Part 16

A London merchant resided a few miles from the City, in an elegant mansion, to and from which he journeyed daily, and invariably by third class. It happened that one of the clerks in his employ lived in a cottage accessible by the same line of railway, but he always travelled first class; the same train thus presenting the anomaly of the master being in that place which one would naturally assign to the man, and the man appearing to usurp the position of the master. One day these two alighted at the terminus in full view of each other. “Well,” said Mr. B—, in that tone of banter which a superior so frequently thinks it becoming to adopt, “I don’t know how you manage to ride first-class, when in these hard times I find third-class fare as much as I can afford.” “Sir,” replied the clerk, “you, who are known to be a person of wealth and position, may adopt the most economical mode of travelling at no more risk than being thought eccentric, and even with the applause of some for your manifest absence of pride. But, as for myself, I cannot afford to indulge in such irregularities. Among the persons I travel with I am reported to be a well-paid _employé_, and am respected accordingly; to maintain this reputation I am compelled to travel in the same manner as they do, and were I to adopt an inferior mode, it would be attributed to some serious falling off of income; a circumstance which would occasion me not only loss of consideration among my _quondam_ fellow-travellers, but one which, upon coming to the ears of my butcher, baker, and grocer, might seriously injure my credit with those highly respectable, but certainly worldly minded tradesmen.” Mr. B— was not slow in recognizing the full force of the argument, more particularly as the question of his own liberality was involved, nor did he hesitate to give it a practical application by immediately increasing the salary of his clerk; not only to the amount of a first-class season ticket, but something over.

—_The Railway Traveller’s Handy Book_.

REMARKABLE WILL.

Some years ago an old gentleman of very eccentric habits, Mr. John Younghusband, of Abbey Holme, Cumberland, died, and his will has proved to be of the most eccentric character. The Silloth Railway runs through part of his property, an arrangement to which he was most passionately averse; and though years have elapsed since then, his bitterness was in no way assuaged. In his will he leaves near £1000 to a solicitor who opposed the making of the railway; the rest of his money he bequeaths to a comparative stranger upon these conditions—that the legatee never speaks to one of the directors of the railway, that he never travels upon it, that he never sends cattle or other traffic by it; and should he violate any of these conditions, the estate reverts to the ordinary succession. To Mr. John Irving and the other directors of the Silloth line Mr. Younghusband has sarcastically bequeathed a _farthing_.

IMMENSE FRAUD ON THE GREAT-NORTHERN RAILWAY.

In the _Annual Register_ for 1856, November 14th, we read, “Another fraud connected with the transfer of shares and stock, but on a far grander scale, and by a much more pretentious criminal, has been discovered.

“Of late some strange discrepancies had been observed in the accounts of the Great-Northern Railway Company, and in particular that the amount paid for dividends considerably exceeded the rateable proportion to the capital stock. An investigation was directed. The registrar of shares, Mr. Leopold Redpath, expressed a decided opinion that the investigation into his department would be useless, and, on its being pressed, absconded. The investigation developed a long-continued system of frauds of vast amount, to the amount, it was said, of nearly £250,000.

“Mr. Leopold Redpath passed in society as a gentleman of ample means, great taste, and possessed of the Christian virtue of charity in no common degree. He had a house in Chester Terrace, handsomely furnished, and a “place” at Weybridge complete with every luxury that wealth could procure; gave good dinners with excellent wines; kept good horses and neat carriages. He was a governor of Christ’s Hospital, the St. Ann’s Schools, and subscribed freely to the most useful charities of London. His appointment on the Great-Northern was worth £300 per annum; but it was supposed that this was only of consequence to Mr. Redpath as affording him a regular occupation and an opportunity of operating in the share-market, in which he was known to have extensive dealings. The directors of the railway appear to have been perfectly aware that their servant was living far beyond his salary, but they considered him to be a very successful speculator. Upon this splendid bubble being blown up, Redpath fled to Paris; but, finding that the French authorities were not inclined to protect him, he returned to London and surrendered himself.

“The mode in which this gigantic swindler had committed his frauds is simple enough. Having charge of the books in which the stock of the company is registered, he altered the sum standing in the name of some _bonâ fide_ stockholder to a much larger sum, generally by placing a figure before it, by which simple means £500 became £1,500, or £2,500, or any larger number of thousands. The surplus stock thus _created_ Redpath sold in the stock-market, forging the name of the supposed transferer, transferring the sum to the account of the supposed transferee in the register, and either attesting it himself, or causing it to be attested by a young man, his protegé and tool, but who appears to have been free from guilty cognizance. In some instances the fraud was but the more direct course of making a fictitious entry of stock, and then selling it. By these processes the number of shareholders and the amount of stock on the company’s register became greatly magnified, while, as the _bonâ fide_ holders of stock remained credited with their proper investments, there was no occasion for suspicion on their part. How Redpath dealt with subsequent transfers of the fictitious stock does not appear. The prisoner was subjected to repeated examination before the police magistrates, when this prodigious falsification was thoroughly sifted, and the prisoner was finally committed for trial at the Central Criminal Court in the following year. It is said that the value of the leases, furniture, and articles of taste in Redpath’s house in Chester Terrace is estimated at £30,000, and at Weybridge at a still larger sum. It is also said that Redpath and Robson, whose forged transfer of Crystal Palace shares has been recorded in this chronicle, were formerly fellow clerks.

