CLAYTON TUNNEL ACCIDENT 229 



the main road and proceed across fields in order to 

 avoid the deep drifts of snow. 



" The passengers, coachman, and guard slept at 

 Clayton, seven miles from Brighton. The road from 

 Hand Cross was quite impassable. The non-arrival of 

 the mail at Crawley induced the postmaster there to 

 send a man in a gig to ascertain the cause on Monday 

 afternoon, and no tidings being heard of man, gig, or 

 horse for several hours, another man was despatched 

 on horseback. After a long search he found horse and 

 gig completely built up in the snow. The man was in 

 an exhausted state. After considerable difficulty the 

 horse and gig were extricated, and the party returned 

 to Crawley. The man had learned no tidings of the 

 mail, and refused to go out again on any such exploring 

 mission." 



The Brighton mail from London, too, reached 

 Crawley, but was compelled to return. 



Such were the incidents upon which the Christmas 

 stories, of the type brought into favour by Dickens, 

 were built, but the stories are better to read than the 

 incidents to experience. I am retrospectively sorry 

 for those passengers who thus lost their Christmas 

 dinners ; but after all, it was better to miss the turkey 

 and the Christmas pudding than to be " mashed into 

 a pummy ' in railway accidents, such as the awful 

 heart-shaking series of collisions which took place on 

 Sunday, August 25th, 1861, in the railway tunnel 

 through Clayton Hill. On that day, in that gloomy 

 place, twenty-four persons lost their lives, and one 

 hundred and seventy-five were injured. 



Three trains were timed to leave Brighton station 

 on that fatal morning, two of them filled to crowding 

 with excursionists ; the other, an ordinary train, well 

 filled and bound for London. Their times for starting 

 were 8, 8.5, and 8.30 respectively, but owing to delays 

 occasioned by press of traffic, they did not set out until 

 considerably later, at 8.28, 8.31, and 8.35. At such 

 terribly short intervals were thev started, in times 



