Straffan Rail Accident 1853

The Straffan Rail Disaster on October 5 1853 occurred when a goods train ran into back of stationary passenger train a quarter of a mile south of Straffan Station, County Kildare, Ireland.

Background

The Great Southern and Western Railway line from Dublin to Cork was only six years in operation when 18 people died in what is still the island’s third worst railway tragedy, having since been surpassed by Armagh in 1889 (80 killed) and Ballymacarret Junction, Belfast, in 1945 (23 killed).

Events

At 6:20 pm on October 5 1853 the piston rod on a locomotive snapped, stranding the newly operating noon express from Cork at a spot 974 yards south of Straffan Station, towards Baronrath in a thick fog and gathering twilight. There were a total of 45 passengers in the two first and three second class carriages.

Edward Croker Barrington, a solicitor for the company who was a passenger on the train, directed John O’Hara, stoker on the train, to signal a warning to a 20-carriage goods train which had been passed in Portarlington was approaching from behind that it might push the train into Dublin. He was gone 15 minutes when the goods train was seen approaching and, reassured, some of the passengers got back on the passenger train. But the goods train crashed into the stationary carriages at full speed, passing through the first class carriage at the back of the train, overturning the second class carriage, shearing the roof off another carriage and driving the rest a quarter of a mile the other side of Straffan Station, reduced to “a heap of ruins”.

William Hutchinson from Clownings was one of the first on the scene, having come to the rail bank to investigate the stalled train. Dr Geoghegan came to tend to the injured, and Edward Kennedy who was hunting nearby helped summon aid. The injured were kept in the Station House and three orphaned children brought to Lyons House.

Inquest and enquiry

The inquest was held initially at Straffan Station House and adjourned to Barry’s Hotel at Thirteenth Lock. The victims came from Cork, Mallow, Kenmare, Birr, Laois, Kildare and Dublin, and included Jesse Hall from Co Kildare, Daniel and Anastasia McSwiney of Kenmare, TW Jelly of Straboe, John Egan of Birr, K Hamilton Haimes, Christopher McNally, Claire Kirwan, Margaret Leathley, Joseph Sherwood and Miss Palmer from Dublin, a Mr Bateman from Cork, Mrs Knapp from England, Mrs Smith from Mallow, and four children. A total of £27,000 compensation was paid to victims, the equivalent of Eu2.37m today.

The Dublin Unionist newspaper Evening Mail alleged that the bodies of the dead and the dying were plundered by the local peasantry, an allegation disproven by the inquest and condemned by the rival Freeman’s Journal: “the people did not plunder the dead and dying but, on the contrary, assisted with the greatest alacrity and to the utmost of their power.” The only criticism at the inquest was of a carter named Connor from Celbridge who refused to carry the wounded until he was given half a crown.

The enquiry found that no warning was given by either red light or detonators. The stoker John O’Hara, engine driver James Gass and James Prey, guard on the luggage train, were arrested.

Folklore: The Ghost Story

According to Ireland’s Own, the Wexford-based weekly which keeps an eye on the supernatural, the spot is haunted by a man with a red lamp ever since.

Allingham Poem

The magic car of modern skill, Nor hour nor distance heeds; With heat and roar and whistle shrill, On through the dusk it speeds.

Our friends in Dublin city gay, Expectant name our names; "The fog is out to-night," they say, And stir the kindly flames.

Oh! chiller than October's touch Is freezing many a smile! Terror and mortal torments clutch What love expects the while.

Love's self, however true and warm, Might fail to recognise The dear, the well-remember'd form, If set before its eyes

'Mong twisted metal, splinter'd wood, Half buried in the ground, 'Mong heaps of limbs crush'd up in blood, Must wife, child, friend he found.

No hostile cannonade, or mine, Perform'd the cruel wrong; Through peaceful fields they sped to join The city's sprightly throng.

:William Allingham (included in "Day and Night Songs", 1854).

References

*Eoghan Corry and Jim Tancred: "The Annals of Ardclough" (2004).