The Irish Mail

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The Irish Mail

Prologue. The night before departure - 19 August 1868 The clocks of London do not agree with each other. The clock above the chemist on Euston Road runs three minutes fast. The clock at King's Cross is reliable to the quarter-hour but no finer than that. The clock at the Palace of Westminster is accurate to within a second, but it is not on Euston Road, and Thompson is not going to Westminster. Thompson is going to Camden. He walks in the dark. It is not yet five. The city is breathing but not awake -- dray horses, bakers, a constable under a lamp. Above the rooftops to the east, the sky holds a pale suggestion that light will come eventually. In Kidderminster, a clock on a dining room mantle will begin to matter very soon. In Chester, Lord Farnham's fob watch is in its case on the hotel bedside table. The Reverend Sir Nicholas Chinnery has said morning prayers. A young woman named Fanny Askin is still asleep in her father's house, and her mother Kate is already awake, checking the light at the curtain. They will all arrive at the same moment. They do not know this yet. • • • [[At Camden Shed|Camden_Shed]]

Act One — Fire and Steam Camden locomotive shed 4:45am There is no clock in the shed. Thompson puts his faith in fire and steam He started his fire an hour ago. The trusted method. Wood first, laid in the cold firebox the night before by the disposal crew, then coal built up carefully, a patient geometry of combustion. Now the //Prince of Wales// stands in the shed road with steam beginning to whisper at her joints, and Thompson moves around her in the lamplight with his oil can, working each bearing in the motion, the crosshead, the coupling rods, the great pair of driving wheels that stand taller than him. The pressure gauge reads forty pounds. He needs a hundred and fifty before he'll move her. Holmes arrived at half past four without a word, took the shovel, and began building the fire higher. They have done this together enough times that language isn't needed. The shed around them clanks and breathes -- three other engines in various states of preparation, their crews moving in the lamplight like figures in a charcoal sketch. Outside, London is still dark. Thompson checks the gauge again. Sixty pounds. All going to plan. He cannot rush this. No man living can rush this. He does not need a clock. He polishes the number and name ... 291...'Lord of the Isles'. [[Holmes at work|Holmes_Firebox]]

Act One — Fire and Steam At the firebox 5:30am Joseph Holmes, of Stafford, has been doing this since he was sixteen years old. The shovel is an extension of him. The coal goes in at the corners first, then the back, then level across the middle -- this is not written down anywhere, it is learned from men who learned it from men before them. The firebox light catches his face each time the door swings open: orange, then dark, orange, then dark. The gauge needle climbs. Eighty. Ninety. Outside the shed, birds stutter into song. Holmes does not look up. Thompson is somewhere behind him, oiling the axle boxes, speaking quietly to the engine in the way drivers sometimes do when they think no one is watching. Holmes has heard it before. He does not mention it. Thompson is a good driver. A hundred. A hundred and ten. Later, much later, in accounts transcribed and published and argued over in committee rooms and coroners' courts -- people will ask whether Holmes heard Thompson's words clearly. Whether he hesitated. Whether there was time. But that is later. Now it is half past five, and the gauge reads a hundred and twenty, and Holmes swings the firebox door shut and reaches for the next shovelful. [[Meanwhile in Kidderminster|Kidderminster]]

Act One — Preparation Townshend House, Kidderminster 6:15am The clock on the dining room mantle is Francis Askin's own vanity -- a good brass-faced bracket clock, bought when he established the school, a statement that Townshend House runs on time and discipline. This morning it is running him. He has been up since five. Kate and Fanny are dressed, their bags already in the hall -- Kate's a proper travelling trunk, Fanny's a leather bag with a brass plate that reads //F. Askin, Townshend House, Kidderminster// -- and he has checked the clock three times since six o'clock without the minute hand appearing to move. He has thirteen children. He is sending one of them withhis wife and his eldest daughter to Dublin. Tickets for the Irish Mail to visit his family in Meath, his people, the country he left to make something of himself in England. He is proud of the school. He is proud of Kate and Fanny. He wishes, this morning, that he could come himself. The clock says quarter past six. The cab is ordered for seven. Fanny comes downstairs in her travelling dress and he looks at her in the way fathers look at daughters who are now women...bewilderment ... and asks if she has her ticket. She shows him her ticket. He asks about the bag. She shows him the bag. He nods and goes to check the clock again. It says seventeen minutes past six. [[Continue|Kidderminster_Platform]]

