Staplehurst rail crash

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The Staplehurst rail crash was a railway accident at Staplehurst, Kent, England, remembered for its effects on Charles Dickens. He was a passenger on the boat train returning from France with his companions Ellen Ternan and her mother in a front, first class carriage on 9 June 1865.

Crash scene after the accident
Crash scene after the accident

The track was in the process of being renovated at Staplehurst, at a spot where the rails ran over a low cast iron girder bridge. The timing of the train, the Folkestone Boat Express, varied with the tides which governed the arrival of ships at the port. The foreman had mistakenly thought that the train would arrive later than it did, and the final two rails had not been replaced. The foreman had posted a lookout, but he was not far away enough to give adequate warning to the fast approaching train. It managed to reach the far side of the bridge by moving on the timber baulks supportng the rails, but the girders below cracked, and most of the carriages fell into the small brook under the viaduct. Ten passengers were killed and 49 seriously injured.

[edit] Charles Dickens

Dickens, and the manuscript of a novel in progress, were in one of the few carriages which did not fall (it is possibly the one leaning at an angle, in front of the guard's van at right in the picture):

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. The same happy result attended Miss Bella Wilfer on her wedding day, and Mr Riderhood inspecting Bradley Headstone's red neckerchief as he lay asleep. I remember with devout thankfulness that I can never be much nearer parting company with my readers for ever, 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.
—Postscript to Our Mutual Friend, Dickens

This profound experience affected Dickens psychologically for the rest of his life. He wrote a short story some time after the accident, a ghost story called "The Signal-Man", in which one of the principal incidents is a rail crash in a tunnel. Though Dickens based his fictional crash upon the events of the terrible and well-known Clayton Tunnel accident of 1861 (23 dead, 176 injured), rather than the Staplehurst crash, it is reasonable to suppose that his personal involvement in the Staplehurst incident inspired the harrowing tale. But he also included a fatal fall from a train and the signalman's own demise, as foretold by a spectre who appears to him before every accident. Dickens was deeply affected by the experience, and was extremely nervous when travelling by train; if possible he either tried to avoid train travel or used alternative means. It is also reasonable to suppose that the psychological effects of the crash helped to shorten his life; he died five years to the day after the accident.

[edit] External links

[edit] References

  • L. T. C. Rolt - Red for Danger: the classic history of railway accidents. Sutton Publishing (1998)
  • PR Lewis, Disaster on the Dee: Robert Stephenson's Nemesis of 1847, Tempus Publishing (2007) ISBN 978 0 7524 4266 2
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