3-003-786 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Fatal railway accident at Kentish-Town, on the north and south western junction line: scene of the disaster on Monday night, 1861. A ballast-train was struck by a passenger train. The engine '...leaped from the rails...and rolled down the embankment...with a hideous dull sound and...frightful screeches...four carriages, in which were a number of passengers [followed]...The moans of the dying, the cries of the wounded, and the lamentations of those who missed their relatives, were to be heard on every side...Men were engaged in dragging corpses from under wheels...Many ladies ran about with linen for the doctors to bandage the wounded...At the time of going to press the number of killed on the spot and deaths consequent on injuries was twelve. Of those who have sustained injuries...there are reckoned nearly a hundred...We give an Illustration of the scene of this disastrous event - upon very special and public grounds. It is not our custom to minister to any morbid taste for the delineation of horrors; but in this instance we believe that no means should be left untried to fix upon the minds of the people of this country the now obvious and absolute necessity of legislative and administrative interference in the regulation of railways'. From "Illustrated London News", 1861.