THE LAW AND THE RAILWAY PASSENGER.
IT would be useless to discuss, from a legal point of view, the justice of the decision which was given in the case of "Cobb v. the Great Western Railway Company." That decision was given against Mr. Cobb, by a Divisional Court, and was subsequently confirmed by the Court of Appeal; and what seems to be good law to so many eminent Judges, must of necessity be good law beyond dispute. Therefore, unless Mr. Cobb be a gentleman of more than ordinary equanimity, the only consolation that is left to him is to pocket his loss, -and exclaim, in the words of Mr. Bumble, "the law is a Hass ! "—an expression of opinion in which, we fancy, the travelling public will probably concur. For really, Mr. Cobb's .case was an exceptionally hard one, in which most people would have thought that he had certainly a legal claim for redress. The law of the land, however, thought otherwise, and as we know that "hard cases make bad laws," we must xiot complain that it has not gone out of its way to right one individual. Nevertheless, that which happened to Mr. Cobb might well befall a good many other people, and as it appears that the law has no provision to meet such cases, it were well, perhaps, that its enactments relating to Railway Companies and their passengers were amended in certain particulars, and that future plaintiffs may receive the satisfaction which it failed to give to Mr. Cobb. Briefly stated, the plaintiff's case was this. In the month of May, last year, he was travelling by the Great Western Railway between Shrewsbury and Bir- mingham. The train, which seems to have been somewhat delayed by the extra traffic of race-meetings, stopped at Wel- lington; and at that station, a gang of sixteen men entered the compartruent in which the plaintiff was sitting, hustled and, robbed him of the sum of 289, which he had in his pockets. The plaintiff got out of the carriage, summoned the etation-master, and asked that the train should be delayed in -order that he might give his assailants into custody and have them searched ; and the request was made the more reasonable by the fact that there were policemen on the platform at the time. The station.rarister flatly refused to accede to this request, and started the train on its journey. When they reached Wol- verhampton, the thieves quickly dispersed amongst the crowd 4apon the platform, and disappeared mat of the reach of their victim. Two of them were subsequently apprehended and con- victed, but it is needless to say that not a penny of the money was recovered. The plaintiff was convinced that had the station- master given him the opportunity he asked for, the gang could not have escaped with their booty; and he therefore brought an action against the Railway Company to recover the sum which he had lost through the negligence of their servant. Both the Divisional Court, before whom the action was first brought, and the Court of Appeal, to which it was afterwards referred, held that an action was not maintainable. A railway
company, they said, makes no contract with its passengers to facilitate their recovery of stolen property. It contracts to carry passengers from one place to another, but it does not contract to protect their property—or, we suppose, their persons—on the way ; and if anybody should be robbed upon their line, it is no business of the railway servants to aid him in seizing the robbers, or recovering his goods. That being the case, the station-master was under no obligation to Mr. Cobh except to do the one thing which be was asked not to do,—namely, to start the train and expedite him on his journey.
