Bell v Great Northern Railway Co of Ireland

‘The Twelfth day of June 1889 will ever live in the memory of the people of Armagh as the blackest and most woful on record. No day ever dawned more auspiciously; no sun ever sat on desolation and agony of greater extent than a few minutes thoughtlessness had then wrought for the city of Armagh.’ ¹

The Darkest Day in Armagh’s History

On 12 June 1889, the Methodist Sunday School of Armagh in (what is now) Northern Ireland organised a day trip from Armagh to the seaside resort of Warrenpoint. When the railway to Warrenpoint opened in 1849, the town became a popular holiday destination, with the railway making the trip to the seaside town an affordable family excursion.² A special Great Northern Railway of Ireland excursion train was arranged for those joining the trip to the seaside on this warm summer’s day. A band of the Royal Irish Fusiliers led the procession from Armagh’s Sunday School to the railway station. Hundreds of children, parents, and preachers followed the band, full of excitement for the journey to come. Nobody could have predicted the horror that would soon unfold.³

The Sunday School committee had planned to sell 800 tickets for the excursion train. This information was provided to the locomotive department which provided rolling stock suitable for the 800 excursionists. The engine driver was instructed to only use thirteen carriages. However, on the morning of the excursion, hundreds more passengers than expected made their way to the railway station. John Foster, the station master at Armagh, decided to add two additional carriages to the train, taking the total number of carriages to fifteen. The engine driver objected, requesting that a second engine be added, but the station master refused. At the train station, 1200 people squeezed into fifteen carriages.⁴ Some passengers even managed to squeeze into the train’s luggage compartments, finding space between the picnic hampers and the band’s instruments.⁵ Despite concerns as to whether the engine could handle the weight of the additional carriages and passengers, the train departed shortly after. Three excursionists were, however, missing as the train pulled out of Armagh station. One lady, upon overhearing an argument between two railway employees about the engine’s ability to cope, promptly decided to take her two children home, avoiding the terrible tragedy that was to follow.⁶

The Runaway Train

The railway to Warrenpoint was steeply graded and curved. The driver, who was inexperienced and had never driven this route before, was unfamiliar with the extent of the incline out of Armagh. As the train approached a point called Derry’s Crossing on a steep hill three miles outside of Armagh, it became clear that the train was simply too heavy to be carried by the engine up the incline. The train stalled.

A prudent course of action would have been to wait for the next train—a scheduled service due in 20 minutes—which could have pushed the struggling train gently over the hill. However, the chief clerk, James Elliot, instead decided to split the train in two. The front five carriages were to be towed by the engine to the nearby Hamiltonsbawn station, before the engine would return to collect the remaining ten carriages.⁷

The rear ten carriages of the train were uncoupled and only the hand-operated breaks in the rear break van held the carriages in place. In addition, stones were placed behind the wheels of the rear carriages, but this soon proved predictably ineffective. When the engine was restarted, the train lurched backwards slightly, overwhelming the brakes on the ten carriages that had been de-coupled. “Oh my God, we will all be killed” proclaimed the chief clerk, James Elliot, before jumping off the train.⁸

The uncoupled carriages ran backwards down the hill, building up speed as they powered down the steep incline. It was common practice to lock the carriage doors on trains carrying children, making it difficult for the passengers on board the runaway carriages to escape.⁹ Some children were thrown from the windows in a desperate attempt to save their lives. One lady on board, Mrs Hamilton, managed to throw all of her children out the window as her carriage ran backwards down the hill, before herself jumping out the train’s window. Miraculously, Mrs Hamilton and her children were all unharmed. Private Cox—one of the Royal Irish Fusiliers—also saved a number of young lives, climbing onto the footplate of his carriage and gently dropping children off the side of the train.

