468 
ON THE MEANS OF COMMUNICATING BETWEEN 
GUAEDS AND PASSENGERS ON RAILWAYS. 
BY T. SYMES PRIDEAUX. 
I T is SO very palpable and obvious tbat, according to the 
doctrine of chances_, every now and then in the running 
of railway-trains cases will occur where some casualty to the 
carriage gr its occupants renders it of the utmost importance 
that one or the other should receive immediate assistance, 
that it seems extraordinary that such a certainly recurring 
contingency was not provided against at the commencement 
of the railway system of locomotion. "What, however, is still 
more surprising is that the repeated examples of the urgent 
necessity that exists for some means of communication 
between the passenger and guard have failed to obtain for the 
travelling pubhc a safeguard so necessary for their security. 
Quite recently, two unfortunate passengers have had to 
struggle for their lives with a furious madman for a space of 
twenty minutes, and, as commonly happens on such occasions, 
the paroxysm was attended by such an increase of strength on 
the part of the maniac, that, notwithstanding his fellow 
travellers were fortunately both powerful men, they were 
several times on the point of being overpowered, and when 
assistance arrived were nearly exhausted. It has sometimes 
happened to passengers to feel the floor of their carriage 
gradually crumbling away beneath their feet ,* and conscious of 
their utter powerlessness to aid themselves, they have had no 
resource but to await, in a state of hopeless terror easier to 
be conceived than described, the arrival of the moment when 
their last support should be shattered asunder, hurling them 
bruised and maimed on the iron tramway, to be crushed and 
dismembered by the following carriages. On other occasions, 
the occupants of railway carriages have had presented to their 
imagination the horrible fate of being burnt alive, not as a 
remote contingency, but as an instant and pressing danger 
which the rapidly increasing smoke led them from moment to 
