§ MR. JEFFREYS (Hampshire, N.)I beg to ask Mr. Attorney General whether railway companies who have issued tickets to passengers for particular trains are bound to provide seats for those passengers in the respective classes of carriages for which they have paid; and what remedy there is against railway companies for the overcrowding of carriages.
§ THE ATTORNEY GENERAL (Sir ROBERT FINLAY,) Inverness BurghsThe answer to the first paragraph of the question is in the affirmative, subject to this qualification, that the contract of carriage may be made conditional upon there being room in the train. Most railway companies have a bye-law with this object as to tickets issued at intermediate stations Railway companies are responsible for any overcrowding of carriages due to default on their part or on the part of their officials. It was said by Lord Blackburn in the House of Lords in the case of the Metropolitan Railways Company v. Jackson (reported in the L.R. for 1878, 3 App. Cas. p. 193) that a pas- 648 senger is entitled to be carried in a carriage with reasonable accommodation, and that the company ought to take reasonable steps to prevent passengers getting into carriages already full. The remedy is by action, in which, as it was pointed out in the case already referred to, the prosecutor may recover for any damage sustained by him in consequence of overcrowding duo to default on the part of the company or their servants.