Act One — Preparation Kidderminster Station 7:40am Francis Askin speaks to the guard at the platform. He is a schoolmaster. He makes his request in the manner of a man who understands the importance of clear instruction: //my wife and daughter are joining the Irish Mail at Chester, they are travelling alone, I would be grateful if you would speak to your counterpart at Chester and ask him to see them settled.// The guard, who is a reasonable man, says yes. Fanny watches her father talk to the guard and does not say anything, because she is twenty-one and her father is her father and some transactions between parents and the world on behalf of their children cannot be interrupted even when the child is grown. 'My Dear, you will have but 15 minutes to change platforms for the Mail, assuming your train is on time. Trust the guard.' He needn't have worried, the Mail is five minutes late. Her mother takes her arm. The guard makes a note in his book. Francis Askin walks back down the platform. He stops at the gate. He turns back once. Fanny and Kate are already in a compartment, Fanny at the window. He raises his hand. She raises hers. The train moves. [[Meanwhile in Chester|Chester_Hotel]]

Act Two — The Station Queen Railway Hotel, Chester 7:00am The Farnhams have been at breakfast since half past six. Lord Farnham -- sixty-nine years old, Henry Maxwell, 7th Baron Farnham, Conservative member for County Cavan these thirty years past -- takes his fob watch from his waistcoat pocket and sets it against the clock above the dining room fireplace. They agree: seven o'clock. He snaps the case shut. Their man Outen is seeing to the luggage. Cripps, Lord Farnham's footman, has been up since five dealing with the porters. Lady Farnham's companion Mrs Stafford sits at the far end of the table with the particular composure of women whose employment depends on never appearing to think. They will all be on the train. The Farnhams do not travel lightly. Two tables across, the Reverend Sir Nicholas Chinnery, 63, baronet, of Flintfield, County Cork, butters his toast and reads from a small book which may be Scripture or may be verse -- his expression does not distinguish between them. Lady Chinnery pours his tea without being asked. They have been married long enough for this to be a kind of language. Chinnery does not check the clock. He checked his watch at six, when he said morning prayers, and he will check it again when the porter comes for the bags. Until then, the time is God's business. The clock above the fireplace ticks through the quiet hotel morning. Outside, a church bell begins to strike seven. The sound comes in across the white tablecloths, past the sleeping silver. Lord Farnham takes out his fob watch again. He compares it to the bell. They are in agreement. [[Whilst in London|Euston_Platform]]

Act Two — The Platform Euston Station 7:30am Seven thirty and the platform is smoke and shouting. Thompson on the footplate of the //Prince of Wales//, No. 291, a Lady of the Lake single-driver express, checks the gauge and does not look at the crowd. He has done this run enough times that London barely registers. What registers is the engine: her temperature, her pressure, the sound of Holmes behind him swinging coal. One hundred and fifty pounds. Good. The guard's van door slams. Somewhere down the platform, a woman is being helped up into a carriage by a porter who takes her bag before she can argue. A child presses its face against a compartment window. A man in a dark coat checks his watch -- the third time Thompson has noticed him do it in the last five minutes. Seven thirty. Slightly late. The Irish Mail pulls out of Euston into the London morning. [[Meanwhile in Chester|Henry_Owen]]

