CHAPTER IV

ACCIDENTS

One of the greatest objections urged by the coaching interest against railways was their danger, and the certain loss of life on them in case of accident. It was unfortunate that the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway was the occasion of a fatal mischance that lent emphasis to the dolorous prophecies of coach-proprietors and the road interests in general; for on that day (September 15th, 1830) Mr. Huskisson, a prominent man in the politics of that time, met his death by being run over by the first train. It seems to ourselves incredible, but it was the fact, that there were those who ascribed this fatality to the wrath of God against mechanical methods of travelling. Then first arose that favourite saying among coachmen, “In a coach accident, there you are; in a railway accident, where are you?” The impression thus intended to be conveyed was that a coaching disaster was a very trifling affair compared with a railway accident. But was it? Let us see.

The Rev. William Milton, who in 1810 published a work on coach-building, lamented the great number of accidents in his time, and said that not a tenth part of them was ever recorded in the newspapers. He darkly added that the coach-proprietors could probably explain the reason. However that may be, the following pages contain a selection of the most tragical happenings in this sort, culled from the newspapers of the past. It does by no means pretend to completeness; for to essay a task of that kind would be to embark upon a very extensive work, as well as a very severe indictment of the coaching age. Moreover, it may shrewdly be suspected that many drowsy folk fell off the box-seats in the darkness, and quietly and unostentatiously broke their necks, without the least notice being publicly taken. Mere upsets and injuries to passengers and coachmen are not instanced here. Only a selection from the fatal accidents has been made.

1807.--Brighton and Portsmouth coach upset; coachman killed.

1810.--Rival Brighton and Worthing coaches racing; one upset; coachman killed.

1819.--“Coburg” (Brighton coach) upset at Cuckfield, on the up journey. The horses were fresh, and, dashing away, came into collision with a waggon. All the eleven outsides were injured. A Mr. Blake died next day at the “King’s Head,” Cuckfield, where the injured had been taken.

1826. _April._--The Leeds and Wakefield “True Blue,” going down Belle Hill with horses galloping, on the wrong side of the road, came into collision with a coal-cart. The coachman’s skull was fractured, and he died instantly. One outside passenger’s leg had to be amputated, and he died the next day. The recovery of another passenger was regarded as doubtful.

One of the more serious among coach accidents was that which befell the London and Dorking stage, in April 1826. It was one of those coaches that did not carry a guard. It left the “Elephant and Castle” at nine o’clock in the morning, full inside and out, and arrived safely at Ewell, where Joseph Walker, who was both coachman and proprietor, alighted for the purpose of getting a parcel from the hind boot. He gave the reins to a boy who sat on the box, and all would have been well had it not been for the thoughtless act of the boy himself, who cracked the whip, and set the horses off at full speed. They dashed down the awkwardly curving road by the church and into a line of wooden railings, which were torn down for a length of twelve yards. Coming then to some immovable obstacle, the coach was violently upset, and the whole of the passengers hurled from the roof. All were seriously injured, and one was killed. This unfortunate person was a woman, who fell upon some spiked iron railings, “which,” says the contemporary account, “entered her breast and neck. She was dreadfully mutilated, none of her features being distinguishable. She lingered until the following day, when she expired in the greatest agony.” The gravestone of this unfortunate person is still to be seen in the leafy churchyard of Ewell, inscribed to the memory of “Catherine, wife of James Bailey, who, in consequence of the overturning of the Dorking Coach, April 1826, met with her death in the 22nd year of her age.”

[Illustration: A MIDNIGHT DISASTER ON A CROSS ROAD: FIVE MILES TO THE NEAREST VILLAGE.

_After C. B. Newhouse._ ]

1827. _December._--The up Salisbury coach was driven, in the fog prevailing at the time, into a pond called the “King’s Water,” at East Bedfont, on Hounslow Heath. An outside passenger, a Mr. Lockhart Wainwright, of the Light Dragoons, was killed on the spot, by falling in the water. The pond was only two feet deep, but it had a further depth of two feet of mud, and it was thought that the unfortunate passenger was smothered in it. The four women inside the coach had a narrow escape of being drowned, but were rescued, and the coach righted, by a crowd of about a hundred persons, chiefly soldiers from the neighbouring barracks, who had assembled.

1832. _February 19th._--Mr. Fleet, coachman and part-proprietor of the Brighton and Tunbridge Wells coach, killed by the overturn of his conveyance.

1832. _October 30th._--Brighton Mail upset at Reigate. Coachman killed on the spot. The three outsides suffered fractured ribs and minor injuries.

