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.
CHAPTER V.
TELESCOPING AND THE MILLER PLATFORM
The period of exemption from wholesale railroad slaughters referred to in a previous chapter and which fortunately marked the early days of the system, seems to have lasted some eleven years. The record of great catastrophes opened on the Great Western railway of England, and it opened also, curiously enough, upon the 24th of December, a day which seems to have been peculiarly unfortunate in the annals of that corporation, seeing that it was likewise the date of the Shipton-on-Cherwell disaster. Upon that day, in 1841, a train, while moving through a thick fog at a high rate of speed, came suddenly in contact with a mass of earth that had slid down upon the track from the slope of the cutting. Instantly the whole rear of the train was piled up on the top of the first carriage, which happened to be crowded with passengers, eight of whom were killed on the spot while seventeen others were more or less injured. The coroner's jury returned a verdict of accidental death, and at the same time, as if to give the corporation a forcible hint to look closer to the condition of its roadway, a "deodand" of one hundred pounds was levied on the locomotive and tender. This practice, by the way, of levying a deodand in cases of railroad accidents resulting in loss of life, affords a curious illustration of how seldom those accidents must have occurred. The mere mention of it now as ever having existed sounds almost as strange and unreal as would an assertion that the corporations had in their earlier days been wont to settle their differences by wager of battle. Like the wager of battle, the deodand was a feature of the English common law derived from the feudal period. It was nothing more nor less than a species of fine, everything through the instrumentality of which accidental death occurred being forfeited to the crown; or, in lieu of the thing itself, its supposed money value as assessed by a coroner's jury.2 Accordingly, down to somewhere about the year 1847, when the practice was finally abolished by act of Parliament, we find in all cases of English railroad accidents resulting in death, mention of the deodand assessed by coroner's juries on the locomotives. These appear to have been arbitrarily fixed, and graduated in amount as the circumstances of the particular accident seemed to excite in greater or less degree the sympathies or the indignation of the jury. In November, 1838, for instance, a locomotive exploded on the Manchester & Liverpool road, killing its engineer and fireman: and for this escapade a deodand of twenty pounds was assessed upon it by the coroner's jury; while upon another occasion, in 1839, where the locomotive struck and killed a man and horse at a street crossing, the deodand was fixed at no less a sum than fourteen hundred pounds, the full value of the engine. Yet in this last case there did not appear to be any circumstances rendering the corporation liable in civil damages. The deodand seems to have been looked upon as a species of rude penalty imposed on the use of dangerous appliances, a sharp reminder to the corporations to look closely after their locomotives and employés. As, however, accidents increased in frequency it became painfully apparent that "crowner's 'quest law" was not in any appreciable degree better calculated to command the public respect in the days of Victoria than in those of Elizabeth, and the ancient usage was accordingly at last abolished. Certainly the position of railroad corporations would now be even more hazardous than it is, if, after every catastrophe resulting in death, the coroner's jury of the vicinage enjoyed the power of arbitrarily imposing on them such additional penalty not exceeding the value of a locomotive, in addition to all other liabilities, as might seem to it proper under the circumstances of the case.