Act Two — The Station Chester -- lodgings, Foregate Street 7:20am W. Henry Owen, twenty-three years old, first organist and choirmaster of St Bartholomew's Church, Dublin, knows every clock in Chester. He grew up here. His father John -- Owain Alaw, the composer, famous enough in Wales to have a bardic name -- raised him in a house full of music and time-keeping, because music is time made audible and his father never let him forget it. Henry knows the Eastgate clock is three minutes fast. He knows the clock in the market is reliable. He knows the church at St Peter's strikes the quarter hour with a catch in the third bell. He is running late. His bag is packed -- he is returning to Dublin after visiting family -- but he stopped to say goodbye to his mother for longer than intended, and now he is walking fast down Foregate Street with the slight specific panic of a man who knows the train will leave with or without him, and who also knows, professionally, the exact time to the minute. Quarter past seven. The mail departs at half past -- no, that is London. Chester is eleven-thirty. He has time. He has time after all. He slows. He breathes. He passes the Eastgate clock, which reads twenty-two past seven, and adjusts this upward by three minutes. He turns toward the railway hotel, where he has arranged to meet a man about a choral programme. He has hours. He goes for breakfast. [[Henry checks|Bradshaw]]

<div class="act-label">Act Two — The Station</div> <div class="passage-title">Henry Owen consults Bradshaw’s 8:15am</div> <div class="passage-subtitle">Queen Railway Hotel, Chester</div> <div class="present-layer"> <p>There is a copy of <em>Bradshaw’s Railway Guide</em> on the reading table in the hotel lounge. It is three months old — July’s edition — but the Irish Mail runs the same schedule it has run for years. Henry Owen sits with his coffee and opens it to the Chester and Holyhead section.</p> <div class="bradshaw-wrapper"> <div class="bradshaw-header"> <h3>Bradshaw’s General Railway and Steam Navigation Guide</h3> <p>For Great Britain and Ireland — July 1868 — Price Sixpence</p> </div> <div class="bradshaw-body"> <div class="bradshaw-route"> London & North Western Railway — Down Irish Mail </div> <table class="bradshaw-table"> <thead> <tr> <th>Station</th> <th>Arr.</th> <th>Dep.</th> <th>Notes</th> </tr> </thead> <tbody> <tr> <td class="station">London Euston</td> <td class="time">—</td> <td class="time">7.30 am</td> <td class="note">Named express. Mail contract service.</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="station">Bletchley</td> <td class="time">8.48</td> <td class="time">8.52</td> <td class="note"></td> </tr> <tr> <td class="station">Rugby</td> <td class="time">9.40</td> <td class="time">9.45</td> <td class="note"></td> </tr> <tr> <td class="station">Stafford</td> <td class="time">10.28</td> <td class="time">10.33</td> <td class="note"></td> </tr> <tr> <td class="station">Chester</td> <td class="time">11.25</td> <td class="time">11.35</td> <td class="note">Additional carriages attached. Passengers for Holyhead.</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="station">Rhyl</td> <td class="time">12.14</td> <td class="time">12.16</td> <td class="note"></td> </tr> <tr class="highlight"> <td class="station">Abergele & Pensarn</td> <td class="time">12.34</td> <td class="time">12.36</td> <td class="note">Does not stop. Through working.</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="station">Colwyn</td> <td class="time">12.42</td> <td class="time">12.44</td> <td class="note"></td> </tr> <tr> <td class="station">Conway</td> <td class="time">12.55</td> <td class="time">12.58</td> <td class="note"></td> </tr> <tr> <td class="station">Bangor</td> <td class="time">1.25</td> <td class="time">1.28</td> <td class="note"></td> </tr> <tr> <td class="station">Holyhead</td> <td class="time">2.05</td> <td class="time">—</td> <td class="note">Ferry to Kingstown departs approx. 2.40 pm.</td> </tr> </tbody> </table> <div class="bradshaw-footnote"> † Times are approximate and subject to variation. The Company accepts no liability for delays arising from traffic or operational circumstance. — L. & N.W.R. </div> </div> </div> <p>Henry Owen traces the route with one finger. The train passes through Abergele at twelve thirty-four, does not stop, continues west to Holyhead. He has made this journey before. He will change at Holyhead for the Kingstown ferry, arrive Dublin by early evening.</p> <p>He closes the guide. He finishes his coffee. Outside the hotel windows, Chester is waking up. He has three hours before the train departs.</p> <p>He does not know — no one at this table knows — that the train which passes through Abergele at twelve thirty-four will arrive there five minutes late, and that five minutes will be the distance between every name on this page and the mass grave at St Michael’s churchyard.</p> </div> [[At Chester Station|Chester_Platform]]

