ECLECTIC MAGAZINE

OF

SEPTEMBER, 1851.

From the Edinburgh Review.

FATAL ACCIDENTS: HOW FAR PREVENTIBLE.*

or commercial arrangements which save the as a foundation, we may safely calculate that public from fluctuations and convulsions, the present population of the United Kingthe careful removal of external noxious agen- dom is double that of England and Wales cies;-all these are more or less the crea- in 1840. Making allowance for the proportures of legislation, and have an influence on tional number of violent deaths having in the vitality, in so much that where they are ma- mean decreased, we may perhaps now count terially deficient,-where men are tyrannical them, in round numbers, at 20,000 in the year. greedy, dishonest, reckless of the safety of This is in itself a vast mass of calamity. It their fellow-men and of their own, where would appal the world if it came in considthey wallow in moral and physical impurity, erable instalments. All Europe was startled and oscillate between abject poverty and un- by the accident which killed 1200 people at certain riches, we may be assured that the the rejoicings for the marriage of Marie Antraces of these malign influences, if they pos- toinette, and which was in some measure resess any such record, will be palpably mark-peated on that of Marie Louise. Our five ed in their tables of mortality. great naval victories in the late war cost us

figure in the human sacrifices of Napoleon: and it will be remembered that the result of the three bloody days of the battle of Paris was deemed to be grossly exaggerated when the deaths were computed at 8,000.

The statistics of most subjects often pre-only 1233 killed, and 3626 wounded; while sent a startling appearance to those who 20,000 were probably beyond the British loss have already arrived on them at independent in battle in any one of its campaigns. Twenconclusions of their own. There are fewty thousand deaths would have cut no mean who would be fortunate enough to approach by guess-work to the exact number of deaths caused by violent accidents in the United Kingdom. Some would enumerate all they remember seeing in newspapers, others would launch into a sea of figures, of which they do not know the actual meaning. In 1838, according to the Report of the Registrar-general, the number of deaths from violence in England and Wales was 11,727. Either there had been some defect in the returns for that year, or the causes of such calamities were decreasing, while population increased for the number in the ensuing year was 11,632; in 1840, 11,594; and in 1841, 11,000. We do not find in the Registrar's Reports of later years the causes of death so separated and distinguished,-at least over the whole kingdom. Scotland and Ireland are both destitute of the valuable machinery of the registration system; so that we know no more directly of vital statistics in these countries, than in China and Japan. But taking the English returns,

It might be natural to expect that, as the same uniform classes of facts have to be recorded by him every year, the Reports of the Registrar-general should be as uniform as an almanac or tide-table. Each annual volume, however, is an independent book with distinct subjects. And a cursory examination of the volumes shows a satisfactory reason for this. The materials collected by the registration system are of the same class every year; but the ways in which they may be used and applied to each other, especially with reference to a succession of years, are infinitely varied. A considerable number of these applications even would occupy too much bulk for an annual Report, and so each year presents its separate combinations: in one, we have the influence of the atmosphere or of politics on mortality-in another, that of trade, on marriages

and births-and so on.

To avert a portion, say a half or a quarter, of the violent deaths incident to peaceful occupations, would surely be a great boon to the community. We see in other departments of the dark catalogue, what the energy of man can accomplish in rendering life more secure. If we look at the element of starvation, which in some countries is so conspicuous, we shall find that the spirit and mechanism of English society have been brought to bear effectually against it, and that-partly from self-exertion, and partly from the application of the Poor Law, where self-exertion has proved insufficient — the mortality from this cause, more miserable yet perhaps than from violence, is comparatively small. It was, in 1838, 167; in 1839, 130; and in 1840, 137. The mortality test, as lately shown to the Metropolitan Association, by Dr. Southwood Smith, gauges the saving of human life which will be effected by improving the dwellings of the industrious poor.

