Among the witnesses were several local persons, who came forward and gave some controversial and uncomfortable evidence against the GWR. Robert Hanning, a labourer resident of Sonning, informed the court that, a fortnight previously, he had seen a ‘slip of earth and some draining tiles at the top, at the very spot where the earth fell’. He stated that he had passed twice a day, since the fortnight, and seen no one working in the cutting. He went past early in the morning and late at night when it was dark. He did not know if there had been any repairs or whether the soil he had seen was the soil that had been cast down.
Thomas Goodchild also told the court that there were slips at precisely the same spot where the accident happened, or thereabouts – one on the right and one on the left. He saw two men that same day at work, but when he went six days later, whilst the soil was put back from the rail, ‘the break in the soil was not made good, it had remained in the same state since.’ Mr Edwin Gosling of Sonning, Mr Thomas Stokes of Swinton, a barrister, and John Plant, a gamekeeper of Sonning, all gave evidence that they had seen, from the wooden bridge, various ‘slips’ and ‘bulges’ in this area.
Mr Walter Bridges, who worked as a labourer on the line, confirmed that there had, indeed, been a slip some two or three weeks previous, and that he and four other workmen had been employed to lay a drain, repair it and make it secure, which they believed they had done. He said the company had placed men at the spot to watch if there was a slip, but they had not watched on that night ‘because they considered the slip was safe’.
Such was the evidence that the jury had to consider, and when they returned to the courtroom they had all agreed on their verdict, ‘accidental death in all the cases and a deodand of £1000’. The reasons for this deodand, which the coroner was initially reluctant to give, were:
1 The jury are of the opinion that great blame attached to the company in placing the passenger trucks so near the engine.
2 That great neglect had occurred in not employing a sufficient watch when it was most necessarily required.
Under the circumstances it was impossible for a reasonable man to doubt that the spot was known to be unsafe … and the very least they should have done was to keep a watchman constantly stationed in the immediate neighbourhood.17
The practice of ‘deodand’ was one of those oddities of Old English Law, whereby any ‘chattel’ (i.e. object or instrument) that caused the accidental death of a man (or woman) was Deo Dand (given to God), thereby forfeited to the Crown, who would sell it and use the monies for ‘pious’ use. In the early days, it would be used to pay for prayers or masses for the soul of the departed. The interpretation of this law was confusing and inconsistent, it (sometimes) being held that the chattel had to be in motion and even ‘going forward’ towards the victim. According to Adrian Gray, in his review of ‘Transport and the Law of Deodand’ this medieval practice enjoyed a significant revival in the early nineteenth century.
In this new technological age, when one would as likely be hit by an engine, mangled by a machine, or blown to pieces by an exploding boiler, as run down by a horse (very common in the crowded towns and cities at this time), this became more of a ‘technical’ forfeit. The coroner’s juries would decide a value for the deodand, and it became an instrument of compensation (or a ‘fine’ against the company/owner) but, as The Times argued in December 1840, it was more likely to be ‘awarded for middle class lives lost in railway accidents but not for the working class mangled in factory machinery’.18
Deodands became popular with coroner’s juries – the Mechanics Magazine wrote, ‘Deodand after deodand has been imposed by honest and indignant juries – deodands surpassing in amount any previously known to our criminal history …’ – however, they were unpopular with the railway companies, as fatal accidents were not uncommon. The companies began to challenge this in the courts, often winning on technicalities. The GWR appealed against their fine and won, arguing that the cause of death was unclear, and that one case had been heard by the wrong coroner.19
Sir Frederick Smith’s report to the Board of Trade, just one day after the accident on 25 December, must have helped, for he concluded that, ‘this accident could only have been prevented by the line being more closely watched, … [but] there did not seem to have been any urgent necessity’. He stated that there was ‘no error in construction … the vertical height of the cutting at the slip being 58 feet, and the slope being two to one, the base being 115 feet’, a ‘two to one’ was, he thought, acceptable to any engineer. He believed that, without the excessive rain, the slope would not have given way since it had already held for two years. However, he also said that the accident ‘might have been rendered less dreadful in consequences’ if the passenger carriages and wagons had had ‘spring-buffers’, for which he had made strenuous recommendations at previous inquiries. Smith was not alone in his support for the use of buffers, they were a subject of discussion in the mechanical world. Sir George Cayley, scientist, inventor and considered founder of aerodynamics, had written an essay on ‘air-buffers’ in which he purported that if ‘two heavy trains were to meet each other on the same line at full speed – if the elasticity of the buffers be supposed perfect each train would rebound with the same velocity it advanced.’20 Smith also recommended that the GWR should improve the construction of their third-class accommodation, and make the sides and ends a minimum of 4ft 6in above the floor, and that they should further think about the passengers comfort regarding being exposed to the weather.