“Lionel Redpath was tried, January 16th, 1857, at the Central Criminal Court, and, being found guilty, was sentenced to transportation for life. At the same time a junior clerk in his office, Charles Kent, was also charged as his partner in the crime. It appeared that Kent had acted on many occasions as attesting witness to the forged transfers which Redpath had employed to carry out his ends; but, as no guilty knowledge on the part of the former was shown, he was acquitted.

“The railway company at first attempted to repudiate the forged stock which Redpath had put into circulation, but pressing remonstrances, not unaccompanied by threats, having been made by the Committee of the Stock Exchange, they consented to acknowledge it. Then came the question by whom the loss was to be borne; a question which was not solved until after considerable litigation. The directors asserted that it ought to be paid out of the current income of the year, and so it was ultimately decided. This led to a further question between the guaranteed shareholders and the rest of the company. For the diminution of the year’s earnings caused by taking up the fictitious stock being so great as to render it impossible to satisfy the guaranteed dividends out of the residue, it was contended on the part of the holders of those shares that, by the provisions of the deed of settlement, the deficiency ought to be made up out of the next year’s profits, so that the guarantee that they should receive their specified dividends was not clogged with the condition in case a sufficient amount of earnings in each year was made to pay them. This dispute led to a Chancery suit, the decree in which was in favour of the holders of the guaranteed shares.”

A LOST TICKET.

“Now, then, make haste there, will you, an’ give up your ticket,” exclaimed a railway guard to a bandsman in the Volunteers returning from a review. “Didna I tell ye I’ve lost it?” “Nonsense, man; feel in your pockets, you cannot hae lost it.” “Can I no?” was the drunken reply; “man, that’s naething, I’ve lost the big drum!”

MELANCHOLY ACCIDENT.—SINGULAR ACTION.

The _Annual Register_ contains the following interesting case. July 25, 1857.—At the Maidstone Assizes an action arising out of a singular and melancholy accident was tried. The action, Shilling _v._ The Accidental Insurance Company, was brought by Charlotte Shilling, widow and administratrix of Thomas Shilling, to recover from the defendants the sum of £2000, upon a policy effected by the deceased on the life of her father-in-law, James Shilling. The husband of the plaintiff, Thomas Shilling, carried on the business of a builder at Malling, a short distance from Maidstone. His father, James Shilling, lived with him; he was nearly 80 years old, and very infirm, and his son used to drive him about occasionally in his pony chaise. In the month of March, last year, an application was made to the defendants to effect two policies for £2000 each upon the lives of Thomas Shilling and James Shilling, and to secure that sum in the event of either of them dying from an accident, and the policies were completed and delivered in the following month of June. On the evening of the 11th of July, 1856, about half-past 7 o’clock, the father and son went from Malling with a pony and chaise, for the purpose of proceeding to a stone quarry at Aylesford, where Thomas Shilling had business to transact, and they never returned home again alive. There where two roads by which they could have got to the quarry from Malling, one of which was rather a dangerous one to be taken with a vehicle and horse, on account of a steep bank leading to the river Medway being on one side and the railway passing close to the other; but this route, it appears, was much shorter than the other, which was nearly two miles round, and it was consequently constantly used both by pedestrians and carriages. About 8 o’clock the pony and chaise and the father and son were seen on this road, and upon arriving at the gate leading to the quarry, Thomas Shilling got out, leaving the pony and chaise in charge of his father. Mr. Garnham, the owner of the quarry, was not at home, and while one of the labourers was conversing with Thomas Shilling, the sound of an approaching train was heard, and the men advised him to go back to his pony, for fear it should take fright at the train, and he said he would do so, as it had been frightened by a train on a previous occasion. He accordingly went towards the gate where he had left the pony and chaise, and from that time there was no evidence to show what took place. The family sat up the whole night awaiting the return of their relatives in the utmost possible alarm at their absence; but nothing was heard of them until the following morning, when a bargeman found the drowned pony and the chaise and the dead bodies of the father and son floating in the Medway, near the spot where the chaise had been last seen on the previous evening. They were taken home, and a coroner’s inquest was held, and the only conclusion that could be arrived at was that the pony had taken fright at the noise of the train, which appeared to have passed about the time, and that he had jumped into the river, which at this spot was from 12 to 14 feet deep.