Of course, the numbers of the dead only represent a certain per-centage of the direct sufferers on these occasions. How many are injured for every one whose life is extinguished by any class of violent agencies, would be a curious object of inquiry it would be found to vary greatly with the circumstances which occasion the violence. We happen to alight at this moment on a note of the casualties caused by an attempt, in 1828, to rush out of a church at Kirkcaldy. The Reverend Edward Irving was addressing

3

few considerations tending to show how far it is within human power to modify those violent jerks and oscillations of the physical world which snap the thread of life, and scatter the hopes and affections clustering round it in desolation and despair.

more value than any ship in his Majesty's navy;' and we have always considered the remark as sound as it was humane, presuming it to be applied to circumstances where neither the national defence nor the safety of others would be endangered. Nulla unquam de vita hominis cunctatio longa est. If a human being is in risk of his life, and can pos

a crowded audience; an alarm arose for the safety of the building; 28 of his congregation were crushed to death, and 150 injured. In the first quarterly railway accidents' return for 1851, the number of persons killed 'from circumstances beyond their own control' is 3, the number injured, 33; while, by the class of accidents set down as 'owing to In the first place we must set it down as their own misconduct or want of caution,' an end money is no object;' that wherever an axiom, that in the accomplishment of such the passengers killed were 7, those injured life can be directly and certainly saved, withonly 3. But in the succeeding quarterly out some counteracting evil,-as for instance, return the proportion is still more startling; without causing any crime or recklessness since, where 9 passengers are killed, 138 are that may afterwards have more deleterious injured from circumstances beyond their own effects on vitality, it ought to be saved by the control, though, of passengers suffering State, at whatever cost. from their own misconduct, &c., there are 9 Hunter, the governor of New South Wales, When Captain injuries to 13 deaths. A strange and unex- lost his ship by putting back for a man who pected disproportion this, arising apparently had fallen overboard, he vindicated himself from the injuries caused by slight collisions. before a court-martial by saying that he But the immediate deaths, or the imme-considered the life of a British seaman of diate wounds, are not all which the public suffer from such calamities. Firt comes that indefinite circle, disappearing as it widens, of those who suffer in their affections, their interests, or their sympathies. But even in the still waters beyond the last perceptible vibration,-where, outwardly indeed, people might not only seem callous to the misfortunes of the sufferers, but selfishly exult-sibly be saved; in case a well, for instance, ng in their own exemption,-there is a jarring of the nerves, an inward unsettledness, which makes life uneasy, and expands into positive distress as often as the excited imagination succeeds in drawing analogies between the thinker's position and that of the sufferer. In many instances some permanent shock to the nerves, even madness itself, has been attributed to the circumstances under which the patient became acquainted with some frightful accident. In the case of parties present at any of the great catastrophes, as for example in the Sutton tunnel, who shall venture to sum up the mental horror suffered there by the 1,500 victims for three quar- *As the statistics of this element of mortality ters of an hour, amidst damp and darkness, are so imperfect at home, we cannot expect to obtain uproar and confusion, the finding of the them in a very complete state in foreign countries. dead and wounded, while the work of death In France, according to some tables published by was going on at intervals,the Registrar-general, accidental deaths were, in -no one knowing 1843, 6,436, and in 1844, 6,729. This would be a when the next remorseless crash would come, small comparative number, if it formed a considerand whom and how many it would slay! able proportion of the kinds of death counted vio Could the calling over of the guillotine lists lent in England. But while their habits of life are n the Parisian prisons be an ordeal of great-hand an excess of those worst kinds of violent death exposed to much fewer risks, there is on the other er agony? Yet the primary cause of all this horror was an engine insufficient for the weight attached to it.

Perhaps we have said quite enough, but the importance of the matter will not be questioned; and it will be no waste of the reader's time if we can present him with a

has fallen in, or a building has given way, and there is one beneath who may yet be spared to breathe and live with his fellow men,-is there any wealth, or labour, or enthusiasm, that will be withheld to procure his rescue? Indeed, large as we have calculated the number of deaths by violence, we question whether the proportion would be as small in any other country exposed to an equal multiplicity of dangers. The cool indifference to life, by which as late as the time of Henry the Eighth we were supposed to be nationally distinguished, has passed into

which are excluded from our consideration on this

occasion. Thus, in 1843 the murders were 306, and in 1844, they were 403. In England, the number of murders in 1840 was 65, and the number in the two preceding years was 156-being an average of for 1848, 2,142, and for 1844, 2,200. In 1839, the 78 for each year. In France, the suicides were cumber in England was 943.