Notes on Railroad Accidents. Charles Francis Adams

he did not find. He was immediately on his feet, and again made a spring upon me. We had then a very long and desperate struggle, when he overpowered me and pinned me in a corner of the compartment. At last he got my right thumb into his mouth, holding my hand to steady it with both his hands while he bit it. With a great effort he then bit my thumb off, clean to the bone. I had no glove on that hand. I called to the other man to help me, but he seemed stupefied. He called two or three times to the prisoner, 'Leave the poor man alone. The poor man has done thee no harm.' Though sitting within nine inches of my knees he rendered me no help.

      "When the prisoner bit my thumb off, he held it in his mouth; he pushed his head through the glass, spat the thumb into his hand and flung it out through the window. I then stood up and put my left hand in my pocket, took out my purse and cried out: 'If it is money you want take all I have.' He made a grab at the purse and flung it through the window, on the same side as the thumb was thrown out. From this act I inferred that I was struggling with a maniac. I retreated to the other end of the compartment, holding the other man between me and the prisoner, but he passed the other man by jumping over the seat and again got hold of me. Then he forced his head through the other window, breaking the glass, and, loosing me for a moment, with his fists smashed the remaining glass in the window. Addressing me he said: 'You ——, you will have to go over;' at the same time he flung both his arms around my waist. I put my leg behind his and threw him on his back. I called upon the other man to help me and he did so.

      "We held him down for some time, but he overpowered us and flung us back some distance. He then laid hold of my travelling rug and threw it through the window. Laying his hand on the bottom of the window he cried out, 'Here goes,' and made a leap through the window. I and the other man instantly laid hold of his legs as he was falling over. I got my four fingers into his right shoe, and, his father assisting me, we held him through the window, hanging head downward for about half a mile. I then fainted, and as I was losing my hold on his heels I have some faint recollection that the prisoner's father lost his hold at the same time, and I can't say what happened afterward. As I was coming to myself the train was stopping, and I heard the other man say, 'Oh, my son, my son.' When the train stopped I walked from the carriage to the station, and Dr. Robinson, who was sent for, came in about an hour and amputated my thumb further back."

      While thus referring, however, to this instance of British railroad conservatism, which with a stolid indifference seems to ignore the teachings of every day life and to meet constantly recurring experience with a calm defiance, it will not do for the American railroad manager to pride himself too much on his own greater ingenuity and more amenable disposition. The Angola disaster has been referred to, as well as that at Shipton. If the absence of the bell-cord had indeed any part in the fatality of the latter, the presence in cars crowded with passengers of iron pots full of living fire lent horrors before almost unheard of to the former. The methods of accomplishing needed results which are usual to any people are never easily changed, whether in Europe or in America; but certainly the disasters which have first and last ensued from the failure to devise any safe means of heating passenger coaches in this country are out of all proportion to those which can be attributed in England to the absence of means of communication between the passengers on trains and those in charge of them. There is an American conservatism as well as an English; and when it comes to a question of running risks it would be strange indeed if the greater margin of security were found west of the Atlantic. The security afforded by the bell-cord assuredly has not as yet in this country off-set the danger incident to red-hot stoves.