The policy on the life of the father had been assigned to the son, whose widow claimed the two sums insured from the defendants. That payable on the death of the son they paid: but they refused to pay that due on the father’s policy, and pleaded to the action several pleas, alleging certain violations of the conditions; and singularly enough, considering that they had not disputed the son’s policy on the same ground, they now pleaded that the death was not the result of accident, but arose from wanton and voluntary exposure to unnecessary danger.

The jury found a verdict for the plaintiff.

A CATASTROPHE.

An old lady was going from Brookfield to Stamford, and took a seat in the train for the first and last time in her life. During the ride the train was thrown down an embankment. Crawling from beneath the _débris_ unhurt, she spied a man sitting down, but with his legs laid down by some heavy timber. “Is this Stamford?” she anxiously inquired. “No, madam,” was the reply, “this is a catastrophe.” “Oh!” she cried, “then I hadn’t oughter got off here.”

WEDDING AT A RAILWAY STATION.

Baltimore has had what it calls a romantic wedding at Camden Station. A few moments before the departure of the outbound Washington train, a gentleman accompanied by a lady and another gentleman, whose clerical appearance indicated his profession, alighted from a carriage and entered the depot. Upon the locks of the leader of the party the snows of fifty winters had evidently fallen, while the lady had apparently reached that age when she is supposed to have lain aside her matrimonial cap. Quietly approaching the officer on duty within the station, they asked for a room where a marriage ceremony might be privately performed. The request was readily granted, and under the leadership of the obliging officer, the party was conducted to the despatch room, a small lobby in the eastern part of the building, where in a few minutes the twain were made man and wife. With pleasant smiles, and a would-be-congratulated look upon their countenances, they mingled with the crowd in waiting; and when the gates were thrown open, arm in arm they boarded the train, their fellow-passengers all the while ignorant of the interesting ceremony.

—_Illustrated World_.

ENGINE FASCINATION.

The fascination which engines and their human satellites exercise over some minds is very great; and while speaking on the subject, I am reminded of a young man who haunted for years one of our chief termini: he was the son of a leading west end confectioner, so that his early training had in no way disposed him to an engineering life; but he was the most remarkable accumulation of statistics in connection therewith I ever knew. The line employed several hundreds of engines, and he not only knew the names of all of them, but when they were made, and who had made them; when each one had last been supplied with a new set of tubes at the factory—this last, of course only referred to the engines employed on the main line, which he had an opportunity of seeing, and would miss when they were laid up for repair—and how this had had the pressure on its safety-valve increased, and this had been diminished. He had such a retentive memory for these and kindred facts, that I have seen the foreman of the works appeal to him for information, which was never lacking. His penchant was so well known that he had special permission for access to the works.

—_Chambers’s Journal_.

COMPETITION FOR PASSENGERS.

Mr. Galt remarks:—“In the summer of 1857 the London and North-Western and Great Northern railways contended with each other for the passenger traffic from London to Manchester. First-class and second-class passengers were conveyed at fares, there and back, of seven and sixpence and five shillings respectively, the distance being 400 miles, and four clear days were allowed in Manchester. As might have been expected, trains were well filled, and, but for the fact that the other traffic was much interfered with, the fares would, it is said, have been remunerative. As it was, it is said the shareholders lost 1 per cent. dividend.

“Another memorable contest was carried on about the year 1853 between the Caledonian and the Edinburgh and Glasgow Companies. The latter suddenly reduced the fares between Edinburgh and Glasgow for the three classes from eight shillings, six shillings, and four shillings, to one shilling, ninepence, and sixpence. The contest was continued for a-year-and-a-half, and cost the Edinburgh and Glasgow Company nearly 1 per cent. in their dividends.”

ACCIDENT HOAX.

The following impudent hoax, contained in a letter which appeared in the _Times_ in 1860, was most annoying to the officials of the Great Northern Company. It is headed:—

“Accident on the Great Northern Railway. “To the Editor of the _Times_.