The drawings for the Great Western Railway’s improved third-class carriage, 1844, with references: A) Fixed Ventilators or Venetians, B) Spaces to be opened or closed by sliding shutters, C) Seats for six passengers each, D) Seats for five passengers each. As MacDermott drily commented, they have the appearance of a ‘milk-van’ and as company officials considered that ‘the third-class passenger was not likely to be interested in scenery they encased him in a box without windows … anyhow [he] could not fall out and that was the main thing’.
The GWR were able to respond quickly to the criticism. In their letter to the Board of Trade of 28 December they inform that these measures ‘had already been adopted some weeks ago’. The GWR had, it seems, already ordered several new third-class carriages with the desired heights, which would be ‘extremely solid and on six wheels’, and have ‘greater comfort and protection for the passenger’. Not only this, but they would have the expensive spring-buffers too.21 In the meantime, until they arrived, they boarded up the sides of existing carriages to the required height.
One thing did not change, however. Despite the Board of Trade writing to the company stating, ‘The practice of sending third-class passengers by heavy luggage trains is attended with considerable additional risk whether such passengers are placed next the engine or at the end of the train’ and despite their requesting the directors to ‘consider a manner that does not expose them to additional danger’, the GWR continued to carry them in just such a manner. This was not to change until the implementation of William Gladstone’s (then President of the Board of Trade) Railway Regulation Act, 9 August 1844, with all its attendant improvements and protection for the ‘poorer classes’, which came into force some three years later. Gladstone’s 1d per mile worker’s trains (sometimes known as ‘Parliamentary trains’) provided seats and protection from the weather, ran at least once a day in each direction, stopping at all stations, and changed the face of third-class travel.
The ineffectiveness of the deodand against the railway companies also influenced further legislation, introduced by the Right Hon. Lord Campbell in 1845, who sought to provide real compensation for victims, and this became the Fatal Accidents Act 1846. (In that same year legislation was also passed whereby deodands were abolished.) A bad accident had effected something good.
Notes
1 Bourne, Great Western Railway, David & Charles Reprints, 1970
2 Ibid.
3 Simmons, J., The Railways of Britain: A Journey thr
ough History, Macmillan, 1986
4 Bristol Mercury, 1 January 1842
5 I am sure MacDermott didn’t mean this to sound insensitive
6 The Times, 25 December 1841
7 The Railway Gazette, August 1940
8 The Mechanics Magazine, 1 January 1842
9 Bristol Mercury, 1 January 1842
10 Western Times, 1 January 1842
11 The Essex Standard and General Advertiser for the Eastern Counties, Friday 31 December 1841
12 Nock, O.S., The Railways of Britain, 1951
13 Chelmsford Chronicle, Friday 31 December 1861
14 Ibid.
15 Andrews, Cyril Bruyn, The Railway Age, Country Life Ltd, 1937
16 The Times, 9 September 1841
17 North Devon Journal, 30 December 1841
18 Gray, Adrian, ‘A Review of Transport and the Law of Deodand’, www.rchs.org.uk/trial/J212_26LawofDeodand
19 Ibid.
20 The Railway Gazette, 9 August 1940
21 www.railway archive.co.uk BoT_Sonning1842
3
‘BRING OUT YOUR DEAD!’
