The North Cumberland Reformer. — 1893-07-20 (Carlisle, Cumbria, England)

THURSDAY, JULY 20TH, 1893.  ACCIDENT? OR MURDER?  "THE deceased met with death owing to culpable negligence on the part of the Lancashire and Yorkshire and the London and North-Western Joint Railway Companies in allowing such a dangerous curve to continue on the main line, and in appointing a driver not sufficiently acquainted with the road." This was the verdict of the coroner's jury, after having the evidence produced, at the inquest held on the unfortunate enginedriver, RIDG WAY, and his fellow-victims of the sad railway fatality at Poulton, which took place on the Ist of this month. It is satisfactory— if anything can be called satisfactory in a case of this kind—that a jury was found to express, with unhesitating boldness, a conviction so straightforward and comprehendable. It is sadly too common an occurrence, that Companies do not safeguard the public or their own employees until some sad, and perhaps fatal, calamity occurs, by which they are forced, either through public opinion or through judicial interference, to do a work which should be their first care to do. The cause of the terrible disaster that sent poor RIDGWAY into eternity in a moment, and that brought bitter bereavement, also, into other homes, was a two-fold one. The employment of a man who but imperfectly knew the road was, undoubtedly, one part of the cause. The jury evidently so regarded it, and exonerated the driver from all blame in the matter. But, had the road been even ordinarily safe—and that is not counting upon very excessive security—there would probably have been no "accident." As it appears, it was not ordinarily safe. Ttpre was a fault of grievous nature, that was no hidden and unknown flaw about which no care could have been taken, but was a well-known and obvious menace. A curve so dangerous, that it had often been regarded by the men working the road as a place requiring special and careful precaution, and concerning which the boldest driver was apt to breathe more freely when it was passed. That the authorities knew the dangerous—we mean, the prey entably dangerous—character of the curve in question, was amply proved before the jury. But no efficient steps had been taken to modify the risk. The fact is, that these risks abound. Drivers know this. They get familiar with the dangers after a time, and then, it is easy to forget that they are dangers. They get weary of calling attention to such conditions of the several roads—or perhaps learn that silence is their safest policy if they desire to retain their employment. Yet men who know, and are silent because their bread and that of their families probably depends on that silence, have the fearful responsibility of carrying hundreds of precious lives past these points of danger week after week. They do their very best, suffering a mental strain in the doing that only they can know. Then comes the fat al hour. Perhaps the hero at the lever is the first martyr to the carelessness of the unj eopardized Board of Directors; or more probably of the highly paid officialism whose highest ambition, after the securing of their own interests, is to keep the working ex penses low, and so compete with the management of other railway systems as to gain the commendation of their directors for carefulness and thrift. Poor RIDG WAY had not even the chances of the ordinary regular driver. Ile did not sufficiently know the road over which he had to conduct the precious lives entrusted to his care to be wholly on his guard in the sense in which precautions were evidently essential. Who is to blame for this accentuating element in the preventible sacrifice of human life we care not to be responsible for indicating. But, that the Grovernment of the nation should take much more stringently in hand the supervision of all railroads, is again most tragically demonstrated Railway companies dare not be trusted.