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William Huskisson, MP, the first railway fatality. At the opening of the Manchester and Liverpool Railway, the local MP, William Huskisson fell under a train and was fatally injured. Here is a contemporary account. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Huskisson was about sixty years old, tall, slouching, and ignoble-looking. In society he was extremely agreeable, without much animation, generally cheerful, with a great deal of humour, information, and anecdote, gentlemanlike, unassuming, slow in speech, and with a down-cast look, as if he avoided meeting anybody's gaze. ... As a speaker in the House of Commons he was luminous upon his own subject, but he had no pretensions to eloquence; his voice was feeble, and his manner ungraceful... There is no man in Parliament, or perhaps out of it, so well versed in finance, commerce, trade and colonial matters, and he is therefore a very great and irreparable loss. It is nevertheless remarkable that it is only within the last five or six years that he acquired the great reputation which he latterly enjoyed. I do not think he was looked upon as more than a second-rate man till his speeches on the silk trade and the shipping interest; but when he became President of the Board of Trade he devoted himself with indefatigable application to the maturing and reducing to practice those commercial improvements with which his name is associated, and to which he owes all his glory and most of his unpopularity. It is equally true that all the ablest men in the country coincide with him, and that the mass of the community are persuaded that his plans are mischievous to the last degree. [Greville Diaries, 18 September 1830] He went to Liverpool in September 1830 for the opening of the Manchester and Liverpool railway, and was received warmly by his constituents. On 15 September he attended the opening ceremony. A procession of trains was run from Liverpool. Parkside was reached without mishap. There the engines stopped for water, and the travellers, contrary to instructions, left the carriages and stood upon the permanent way, which consisted of two lines of rails. Huskisson went to speak to the Duke of Wellington, to whom, in spite of their recent disagreement, he felt bound, as member for Liverpool, to show courtesy. At that moment several engines were seen approaching along the rails between which Huskisson was standing. Everybody made for the carriages on the other line. Huskisson, by nature uncouth and hesitating in his motions, had a peculiar aptitude for accident. He had dislocated his ankle in 1801, and was in consequence slightly lame. Thrice he had broken his arm, and after the last fracture, in 1817, the use of it was permanently impaired. On this occasion he lost his balance in clambering into the carriage and fell back upon the rails in front of the Dart, the advancing engine. It ran over his leg; he was placed upon an engine and carried at its utmost speed to Eccles, where he was taken to the house of the vicar. He lingered in great agony for nine hours, but gave his last directions calmly and with care, expiring at 9 p.m. He was buried with a public ceremonial in Liverpool on the 24th. [Dictionary of National Biography: from the earliest times to 1900, Oxford University Press, 1949] Overlooking the site of the accident is a monument that reads: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |