perfect." The result of the investigation is, that the Commissioners hope that the Directors will see the propriety of adopting precautions for the safety of the public,' &c. The railway companies, in their litigations with parties claiming damages for injury caused by accident, strongly endeavoured to carry as a point of law, the principle that they were not responsible for the consequences of these latent defects' as they were called; but their liability fortunately was sustained. It is not sufficient, however, that the courts, both civil and criminal, are open in case of injury: the public should be protected from risk. But the adoption of preconstituted securities for the sufficiency of materials would be expensive.' Certainly; and here we are driven back on the axiom with which we started, that the safety of life is the first thing to be provided for. For a decrease of the 20,000, annual deaths by violence, we must look to the statistical classification of the causes of these deaths; and seek to induce the Legislature to take peremptory protective measures against each operative cause, however much it may embarrass the probable investment of capital or the amount of dividends. It is admitted, that in most of the affairs of life the people of this country require less central interference than those of any other European nation. This may be true, even of railway travelling. The general safety, considering how slight is the governmental control over the powerful corporations entitled to make their profits by conveying passengers and goods in the cheapest manner, is even at present most remarkable. The number of passengers killed was 30 in 1847, 21 in 1848, 23 in 1849, and 32 in 1850. So small a proportion of deaths levied on the travelling community, shows that what the companies require is not so much control as regulation. A more effective check on carelessness or parsimony, and a closer responsibility, might reduce the number of accidents nearly to zero. In the meantime we have no hold on companies to prevent them from gambling with the public safety. In other words, though they are pecuniarily responsible for injuries caused by carelessness or defectiveness, and though they know that when any flagrant calamity occurs, their line will be for a time deserted, they have it in their power to run risks involving both the lives of the passengers and their own fortunes, in sanguine reliance on the chapter of accidents turning up in their favour, and we know that they have persevered in doing so. The Reports of the Railway Commissioners are filled with expostulations to the companies to abandon practices fraught with danger, such as have come under the notice of the inspector, from their being of a kind which have occasioned fatal accidents. For instance, when the train went off the rails at Rockliffe, on the Caledonian line, and killed five people, besides doing much secondary mischief, it was found that the whole had been caused by the defective construction of a fixture on a wheel. It would surely be no extravagant interference with freedom of action and the rights of property, to make it penal to employ a wheel of so dangerous a construction. The Railway Board, however, could only gently report that it appeared to the inspecting officer that the wheel had been improperly fitted in the first instance in the manufactory; and a as great number of wheels fixed in a similar munner were in daily use upon railways, and the accident had occurred on this wheel after it had travelled from 12,000 to 13,000 miles, the Commissioners caused a circular to be sent to the Railway Companies, calling attention to the remarks of the inspecting officer upon the advisability of an examination of all wheels so fixed, and the adoption of measures to prevent a similar catastrophe.' Yet, if any company chose to disregard this representation, and, for the sake of present economy, to take the chance of a similar catastrophe, there appears to be no law subjecting the managing partners to responsibility by punishment as criminals, for this wholesale gambling with human life. People may dif fer on the propriety of making directors criminally responsible, at least until they are fully warned, and defy the warning. But surely when death has occurred, and scientific authorities point out the distinct cause of it, there should be summary means of interference. It is not enough that railway servants are punishable by the criminal law for any neglect of duty, according to the nature of the case. A stricter protection of the public requires that some person should be authorized to see that there are no latent sources of danger in the materials or machinery and the general arrangements. Most recent accidents on railways bring home the cause to an insufficient staff of skilled employées, and to a dangerous economy overtasking the capacity of subordinate officers. Thus, in the alarming accident at Cowlairs, However un pleasant or humiliating such a record might be, it could not but be of service. This system has indeed been