Notes on Railroad Accidents. Adams Charles Francis
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.
Recurring, however, to the accident of December 24, 1861, the numerous casualties in that case were due to the crushing of the rolling stock which was not strong enough to resist the shock of the sudden stop. Under these circumstances the light, short English carriages rode over each other and were broken to pieces; under similar circumstances the longer and heavier cars then in use in America would have "telescoped;" that is, the platforms between the cars would have been broken off and the forward end of each car riding slightly up on its broken coupling would have shot in over the floor of the car before it, sweeping away the studding and other light wood-work and crushing stoves, seats and passengers into one inextricable mass, until, if the momentum was sufficiently great, the several vehicles in the train would be enclosed in each other somewhat like the slides of a partially shut telescope.
Crushing in other countries and telescoping in America were formerly the greatest, if not the worst, dangers to which travel by rail was liable. As respects crushing there is little to be said. It is a mere question of proportions, – resisting strength opposed to momentum. So long as trains go at great speed it is inevitable that they will occasionally be brought to a dead-stand by running upon unexpected obstacles. The simple wonder is that they do this so infrequently. When, however, now and again, they are thus brought to a dead-stand the safety of the passenger depends and can depend on nothing but the strength of the car in which he is sitting as measured by the force of the shock to which it is subjected. This matter has already been referred to in connection with the Shipton and Wollaston accidents,3 the last of which was a significant reminder to all railroad managers that no matter how strongly or with how careful a regard to scientific principles cars may be constructed, just so long as they are made by human hands it is easy to load on weight sufficient, when combined with only a moderate momentum, to crush them into splinters.
Telescoping, however, was an incident of crushing, and a peculiarly American incident, which is not without a certain historical interest; for the particular feature in car construction which led directly to it and all its attendant train of grisly horrors furnishes a singular and instructive illustration of the gross violations of mechanical principles into which practical, as opposed to educated, mechanics are apt constantly to fall, –
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Ante pp. 18-19.