FATAL COACH ACCIDENTS. 155 



the rain that fell in the course of the day ; and 

 to the same cause may be ascribed the trifling 

 injury done to the horses and the coach. In a 

 few minutes after the accident took place a 

 Bath coach came up. The passengers rendered 

 every assistance in their power, and, with some 

 diSiculty, succeeded in extricating the inside 

 passengers from the mail. Among them was a 

 naval officer who was going to join his ship at 

 Plymouth, but he had suffered so much from the 

 concussion that he was speechless and unable to 

 move. He was conveyed to a small cottage 

 on the roadside, but died the following 

 day. 



In December of the same vear, as the Salis- 

 bury coach was on its journey to London, the 

 fo^r was so thick that the coachman could not 

 see his way, and on entering Bedfont, near 

 Hounslow, the horses went off the road into the 

 pond called the King's Water, dragging the 

 coach along with them. One of the passengers, 

 Mr. Lockhart Wainwright, a young man of 

 five-and-twenty years of age, belonging to the 

 Lio-ht Drao-oons, was killed on the spot. The 

 water was about two feet deep, with a soft 

 bottom of mud about two feet more. Whether 



