1865 Staplehurst: Heroism of Our Mutual Friend

Chapter 3

1865 St aplehur St: heroiSm of our mutual friend

Novelist Charles Dickens, one of the world’s best-loved authors, was a passenger in a train which crashed onaviaduct at Staplehurst in Kent, after workmen told nobody that they had removed alength of track on it. Ten people died; the writer tended to the wounded and dying, and then ran back inside the wrecked train to rescue his latest manuscript. On Friday, June 9, 1865, the South Eastern Railway’s daily boat train to London left Folkestone just before 2.40pm, having taken on board passengers from the tidal cross-channel ferry from France. The service, headed on this occasion by SER tender locomotive No. 199, one of the famous Cudworth singles with 7ft diameter driving wheels, was often referred to as the ‘tidal train’. Packed with continental pleasure-seekers, it comprised a brake van, a second-class carriage, seven first-class carriages, two more second-class carriages and three more brake vans, carrying in all 80 first-class and 35 second-class passengers. Three of the brake vans contained a guard and these were able to communicate with the driver using a whistle on the engine. Shortly after the train passed Headcorn station at 45-50mph, the driver saw a red flag. He whistled for the brakes and reversed his engine, but the locomotive and brakesmen were unable to stop the train before it derailed at 3.13pm while crossing the 10fthigh River Beult viaduct at Staplehurst. There, unknown to the train crew, a length of track had been removed during engineering works on the viaduct, with inevitable consequences. The 10ft-high viaduct spanned a riverbed, which was mostly dry at the time of the accident. The train jumped the rails before splitting into two. The locomotive, tender,avan and a second-class carriage made it across and remained coupled to afirstclass carriage, the other end of which rested in the dry river-bed. The next seven carriages ended up in the mud and the last second-class carriage remained coupled to the trailing vans, the last two of which remained on the eastern bank. Ten people died and 40 others were seriously injured while seven carriages were destroyed. Inside afirst-class coach left hanging over the bridge with its rear end resting on the field below were novelist Charles Dickens, his mistress Ellen Ternan and her mother Frances Ternan, all returning to London from a month in Paris. Ellen’s presence was a guilty secret that Dickens was concealing from his adoring public, and he now found himself in a predicament that came very close to exposing that secret. We do not know why Dickens chose to travel in the front carriage as it was an unpopular location with travellers at the time as the first and last carriages were the most likely to be destroyed in the event of a crash. Maybe he felt that the brake van in front of his coach would absorb any impact. Nonetheless, Dickens played a significant part in the subsequent rescue efforts. Despite sustaining minor injuries himself, he climbed out of a window, and noticed two guards running up and down. He summoned them and, with their help, used planks to lead the Ternans out of the carriage and to safety. He helped them up the bank and returned to the carriage. Once back inside, he retrieved his top hat and aflask of brandy. Filling the hat with water, he scrambled down the bank and started to tend the other victims, some of whom died while he was with them. He administered brandy to a

man with a severely cracked skull and a woman propped against a tree, but he could not save either.

Before he left with other survivors in an emergency train to Charing Cross station, to the utter astonishment of the survivors and onlookers, he returned to the carriage, which was then tottering on the brink, and retrieved the manuscript of Our Mutual Friend. He acknowledged the incident in the novel’s postscript: “On Friday the Ninth of June in the present year, Mr and Mrs Boffin (in their manuscript dress of receiving Mr and Mrs Lammle at breakfast) were on the South Eastern Railway with me, in a terribly destructive accident. When I had done what I could to help others, I climbed back into my carriage – nearly turned over a viaduct, and caught aslant upon the turn — to extricate the worthy couple. They were much soiled, but otherwise unhurt. Iremember with devout thankfulness that I can never be much nearer parting company with my readers forever than I was then, until there shall be written against my life, the two words with which I have this day closed this book: – THE END.” Our Mutual Friend is now regarded as one of Dickens’ greatest works, so his final heroic act on the day saved a priceless piece of English literature.

Afterwards Dickens was nervous when travelling by train, using alternative means when available. SER directors later presented Dickens with a piece of plate as a token of their appreciation for his assistance. Dickens was greatly affected by the tragedy, losing his voice for two weeks, and shaking so much that he could not write for a week. He remained resolute that he would not attend the subsequent inquest into the disaster, most likely because it would mean revealing that he had been travelling with Ellen Ternan. However, soon afterwards he wrote a short story,aghost story named The Signalman, in which one of the main incidents is a rail crash in a tunnel. A 1976 BBC dramatisation of the story was filmed on the Severn Valley Railway. Dickens died on the exact fifth anniversary of the accident, leaving The Mystery of Edwin Drood unfinished, his son claiming that he had never fully recovered from his experience at Staplehurst.

Penal retribution and Permanent Protection The Board ofTrade report into the disaster, published on June 21, 1865, found that for the previous eight to ten weeks, a team of eight men and aforeman had been renewing the timbers under the track on viaducts between Headcorn and Staplehurst stations. The track would be removed when no train was due; however, on June 9, the foreman had misread his timetable and there had also been no notification to the driver about the track repairs. A man had been placed with a red flag 554 yards away, but the regulations required him to be 1,000 yards away. Accordingly, the train did not have enough time to stop. It later transpired that Henry Benge, the foreman of the worker gang, consulted the wrong timetable and so was not expecting the boat train for another two hours. Also, he did not issue sufficient detonators to platelayer’s labourer John Wiles, whose duty it was to place detonators on the track at 250-yard intervals, up to 1,000 yards, to explode under the wheels of any unexpected train and warn the driver of danger. Benge also instructed that the detonators were not to be placed on the track unless visibility was poor. As it was a bright sunny afternoon, the detonators were not placed. Benge was found guilty by a grand jury of culpable negligence of passenger Hannah Cunliff and was sentenced to nine months’ imprisonment. At 3.13pm, on Tuesday, June 9, 2015, members of the Staplehurst Society marked the 150th anniversary of the crash, visiting the location to remember the victims. Anita Thompson read out the names of those who had perished and, at the appropriate minute, a colourful wreath was cast, from the river bank, to float on the river a few yards from the

site of the derailment. It had not been possible to access the exact spot owing to recent necessary alterations to the river by the local water company. It has been said that the Staplehurst accident led to, or at least contributed to, the formation of Rule 55, Protection of Train, which is still in use in a much-modified form today. The basic principle is that waiting trains on running lines must remind the signal controller (signaller) of their presence. Staplehurst apart, Rule 55 was introduced following a spate of accidents caused by signalmen forgetting that trains were standing on a running line, sometimes within sight of their signal boxes. It applied on British railways in the 19th and 20th centuries, and was superseded by the Modular Rulebook following privatisation.