‘Bring out your dead!’ was a cry that often rang through the streets of historical London, during the frequent visitations of pestilence and plague. At such times of crisis, all niceties would be dispensed with, and the dead brought out and unceremoniously carted away for burial in massive pits slaked with lime to hasten decomposition and to curtail infections. In ‘civilised’ times the normal practice was for a Christian burial within a coffin, in consecrated ground around the Church which was protected within the wall. For those outside of Christian ideals (such as babes born out of wedlock, unmarried single women who died in childbirth, criminals, paupers and the insane), burial would be on the ‘other side’, the unblessed side of the Church wall.
In early nineteenth-century industrial Britain, the massive movement from the land to the towns and cities created population explosions and rapid expansions. For London, this was further exacerbated by the large influx of political and economic refugees, e.g. the French running from ‘the Terror’; the Jews of various countries (particularly Russia) running from religious and economic persecution; and the Irish from poverty and famine.
Huge social problems erupted, not least of which was how to deal with the ever rising numbers of dead. The small churchyards built for smaller scale communities were being overwhelmed as London spread even further, enveloping the suburbs into the metropolis. There was an outcry, on many levels, from socially-minded Victorians, as more and more official, and unofficial, reports and articles in the papers highlighted the dreadful state of affairs in city and town-centred churchyards.
In 1831, cholera came to Britain. It was the far edge of a pandemic that had started in the province of Bengal in north-east India back in 1826, and had insidiously sent its death-carrying tentacles across the continents. It entered Britain via the ports. It killed many thousands, and overstuffed London and Glasgow, both port cities, were especially hard hit. The talk about overcrowded graveyards became louder and more urgent, but still nothing was done, as an article in Bell’s Life in London and Sporting Chronicle, in September 1838, shows:
CHURCH-YARDS IN LONDON – HORRIBLE DEATHS – The state of the churchyards of the metropolis is at once disgusting and dangerous, and calls loudly for Legislative interference. To know that the population of London is exposed to the pestilent miasma of our burial grounds, situated as they are in the very midst of the most densely crowded neighbourhoods, is calculated to excite the most painful apprehensions for the public safety. A grave was opened in Aldgate churchyard on Friday, and immediately the pestilential exhalations destroyed the grave-digger, and also another man who went, after a considerable time, to his aid. Let any one read the following evidence before the Coroner’s inquest, and say whether it is not the duty of all interested in preserving the metropolis from disease in its worst forms to interfere to stay the plague … Whether partiality for the place, arising from religious or family attachments, or regard for vested interests in those who have a property in the soil, tend to perpetuate the evil, it is obvious that the public health is the supreme law, and the legislature must interfere to preserve it.
Nearly a decade later, and the burial practices had not changed because the necessary ‘interference’ had not occurred. Many now sought to bring that about. The sole purpose of ‘The National Society for the Abolition of Burials in Towns’, formed in 1845, was to petition Parliament for the immediate closure of burial places within cities and towns. They strenuously advocated the discontinuance of ‘burying the dead in the midst of the living’. Their cry was ‘bring out your dead – way out of the towns and cities and out into the countryside’.
In that same year, Frederick Engels, German social scientist and political theorist, published a social treatise entitled The Condition of the Working Class in England. It makes horrific reading, not just regarding the living, but also regarding the dead. Engels writes:
As in life, so in death. The poor are dumped into the earth like infected cattle. The pauper burial-ground of St Brides, London, is a bare morass, in use as a cemetery since the time of Charles II, and filled with heaps of bones; every Wednesday the paupers are thrown into a ditch fourteen feet deep; a curate rattles through the Litany at the top of his speed; the ditch is loosely covered in, to be re-opened the next Wednesday, and filled with corpses as long as one more can be forced in. The putrefaction thus engendered contaminates the whole neighbourhood.