Sadly, some passengers were simply too frightened to follow the lead of Private Cox and Mrs Hamilton. Samuel Steele, the local Petty Sessions Clerk, was in one of the runaway carriages with his wife, two children, and niece, however, his wife was too scared to throw her children out the window or jump herself. Samuel refused to leave his family behind and instead braced for impact. He died along with all three children. His wife survived and was completely unscathed.¹⁰

After running down the incline for nearly 2.5 kilometres, the runaway carriages had attained a speed of approximately 80 km/h.¹¹ By this stage, the next passenger train had left Armagh station and was fast approaching the runaway carriages. The line operated on a time interval system, with trains departing every twenty minutes. It was not possible to let the train behind know that the line was not clear.¹² William Herd was the fireman responsible for tending to the steam engine’s fire on the fast-approaching passenger train. When he heard the sound of the carriages running backwards toward their train, Herd screamed at the driver, Pat Murphy, to abort the engine with him. Murphy, however, was determined to save his train and the lives of his passengers. He stayed in the engine, slowing his train as much as he could. Approximately ten seconds prior to impact, Murphy and Herd had managed to reduce the train’s speed from 48km/h to a mere 8km/h. Five seconds before impact, Herd the fireman threw himself from the engine while Murphy the driver stayed on his train and braced for impact.¹³

The sound of the carriages colliding with the oncoming train was so loud it could be heard back in Armagh.¹⁴ The engine of the oncoming train was derailed and left ’lying like some great monster on its side’.¹⁵ The two rearmost carriages of the runaway train were completely obliterated.¹⁶ Many excursionists were scalded by the boiling water used to power the steam engine that flowed out of the locomotive in the aftermath of the collision. Mr and Mrs Vallelly, a couple from Northern England who had been holidaying in Northern Ireland, were left with permanent scars on their scalps as a result of being scalded.¹⁷

Understandably, the sight of the overturned train, mangled carriages, and horrific injuries, was simply too much for some witnesses. John Hughes, a local chauffeur, died of a heart attack on the spot after arriving at the crash site and observing the horrific scene before him.¹⁸ For some of the more fortunate who survived to tell the tale, the accident marked an important turning point in their lives or careers. Pat Murphy—the driver of the oncoming passenger train who had refused to abandon his engine and passengers—miraculously escaped unharmed. However, after twenty years working as a train driver, Murphy resigned following the events of this ill-fated day, vowing to never work on a train again.¹⁹

In the immediate aftermath of the accident, an alcohol delivery vehicle travelling in the area was diverted towards the crash site. Brandy was circulated amongst the dying and the badly injured as a form of pain relief.²⁰ A Northern Irish newspaper reported bodies being carried through the streets as if ‘some form of deadly pestilence has been raging unchecked and has converted a prosperous city into a charnel house’.²¹ In some parts of town, there was not a single house without at least one dead.²² In some cases, whole families were obliterated.²³ Public buildings were converted into makeshift morgues and surgeries.²⁴ The town’s infirmary was overwhelmed but Armagh’s locals stepped up, taking the injured into their own homes when the infirmary ran out of beds.²⁵ The Irish Times described a town ‘bowed and literally crushed tonight by the weight of this terrible calamity’.²⁶

In the end, 80 people were killed and 260 were injured in the accident, about a third of whom were children. It was, at the time, the deadliest railway accident in European history. Today, the accident remains the deadliest ever to have occurred in Ireland.²⁷

Nervous Shock on the Railway

Mary Bell was one of the passengers on the excursion train to Warrenpoint. She was seated in the last carriage of the train that remained connected to the engine after the train was divided in two. When the rear ten carriages were uncoupled, the portion of the train in which Mary was seated gave a violent jerk, before reversing slightly. Mary heard someone cry out: “Jump out; jump out, you’ll all be killed.” She also witnessed people being thrown around the carriage and jumping out of the train’s windows. On behalf of the defendant, three passengers who were also seated in the front portion of the train testified, in contrast to Mary, that they did not feel any sudden or violent jerk when the carriages were uncoupled.

Although Mary was not in the runaway part of the train and her carriage did not collide with the oncoming passenger train, she suffered from fright and nervous shock as a result of the accident. Mary and her husband George brought an action against the railway company to recover £600—Mary for her nervous shock and medical expenses, and George for the loss of his wife’s society and services. Prior to the accident, Mary’s general employment was housekeeping for her husband, however, following the accident, she was unable to carry out this work.

Mary’s son testified that upon hearing of the accident he drove out to the crash site and found Mary lying on her side. She did not recognise her son. Mary’s daughter testified that when her mother returned home approximately two weeks after the accident, she trembled and looked as white as death. She rarely slept at night, and when she did, she often woke screaming.

The jury found the railway company was guilty of negligence and agreed that Mary’s nervous shock reasonably and naturally resulted from this negligence. Mary was awarded £300 and her husband was awarded £50.