partially commenced by the Railway Board in the transmission of circular notices on the prevalent causes of accident. Thus, having had to examine four successive accidents caused by the explosion of the boiler, a circular was sent to the several companies which ran thus: near Glasgow, several people were killed from | A succinct tabular statement of these accipalpable deficiency of service and caution; dents and their causes might, one should yet no one was penally responsible; since the think, be prepared to good purpose, and be subordinate officers who were tried could not widely distributed, especially among railway be punished for mere failure to do impossi- servants. Some companies would not like bilities; and their superiors, who were well this, as it must show the men how great a scolded by the bench, had, in lowering their proportion of cases arises from excessive establishment to so fatal a pitch, committed parsimony and an insufficient establishment. no crime punishable by law. The public will It would also show, how often the most never feel at ease while their safety depends respectable and painstaking officers are the on the discretion of inferior and uneducated victims of these defects. officers, with too heavy an amount of duty economised on their shoulders. A collision occurred on the Leeds and Thirsk line in September, 1849, and it appeared from the report of Captain Simmons that, while eleven passenger trains passed the spot daily, there were two good trains, concerning which the principal regulations were,-that, the goods guards must endeavour to work their trains so as not to impede passenger trains, and a goods, mineral, or ballast train, when likely to be overtaken by a passenger train, shall shunt at least fifteen minutes before the passenger train is due, and wait there five minutes after the passenger train is past.' Thus, the safety of every traveller on that line depended on the discretion of the guards of those good trains, who, no doubt, for their own safety, would endeavour to work their trains so as not to impede passenger trains,' though perhaps they might sometimes find it a perilous kind of pilotage; and would also shunt when likely to be overtaken by a passenger train,' provided they knew distinctly when there was such a likelihood. In fact, the accident was occasioned by the guard of a goods train being utterly ignorant whether the passenger train was due or not. This seems a tempting of Providence as it is called, -rather a defying. Captain Simmons naturally suggested,-nothing beyond a suggestion could come from the Railway Board, that there should be fixed arrangements on the line, so that the drivers and guards should be relieved from the undue responsibility now attached to them, in starting on a journey with no instructions as to the getting out of the way of passenger trains beyond the above-quoted regulations, and a printed passenger time-table.' 'T'he accounts of fifty separate accidents in the last Commissioner's Report (some of them already referred to) show a remarkable generic similarity in the causes at work; the same deficiencies uniformly repeating themselves, with little perceptible difference, except that the amount of slaughter varies with the number of victims present at the time. "The Commisioners are informed that these occurrences all receive a very probable solution; and the facts connected with them tend to establish that the water in the boilers had been allowed, either by accident or neglect, to diminish, so as to leave the top of the fire-box uncovered, and therefore liable to acquire a great heat from the continued action of the fire. Under these circumstances, the suppiy of water has been increased, or, from other causes, it has accumulated at the fire-box end of the boiler, so as to flow over the heated plate. This action would produce a very rapid evaporation; and it is probable that it has been so rapid and to such an extent, that neither the escape of steam through the cylinders nor the safety-valves has been sufficient to relieve the pressure suddenly produced in the boiler; and explosion has taken place.' The two most fatal accidents which have latterly appalled the public-that of Cowlairs, near Glasgow, and that of the Sutton or Frodsham Tunnel,—are both, in their operative causes, typified by similar minor accidents, which might have been, but fortunately were not, equally fatal,-and, like them, are traceable to defective and parsimonious arrangements. At Cowlairs an engine was to pass from the front, cross, and get to the back of a train. The nearest crossing point was shut by the carriages of this train-and the next by another train. The driver of the latter was requested to move back and open the crossing. He politely did so. One cannot help speculating how his passengers would have felt in the consciousness that this little accommodation exposed them for a couple of minutes to about as much danger as the soldiers who defended Hougemont at Waterloo. The end of the train stretched beyond the signal-post. It was but