"MOVING ACCIDENTS" BY RAIL AND COACH—SHORT TIME FOR THE ISSUE OF RAILWAY TICKETS—RECKLESS DRIVERS—AN AFFAIR OF HONOUR—ANECDOTE OF THE LATE DUKE OF WELLINGTON.

CHAPTER VI.

A great deal has been written and said upon the subject of accidents in travelling, and comparisons have been made between those caused by rail and road. There can be no doubt that there has been an awful sacrifice of life and an enormous amount of injury attributable to the rail. Where hundreds formerly made their journeys by public mails and stage-coaches, or travelled in their own carriages, thousands upon thousands are now conveyed by steam; and out of those thousands how many are reckless and foolish!—scrambling into the carriages when they are moving, or rushing out before they stop.

Although it would be, humanly speaking, impossible to provide against accidents, for in or after a frost ironwork cannot be depended upon; still, some might be averted by extra care and diligence on the part of those to whom the lives of Her Majesty's faithful subjects are entrusted. I believe it is many years since an accident has occurred on the London, Brighton, and South Coast Railway; and this is mainly owing to the unremitting attention of the general manager, J. P. Knight, Esq., and his staff; and probably there are other railways equally well looked after and equally free from danger.

To render railway travelling safer than it now is, the following rules should be adopted:—First and foremost, the men should be better paid, and not overworked; secondly, the telegraph and signal duties should be placed in the hands of responsible and intelligent persons; and last, not least, punctuality in starting should be rigidly enforced, for in making up for lost time many have found to their cost that the old hunting maxim has been realised, "It is the pace that kills."

To carry out the latter, luggage should be sent into the station a quarter of an hour before the time of departure, and the doors closed to passengers five minutes before the train leaves. How often have I seen trains delayed in London and at different stations in the country through the late arrival of some persons of distinction! The humbler classes do not fare quite as well, for many a farmer's wife, country girl, labourer, or mechanic has either been left behind or has been hustled into the third class carriages, leaving band-boxes, baskets, tools or implements on the platform. It is only a few months ago that I saw the above illustrated.

At—— station, just after the train was in motion, a well-appointed waggonette drove up, the coachman shouting "Wait a moment!" The injunction was obeyed, the train was stopped, and in about four or five minutes two middle-aged ladies, a tiny specimen of the canine race, a luncheon basket, dressing case, work-basket, cloaks, umbrella, and parasols were deposited in a first class compartment, and a large amount of luggage placed in the van. The darling little white, curly-haired pet, "Bijou" by name, soon emancipated itself from the muff in which it had been hid, much to the discomfiture of myself and other occupants of the carriage! Mark the contrast! After about an hour's journey we stopped at a very rural station, and just as the whistle was about to be blown a quiet, respectable-looking female, evidently of the humbler grade, rushed out of the office with merely a small basket in her hand, exclaiming,

"Am I in time, guard?"

"Plenty," he responded, "for the next train."

The whistle was heard, and the poor woman left behind, to ruminate for four hours upon her ill-luck.

There is another evil which many of the railways have got rid of, and which we trust will shortly be universally adopted—I refer to the brief time allowed for taking tickets. In Glasgow (I speak from experience) you may purchase your ticket in offices appointed for the sale of them independent of the railway station. To the public this is a special boon, and upon one occasion I found the benefit of it.

I was engaged to give a lecture at the City Hall, Glasgow, which was to commence at eight o'clock. The night train to London left at twelve minutes after nine, so there was not much time to spare. By taking my ticket in the afternoon, leaving my portmanteau in the cloak-room, engaging an intelligent porter to take it out and have it ready for me, and benefiting by the kindness of my host, Wm. Holms, Esq., M.P. for Paisley, who conveyed me in his brougham from the lecture-hall to the station, I arrived in time for the train, reaching my London home in time for a ten o'clock breakfast, with ample time, as the Yorkshireman says, "to have a wash before a bite."

I now turn to accidents by road. These were principally caused through the carelessness of the drivers, a refractory team, a coach that had not been thoroughly inspected before starting, and occasionally by a coachman who had imbibed a considerable quantity of strong ale or fiery spirits. I could fill pages with accidents that have occurred to stage-coaches, in which many were killed and others most severely hurt.

If I recollect right, a Worcester coach, descending the steep hill into Severn Stoke, was overturned, none of the passengers escaping death; and on all the roads east, west, south, and north of London frequent upsets took place, more especially during the foggy month of November, where ditches bounded the main road.

I well remember travelling from Windsor to London on the box of Moody's coach, driven by "Young Moody," as he was called in contradistinction to his father, the proprietor of it. I was on the box seat; and after passing Cranford Bridge a dense fog set in, one of those fogs that are described as resembling the colour of pea-soup. The coach was full inside and out.

