MOTION FOR RETURNS. (Hansard, 12 June 1873)

§ LORD BUCKHURST

said, he had to remind their Lordships that he had on several previous occasions drawn their Lordships' attention to the question of Railway Accidents and the destruction of life resulting therefrom. He had again to trouble their Lordships on the subject. He would at present confine himself to the question of accidents to persons employed by Railway Companies. He found by Captain Tyler's Report for 1872 that 347 persons so employed had been killed during the past year, and 365 had been seriously injured. He believed that these included persons who were not exactly in the employment of Railway Companies, but who were relatives or friends of persons so employed; so that some deduction should be made from the total number. He believed that most of those accidents were caused by carelessness on the part of the men themselves, and by defective machinery and arrangements. An Act had been passed obliging Railway Companies to send in a return to the proper Government authorities; but he much feared that that law was not very strictly observed. He understood it had been laid down as law that a railway servant could not claim compensation for an injury which had been occasioned by the negligence of another railway servant, and that the relatives of a railway servant who had been killed under similar circumstances could not obtain compensation from the Company. Surely, if this was the case, it was a defect in the law which should be remedied. Instead, however, of an alteration in the law, he should like to leave the Railway Companies to take the matter in hand, and provide a system of compensation for the benefit of the survivors of those killed in their service. It appeared from statistics which had been criticized in the newspapers that a large number of railway servants had been killed from time to time, and that their survivors had received nothing in the shape of compensation. He had been told that on 832 the Great Northern Railway alone, within a radius of 60 miles, 60 children had been made orphans since the 1st of January. These were the children of persons who had been in the service of the Railway Company; and in every case, as he was informed, compensation was refused. The want of a sufficient number of hands might also account for many of these accidents. It was well-known that on more than one railway the men had to be on duty for too many hours at a spell. He had been told that there were pointsmen on the Great Northern line who had to work 84 hours a-week, and that some of them had not had a holiday for 18 months.