Such malpractices were not limited to St Brides. Richard Kelsey, Surveyor to the Commissioner of Sewers for the City of London, stated in a Parliamentary Report of 1845 that it was even known that where sewers ran under the church building, these were broken open and bodies placed there. The clergy responsible for the accommodation of the dead were often desperate or unscrupulous (burying was, for them, a pecuniary enterprise after all) and it was not unknown for them to place bodies under the floorboards of the chapel. This would soon be realised by those kneeling and praying above, when the foulness of the smell invaded the room. Dr John Simon wrote several City Medical Reports. In his report of 1849, he highlighted this gruesome and unhealthy practice:
It is a very serious matter for consideration, that close beneath the feet of those who attend the services of their church, there often lies an almost solid pile of decomposing human remains, co-extensive with the area of the building, heaped as high as the vaulting will permit, and generally but very partially confined … There are, indeed, few of the older burial-grounds in the City where the soil does not rise many feet above the original level, testifying to the large amount of animal matter which lies beneath the surface.
It was an appalling situation and London was definitely in crisis. Something needed to be done.
In 1848 cholera came again and killed in even larger numbers. Some say that 50,000 died, and London graveyards went into meltdown. It caused the Board of Trade to investigate, what John Clarke neatly calls, London’s ‘acute burial congestion’ in his comprehensive book, The Brookwood Necropolis Railway, and in its report (1849) the Board of Trade proposed that a ‘London Cemetery’ be created outside London, perhaps bearing in mind Dr Simon’s findings:
The use of some spacious and open cemetery at a distance from the City should be substituted for the present system of interment, and the urgency of this requirement will be demonstrated all the more cogently, when it is remembered that the annual amount of mortality in the City averages about 3,000, and that under the present arrangements every dead body buried within our walls receives its accommodation at the expense of the living, and to their great detriment.
The government did not act on this recommendation, but from 1850–57, starting with the Metropolitan Interments Act, a series of Burial Acts enabled the closure of town churchyards to further burials, and created the mechanisms for the establishment of municipal graveyards in ‘open spaces’ outside London and other towns.
The London Necrop
olis and National Mausoleum Company, latterly known and more commonly referred to as the London Necropolis Company, was the brainchild of Sir Richard Broun and Richard Sprye.1 These two had floated the idea back in 1849, but not until 1851 did they register their proposal ‘for the formation of a Necropolis and Mausoleum for the general interment of the dead … at a very ample sanitary distance’ from London and its suburbs, making generous allowances far above any anticipated expansion and growth in numbers – dead and alive.
The site they had selected for the cemetery was a large tract of low value common ground at Woking, some 23 miles (37km) from London, which could be purchased from the estate of Lord Onslow. Whilst this would appear to be a ridiculously long way away, the brilliance and novelty of the idea lay in its proposal to use the railway to convey both bodies and mourners directly to the site. The existing London & South Western Railway (L&SWR), established in 1838, already ran from London to Woking and could be easily adjusted to run directly to the cemetery. This, Broun and Sprye argued, could be done more quickly, more cheaply and with less inconvenience than by the usual horse-drawn hearse service through the crowded streets of London to the eight cemeteries just outside its boundaries. They won their argument and the company was incorporated, by private Act of Parliament, in June 1852. To prevent the L&SWR from exploiting its monopoly on access to the cemetery, the act bound the L&SWR to carry corpses and mourners to the cemetery in perpetuity; set a maximum tariff which could be levied on funeral traffic and declared such arrangements to last without any reference to the shareholders wishes. It did not specify detail of how the funeral trains were to operate.2
The L&SWR were very happy to be part of this new enterprise, believing that they stood to make something in the region of £40,000 a year in extra fares, but decided that, in order not to alarm their everyday passengers, who might feel anxious about travelling in the company of the dead, the necropolis trains would have to be run as an entirely separate service, with its own rolling stock and timetable. Whilst it would not be the first railway to transport both bodies and mourners to their destination, the Necropolis Railway would be the first dedicated funeral line with a dedicated station, as a small article in the Carlisle Journal,3 in October 1841, reports:
Death, Dynamite and Disaster Page 5