In 1833 the Marquis of Worcester, a shining light of the road in those days, began that connection with the Brighton Road which afterwards produced the “Duke of Beaufort” coach, made famous by the coloured prints after Lambert and Shayer. He was passionately fond of driving, and was so very often allowed by the complaisant professional coachmen to “take the ribbons” that he at last fell into the habit of taking them almost as a matter of right. Of course, the jarveys who had relinquished the reins to him were always well remembered for their so doing; but there were those to whom money was not everything, and in whose minds the sporting instinct was less developed than a wholesome and ever-present fear of the penalties to which coachmen were liable if they permitted other persons to drive. There could have been no objection on the score of coachmanship, for the Marquis was an able whip; but the fact remained that he could not get the reins when he wanted them, and so in revenge set up two coaches on the Brighton Road, in alliance with a Jew named Israel Alexander. A paltry fellow, this Marquis, afterwards seventh Duke of Beaufort, to enter into competition with professional coachmen in order to satisfy a childish spite; not, at any rate, the high-souled sportsman that toadies would have one believe.

[Illustration: THE “BEAUFORT” BRIGHTON COACH.

_After W. J. Shayer._ ]

The coaches put on the road by this alliance were the “Wonder” and the “Quicksilver,” both with intent to run Goodman, the proprietor of the “Times” coaches, off the route. The coachmen who tooled these new conveyances were, of course, always to give up the reins when my lord thought proper to drive, and so the revenge was complete. But the “Quicksilver,” a fast coach timed to do the 52 miles in 4¾ hours, had not been long on the road before it met with a very serious accident, being overturned when leaving Brighton on the evening of July 15th. A booking-clerk, one John Snow, the son of a coachman, and himself a sucking Jehu, was driving, and upset the coach by the New Steyne, with the result that the passengers were thrown into the gardens of the Steyne, or hung upon the spikes of the railings in very painful and ridiculous postures. Goodman had the satisfaction of presently learning that the bad-blooded sportsman and his partner lost some very heavy sums in compensation awards.

The “Quicksilver” was thereupon repainted and renamed, and, under the alias of the “Criterion,” resumed its journeys. But ill-fortune clung to that coach, for on June 7th, 1834, as it was leaving London, it came into collision with a brewer’s dray opposite St. Saviour’s Church, Southwark. A little way on, down the Borough High Street, the coachman was obliged to suddenly pull up the horses to avoid running over a gentleman on horseback, whose horse had bolted into the middle of the road. The sudden strain on the pole, already, it seems, splintered in the affair with the dray, broke it off. It fell, and became entangled with the legs of the wheelers, who became so restive and infuriated that attempts were made to put on the skid; but before that could be done the coach overturned. Sir William Cosway, who was one of the outsides, and was at that moment attempting to climb down, was pitched off so violently that his skull was fractured, so that he died in less than two hours afterwards. A Mr. Todhunter “sustained” (as the reporters have it) a broken thigh.

1834.--The London and Halifax Mail came into collision with a bridge, five miles from Sheffield. The coachman, Thomas Roberts, was killed.

The Wolverhampton and Worcester coach, in avoiding a cart coming down a hill near Stourbridge, was upset, and a passenger killed.

_October._--A wheel came off one of Wheatley’s Greenwich coaches at London Bridge, and one gentleman was killed.

1835. _August._--The Liverpool “Albion” fell over on entering Whitchurch, through a worn-out linchpin. A lady inside passenger was disfigured for life.

_June._--The Nottingham “Rapid” upset, three miles from Northampton, through the breaking of an axle. A girl’s leg crushed, and afterwards amputated.

_November._--The Newcastle and Carlisle Mail upset, two miles from Hexham. Aiken, the coachman, killed.

_December 25th._--The down Exeter Mail upset on Christmas night, on nearing Andover, through running against a bank in the prevailing fog. Austin, the coachman, killed.

1836. _June._--The up Louth Mail nearly upset by stones maliciously placed in the road by some unknown person, near Linger House bar. Rhodes, the guard, was thrown off and seriously injured.

In September, 1836, a shocking accident befel the down Manchester “Peveril of the Peak,” five miles from Bedford. The coach turned over, and a gentleman named O’Brien was killed on the spot. The coachman lay two hours under the coach, and died from his injuries.

The next disaster on our list was caused by a drunken coachman’s dazed state of mind. Early on a Sunday morning in June, 1837, the Lincoln and London Mails met and came into collision at Lower Codicote, near Biggleswade. The driver of the up mail, Thomas Crouch, was in a state of partial intoxication at the time, and owing to a curve in the road, and the wandering state of his faculties, he did not observe the approach of the other mail. The result was that, although the coachman of the other made room for him to pass, the two coaches came into violent collision. The coach driven by Crouch was turned completely round, ran twenty or thirty yards in a direction opposite to that it was originally taking, and finally settled in a leaning posture in the ditch. Crouch was so injured that he died a few hours afterwards. The passengers were not much hurt, but two horses were killed.

