Litchfield enquirer., 1875-11-11

AA AAAG 4t421Lb IBcu8ltY WHICH WAS, III C<466 ] of disasters on railways resulting in a loss of human life, imposed upon the corpora tlons. 1t was principle of English com > mon law. derived from the feudai period, that anything through the instFumentality of which death occurred was forfeited to the crown as deodand; accordingly, down to the year 1S40, and even later, we find, Tn ali cases where persons were killed rec ords oi deodands levied by the coroner's Iuriss upon the locomotives. These ap- pear to have been arbitrarily imposed and graduated Tn amount accordingly as cir cumstances seemed to excite in greater or less degree the sympathies or the indigna- ton of the jury In November, 1888, for instance, locomotive exploded upon the Liverpool and Manchester road, killing its engineer and fireman and for this es- eapade deOdand of twenty pounds was assessed upon 1t by the coroner's jury {: while upon another occasion, in 1859, where the locomotive struck and killed a man and horse at street crossing the deodand was fixed at no less a sum than fourteen hundred pounds, the full value of the engine. Yet in this last case there did not appear to be any circumstances rendering the corporation liable in civil damages. The deodand seems to have been looked upon as a species of rude penalty imposed on the use of dangerous appliances, sharp reminder to the corpo- rations to look closely after their locomo- tIves and employees. As, however, acci- dents increased Tn frequency, it became painfully apparent that ''crowner's quest law was not in any appreciable degree better calculated to command the public respect in the days of Victoria than in those Of Elizabeth, and the ancient usage was accordingly at last abolished. Ger tainly the position of railroad corpora tons would now be even more hazardous than 1t IS. If, after every catastrophe re- sulting Tn death, the coroner's jury of the viclnage enjoyed the power of arbitrarily imposing on them such additional penal ty, III addition to all other liabilities. as might seem to it proper under the circum- stances of the case.
 The period of exemption lasted eleven years. and, curiously enough, the record of great catastrophes opened on the Great Western Railway and upon the 24th of December. day which seems to have been peculiarly unfortunate in the annals of that company, seeing that it was lIke- wise the date of the Shipton- n-on-C CherweIl disaster. Upon that day in 1S41. train. while moving through thick fog at a high rate of speed, came suddenly in con- tact with mass of earth which had slid from the embaDkment at the side On to the track. Instantly the whole rear of the train was piled up on top of the first carriage, which happened to be crowded with passengers, eight of whom .were kill ed on the spot, while seventeen otlisrs were more or less injured. The coroner,s Jury returned a verdict of accidental death. and at the same time, as if to give | closer to the condition of its embark ments, deodand of one hundred pounds was levied on the locomotive and tender. 1 TELEscoPISe.
 The disaster in this case was due to the telescoping, as it IS termed, of cars. That IS. the cars are closed up in each other .ae the sldes of tslessePgi sfe anass the stopping of train in .~pId motion. This 1 IS, upon the whole, the most frightful danger to which travel by rail is liable, l and there are but two ways in which pro- vision can be made to meet it. The oc- currence of accident may be guarded against through an unsleeping and all- | pervadlng vigilance or, where 1t must occur, an equipment may be provided so strong as to be capable of meeting and re- sisting 1t. Now, so long as trains go at great speed and depend for their safety l on human precaution, 1t is inevitable that they Wlll run upon some unexpected ob- | stacle. The simple wonder Is that they do this so infIequently. Were 1t not an accomplished fact. the security in this re- spect which has been attained would be deemed simply impossible. Though some- times inevitable, the occurrence of acci- dents of this description may, however, in the vastly larger proportion of the few in- stances in which they must occur, be ren- dered harmless just in proportion as those in charge of train can reduce its speed, or as the train itself, through it's more perfect construction, can resist the pres- sure of sudden shock. Improved brakes and stronger and heavier car construction are the great safeguards against telescop- l ing, and the advance made in these re- spects of late years on the American rail- roads has been little sEort of wonderful. This has been due to two inventions, both of which have only recently been brought into general use: the atmospheric train brake, and what Is, from the DGme of it's inventor, known as the Miller platform and buffer. By the first the velocity of the whole train Tn its every part is placed directly and immediately under the con- trOl of its engineer and by the last the cars of train are practically converted into one continuous body, in which there are no separate or loosely connected parts to be crushed into each other, or piled on | top of each other Had the train upon the Great Western Railway at Shipton- on Cherwell, in 1874. been equipped with the continuous train brake, the worst features of that catastrophe would certainly have been averted, and 1t would have been passefEover unDOticed as simple, ordi- nary case of derailment. Had the cars of which that train was composed, or those of the other train on the same road just thirty three years before, been built with the Miller platform and buffer, their strength, converting them into substances too hard to be crushed, would in both cases have resisted tue shock caused by the sudden stopping of the locomotives.
 THE FoxBoBoUGH ACCIDENT.
 A very apt illustration of what might have been the result in these cases was furnished in an accident, not dissimilar to that at Shipton- on-C -Cberwell in charac- ter, which happened in Massachusetts on the Boston < Providence Railroad upon July 15, 1872 As au express train was running up to Boston about noon of that day, and at . rate of speed of some forty miles an hour, 1t came in contact with a horse and wagon at a grade crossing in the town of Peterborough. The train was made up of thoroughly weIl-built cars. equipped with both the Miller platform and tine Westinghouse train-brake. There was no time in which to cheek the speed, and 1t thas became simple question of strength of construction, to be tested in an unavoidable collision. The engine struck the Sagon. and instantly destroyed it. The horse had already cleared the rails when the wagon was struck, but, a portion of his harness getting caught on the loeomotive.she was thrown down and dragged a short distance until his body came in contact with the platform of a station close to the spot of collision. The body was then forced under the cars. hay
 ing been almost instantaneously rolled 1 1~a |, -.