RAILWAY-STATION CROWDS.
ONCE more we have had to listen to the tale of disasters wrought by a panic-stricken crowd. "Panic," however, is hardly the word to use in connection with the catastrophe at Hampstead Heath Railway-Station, as the rush and stampede of unreasoning terror did not set in until the mischief had actually been done : then, they seem to have set in most thoroughly, and had not the railway officials been fortunately able to stop the expected trains from entering the station, the massacre among those who bad jumped on to the line would have been terrible. As it was, the matter was quite bad enough, and the number of people killed—eight in all—was probably no index of the far greater number of those who must have been injured. The cause of the disaster is simple enough, and needs little explanation, in spite of the somewhat conflicting evidence that has been offered by "eye-witnesses." On Easter Monday, as upon most Bank Holidays, several thousands of people visited Hampstead Heath. No special precaution seems to have been taken on this occasion by the Railway Company, beyond that of increasing the staff of the officials at that particular station, where, we may note, there is an unusually large platform in- tended to accommodate a greater number of people than usually congregate at the suburban stations upon that line. This platform is reached, as in the case of a great many stations where the line is on a lower level than the road, by a staircase of some thirty steps, which is divided by a rail into two divisions, each five feet in width, but narrowed at the platform end, by a ticket-collector's box in the centre, to about three feet and a half. Thousands of people in the course of the morning had arrived at the station, ascended the staircase at their ease, and proceeded to Hampstead Heath. Thousands of people might have returned in the evening with equal safety and comfort, had they arrived at the station after the same fashion, by detachments. And as, in the natural course of events, they might reasonably be expected not to have all wished to leave the Heath at the same time, the Railway Company does not seem to have taken the other possibility into consideration at all. For it must be sufficiently patent to every one that it would be impossible for even a thousand people to arrive at such a staircase at the same time, and attempt to descend it in a hurry, without the certainty of a grave disaster. Unfortunately, the event which was un- foreseen and unprovided for actually took place, and took place, too, in the most natural way in the world. Some threatening clouds and a few drops of rain emptied the Heath quickly of its visitors, who made straight for the nearest shelter and the shortest way home. The inevitable result ensued; and really one can only wonder that it was not more disastrous even than it actually was. The plat- form, in spite of its length, was speedily blocked by the invading crowd, who simply refused to lose their chance of catching the first train by moving further up it, and further away from the staircase they had just descended ; and so soon as the crowd upon the staircase was checked at its egress, and the weight of those who were pressing down from above irresistibly crushed the unfortunate people at the bottom. In spite of the evidence of one or two of the victims, it is im- possible to believe that the gates at the bottom of the staircase were closed, when the railway officials who were on the spot so positively assert that they were open. Nor is it in the least necessary to believe it, for the accident sufficiently explains itself without entertaining that supposition.
The disaster is of great interest to the travelling public, inas- much as it is one that might happen at more than one railway- station with equal certainty. Nothing, says the French proverb, is more certain than the unforeseen; and, unfortunately, that is a proverb which Railway Companies rarely take into
consideration. Take, for instance, Baker Street Station, on the underground railway. Already the resources of its plat- form and staircase are taxed to their utmost limit, and the pro- cess of waiting for a train in that dark and forbidding cavern is a sufficiently nervous one when the passenger considers how easily a sudden rush on the part of the crowd behind him would precipitate him on to the rails and under the wheels of some passing train. An unexpectedly large crowd, a sudden panic and stampede, and the entrance of a train, are all things which might easily happen. If they should happen together,. what might not be the extent of the ghastly catastrophe that would certainly ensue ! When we contemplate the possibilitics of such an event, not only at Baker Street, but at other stations also on the underground railway, we can only look upon our past immunity as but little short of miraculous. The approaches. and the exits from railway-stations are not specially designed with a view to panic-stricken crowds, as is happily the case- with our theatres ; and we are not at all sure that there is not almost the same necessity for such precautions in the case of several stations as there is in the case of every theatre. In the case of Hampstead Heath Station, the enlarged platform showed that the Railway Company were fully aware of the possibility of their having to accommodate on occasions an enormous crowd. Why, then, did they not adopt a similar precaution with regard to the staircase which led to it ?' In view of the crowds that might attempt its descent at the same moment, and the possibility of the long but narrow platform becoming blocked at the entrance end, the- staircase was ludicrously inadequate to the use that might possibly be made of it, to say nothing of its faulty con- struction, which, by-the-way, it shares with nearly every staircase upon suburban lines, in having the ticket-collector's- box and the barrier placed at the bottom and not at the head of its steps. The reason of this arrangement is really far to seek, if it is not that the ticket-collector, in the case of ordinary traffic, may be also employed in helping to despatch the train after the barrier is closed. On this occasion, we are told that, though that official was in his box, no effort was made to check the tickets of those who passed him, and he was free to devote his energies to a fruitless attempt to persuade- the passengers on the platform to move on and those upon the staircase to hold back. The wonder is, not that those at the bottom of the stairs became entangled in the narrow exit and fell, but that others higher up the staircase did not fall also. A Bank-Holiday crowd, bent upon making its way downstairs in a hurry, is not likely to be very careful of pre- serving its footing, and though it does not appear that this crowd was in any degree more senseless and disorderly than such crowds usually are, there seems to have been plenty of rude fun and good-natured pushing. Even before the first man fell, several people were in danger of being suffocated, as- they stood, by the intense crush and weight of the densely packed bodies behind them. When the alarm was raised and the pressure sufficiently relieved to allow the bodies of those- who had fallen to be extricated, it was found that life had been lost, not from the violence of trampling, but simply from. asphyxiation. In the hurried passage of so large a crowd through an equally narrow but level corridor, an accident of the same kind would not have been surprising ; upon such a staircase the accident was inevitable.
After a disaster of this kind, the public is always anxious to find some shoulders upon which to lay the blame. If they laid it in this instance upon those of the railway officials who- provided the extended platform for extraordinary passenger traffic, and yet omitted to alter the staircase, we do not think they would be far wrong. It is to be feared, however, that want of foresight of this kind is a matter of which no one Railway Company is more guilty than another. In spite of the constant recurrence of holiday seasons and excur- sionist crowds, the provision that is made for the comfort and even for the safety of the latter by the suburban railway officials, is never an adequate one. The public' is extremely long-suffering whenever it is a question of a. holiday, and allows itself to be dangerously packed upon narrow platforms, or crammed twenty at a time into carriages that are only constructed to hold ten, without a murmur.. Those who are thus inconvenienced, look upon this discomfort as owing in a great measure to their own fault. If all the world chooses to travel upon the same day, it must expect to- encounter difficulties of transport. To a certain extent the
reasoning is sound enough, and the tolerant patience of the public not excessive ; but that is no reason why the Rail- way Companies should trade upon the good-nature of their passengers, and we cannot help thinking that they show a decided disposition to do so. A matter of this kind does lie directly between the Companies and their customers, the public. It is perfectly absurd that the services -of the police should be called in to control and regulate the passage of holiday-makers upon the railways; and if the Companies accept that traffic, they must also be responsible for its regulation. In this particular case, when a terrible disaster has been brought about merely by the unforeseen result of a shower of rain, it is impossible to allow that the arrangements made by the railway authorities could have been in any sense sufficient.
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