two minutes exposed, but that was enough; another train coming up with unconscious rapidity, dashed into it. The precaution, which would have averted the collision, was the sending a man back with a hand signal; but there was no one to do this duty. In fact, the few officers present, -the break-headsman, guard, and engineman,-had a fearful press of business and responsibility thrown on them; and they found themselves without definite instructions, under circumstances for which, indeed, they had not sufficient official strength, however fully they might have been instructed. It would seem, from the inspector's Report that the driver wished a pointsman to take a signal, but the man said he had other things to do. He then directed his fireman to go and tell the guard to go back with a signal. Whilst the fireman was in the act of going to tell the guard to go back, the train drawn by Brown's engine came in sight from around the curve, and the crash took place. Could any jury convict the driver, who had asked, first, the pointsman, and then the fireman to tell the guard to go with a signal; or the pointsman, who had other things to do; or the fireman, who could not find the guard in an instant; or the guard, who was not told; or even the driver of the advancing train, who, in unconscious security, was coming up very fast? This tragedy occurred in August, 1850. Within two months we find the same story repeated, in everything but its bloody conclusion; and this was averted only by the skill and carefulness of the driver of the assaulting train. At Woodlesford, on the Midland line, an excursion train was detained. The weather was very foggy, and the train stretched 160 yards beyond the signal; being thus unprotected by it, when another train came up. The driver was proceeding with extreme caution, and the collision was slight; but it might have been more deadly even than that of Cowlairs. On the 15th July, 1850, a train entered the Blackheath tunnel of the North Kent line, of which the cavernous' progress is thus described by the Government inspector:-The load proved too great for the engine on so steep an incline, and with such slippery rails. The train, too, owing to the previous delays, commenced the ascent at a very slow pace, when it wanted all the momentum of accumulated speed to carry it up the incline. The engine had only got a few yards inside the tunnel when the driving wheels began to slip, and soon the speed was so much reduced, that the fireman jumped off, and walked beside the engine, shovelling up sand upon the wet rails, to enable the drivingwheels to bite, the engine having a sand-box only on one side.' Thus was it slowly labouring through the tunnel, when a passenger train ran into it. The Blackheath tunnel, therefore, would have anticipated the terrible catastrophe at Sutton, but for a material element of difference. Instead of human beings, the train broken in upon was freighted with fruit for Covent Garden Market. Sutton has left scars on the public mind too deep to be soon forgotten; and some of our readers will remember the identity of the principle cause of the crash with that which we have just been describing. There were others, it is true, in the Sutton case, to make the tragedy more complete. Not only was the engine insufficient to bite the slippery rails, but defects in the carriage acted as a drag. The policemen usually stationed by the tunnel mouths were withdrawn at a time (the races) when they were specially needed; and the trains, instead of having a systematic precedence, were despatched as fast as they could be filled-filled extravagantly beyond the locomotive strength of the engines, as had been represented to be the case by the responsible officers of the company-the slowest happening to be sent off first. Yet, in his analysis of the causes of the previous accident at Blackheath, the Government inspector had embodied what, if it had been put into the shape of an order, and had been enforceable, instead of being a mere expression of opinion, would have guarded against the recurrence of this particular form of destructiveness, of which so fearful a repetition was to recur. The inspector said, 'The causes of this accident are at once apparent, namely-1st, the insufficiency of engine power, there having been only one pilot engine stationed at Woolwich. 2ndly, the imperfect rules laid down for working the traffic through the tunnel. 