On September 8th, a coachman named Burnett was killed at Speenhamland, on the Bath Road. He was driving one of the New Company’s London and Bristol stages, and alighted at the “Hare and Hounds,” very foolishly leaving the horses unattended, with the reins on their backs. He had been a coachman for twenty years, but experience had not been sufficient to prevent him thus breaking one of the first rules of the profession. He had no sooner entered the inn than the rival Old Company’s coach came down the road. Whether the other coachman gave the horses a touch with his whip as he passed, or if they started on their own accord, is not known, but they did start, and Burnett, rushing out to stop them, was thrown down and trampled on so that he died.

Of another kind was the fatal accident that closed the year on the Glasgow Road. On the night of December 18th, the up Glasgow Mail ran over a man, supposed to have been a drunken carter, who was lying in the middle of the highway.

1837. _August._--The up Glasgow Mail, the up Edinburgh Mail, the Edinburgh and Dumfries, and the Edinburgh and Portpatrick Mails all upset the same night, at different places.

1838. _August._--The London to Lincoln Express met a waggon at night, at Mere Hall, six miles from Lincoln. The coachman called to the waggoner to make room, and a young man who, it is supposed, was asleep on the top, started up, and rolled off. The waggon-wheels went over and killed him.

_September._--The Edinburgh and Perth “Coburg” was the subject of a singular accident. Passengers and luggage were being received at Newhall’s Pier, South Queensferry, when the leader suddenly turned round, and before the coachman and guard, who were stowing luggage, could render assistance, coach and horses disappeared over the quay-wall. Some of the outsides saved their lives by throwing themselves on the pier, but the four insides were less fortunate. Two of them thrust their heads through the windows, and so kept above the sea-water; the other two--a Miss Luff and her servant--were drowned. One outside, who had been flung far out into the sea, could fortunately swim, and so came ashore safe, but exhausted. Nine years later, February 16th, 1847, a similar accident happened to the Torrington and Bideford omnibus, when the horses took fright and plunged with the vehicle into the river from Bideford Quay. Of the twelve passengers, ten were drowned.

_October._--The “Light Salisbury,” having met the train at Winchfield Station, proceeded to Hurstbourne Hill, between Basingstoke and Andover, where the bit of one of the horses caught in the pole and the coach was immediately overturned. One passenger died the same afternoon, and another was taken to his house at Andover without the slightest hope of recovery. A young woman’s leg was broken, and two other passengers’ limbs were smashed.

The railway journals, which had even thus early sprung into flourishing existence, did not fail to notice the increasing number of coaching accidents, the _Railway Times_ with great gusto reporting twenty in a few weeks. The prevalence of these disasters was a cynical commentary upon the “Patent Safety” coaches running on every road, warranted never to overturn and doing so with wonderful regularity, and on those coaching prints noticed by Charles Dickens--“coloured prints of coaches starting, arriving, changing horses; coaches in the sunshine, coaches in the wind, coaches in the mist and rain, coaches in all circumstances compatible with their triumph and victory; but never in the act of breaking down, or overturning.”

The last years of coaching were, in fact, even more fruitful in accidents than the old days. Especially pathetic were the circumstances attendant upon the disaster that overtook the “Lark” Leicester and Nottingham Stage on May 23rd, 1840. The coach was on its last journey when it occurred, for the morrow was to witness the opening of the railway between those places. Like most of these last trips, the occasion was marked by much circumstance. Crowds assembled to witness the old order of things visibly pass away, and Frisby, the coachman, had dolefully tied black ribbons round his whipstock, to mark the solemnity of the event. Unfortunately, that badge of mourning proved in a little while to be only too appropriate, for the well-loaded coach had only gone about a mile and a half beyond Loughborough when Frisby, who had been driving recklessly all the way, and had several times been remonstrated with, overturned it at Coates’ Mill. A Mr. Pearson and another were killed. Pearson, who had especially come to take part in this last drive, was connected with the “Times” London and Nottingham coach. He had been seated beside Frisby, and had several times warned him, without avail. His thighs were broken, and he received a severe concussion of the brain, from which he died at midnight. Frisby himself was crippled for life.

[Illustration: A QUEER PIECE OF GROUND IN A FOG: “IF WE GET OVER THE RAILS, WE SHALL BE IN A UGLY FIX.”

