victory; but never in the act of
breaking down, or overturning.”
The last years of coaching were, in fact, even more fruitful in
accidents than the old days. Especially pathetic were the circumstances
attendant upon the disaster that overtook the “Lark” Leicester and
Nottingham Stage on May 23rd, 1840. The coach was on its last journey
when it occurred, for the morrow was to witness the opening of the
railway between those places. Like most of these last trips, the
occasion was marked by much circumstance. Crowds assembled to witness
the old order of things visibly pass away, and Frisby, the coachman,
had dolefully tied black ribbons round his whipstock, to mark the
solemnity of the event. Unfortunately, that badge of mourning proved in
a little while to be only too appropriate, for the well-loaded coach
had only gone about a mile and a half beyond Loughborough when Frisby,
who had been driving recklessly all the way, and had several times been
remonstrated with, overturned it at Coates’ Mill. A Mr. Pearson and
another were killed. Pearson, who had especially come to take part in
this last drive, was connected with the “Times” London and Nottingham
coach. He had been seated beside Frisby, and had several times
warned him, without avail. His thighs were broken, and he received a
severe concussion of the brain, from which he died at midnight. Frisby
himself was crippled for life.
[Illustration: A QUEER PIECE OF GROUND IN A FOG: “IF WE GET OVER THE
RAILS, WE SHALL BE IN A UGLY FIX.”
_After C. B. Newhouse._
]
The pitcher goes oft to the well, but at last it is broken; and so
likewise the coachmen who, winter and summer, storm or shine, had
driven for almost a generation over the same well-known routes,
at length met their death on them in some unforeseen manner. A
striking instance of this was the sad end of William Upfold--“unlucky
Upfold”--who was coachman of the “Times” Brighton and Southampton
Stage, a coach which ran by way of Worthing and Chichester, he was
a steady and reliable man, fifty-four years of age, and had been a
coachman for thirty-five years, when fatal mischance slew him on a
February night, 1840. A singularly long series of more or less serious
accidents had constantly attended him from 1831. In that year his leg
was broken in an upset, and he had only just recovered and resumed
his place when the coach was overturned again, this time through the
breaking of an axle. The injuries he received kept him a long time
idle. Again, in January 1832, at Bosham, the furies were eager for his
destruction. He got off at the wayside inn, and left the reins in the
hands of a passenger, who very foolishly alighted also, a minute or so
later. When Upfold saw him enter the inn he hastily left it; but the
horses had already started. In trying to stop them he was kicked on
the leg, and fell under the wheels, which passed over him and broke the
other leg.
Poor Upfold recovered at last, and might have looked forward to
immunity from any more accidents; but Fate had not yet done with him.
When nearing Salvington Corner, one night in February 1840, he was
observed by Pascoe, a coachman who was with him, to pull the wrong rein
in turning one of the awkward angles that mark this stretch of road.
“Upfold, what are you at with the horses?” he asked.
“I have pulled the wrong rein,” said Upfold.
“Then mind and pull the right one this time,” rejoined Pascoe; but
scarcely had he said it when the coach toppled over. Nearly every
one was hurt, but Upfold was killed. His pulling the wrong rein was
inexplicable. The unfortunate man knew the road intimately, and the
witnesses declared he was absolutely sober; and so the country-folk,
who knew his history and how often accidents had come his way, were
reduced to the fatalistic remark that “it had to be.”
1841. _November 8th._--Rival coaches leaving Skipton started racing on
the Colne and Burnley road. The horses of one grew unmanageable and
ran away. The passengers, alarmed, began to jump off, and a Manchester
man, name unknown, who had been sitting beside the coachman, laid hold
of the reins to help the coachman pull the horses in. In doing so, he
pulled their heads to one side, and they dashed with appalling force
into a blank wall. He was killed on the spot. All the passengers who
had jumped off were more or less seriously injured; but a woman and a
boy, who had remained quietly in their seats on the roof, were unhurt.
1842. _January 17th._--The “Nettle,” Welshpool and Liverpool
coach, overturned by a stone near Newtown. Mr. Jones, of Gorward,
Denbighshire, a Dissenting minister, going to live at Kerry,
Montgomeryshire, was thrown off the roof. He died two days later of his
injuries, in great agony.
_December 28th._--The Mail, coming south from Caithness-shire, broke an
axle at Latheronwheel Bridge, and Donald Boss, the coachman, was dashed
from his box over the bridge into the rocky burn, thirty feet below,
and killed. The guard had a narrow escape. Fortunately, there were no
passengers.
1843. _February 18th._--The Cheltenham and Aberystwith Mail left the
“Green Dragon,” at Hereford, on its way, and proceeded as usual to St.
Owen’s turnpike-gate. The gate was open, as a matter of course, for the
Mail, but the boisterous wind blowing at the time sent it swinging back
across the road as the Mail passed. It hit the near wheeler a violent
blow and broke the trace and the reins. Then rebounding, it struck
the body of the coach with such force that Eyles, the coachman, was
thrown off the box and killed. The horses, thoroughly terrified, then
ran away, and, meeting some donkey-carts on the road, ran into them,
injuring some old women driving from market. One of them subsequently
died from her hurts.
_March 22nd._--The Norwich Day Coach upset at Brentwood. The coachman,
James Draing, who was also proprietor, was killed.