3rdly, the neglect of the guard of the fruit train in leaving Strood without his fog-signals, and in not at once procuring others from the driver when he found that his train was delayed. A general review of many reported railway accidents convinces us that a code for merely punishing stipendiary officers is not sufficient protection to the public. There must be something nearer an adoption of the obsta principiis. Unpunctuality is a main cause of accident ;-an unpunctuality created by imperfect, because parsimonious, organisation. Subordinates, who would act most faithfully under distinct regulations and have a right to expect them for their guidance, are driven to rely on their own discretion; and instead of mere obedience to orders, a fund of individual resources seems to be taken for granted, such as one might be thankful for in effective commanders of armies. Those who are best trained to formal duties, are sometimes the worst fitted for emerging efforts of presence of mind and forethought. What should be as regular as the motions of the clock, becomes an entanglement and confusion of persons and machinery, on the sudden aspect of danger and death. The station-master or pointsman has his instructions for acting according to a certain routine of trains; but the routine is not followed; and instead of acting on his instructions, he has to make, on the instant, a new arrangement, of which he cannot calculate the results, and with which he cannot get his fellow-officers to cooperate. There is something pathetic in that part of the official Report on the Sutton accident, which describes the efforts of the guard of the fourth train to take a signal to the mouth of the tunnel. After passing the impediments in the tunnel, and beginning to run, he had only got back a very short distance, when he heard the noise of another engine approaching.' The man's nerves had been very much shaken by the unusual circumstances under which he was called upon to act. Upon hearing the engine apparently quite close to him, while the darkness prevented his seeing any thing beyond the reach of his own small lamp, he completely lost his presence of mind and fell over the ballast in the centre of the tunnel: and there he lay all the time the last train was passing by him, as he himself relates, in such a state of excitement and fear, that he was scarcely conscious of any thing which occurred. In one case described by the Commissioners in their Report for 1850, the station-keeper had no clock or watch, but he took his time from the passing of a particular train; and that train being, on one occasion, unpunctual, put him wrong, and a collision was the consequence. To the causes of accident already mentioned we must add badly framed and insufficient instructions, together with an imperfect supply of the minor machinery for a line-such as breaks and signals, and perhaps guards, as seems from what passed lately before the Lewes inquest. Among the multiform origins of railway evils, neither last nor least is the practice of permitting rules to be habitually neglected until some crash reminds the directors and superior officers of their existence. All these, with other latent causes of death, are in perpetual operation, and the question still remains— how are we to be protected from them? The power and wealth of the railway corporations have, we all know, made Government loth to interfere with them; but the public now loudly demands increased protectionand it must be given. As we have already said, we do not anticipate that absolute control will be necessary, or the penal punishment of directors for either carelessness or culpable parsimony. It is too clear, however, that penal consequences to culpable officers, though coupled with pecuniary loss to shareholders, are but poor protection. Perhaps the example set by the factories and mining acts may be followed; and, in case of a stringent and minute system of inspection being adopted, to make it criminal in directors to continue any arrangement condemned as dangerous by the proper officer, might be as much security as the subject admits of. Hitherto we have looked to the position of the passengers only; but they are not the only persons slain or maimed by railway trains. The companies collectively, and individually every company not in desperate circumstances, have a strong pecuniary interest in the safety of passengers; for, every fatal accident brings after it a collapse of passenger fares. But even this interest, which has been found insufficient to secure the highest degree of care, is wanting, (except as far as Lord Campbell's act creates it,) in the case of the public at large. It is the pecuniary interest of companies to carry their lines through all convenient levels, inhabited or not, leaving it to the public to take care of themselves. Thus we have annually a formidable item of railway accidents in 'trespassers and other persons, neither passengers nor servants of the company;' among whom the slaughter in 1847 was returned as 57; in 1848 as 43; in 1849 as 52; and, in 1850, 48. These numbers represent, in a great measure, victims deliberately offered up to the cheap construction of railways. Level crossings are less costly than bridges or tunnels, and they are sanctioned at so many lives a year. It would, we think, have been a good rule from the commencement, and one of which the cost would have been well repaid to the public in its sense of security and ease of mind, had all railways been, as it were, hermetically sealed, so as to render trespassing in them next to impossible. There is yet another and a very heavy item of vital responsibility to be laid at the door of railway companies. How do they pro vide for the safety of their own servants? It | twenty-six. I think it may be possible-one is among these that we find the great prepon- or two more or less somewhere therederance of fatalities. Thus there were slain abouts.