Vandalism in 1893

[merlodlliw]

Interesting story in this weeks http://www.nwrail.org.uk/nwnews.htm Dave Sallery found this interesting item in a Magistrates' Court report from 1893:

also Sunday engineering freights in North Wales.

 

[WatcherZero]

I remember seeing a report from the 1920's about local children throwing stones at passing trains and putting objects in the points to block them and reccomending extra police patrols along the route and a talk in schools about the dangers of railway lines.

The more things change the more they stay the same eh?

 

[Cherry_Picker]

Yep, and people remain convinced that the world is going to hell in a handbasket when the simple truth is this kind of behaviour has always happened.

 

[DaveNewcastle]

There's a bit of stone-throwing in Dickens' London.
Shakespeare's rogues get up to some awful pranks and obscenities.
The Bible discusses stoning as an institution.

. . . and that's just in mainstream literature. I don't think the Roman occupiers of this island wore metal armour purely to be fashionable either.

 

[CosherB]

And it seems these girls were quite likely after wood for the fire, possibly under orders from home, as they were obviously collecting the keys to take away. If they'd nicked every second one it would have been safer!

 

[ChiefPlanner]

Railway crime is not a new issue - look back far enough and you will find numerous reports of window etching (done with diamond rings by "young Toffs") , seat slashing (theft of horsehair) , track obstacles , kids attacking telegraph pole insulators , staff assaults a plenty (often drink related) , endemic trespass , fare dodging etc etc. Even terrorism and armed crime.

Pro-rata , the Victorian could easily match or beat todays crime rates - though an element was clearly related to real poverty and need.

 

[DaveHarries]

I don't know if this clarifies as vandalism, but in 1879 some boys from Sidcot School, nr. Winscombe, North Somerset (of which I used to be a pupil between 1995 - 2000) attached a parcel of explosive chemicals to the rails inside the 180yd Shute Shelve tunnel. It blew up under the wheels of a passenger train whose driver, of course, put the brakes on in a real hurry. The culprits were caught and received lectures from a representative of the GWR and from Edmund Ashby, the then headmaster of the school.

The tunnel is on the Winscombe - Axbridge stretch of the old GWR Cheddar Valley Railway between Yatton and Witham Friary: the tunnel can be walked through as it is part of a cycleway.

Dave

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Railway crime is not a new issue - look back far enough and you will find numerous reports of window etching (done with diamond rings by "young Toffs") , seat slashing (theft of horsehair) , track obstacles , kids attacking telegraph pole insulators , staff assaults a plenty (often drink related) , endemic trespass , fare dodging etc etc. Even terrorism and armed crime.

The one about the telegraph pole ceramic insulators brings the 1950's to mind, where there were numerous of these items smashed every week on the side top wailings of the New Allen Street viaduct which ran from Manchester Oldham Road goods depot to Collyhurst. There were even unofficial "league tables" of how many each pupil had smashed....the offenders being boys from Abbott Street C of E Junior School and St Patrick's R C Junior School.