"I don't half like this," said Moody. "If I can only manage to get safe to Hounslow, I'll have the lamps lit."

In those days lucifer-matches were quite unknown, so to get a light from any of the passengers was impossible; not so would it be at the present time, when almost every one carries with his pipe or cigar a box of matches.

Scarcely had my box companion uttered the above words when we were upset, an accident caused by our driving into a deep, broad ditch. I and the outsiders were pitched into the furze on the heath, anything but a bed of roses, while the insides were screeching for help. Some of us ran to the horses to keep them quiet, others lent their aid in extricating three middle-aged ladies and an elderly gentleman who were confined in what one of the females described as the "opaque body of a stage-coach."

After some trouble things were put to rights; happily, no one being severely injured. Thinking it more than probable that if we attempted to proceed on our journey without lamps we should meet with another mishap, I got a labouring friend who came to our assistance to walk to the "Travellers' Friend," and borrow two lanthorns. This he accordingly did; so with the aid of our own lamps and the above lights we managed to reach Hounslow in safety. From Hounslow to London we had difficulties to contend against, for the dim oily rays of a few lamps and lights in shops had not then given way to the brilliancy of gas.

A few years afterwards, when travelling inside the Henley coach, an axletree broke, and we were upset into a drift of snow—soft, but rather cooling. Upon this occasion an outside passenger had his arm fractured.

My third and fourth upsets from private carriages will be duly recorded.

It occasionally happened that driving out or into a yard, despite the warning "Take care of your heads," some half-sleepy or inattentive passenger met with a serious accident by his head coming in contact with the roof. Then, again, a skid would come off the wheel going down hill at an awful pace, which, of course, brought the passengers to grief. An inveterate kicker or a giber added to the dangers of the road, and a heavy snowstorm, in which the passengers had to descend and make their way to the nearest wayside inn or cottage, did not improve their condition.

Of course when due precautions were taken, the accidents were, comparatively speaking, few. I have travelled at a tremendous pace by the "Hirondelle"—irreverently called the "Iron Devil"—by the "Wonder," between Shrewsbury and London, and by almost all the fast coaches between London and Brighton, London and Oxford, London and Southampton, London and Bath, and have never met with the slightest accident.

In bygone days it was very agreeable, albeit rather expensive, to travel post, especially in your own light chariot or britchka; but to be dependent upon hack chaises on the road was far from pleasant. These chaises were not very well hung on springs, the windows seldom fitted closely, and the rattling noise reminded one of a dice-box in full play upon wheels. There was generally straw enough at your feet to hold a covey of partridges. Although these vehicles were light and followed well, a great deal of time was wasted in shifting your luggage from one to another at every stage, or, at most, every other stage.

I once left London on an affair of importance—namely, that of carrying a hostile message from a friend to a gentleman who resided near Marlborough, and found it so difficult to rouse the ostler, postboy, and the man who looked after the chaises, that I got no farther than Botham's at Salt Hill.

I left the Piazza Coffee-House, where the letter had been concocted demanding an apology or a meeting, about eleven at night, was kept waiting for more than a half hour at the "Red Lion," Hounslow, and only reached Salt Hill about half-past one in the morning. There, again, had I to awake the sleepy ostler and drowsy waiter, the latter of whom strenuously recommended me to sleep at the hotel and continue my journey at daylight. This I accordingly did; but what with the arrangement of the affair of honour, as it was called, and which ended amicably, I was nearly two-and-twenty hours on the journey by road that could now be accomplished with ease by rail in less than seven. I have alluded to two upsets that I have in the course of my life met with from private travelling-carriages. The first occurred in July, 1814, when returning with the late Duke of Wellington from Windsor to London. His Grace had been dining with the officers of the Royal Horse Guards (Blues), in which regiment I had the honour of holding a commission, when, as we reached Brentford, at night, the linch pin came out of the fore wheel of his carriage, by which it was upset.

Nothing would satisfy the people but drawing the carriage to London, which they certainly would have done but for the remonstrance of his Grace, which finally succeeded. After a delay of half an hour the damage was repaired, and we reached London in safety. The accident might have proved a fatal one, for we were travelling as fast as four good horses could take us.

Had such a calamity happened to Wellington, then in the prime of life, no one can hardly picture the consequences. Happily his life was spared to add another conquest to those he had won on the banks of the Douro, of the Tagus, the Ebro, and the Garonne. The second and last upset I had was on the night of my return from Canada, in 1819, when, in driving through Goodwood Park, the postboys drove over a bank and, to use a common expression, "floored the coach."