On appeal, the defendants relied on the 1888 case of Victorian Railways Commissioners v Coultas, arguing that in cases of nervous shock, unaccompanied by physical injury, no damages are recoverable. Readers should refer to our previous post for a summary of the decision in Coultas. Briefly, the case involved a female plaintiff who received a fright upon seeing a train rapidly approaching a portion of the railway that she was crossing in a horse-drawn buggy. The Privy Council refused to allow the plaintiff to recover for nervous shock, fearing that to do so would result in ‘a wide field opened for imaginary claims’.

The Privy Council’s decision attracted widespread criticism and barely two years later, when the case of the runaway train came before the Court of Appeal in Ireland, Mary Bell was successful. Chief Baron Palles refused to follow the Privy Council’s reasoning in Coultas, declaring that the Privy Council erred in its conflation of the non-organic phenomena of mere grief and emotional distress (which do not sound in damages at common law) with organically based nervous shock. According to the Chief Baron, Sir Richard Couch’s judgment in Coultas ‘assumes, as a matter of law, that nervous shock is something which affects merely the mental functions, and is not in itself a peculiar state of the body. This error pervades the entire judgement’. Criticising the notion that nervous shock must be accompanied by a separate physical injury to sound in damages, Palles CB observed:

“Why is the accompaniment of physical injury essential? I should not be surprised if the surgeon or the physiologist told us that nervous shock is or may be in itself an injurious affection of the physical organism.” ²⁸

In reaching his decision, Palles CB relied upon the 1884 case of Byrne v Great Southern and Western Railway Co of Ireland.²⁹ This case involved an action by the superintendent of the telegraph office at Limerick Junction railway station in Ireland. When a train unexpectedly came crashing through the walls of the telegraph office, the superintendent was shocked by the sound of the train and the sight of the walls crashing down around him. He sustained no physical injuries but suffered nervous shock. He was awarded £325 in damages and this verdict was upheld by the Court of Appeal in Ireland.³⁰

In selecting to follow the progressive decision in Byrne and refusing to be bound by the Privy Council’s much more cautious judgment in Coultas, Palles CB was willing to defer to the scientific and medical evidence on nervous shock:

“I am of opinion that as the relation between fright and injury to the nerve and brain structures of the body is a matter which depends entirely upon scientific and medical testimony, it is impossible for any court to lay down, as a matter of law, that if negligence causes fright, and such fright, in its turn, so affects such structures as to cause injury to health, such injury cannot be “a consequence which, in the ordinary course of things would flow from the negligence, unless such injury accompany such negligence in point of time.””

In a concurring judgment, Murphy J also found in favour of Mary Bell. According to Murphy J, as long as the plaintiff can prove that they suffered an injury caused by the defendant’s negligence, it is ‘immaterial whether the injuries may be called nervous shock, brain disturbance, mental shock, or bodily injury’. Here, it was clear that the negligent management of the train by the defendant was the cause of the injuries that Mary Bell sustained, and as such, her claim could succeed.

The Legislative Response

An inquest into the Armagh rail disaster was completed in the weeks following the disaster and made findings of culpable negligence against six of those involved, including those responsible for the selection of the engine to lead the excursion train, and James Elliott who ordered that the excursion train be split in two.³¹ Three of the accused were committed for trial for manslaughter. In the end, however, none of those involved in the railway disaster were found culpable.³²

The accident did, however, lead to various safety measures being introduced as legal requirements for railways in the United Kingdom. The Regulation of Railways Act 1889 made the use of continuous automatic brakes mandatory and was rushed through parliament in the months following the accident.³³ The Inspector of the Board of Trade had reported that the use of such brakes would have made the accident impossible.³⁴ The legislation marked an important move away from self-regulation and toward government intervention in the private railways.³⁵ The Oxford Companion to British Railway History described the legislation as ’the most striking example of the direct intervention of the state in the working of British railways in the 19th century, and it proved entirely beneficent.’³⁶

Whilst the legislative change may have come too late to prevent the Armagh railway disaster and Mary Bell’s injuries, Irish tort law was clearly ahead of other common law jurisdictions in the 19th century, with the Court of Appeal prepared to recognise the injustice of Privy Council jurisprudence and accept the realities of psychiatric injury.