Act Three — The Journey Chester Station 11:30am The grandfather clock in the Queen Railway Hotel reads half past eleven when the porter comes for the last of the Farnham luggage. Lord Farnham does not see it. He is already on the platform, his fob watch in his hand, watching the four carriages being attached to the Irish Mail. The Chester station clock is mounted high on the end wall of the platform building -- a big-faced public clock that belongs to everyone. Fanny Askin walks through the connecting tunnel from the hotel with her mother and comes out onto the platform into the noise and the steam. She looks up at the station clock. Eleven thirty-one. She finds their carriage -- second behind the engine, the Chester addition, the front-most of the new carriages. Her mother goes in first. Fanny hands her bag up to the guard, watches him stow it, and climbs in. The brass plate winks once in the platform lamplight. //F. Askin, Townshend House, Kidderminster.// Henry Owen, running again now -- he always leaves it too late -- climbs into a carriage three down from Fanny. Lord and Lady Farnham and their retinue settle into the first-class compartment immediately behind the front guard's van. The Reverend Sir Nicholas Chinnery assists Lady Chinnery up the step with a formality that is also tenderness. Judge and Mrs Berwick take their seats. The Parkinson brothers from Blackburn find their compartment. The guard walks the platform. The doors are locked, as they always are, between stations. The train moves. [[On the footplate|Footplate_Running]]

Act Three — The Journey The footplate — Prince of Wales, No. 291 Running west, noon. The down line. Thompson has a watch given to him by the LNWR for fifteen years' service, plain silver, but he has not looked at it since Chester. It is in his waistcoat pocket. He knows the time by the line. He knows where they are by the coast coming into view on his left, the grey-green Irish Sea, and by the feel of the engine under his feet -- she is running well, a hundred and fifty pounds, forty miles an hour, the driving wheels eating the rail. He knows they are five minutes late. He has been calculating since Chester whether he can recover it. He cannot, not on this road, not with this load behind him. He files this away. Holmes is behind him. He can hear the steady rhythm of the shovel. Thompson watches the line ahead. The North Wales coast unrolls to his left: sea-wall, sand, the Irish Sea pale and flat in the August noon. To his right, the limestone headlands. Ahead, the line curves leftward, following the coast. He has driven this road many times. He could drive it in his sleep. He is watching. [[In the second carriage|Fanny_Journey]]

Act Three — The Journey Second Chester carriage Running west, approaching the North Wales coast Fanny Askin has the window seat. Her mother Kate is reading -- a novel she borrowed before they left, already a third of the way through. Fanny is not reading. She is watching Wales arrive. She has not been to Ireland since she was small. She remembers it in pieces: the smell of turf smoke, her grandmother's voice, a lane with cow-parsley above her head. Her father talks about County Meath the way people talk about a place they left before they were entirely finished loving it. She has always wanted to see it for herself. The sea appears suddenly, between two fields, as the line swings toward the coast. Fanny straightens. It is more than she expected -- wider, paler, more present. The Irish Sea. If you followed it far enough west, it would bring you to Dublin. Kate looks up from her book. //We are nearly there,// Fanny says, meaning Holyhead. Her mother smiles and returns to her page. The carriage doors are locked, as they always are, between stations. The handles on the inside do not turn. The brass plate on Fanny's bag catches the noon light from the window: //F. Askin, Townshend House, Kidderminster.// [[Her mother smiles and says 'We are almost at Llanddulas|Llanddulas]]

