The Little Bytham rail crash of 1896

One the biggest rail disasters of the 19th century was the derailment of a London bound passenger train at Little Bytham, near Bourne, when the train was wrecked and two passengers killed while several others were badly injured.

The accident occurred on Saturday 7th March 1896 and involved the Leeds and Bradford dining car express which left Leeds at 5.30 pm and was due at King's Cross at 9.20 pm, a journey of ten minutes under four hours. The train consisted of an engine and a brake van immediately behind the tender, a Pullman dining car, three ordinary passenger carriages, a composite carriage comprising first and third compartments, a heavy brake van carriage and a guard's van bringing up the rear. The train made a four-minute stop at Grantham before resuming the journey at 7.17 pm with about 40 passengers aboard but twelve miles down the line, it crashed.

It was running at high speed when three of the last carriages left the rails. One of them struck the parapet of the bridge which crossed the road at this point and was completely wrecked, killing two of the passengers inside. The force of the impact detached the guard's van which also included three passenger compartments, and was hurled over the bridge to the road below but miraculously the two lady passengers escaped serious injury but sustained extensive cuts and bruises and were severely shocked. Ten passengers in other carriages also sustained minor injuries.

Medical assistance was summoned from Grantham and a special train carrying four local doctors and a six-man detachment from the station's ambulance corps was sent to provide medical help equipped with a stretcher and a supply of splints and bandages. Other trains using the main line were held up and passengers on board with medical experience volunteered to help at the crash scene where wreckage was littered along several hundred yards of track.

But conditions for the rescuers were not good, as the Grantham Journal reported the following week (Saturday 14th March) : "The operations began in a steady downpour of rain and the night being intensely dark their work was supremely difficult carried on as it was by the feeble light of lamps and fires lit at the side of the line."

It later transpired that sections of the line at this point had only recently been re-laid and the speed of express trains which normally reached 60 mph and 70 mph along this stretch had been limited to 30 mph but this restriction had been lifted at 4 pm that day and the flagmen used to provide warnings withdrawn because conditions were then assumed to be safe.

The Leeds express was reckoned to be one of the fastest on that line, often clocking 60-70 mph. "While travelling over the newly-laid metals at terrific speed, and when approaching Little Bytham station, the rear part of the express left the rails", reported the Grantham Journal. "The cause of the accident remains to be definitely explained but it is suggested that the rain which fell during the evening caused the ballast to settle under the weight of the train and so brought about the catastrophe. The statement is also vouchsafed that if the speed at which it was going had not been so great, the whole of the train would have been wrecked. As it was, the wheels of the derailed carriages travelled for some distance on the sleepers, and the vehicles were rocked violently from side to side, causing the greatest alarm to the unfortunate passengers.

"Possibly the train would have been brought to a standstill without any very serious consequences if the mishap had occurred at any other spot. But, unfortunately, the train had to cross a three-arched bridge spanning the highway. Here it was the disaster was consummated. The composite carriage which was running on the near side of the line was swung at the parapet with immense force. The impact had several disastrous results. It levelled the bricks and masonry for a distance of several yards, and the whole body of the carriage was torn clean off the wheels and hurled on to the down line.

"The violence of the collision broke also the coupling of the guard's van which crashed over the parapet of the bridge with the force of a projectile into the road below. Such was the impact that the solidly-built carriage was sent halfway up the embankment on the opposite side of the road, the wheels being deeply embedded in the soil. Two of the passenger compartments were reduced to a state of utter wreck, the roofing and sides being wrenched off and smashed out of all resemblance to their former shape. The latter part of the vehicle bore striking evidence, in shattered windows and displaced broken woodwork, of the peril through which the guard and Mrs Paul [one of the passengers] had passed."

An act of bravery by the guard, Ambrose Knott, of King's Cross, London, helped save Mrs Paul, wife of the Chief Constable of Bradford, who was on her way to London to visit a sick relative. The newspaper reported: "When the impact occurred, she was flung into a hedge which partly projected into the carriage and her terrified appeals for aid were noble responded to by guard Knott who, himself apparently worse injured than the lady, nonetheless got out of his van and extricated her from her plight. Immediately afterwards, she fainted and the brave fellow, summoning all his strength, took her into his arms, painfully climbed down the embankment and staggered along with her to the station.

"Fortunately, help was at hand and he was relieved of his burden. Knott himself then collapsed and he was carried to the Willoughby Arms Hotel and put to bed. Mrs Paul was also accommodated at the same hostelry. When medical aid arrived, it was found that Knott was extremely bruised about the head, and was suffering from shock to the system. The lady sustained a bad cut on the face and was also much bruised."

The two passengers who lost their lives were Mrs Ann Mary Bligh, aged 28, of Pudsey, who was going to visit friends in London, and Mr Michael Walter, aged 49, a bachelor, of Maida Vale, London, who worked for a London firm of wholesale clothiers and had been making one of his regular business trips to Bradford.

An inquest was subsequently held at the Willoughby Arms at Little Bytham when the jury returned a verdict that they died from injuries accidentally inflicted in consequence of part of the train in which they were travelling running off the line, caused by a subsidence of the rail road which had recently been re-laid. They recommended that in future cases of re-laying lines, the flagmen are not withdrawn until the road was fully ballasted.

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