_April 21st._--The Southampton and Exeter Mail upset in the New Forest,
two miles from Stony Cross, by the horses, frightened at an overturned
waggon, running the coach up a bank. Cherry, the coachman, met a
dreadful death, his head being literally split in two. A subscription
of £350 was raised for his widow and six children.
_May 1st._--The “Red Rover,” Ironbridge and Wolverhampton coach, upset
half a mile from Madeley. One passenger, name unknown, killed. He was
described as “a very stout gentleman, apparently about sixty years of
age, dressed in an invisible green coat and great-coat of the same
colour.”
_June 26th._--William Cooke, guard of the Worcester coach, fell off his
seat and was killed.
_September 16th._--The Ludlow and Bewdley “Red Rover” overturned by the
breaking of the front axle. The coach was going slowly down-hill at the
time, and the wheel had the slipper on. It was a heavily-loaded coach,
and all the outsides were violently thrown. A Mr. Thomas, a native
of Ludlow, fifty-seven years of age, retired from business, was so
seriously injured that he died next day. At the inquest a deodand of
£30 was placed on the coach.
[Illustration: ROAD VERSUS RAIL.
_After C. Cooper Henderson 1845._
]
From this time forward the records of coaching accidents grow fewer,
and occur at longer intervals; but only because coaches themselves
were being swiftly replaced by the railways, which had by now come
largely into their kingdom. Railway accidents took their place, and
the coaching artists began to paint, and the printsellers to publish,
pictures like that of “Road _versus_ Rail” engraved here, showing a
very smart and well-appointed coach bowling safely along the road,
while a railway accident in progress in the middle distance attracts
the elegant and rather smug attention of coachman and passengers.
Every one now forgot the numerous casualties of the old order of
things--save, indeed, the bereaved and the maimed, suffering from the
happenings of pure mischance, or from the drunken or sporting folly of
the coachmen.
But to the very last, in those outlying districts to which the rail
came late, and where the coaches continued to ply regularly until
the ’fifties, the tragical possibilities of the road were insistent,
confounding the thorough-going sentimentalists to whom the old times
were everything that was good, and the new, by consequence, altogether
bad. Listen to the moving tale of the Cheltenham and Aberystwith down
mail on a wild night “about” 1852, according to the vague recollection
for dates of Moses James Nobbs.
Although torrents of rain had been falling and the night was pitch
dark, all went well with the mail until nearing the Lugg Bridge, near
Hereford, where the little river Lugg, rushing furiously in spate to
join the Wye, had undermined the masonry. No sooner did the horses
place their weight upon it than the arch gave way, and the coachman,
Couldery the guard, and the one passenger, were precipitated into
the torrent and swept away for more than a mile down stream. It was
midnight when the accident happened, and until daybreak the three, at
separate points, clung to rocks and branches, from which they were then
rescued by search-parties. The coachman and guard recovered from the
exposure, but the passenger died.
Charles Ward, that fine old coachman, who kept on the road in Cornwall
for many years after coaching had ceased over the rest of England,
tells amusingly of the happening that befell the cross-country Bath and
Devonport Mail, in some year unspecified. It might have been a most
serious accident, but fortunately ended happily. The coach was due to
arrive at Devonport at eleven o’clock at night. On this particular
occasion all the outside passengers, except a Mrs. Cox, an “immense
woman,” who kept a fish-stall in Devonport Market, had been set down at
Yealmpton, where the coachman and guard usually had their last drain.
They went, as usual, into the inn, and very considerately sent out
to Mrs. Cox a glass of “something warm,” it being a very cold night.
The servant-girl who took out that cheering glass was not able to
reach up to the roof, and so the ostler, who was holding the horses’
heads, very imprudently left them, to do the polite, when the animals,
hearing some one getting on the coach, and thinking (for coach-horses
did actually do something like it) that it was the coachman, started
off, and trotted at their ordinary speed the whole seven miles to the
door of the “King’s Arms” at Plymouth, where they were in the habit of
stopping to discharge some of the coach-freight. On their way they had
to cross the Laira Bridge and through the toll-bar, and did so, keeping
clear of everything on the road in as workmanlike a manner as though
the skilfullest of whips was directing their course. Mrs. Cox, however,
was terrified. Afraid to scream lest she should startle the horses,
she had to content herself with gesticulating and trying to attract
the attention of the people met or passed on the road. When the horses
drew up in an orderly fashion at the “King’s Arms,” and the ostlers
came bustling out to attend to their duties, they were astonished to
see no one but the affrighted Mrs. Cox on the outside, and two inside
passengers, who had been in total ignorance of what was happening.
The coachman and guard, in a very alarmed state, soon came up in a
post-chaise. It took many quarterns of gin to steady the nerves of
the proprietress of the fish-stall, and the incident became the chief
landmark of her career.
We will conclude this chapter of accidents on this lighter and less
sombre note, and tell how humour sometimes remained in the foreground
even if the possibilities of tragedy lurked threatening in the rear.
The tale used often to be told on the Exeter Road how, on one occasion,
when Davis was driving the up “Quicksilver” Mail between Bagshot
and Staines on a dark night, he ran into some obstruction, and the
coach was upset into the adjoining field, fortunately a wet meadow.
The “insides” were asleep at the time, and they naturally awoke in
the wildest alarm. One, who did not grasp the situation, called out,
“Coachman, coachman, where are we?” “By God, sir,” replied Davis, “I
don’t know, for I was never here before in all my life!” Happily,
nobody and nothing was hurt, and in twenty minutes the coach was away,
making up for lost time.