** in 1847, 124; in 1848, 138; in 1849, 127; This gentleman appears to have been a and, in 1850, 128. We cannot doubt that rigid performer of his duty; and his duty much of this sacrifice of life could be avoid- was to blast rocks, not to save men's lives; ed by the adoption of precautionary arrange- which, at the rate of twenty-six per tunnel, ments, at a slight increase of outlay. Here, more or less, he seems to have looked on as however, is opened up a vista of other transac- a trifling affair. Conscientious fulfilment of tions, where life in the labouring class has defined duties is one of the national virtues; certainly been far more wantonly wasted than and the engineer's zeal for his own departis at present the case in the working of our ment, only points to the propriety of what railways. The attention of the public was we have already hinted at,-separate provistrongly directed, a few years ago, by Mr. sions for insuring the safety of life at whatChadwick, to the inconsiderate selfishness of ever cost, and their enforcement by persons contractors for railway cuttings and other whose special duty it shall be to carry them like works, in tempting their ignorant ser- out. Many are the important things left unvants to put their life in peril. In a parlia- done, which will be done well if we can show mentary inquiry which followed, some wit- them to be any one's special duty or function; nesses startled the committeee by their can- but which will be neglected for ever while dour. Reference was made to the use of we can only speak of ultimate results. The copper stemmers, instead of iron, for ram- nurse to whom sanitary reformers might ming home the powder for blasts; and the plead for ever about the dangerous effects of expediency of the substitution was supported her treatment of her offspring, will do careby such instances as this: William Jack- ful justice to the child she is employed to son, miner; He was looking over John tend, not because she loves it better than her Webb's shoulder while he was stemming a own, but because she has stipulated to behole charged with powder, when the blast stow on it a certain attention, and so made went off, blowing the stemmer through Jack- this her bounden charge. A great change son's head, and killed him on the spot.' An was produced in the health of emigrants by assistant engineer on the Sheffield and Man- bargaining with the medical superintendents chester Railway-there is no occasion to give of the vessels for so much per head, not achis name-being questioned about his own cording to the number embarked, but the practice in this matter, said, 'When I inquir- number landed. It has been said that the ed into the thing, I found so very few in- increase in the health and vitality of the exdeed were the accidents that occurred in con-iles which followed this arrangement, represequence of the iron stemmers which we sented the mercenary motive. used, that I did not think it worth while to however, that it is not a refinement to think cause the whole system to be altered, and go it partly owing to a more precise declaration, to the expense of such tools;' which elicited and a better adjustment of the obligation from the querist the remark, 'You thought contracted for. In the one case the surgeon on the part of the company, that it was worth might conceive his duty to be satisfied by atwhile running the risk of two or three men's tending to the passengers when they were lives rather than going to the expense of ill, and prescribing medicine for them; in the more expensive tools.' The same gentleman's other, the privso which made it his interest examination on the use of the patent fuse,' must have also shown him it was his duty to was still more candidly characteristic. In keep them alive, if possible, and for this end, blasting in this tunnel was the patent fuse to keep them in health. used?''No.' 'Is that not more safe for blasting than the common fuse?'-'Perhaps it is; but it is attended with much loss of time, and the difference is so very small. 7 would not recommend the loss of time for all the extra lives it would save.' His unsophisticated ideas as to the worth of human life seem to have almost amused the Committee. Being asked, 'How many deaths were incurred by accident during the construction of the tunnel?' he answered, Mr. Nicholson states We hope, The Legislature of late years has in some measure carried out the object of this paper in the case of manufactories, emigrant vessels, and mines. In the last department, however, there is vast room still for further amendment; and if it do not soon come from the quarters more nearly interested, we should neither be surprised nor grieved to see that * Minutes of Evidence taken before the Select Committee on Railway Labourers. (1846). Questions 1592, 1609, 1629, |