“Sir,—I beg to inform you of a serious accident, attended by severe injury, if not loss of life, which occured to-day to the 8 o’clock a.m. train from Wakefield, on the Great Northern railway, near Doncaster, by which I was a passenger. As the train approached Doncaster, about 9 o’clock, the passengers were suddenly alarmed by the vehement oscillation of the carriages. In a few seconds the engine had run off the line, dragging the greater part of the train with it across the opposite line of rails. By this time the concussion had become so vehement that the grappling chains connecting the engine, tender, and first carriage with the rest of the train providentially snapped. This circumstance saved the lives of many. But the engine, tender, and first carriage were hurled over the embankment, all three being together overturned, and the latter (a second-class one) nearly crushed. The stoker was severely injured on the head, and his recovery is more than doubtful; the engine driver contrived to leap off in time to save himself with a few bruises. The shrieks of the passengers in the overturned carriage (three women and five men) were fearful; and for some time their extrication was impossible. One middle-aged woman had her thigh broken, another her arm fractured. One old man had one, if not two of his ribs broken. The passengers in the other carriages, in one of which I was travelling, were less seriously injured, though sufficiently so to talk about compensation, instead of assisting in earnest those with broken limbs. The line of rails was torn up for a considerable distance. Owing to the telegraph being out of gear, some delay in communicating with Doncaster was experienced. A surgeon and various hands at length arrived with a special train for the injured passengers, who, after long delay, were removed to Doncaster. I, of course, as a medical man, rendered what assistance I could. Those worst injured were conveyed to the Railway Arms, the recovery of more than one being doubted by myself. At length a fresh train started from Doncaster, and we reached London nearly two hours after due.

The carelessness of the Company will, I hope, be the subject of your severest animadversion. The accident was caused by the tire of one of the right wheels of the engine having flown off; and it is clear that the engine was not in a condition to ply between the stations of the Great Northern railway.

I have no objection to your use of my name if you think fit to publish it.

Your obedient servant, Thomas Waddington, M.D., of Wakefield. Morley’s Hotel, Charing Cross, March 26.

To the above letter the following reply was sent to the _Times_.

“Alleged Accident on the Great Northern. “To the Editor of the _Times_.

“Sir,—The Directors of the Great Northern railway will feel much obliged by the insertion of the following statement in the _Times_ to-morrow relative to a letter which appeared therein to-day, signed ‘Thomas Waddington, M.D., of Wakefield,’ and headed, ‘Accident on the Great Northern railway.’

There was no accident whatever yesterday on the Great Northern railway.

The trains all reached King’s Cross with punctuality, the most irregular in the whole day being only five minutes late. No such person as Thomas Waddington is known at Morley’s Hotel, whence the letter in question is dated.

I am, Sir, yours faithfully, Seymour Clark, General Manager, King’s Cross, March 27.

In the _Times_ on the day following appeared a letter from the real Dr. Waddington, of Wakefield, (Edward not “Thomas”) confirmatory of the impudence of the hoax.

“The alleged Accident on the Great Northern railway. “To the Editor of the _Times_.

“Sir,—My attention has been called to a letter in the _Times_ of yesterday (signed ‘Thomas Waddington, M.D., of Wakefield’) the signature of which is as gross and impudent a fabrication as the circumstances which the writer professes to detail. I need only say there is no ‘M.D.’ here named Waddington but myself, and that I was not on the Great Northern or any other Railway on the 26th inst, when the accident is alleged to have occured.

Having obtained possession of the original letter, I have handed it to my solicitors, in the hope that they may be enabled to discover and bring to justice the perpetrator of this very stupid hoax.

I am, Sir, your obedient servant, Edward Waddington, M.D.

Wakefield, March 28.

A’PENNY A MILE.

Two costers were looking at a railway time-table.

“Say, Jem,” said one of them, “vot’s P.M. mean?”

“Vy, penny a mile, to be sure.”

“Vell, vot’s A.M.?”

“A’penny a mile, to be sure.”

SINGULAR FREAK.

In October, 1857, Mr. Tindal Atkinson applied to Mr. Hammill, at Worship Street Police Court, to obtain a summons under the following strange circumstances:—

“Mr. Atkinson stated that he was instructed on behalf of the Directors of the Eastern Counties Railway Company to apply to the magistrate under the terms of their Act of Incorporation, for a summons against Mr. Henry Hunt, of Waltham-Cross, Essex, for having unlawfully used and worked a certain locomotive upon a portion of their line, without having previously obtained the permission or approval of the engineers or agents of the company, whereby he had rendered himself liable to a penalty of £20. He should confine himself to that by stating that in the dark, on the night of Thursday, the 1st instant, a locomotive engine belonging to Mr. Hunt was suddenly discovered by some of the company’s servants to be running along the rails in close proximity to one of the regular passenger trains on the North Woolwich line. So great was the danger of a collision, that they were obliged to instantly stop the train till the stranger engine could get out of the way, to the great terror of the passengers by the train, and as he was instructed it was almost the result of a merciful interposition of Providence that a collision had not occurred between them, in which event it would probably have terminated fatally, to a greater or lesser extent. He now desired that summonses might be granted not only against the owner of the engine so used, but also against the driver and stoker of it, both of whom, it was obvious, must have been well aware of their committing an unlawful act, and of the perilous nature of the service in which they were engaged when they were running an engine at such a time and place.