No doubt that is very excellent law ; but, at the same time, it seems to us to be not only very bad sense, but also an ex- tremely inexpedient precedent. Already the gangs of thieves and sharpers who infest railway carriages and stations on the occasion of race-meetings are quite numerous enough, without having the further invitation of impunity offered to them. The case of Mr. Cobb is typical of a great many others. He had paid for a tenth part of a compartment in the railway- train, and the railway began by defrauding him, in that they allowed sixteen other people to enter that compartment. Moreover, although they knew well the character of a great many of their passengers on a day of a race-meeting, they had taken so little pains to secure police supervision at their stations, that a gang of sixteen pickpockets were able to force their company upon Mr. Cobb withoat let or hindrance. Any defence which their passenger may have attempted to make of his own property was rendered impossible by the crowd which the Company's servants had allowed to enter into one compart- ment; in other words, Mr. Cobb, crushed and hustled in his seat, was made powerless to defend himself by the Company's complicity in overcrowding,—the Company in this particular case being the unwitting accomplice of thieves. The passenger had only one resource, which was to get out of the carriage and seek assistance. Assistance was, naturally enough, not immediately at hand, and he had to appeal to the station- master to delay the train for a few minutes until he could summon the members of the police who were upon the plat- form. The station-master refused, with the result which we already know. Now, it is impossible to say that the passenger in this instance lost his money through his own negligence. He was placed by the Railway Company, and through no fault or wish of his own, in a position in which all the ordinary safeguards were impossible. It was not his fault that the carriage was disgracefully overcrowded; nor was it his fault that his fellow-passengers were dishonest. He can only reasonably blame himself for entrusting himself to the railway at all. We cannot help wondering whether the Great Western Railway would have been held equally irre- sponsible had the case been one of assault against the pas- senger's person, and of a more serious character. Let us suppose, for example, that a train is just about to leave a station when a man leaps from one of the carriages and cries out that he has been stabbed or shot by a fellow-passenger, appealing to the station-master to delay the train and arrest his assailant. It would be no duty of the station.master to assist this arrest, so we may imagine him remaining im- movable, his whistle to his lips, waiting for the fixed minute of departure. The clock strikes, the station-master whistles, and the train starts, and then the unfortunate passenger, unable to find a policeman, reels back on to the platform, and falls dead. Would the law consider in such a case that the conduct of the Railway Company's official showed no negligence, that he could not be held to have facilitated the escape of the murderer, and that in his person the Railway Company had satisfactorily performed all the duty that could have been expected of them P If the law is consistent upon the subject, it should certainly hold the station-master blameless. But it is difficult to believe that the law would be consistent. And, to tell the truth, it is difficult for us to believe that the law has been quite consistent in the present case. There is very often to be found in a railway-carriage a con- trivance known as an alarm-signal, which serves to arrest the attention of the guard, who is supposed to stop the train and go at once to the assistance of the persons in the carriage indicated. Let us suppose that a passenger pulled the alarm-signal, but that the guard paid no attention to it, and that the passenger was in consequence robbed and ill-treated, his assailant escaping on the entrance to the next station. Would the Company be held responsible
for the neglect of theii servant, and forced to compensate their passenger ? If they are not held responsible, we fail to see of what use such alarm-signals are, or why railway officials should ever pay any attention to them at all. We can only suppose that the Company would, in such a case, admit ts responsibility. Now, if Mr. Cobb's companions had robbed him between two stations, and Mr. Cobb had pulled the signal, and the train had been stopped on his account, what conduct might we have expected of the railway-guard P According to the law, he could not be called upon to assist Mr. Cobb in recovering his property ; but we should really like to know what the law would consider to be his duty under the circumstances.
The British public has learnt by bitter experience not to expect too much of the Railway Companies. It knows, by this time, that the cardboard ticket for which it pays, guarantees it only one thing,—namely, that it may sit down if it can, or stand if it cannot sit clown, in one of the Com- pany's railway carriages between two stations upon the Company's line. Nevertheless, in spite of its disillusions, it still cherishes the not unreasonable expectation that Rail- way Companies should take some ordinary precautions towards insuring the safety of their passengers and their passengers' property ; and Railway Companies who have flagrantly disappointed it in this expectation, have done so to their cost. We do not think that another similar case will be allowed to pass so quietly ; nor do we see any reason why the Railway Companies should not be held responsible for the facilities which they afford to crime. It would not be too much to expect of the Company that, on such occasions as race-meetings, it should run nothing but saloon-carriages or other carriages that:are open from end to end, and can be put under proper supervision. The nuisance caused to the ordinary travellers by overcrowding them with the rift.raff of the race- course is becoming every year more and more aggravated ; and, inasmuch as tae Railway authorities charge heavy fares and make a large profit on these occasions, there is less excuse every year for their shortcomings in the way of making proper provision for the safety and comfort of their customers. Cases of robbery and ill-treatment upon the premises of a Railway Company are really becoming too frequent, one would think, for the peace of mind of the directors, for it can hardly be a matter for pleasant reflection, that a greed for dividends has made their lines the favourite hunting-ground of thieves.
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