_After C. B. Newhouse._ ]

The pitcher goes oft to the well, but at last it is broken; and so likewise the coachmen who, winter and summer, storm or shine, had driven for almost a generation over the same well-known routes, at length met their death on them in some unforeseen manner. A striking instance of this was the sad end of William Upfold--“unlucky Upfold”--who was coachman of the “Times” Brighton and Southampton Stage, a coach which ran by way of Worthing and Chichester, he was a steady and reliable man, fifty-four years of age, and had been a coachman for thirty-five years, when fatal mischance slew him on a February night, 1840. A singularly long series of more or less serious accidents had constantly attended him from 1831. In that year his leg was broken in an upset, and he had only just recovered and resumed his place when the coach was overturned again, this time through the breaking of an axle. The injuries he received kept him a long time idle. Again, in January 1832, at Bosham, the furies were eager for his destruction. He got off at the wayside inn, and left the reins in the hands of a passenger, who very foolishly alighted also, a minute or so later. When Upfold saw him enter the inn he hastily left it; but the horses had already started. In trying to stop them he was kicked on the leg, and fell under the wheels, which passed over him and broke the other leg.

Poor Upfold recovered at last, and might have looked forward to immunity from any more accidents; but Fate had not yet done with him. When nearing Salvington Corner, one night in February 1840, he was observed by Pascoe, a coachman who was with him, to pull the wrong rein in turning one of the awkward angles that mark this stretch of road.

“Upfold, what are you at with the horses?” he asked.

“I have pulled the wrong rein,” said Upfold.

“Then mind and pull the right one this time,” rejoined Pascoe; but scarcely had he said it when the coach toppled over. Nearly every one was hurt, but Upfold was killed. His pulling the wrong rein was inexplicable. The unfortunate man knew the road intimately, and the witnesses declared he was absolutely sober; and so the country-folk, who knew his history and how often accidents had come his way, were reduced to the fatalistic remark that “it had to be.”

1841. _November 8th._--Rival coaches leaving Skipton started racing on the Colne and Burnley road. The horses of one grew unmanageable and ran away. The passengers, alarmed, began to jump off, and a Manchester man, name unknown, who had been sitting beside the coachman, laid hold of the reins to help the coachman pull the horses in. In doing so, he pulled their heads to one side, and they dashed with appalling force into a blank wall. He was killed on the spot. All the passengers who had jumped off were more or less seriously injured; but a woman and a boy, who had remained quietly in their seats on the roof, were unhurt.

1842. _January 17th._--The “Nettle,” Welshpool and Liverpool coach, overturned by a stone near Newtown. Mr. Jones, of Gorward, Denbighshire, a Dissenting minister, going to live at Kerry, Montgomeryshire, was thrown off the roof. He died two days later of his injuries, in great agony.

_December 28th._--The Mail, coming south from Caithness-shire, broke an axle at Latheronwheel Bridge, and Donald Boss, the coachman, was dashed from his box over the bridge into the rocky burn, thirty feet below, and killed. The guard had a narrow escape. Fortunately, there were no passengers.

1843. _February 18th._--The Cheltenham and Aberystwith Mail left the “Green Dragon,” at Hereford, on its way, and proceeded as usual to St. Owen’s turnpike-gate. The gate was open, as a matter of course, for the Mail, but the boisterous wind blowing at the time sent it swinging back across the road as the Mail passed. It hit the near wheeler a violent blow and broke the trace and the reins. Then rebounding, it struck the body of the coach with such force that Eyles, the coachman, was thrown off the box and killed. The horses, thoroughly terrified, then ran away, and, meeting some donkey-carts on the road, ran into them, injuring some old women driving from market. One of them subsequently died from her hurts.

_March 22nd._--The Norwich Day Coach upset at Brentwood. The coachman, James Draing, who was also proprietor, was killed.

_April 21st._--The Southampton and Exeter Mail upset in the New Forest, two miles from Stony Cross, by the horses, frightened at an overturned waggon, running the coach up a bank. Cherry, the coachman, met a dreadful death, his head being literally split in two. A subscription of £350 was raised for his widow and six children.

_May 1st._--The “Red Rover,” Ironbridge and Wolverhampton coach, upset half a mile from Madeley. One passenger, name unknown, killed. He was described as “a very stout gentleman, apparently about sixty years of age, dressed in an invisible green coat and great-coat of the same colour.”

_June 26th._--William Cooke, guard of the Worcester coach, fell off his seat and was killed.

