The Express.
London, England, 1861-08-26 00:00:00

0

(Stamped, ld. Additional.)

lint, cease up. The signalman at the tunnel celled out
to his taste to know If the twain—mean* the fret Bal-.
km train--hed got through, and the reply mos tut the
graph at the other Old at the tunnel bad signelhd bosh to
ese that the train bad Pared through, the fact hang that
the telegraph referred to the Portsmouth exontsies, and
sot to the fin Brighten. The sigasiman, thersiorehen the
snood Brighton train comisameshowed a white or safety
Anaoad the driver of it d at full speed into she
i. It had not get 300 yards before there was •
hessuidotes shook ; it had run into the flat Brighton train,
width, is fact, wee at the time slowly backing out of the
nes& The 0000/qOOOOOOlllBll awful ; the embus of the
emend Origins train ran right over the hest carriages
d the find Brightos train, and then, falling upon them,
litesslly emend the usfornmate passengers, for it so
happened that to this Inn the nail precentors bed not
bees taken of leaving the last empty, or of having
a van ot truck. The kg menage, therefore, was full of pas-
= an thiteoghos fell upon them, sad, as we have mid,
and the ninon of the sane that sawed
an not to be or cooceived. The tunnel was quite
dark. In • moment it was blocked up. with a horrible mass
In which WO/0 mingled dead sad dying roes, women, sod
Oblates, buried beneath and amid hens of broken
with the engine and tender crown-
ing pressing down the whole. lo add to
the sallerinp of the unfortunates, the steam and boiling
water descended in showers tine them, asehjearr those whose
bodies were at all exposed. The heliostat those who first
entered the tunnel were harrowed to the Int deans.
Then were the screams of the new. the of the
wounded, and the cries ci poor little' eh Of these
latter, end cue of the Breen be extricate& it on fend
that bet Ms legs bad been broken and that it hod bees
badl erithhd.
As 10 re tunnel Itself, It wee Impassable ; it was filled
Isle about ISO yards from the Brighton end by • dreadful
mese of ruins and dead and wounded.
Here we may state that the engine of the first Brightos
inn, and shoat half of the train, cons sting of some twenty
seerimps, felt little or mittens of the cheek. • gestleman
enfl in one of the middle mangos tells le be only tali
$ sack, which thaw him Into the laps of two Mks
oe e opposite sett, but without haring either of them.
This portion of the tram, therefore, was, after a time, die-
Mend from its shattered half and taken on to the Elmesociee-
gate station, where every assistance possible wee resisted
to the alarmed. and, in 00104 men injured penmen. Per
even here then were injured passenger.: one gentleman
sustained a rupture by the shock, and there were scratches
and senor harts et every denriptioo—some, say the medi-
cal men, of a most sigular nature.
But was, of course, at the other or Brighton sod of
the tunnel tan the dreadful seen of 'offering was preeisted.
Here the Int efforts of she railway aeon. ls were directed
to extricate the sufferers and bring them to the open light
of day. The first to be brought out, under the Orontes
of Dr. Hall, was a lady quite dead, whom body, fear-
fully crushed, was taken out from under the engine.
The little child we have named, whose cries were heartrood-
isg, followed; then William Arnold, a gardener is the
employ of Mr. Pep, of the Royal York Hotel, with • com-
pound fracture of both legs ; next came • men named Tein,
of si, Goswell-rcad, also with both his legs broken ; next •
girl with several flesh weans in the lap ; and then • can
with his face severely cut,
. but not otherwise injured. All
the were put into sent to the Brighton eta-
ton under the care of Dr. all, and thence to the Oonnty
Ilemited Dr. Hall returning to the place of accident.
Hee, in the meantime, • great number of persons bad
assemUed, both on the hills above the deep minim sod
in the cutting and tumid itself, out of which momentarily
objects were brought which harrowed the (dollop of all ;
bodies fearfully mutilated and blackened by the pressure ;
and living sufferers, but whose condition in some COMO war
more to be pitied than that of the actually den. Into this
scene, from which many had to retreat, unable to bear it,
we will not go further. An Mead it may be gathered from
the feet that the number of killed is this most calamitous
accident is non, at the moment we write, to be 22 ; and
the number of injured is not, perhaps, under 100. But
there latter it is impossible to compute ; they covered the
platform at Hassock's-gata, and were continually arriving
at Brighton.
After a time the engine and the first portion of the first
Brighton train went on to London with such of the ms.
sengue as had escaped.
We do not hear that the passengers of the second
Brighton train suffered much injury. Its engine-driver
and stoker escaped by pooping off, and the shock of the
colleen woe, of course, much broken by the engine itself
running over the last carriages of the first Brighton train.
It needed all the effetes of the rail ay men, with ropes,
he., to moon this engine, which, streams to say, had not
fallen over. The merges on which it fell were of course
smashed to stoma, and their fragments were merely bits
of wood, he. ; but the carriages attached to this engine
were not so much damaged, and some were immediately
sent back to Brighton with the wounded.
A passenger in the front part of the first Brighton trails
describes his experience in this way. He says :
" We had got a considerable distance into the tunnel
when the train gradually stopped as if it had come to a
statios. Our impression was, but of course we knew
nothing about it, that the engine had broken down from its
strength being overtasked, or that the coupling chains bad
broken, and it hail become detached from the carriage..
This did not occasion us any particular alarm—the feeling
I was rather one of annoyance. But we had not been in
the darkness of the tunnel more than a few minutes when
we heard a whistle as of another train approaching,
sad before we had time to think of the consequences,
there was • shock and • smash. It was instantaneous. I
was knocked forward against the man opposite me, but not
so violently as to Cattle eisher of us any serious injury. But
then you see, we were in the fore part of the train, about a
dozes carriages from the engine ; and I dare say the train
was nearly 30 carriages long.
"The sane that followed I have no power to describe to
yes. The yells and shrieks of the people were awful, not
°sly of those who were injured, but the rest of the pas.
singers of the two tens, whom alarm, increased by the
darkness, was intense. People were distracted with terror.
We had not noisy injured beyond mere contusions is oar
carriage; but people yelled and shrieked and put op prayers,
believing that they should never see daylight more. Their
fears isereand the actual horror of the situation. They
imagined that ever, moment other trains, either on the up or
down lines, would run into them and reader their doom cer-
tain. For some 10 minutes we remeieed in darkness ; then
lights wen hung up against the sides of the tunnel, and the
scene that revealed itself was terrific. There, in the back-
ground, I could dimly perceive a heap of carriages more or
less in fragment., which seemed to have been piled one
upon the other. From among this masa, and around it
Is all directions, you could distinguish people lying,
sitting, or running to and fro, shrieking and groaning.
I I never witnessed such • some is my life. I trust in Clod
never to do so again. We were detained in this tunnel an
hour and ten minutes before any of our train could be
got out ; then about 15 of our carriers got oat, taking with
them • number of the slightly wounded. It stopped at
Hassock's-gate, where the wounded were taken out, and
the whole platform was covered with thorn. Some were
severely hurt. 1 saw a lady an little girl, mother and
daughter, I believe, aid they had missed the babj ; but
the mother was too much hurt to do more than to put her
Lands together as if praying for it. I was told that Mrs.
Swayslaud, of the Northstreet Quadrant, had broken her
leg. Many of the passengers were only slightly hurt,— they ,
were cut or contused. or severely shaken. Many of the
paseeogers continued their journey to London, but I returned
out of consideration for the feeling. of my fn-nde at
Brighton, who would naturally be in a great state of alarm
and uncertainty as to my fate.'"