CHARFIELD DISASTER.
Enginedriver Charged With
Manslaughter.
NEGLIGENCE ALLEGED.
(Australian and N.Z. Press Association.) (Received 12 noon.)
LONDON, November 20.
As a sequel to the Charfield disaster when a- train was derailed on entering Charfield Station Ernest Aldington, the enginedriver of the express, who has been employed by the company for 37 years, was charged with manslaughter of Dorothy Burnell, the only person of the fourteen killed who has been definitely identified.
The prosecution alleged that the cause was gross negligence amounting to recklessness, because it was established that all signals were definitely at danger. Three distinct safeguards had been overlooked and the public rightly expected some degree of safety during a fog. The driver's duty, in the event of signals being invisible, was to reduce speed. Sir Henry Curtis-Bennett, K.GL, defending, intimated that the evidence of the driver and the fireman was emphatically that they saw a distant signal in their favour.
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Bibliographic details
Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 276, 21 November 1928, Page 7
Word Count
152CHARFIELD DISASTER. Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 276, 21 November 1928, Page 7
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