_September 16th._--The Ludlow and Bewdley “Red Rover” overturned by the breaking of the front axle. The coach was going slowly down-hill at the time, and the wheel had the slipper on. It was a heavily-loaded coach, and all the outsides were violently thrown. A Mr. Thomas, a native of Ludlow, fifty-seven years of age, retired from business, was so seriously injured that he died next day. At the inquest a deodand of £30 was placed on the coach.

[Illustration: ROAD VERSUS RAIL.

_After C. Cooper Henderson 1845._ ]

From this time forward the records of coaching accidents grow fewer, and occur at longer intervals; but only because coaches themselves were being swiftly replaced by the railways, which had by now come largely into their kingdom. Railway accidents took their place, and the coaching artists began to paint, and the printsellers to publish, pictures like that of “Road _versus_ Rail” engraved here, showing a very smart and well-appointed coach bowling safely along the road, while a railway accident in progress in the middle distance attracts the elegant and rather smug attention of coachman and passengers.

Every one now forgot the numerous casualties of the old order of things--save, indeed, the bereaved and the maimed, suffering from the happenings of pure mischance, or from the drunken or sporting folly of the coachmen.

But to the very last, in those outlying districts to which the rail came late, and where the coaches continued to ply regularly until the ’fifties, the tragical possibilities of the road were insistent, confounding the thorough-going sentimentalists to whom the old times were everything that was good, and the new, by consequence, altogether bad. Listen to the moving tale of the Cheltenham and Aberystwith down mail on a wild night “about” 1852, according to the vague recollection for dates of Moses James Nobbs.

Although torrents of rain had been falling and the night was pitch dark, all went well with the mail until nearing the Lugg Bridge, near Hereford, where the little river Lugg, rushing furiously in spate to join the Wye, had undermined the masonry. No sooner did the horses place their weight upon it than the arch gave way, and the coachman, Couldery the guard, and the one passenger, were precipitated into the torrent and swept away for more than a mile down stream. It was midnight when the accident happened, and until daybreak the three, at separate points, clung to rocks and branches, from which they were then rescued by search-parties. The coachman and guard recovered from the exposure, but the passenger died.

Charles Ward, that fine old coachman, who kept on the road in Cornwall for many years after coaching had ceased over the rest of England, tells amusingly of the happening that befell the cross-country Bath and Devonport Mail, in some year unspecified. It might have been a most serious accident, but fortunately ended happily. The coach was due to arrive at Devonport at eleven o’clock at night. On this particular occasion all the outside passengers, except a Mrs. Cox, an “immense woman,” who kept a fish-stall in Devonport Market, had been set down at Yealmpton, where the coachman and guard usually had their last drain. They went, as usual, into the inn, and very considerately sent out to Mrs. Cox a glass of “something warm,” it being a very cold night. The servant-girl who took out that cheering glass was not able to reach up to the roof, and so the ostler, who was holding the horses’ heads, very imprudently left them, to do the polite, when the animals, hearing some one getting on the coach, and thinking (for coach-horses did actually do something like it) that it was the coachman, started off, and trotted at their ordinary speed the whole seven miles to the door of the “King’s Arms” at Plymouth, where they were in the habit of stopping to discharge some of the coach-freight. On their way they had to cross the Laira Bridge and through the toll-bar, and did so, keeping clear of everything on the road in as workmanlike a manner as though the skilfullest of whips was directing their course. Mrs. Cox, however, was terrified. Afraid to scream lest she should startle the horses, she had to content herself with gesticulating and trying to attract the attention of the people met or passed on the road. When the horses drew up in an orderly fashion at the “King’s Arms,” and the ostlers came bustling out to attend to their duties, they were astonished to see no one but the affrighted Mrs. Cox on the outside, and two inside passengers, who had been in total ignorance of what was happening. The coachman and guard, in a very alarmed state, soon came up in a post-chaise. It took many quarterns of gin to steady the nerves of the proprietress of the fish-stall, and the incident became the chief landmark of her career.

We will conclude this chapter of accidents on this lighter and less sombre note, and tell how humour sometimes remained in the foreground even if the possibilities of tragedy lurked threatening in the rear. The tale used often to be told on the Exeter Road how, on one occasion, when Davis was driving the up “Quicksilver” Mail between Bagshot and Staines on a dark night, he ran into some obstruction, and the coach was upset into the adjoining field, fortunately a wet meadow. The “insides” were asleep at the time, and they naturally awoke in the wildest alarm. One, who did not grasp the situation, called out, “Coachman, coachman, where are we?” “By God, sir,” replied Davis, “I don’t know, for I was never here before in all my life!” Happily, nobody and nothing was hurt, and in twenty minutes the coach was away, making up for lost time.

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