page_title: Opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway
section_title: Initial reaction
hierarchical_section_title: Opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway / Parkside / Initial reaction
caption_attribution_description: English: Huskisson's Memorial
context_page_description: The Liverpool and Manchester Railway opened on 15 September 1830. Work on the L&M had begun in the 1820s, to connect the major industrial city of Manchester with the nearest deep water port at the Port of Liverpool, 35 miles away. Although horse-drawn railways already existed elsewhere, and a few industrial sites already used primitive steam locomotives for bulk haulage, the L&M was the first locomotive-hauled railway to connect two major cities, and the first to provide a scheduled passenger service. The opening day was a major public event. Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, the Prime Minister, rode on one of the eight inaugural trains, as did many other dignitaries and notable figures of the day. Huge crowds lined the track at Liverpool to watch the trains depart for Manchester.
  The trains left Liverpool on time and without any technical problems. The Duke of Wellington's special train ran on one track, and the other seven trains ran on an adjacent and parallel track, sometimes ahead and sometimes behind the Duke's train. Around 13 miles out of Liverpool the first of many problems occurred, when one of the trains derailed and the following train collided with it.
context_section_description: Joseph Parkes, Lord Wilton and William Rathbone were the first to reach Huskisson. They found that a wheel had passed over his right calf and thigh, leaving his knee itself untouched. A flap of skin on his upper leg had been cut back, exposing the muscles, and the exposed arteries had not been severed but were flattened, pulsing with Huskisson's heartbeat. The damaged leg shook uncontrollably. Observers noted that Huskisson did not appear to be in pain, and instead lay watching the leg shake. Huskisson shouted "This is the death of me". Parkes attempted to reassure him, but Huskisson replied "Yes, I am dying, call Mrs Huskisson". A man threw his coat over William Huskisson's leg to spare Emily Huskisson from seeing the extent of his injuries, and she was helped from the carriage in which she had been sitting. In hysterics, she attempted to throw herself onto Huskisson, but was restrained by fellow passengers as Lord Wilton applied a makeshift tourniquet he had made using handkerchiefs and an elderly passenger's walking stick. Other passengers ripped the door of a nearby railway storeroom from its hinges, to serve as a makeshift stretcher. Huskisson was lifted onto the door, shaking his head and saying "Where is Mrs Huskisson? I have met my death, God forgive me." (Garfield, writing in 2002, gives his words as "This is my death, God forgive me".)
  Men ran along the track in both directions to tell the other trains not to proceed. In the initial panic, the first thought of many of those present was that the Prime Minister had been assassinated.
  On looking out, I observed the Duke's train drawn up parallel to another train, with a considerable number of persons on foot assembled in the intervening space; and, at the same time, I perceived an appearance of hustling, and stooping, and crowding together for which I could not well account. In another moment, a gentleman rushed forth, and came running up the line towards us; as he neared, I saw evidently that he was much agitated, and pale, and breathless—in short, that something dreadful had happened was obvious. At length he stopped, and fifty voices exclaimed, "Has any thing happened? What is the matter?" In a state of distracted nervousness, and in broken unconnected words, he at last broke silence—"Oh God! he is dead! He is killed! he is killed!"—"Who, and when, and how?" burst from every mouth; the first passing thought on my own, and probably every other mind, being, that some desperate and successful attempt had been made on the Duke's life. The truth, however, soon spread like wildfire to the right and left, acting, as it fell upon every car, like a spell. Smiles and cheerful countenances were changed for one general gloom. Amongst those who were near the fatal spot, the first feeling was one of thankfulness, that their own immediate relative was not the victim; the next, and most permanent, was sympathy with the unhappy lady who saw her husband stretched, lacerated and bleeding, on the ground. A further sympathy was, I am sure, as generally and as sincerely felt—a sympathy with those gentlemen, who, as directors, had for so long devoted themselves to the accommodation of the public, and looked forward to this day as a gratifying and auspicious termination of their labours; conscious, too, as they were, that had their printed directions, issued with the tickets, been adhered to, no such accident could by any possibility have occurred.
  — "A Railer", Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine
  Henry Herbert Southey, physician to the recently deceased George IV, had travelled in the Duke's train, as had Dr Hunter, professor of anatomy at the University of Edinburgh. The two of them rushed to Huskisson's side, joined shortly afterwards by Joseph Brandreth, a Liverpool surgeon who had been travelling behind Phoenix. The doctors suggested returning Huskisson to Liverpool for treatment, but George Stephenson insisted that it would be better to take him on to Manchester.
  Huskisson was loaded onto the flat-bottomed wagon of the Duke's train which had carried the band. The remaining three carr
caption: The site of the former Parkside station. The white monument marks the location of the accident.(53°27′17″N 2°35′46″W﻿ / ﻿53.454848°N 2.596051°W﻿ / 53.454848; -2.596051﻿ (Huskisson monument))
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