The Hole in the Wall - Victoria Station's Signalbox and Dickens

In the 1860s there was an outcry over railway safety and the fact that while technologies were available to improve it, the railway companies were reluctant, for reasons of cost, to introduce them. Having been involved in the Staplehurst accident on 9 June 1865, Charles Dickens thereafter took an active interest in the promotion of railway safety. Therefore, in 1866 his magazine, All the year Round, featured an article on 'The Hole in the Wall', an advanced signal box at Victoria Station. This used advance interlocking signals and points, so the control of both was controlled by one mechanical action, thus eliminating a degree of human error. The description inside the box was as follows:

"Bells ring, whistles shriek, hands move, and huge iron bars creak and groan apparently of their own accord, and certainly by agencies which are invisible. On the right-hand wall of the box, and on a level with the eye, are fastened four cases, which communicate telegraphically with the platforms of the station, with Battersea Park, and with Stewart's-lane junction; and the movable faces of these are full of mysterious eloquence. The furthest one strikes what seems to be a gong twice, and then, without waiting for a reply, bangs the gong four times; the needle hands of the others tick away with spasmodic vigour.... To the left of the window, and facing the entrance door, is an apparatus which I can only describe as terrifying. Composed of strong and massive cranks so connected as to form a consistent whole, and resembling a tangled agricultural harrow, or one of the weird instruments of torture which racked the limbs of schismatics in bad old times, it has secret springs, and bells, and joints, which creak, and act, and tingle with a sudden directness highly discomposing to a stranger. You look mildly at one of its joints, and have a question concerning its use on the tip of your tongue, when, presto! it gives a cumbrous flap, and becomes a staring red signboard, with "Crystal Palace up waiting," or "Brighton down waiting," staring you in the face."

"The first shock of a great earthquake" - Dickens and Railway Construction

In Dombey and Son, Dickens described the destruction of the fictional Stagg’s Garden’s in Camden as the London and Birmingham Railway built towards Euston in the mid 1830s. While Stagg's Gardens itself was fictional - the level of destruction was not.

‘The first shock of a great earthquake had, just at that period, rent the whole neighbourhood to its centre. Traces of its course were visible on every side. Houses were knocked down; streets broken through and stopped; deep pits and trenches dug in the ground; enormous heaps of earth and clay thrown up; buildings that were undermined and shaking, propped by great beams of wood. Here, a chaos of carts, overthrown and jumbled together, lay topsy-turvy at the bottom of a steep unnatural hill; there, confused treasures of iron soaked and rusted in something that had accidentally become a pond. Everywhere were bridges that led nowhere; thoroughfares that were wholly impassable; Babel towers of chimneys, wanting half their height; temporary wooden houses and enclosures, in the most unlikely situations; carcases of ragged tenements, and fragments of unfinished walls and arches, and piles of scaffolding, and wildernesses of bricks, and giant forms of cranes, and tripods straddling above nothing. There were a hundred thousand shapes and substances of incompleteness, wildly mingled out of their places, upside down, burrowing in the earth, aspiring in the air, mouldering in the water and unintelligible as any dream. Hot springs and fiery eruptions, the usual attendants upon earthquakes, lent their contributions of confusion to the scene. Boiling water hissed and heaved within the dilapidated walls; whence, also, the glare and roar of flames came issuing forth; and mounds of ashes blocked up rights of way, and wholly changed the law and custom of the neighbourhood.

In short, the yet unfinished and unopened Railroad was is progress; and, from the very core of all this dire disorder, trailed smoothly away, upon its mighty course of civilisation and improvement.’

The Other Victims of the Staplehurst Accident - 1865

The fame of the Staplehurst Accident of 9 June 1865 stems from the fact that Charles Dickens was on the train, travelling back from Folkestone to London with his mistress, Ellen Ternan, and her mother. Naturally, in the wake of the accident Dickens' presence and his subsequent attempts to help the dying and the injured garnered much attention. This is entirely understandable. However, the ten passengers who were killed have largely remained anonymous. They were as follows:


Emma Beaumont - Spinster
Anne Bodinham - Wife of Frederick Bodinham, Solicitor
Charlotte Chaunhay-Faithful - Wife of Faithful, Judge at Bombay
Hannah Cundliff - Wife of Martin Cundliff, Hotel Keeper
James Dunn - Warehouseman
Adam Hampton - Surgeon
Hippolite Mercia - Cook
Amelia Rayner - Wife of Lloyd Rayner, Merchant
Lydia Whitby - Wife of George Whitby, Merchant
Caroline White - Spinster

A quick search of the census found the background of only one of the accident's other victims, Amelia Rayner. Amelia had been born around 1827 and lived in 1861 lived with her husband, George - listed in the census as being a 'General Broker' - in Toxteth Park, Liverpool. They had five children, Lloyd Jun. (6 years), Ellen A. (5 years), Maurice E. (3 years), Amelia May (1 year) and Hugh (5 months). Clearly Lloyd's business was successful, and the family were employing five servants, which shows the family's not inconsiderable wealth. Furthermore, it would seem from the 1871 census that George and Amelia had another son, Norman, who had been born in 1865, just before the accident. However, by 1871 Lloyd had found love again, and had married Anne S. Brown in 1868.

If you would like to know more about the Staplehurst accident, last year I wrote a post for the main Turnip Rail site HERE.

"The most desperate efforts to avoid the ladies" - Observing Station Activity (1868)

When browsing copies of Charles Dickens' magazine, All The Year Round, I came across this fascinating piece from 1868 which not only commented on the ever-present hustle and bustle at railway stations, but also on the entertainment one could have through the simple act of observing it:

"There is certainly no more lively, bustling, animated and animating scene than the terminus of a railway on the departure of an express train. It does one good even to be an on-looker; and I can imagine that a man who has few opportunities to travel, might give himself a pleasant excitement every day, by visiting the nearest terminus to witness the excitement of others. In this ingenious manner I have enjoyed some delights of travelling, without the weariness of a journey, an without the paying a fare. It would be difficult to describe what it is that renders the scene so invigorating. There seems to be a sort of animal magnetism at work. Everyone is excited though there is no particular cause for excitement. There are plenty of carriages, there are full five minutes to spare, and yet every individual on the platform is in an intense hurry-passing and repassing, darting at the book-stall, plunging into the refreshment-room, peeping into the carriages, glancing at the clock, asking questions of the guards (who are passing up and down with their hands slyly formed into money boxes), giving directions to porters, shaking hands with friends over and over again, and, if addicted to tobacco, making the most desperate efforts to avoid the ladies."[1]

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[1] Unknown Author (Charles Dickens ed.) 'Railway Thoughts', All The Year Round, 4 January 1868, p.81