Act Four — The Shunting Llanddulas sidings 12:15pm The stationmaster has a problem and a limited range of solutions. The pick-up goods train -- forty-three wagons, come up from Abergele -- has arrived at Llanddulas at quarter past twelve and both sidings are partly occupied. Neither will take the full train. The sensible thing, perhaps, is to wait. The Irish Mail is due through shortly; after it passes, there is room to think. He does not wait. There is a way to do this: loose shunting, split the train, work the wagons into both sidings together. He has seen it done. He gives the order. Both brakesmen dismount from the goods train to assist. Among the forty-three wagons are two loaded with paraffin -- fifty wooden barrels, 1,700 gallons, straw-packed, sealed. These wagons, along with four others and the brake van, are left uncoupled on the main down line. The gradient here is one in a hundred, falling toward Abergele. The brake van holds them. For now. Colonel Rich will later call the stationmaster //very culpable.// He will not be prosecuted. [[They run away|Runaway]]

Act Four — The Shunting The main down line 12:37pm The loose-shunted wagons struck the stationary group with excessive force. The impact released the brake van's brake. Six wagons and the brake van are rolling south-west on the falling gradient -- one in a hundred, enough. Paraffin is in fifty wooden barrels in two of the wagons, 1,700 gallons, straw-packed, sealed. The line curves gently toward the sea. The morning is clear. From here -- if there were anyone to see it -- the coast of North Wales runs out west in haze, and the Irish Mail is somewhere behind that curve, doing forty miles an hour, five minutes late. The brake van's brake has released. There is no one to reapply it. An attempt is made to reverse the goods engine and retrieve them. Too late. The wagons are already around the curve, out of sight, gathering speed on the long falling gradient toward Abergele. They roll. • • • [[On ther footplate|Abergele_Passing]]

Act Five — The Collision Abergele station 12:39pm The Irish Mail passes through Abergele at approximately forty miles an hour, still five minutes late. From the platform: a blur of carriages, a face at a window. A child waving. No one waves back in time. Had the train been on time, it would have been three miles further east, past Llanddulas, before the shunting started. On the footplate, Thompson watches the line ahead. The coast curves left. The limestone cliffs rise to his right. He is thinking about Holyhead, about the time, about nothing in particular... the watchful blankness of a man in the middle of a familiar thing. Two hundred yards ahead, something is moving toward him on the down line. He looks at it for one second, thinking: //the up line.// He looks at it for another second, thinking: //no.// [[Thompson looks|Thompson_Sees]]

Act Five — The Collision The footplate 12:40pm — approximately 200 yards Thompson shuts off the steam. He shouts to Holmes to apply the locomotive brake. "For God's sake Joe, jump; we can do no more." (Arthur Thompson, driver, to Joseph Holmes, fireman Recorded in the //Illustrated London News//, August 1868) Thompson jumps. He strikes the ground, rolls into a ditch. His head. His hand. His knee. He lies there for a moment while the world continues to exist around him. Holmes does not jump. [[The crash|Impact]]

Act Five — The Collision 12:40pm The //Prince of Wales// strikes the wagons at a combined speed of perhaps forty-five miles an hour. The engine overturns. The tender comes over the engine. The paraffin barrels burst. In the second Chester carriage, Fanny Askin does not know the time. The front guard's van and the first three passenger carriages are engulfed. Witnesses describe it as instantaneous -- not a progression but a single event, fire and then fire everywhere, as complete and immediate as a word spoken aloud. The carriage doors are locked, as they always are, between stations. Farm labourers and quarry workers will form a bucket chain to fetch water from the sea, two hundred yards away. By the time the fire goes out, the victims will be found burned beyond recognition. [[Thompson is in the ditch|Thompson_Ditch]]

Act Six — The Sequel The ditch, beside the line 12:40pm and after Thompson is not dead. His head is bleeding. His hand. His knee. He lies in the ditch for what may be seconds or minutes and then gets up, because Thompson is not the kind of man who stays in a ditch. He helps uncouple the rear carriages from the burning section. He gives a carriage key to a tall gentleman standing on the steps of a carriage further back -- later, this gentleman will be identified as the Marquis of Hamilton. Thompson does not know this. He is moving along the train, doing what can be done. Holmes is not in the ditch. Holmes is in the wreck of the locomotive, which is already past the reach of anything Thompson can do. Thompson will die on the 15th of October 1868, at his home at Castle Church, Staffordshire. His wife Frances. Five children. The inquest will record //pre-existing ulcerated bowels, hastened by injuries sustained in the accident.// The careful language of official documents, covering the space where something unsayable lives. [[A hero|Hamilton_Running]]

Act Six — The Sequel Running east along the line 12:40pm — the up Irish Mail is coming Henry Hamilton, Viscount Hamilton -- later the 2nd Duke of Abercorn -- is in a rear carriage and is not on fire. He gets out of the train. He looks west at what is happening, which he will later describe as flames leaping twenty feet high, spreading in every direction. He turns east and runs. One and three-quarter miles along the line to Llanddulas station. A grown man running in August afternoon heat along a railway line, away from the fire, toward something useful. He knows what the up Irish Mail is. He knows what will happen if it comes around that curve. He reaches Llanddulas. They stop the up Irish Mail. A second disaster does not happen. The disaster that did happen is enough. The first three carriages and the guard’s van were consumed almost entirely. Wood, upholstery, luggage — all taken. Ironwork distorted by heat. Little remained that could be named with certainty. When they wreckage is searched a brass nameplate is recovered from the ashes of the second carriage. F. Askin, Townshend House, Kidderminster. [[The Aftermath|Aftermath]]

Act Six — The Sequel St Michael's Churchyard, Abergele 25 August 1868 Thirty-one coffins for thirty-three people. Each one numbered, not named. Three of the thirty-three will be identified by personal effects: one by a Chubb key whose number traces back to a safe owned by Mr William Townend Lund. One by a keyring inscribed //Francis Askin, Townshend House, Kidderminster// -- which Kate Askin had in her possession. One by the valet's papers. The bag with the brass plate: //F. Askin, Townshend House, Kidderminster.// The gravediggers begin at eight o'clock on the twenty-fifth. The church clock strikes the hour above them as they work. The mass grave is fifty-seven feet by nine. The sea is two hundred yards away. The paraffin smell is still in the air. The London and North Western Railway Company pays all funeral expenses. [[The Inquest|Inquest]]

Act Six — The Sequel The Bee Hotel, Market Street, Abergele September 1868 — and Ruthin Assizes, Spring 1869 Colonel Frederick Henry Rich of the Board of Trade conducts the inquiry. He finds the two brakesmen culpable. He finds the Llanddulas stationmaster //very culpable.// He notes the partial responsibility of the LNWR. The Ruthin Assizes. Spring, 1869. Both brakesmen are charged with manslaughter. The jury is out for less than ten minutes. Both are acquitted. The stationmaster is not prosecuted. In December 1868, Francis Askin's pupils present him with two portraits: Kate and Fanny. He thanks them for //the likeness of a beloved wife and daughter// and //a loved mother and sister.// The bracket clock on the dining room mantle at Townshend House ticks through the silence after the ceremony. He does not look at it. [[Epilogue|End_1882]]

Epilogue Fourteen years later 1882 The Regulation of Railways Act, 1882: carriage doors to be openable from inside while the train is in motion. Fourteen years after Abergele. • • • The Askin sisters had been travelling to Ireland. The Parkinson brothers from Blackburn. Lord and Lady Farnham. The Reverend Sir Nicholas Chinnery and Lady Chinnery. Judge and Mrs Berwick. Guard Smith, elderly, well known at Chester station, who remained at his post. Joseph Holmes, of Stafford, who did not jump. W. Henry Owen, twenty-three, who knew every clock in Chester. Thirty-three people. Fourteen years. The clocks of London do not agree with each other. [[Read again|Start]]