A RAILWAY HORROR.

Colonist, Volume XXX, Issue 5018, 29 September 1887, Page 3

A RAILWAY HORROR.

100, EXCURSIONISTS KILLED. FULLY FOUR BUNDRED INJURED. Out from Peoria, Illinois, Wednesday eVeiung";* August 10, sped a special train with fifteen coaches, crowded with over 900 gay, happy* hearted excursionists. Jost before midnight, •a drawn by two engines it passed through Chatswonh at rapid speed, the engineer taw, to his horror, a burning bridge ahead. Death, and a dreadful death, was there inexorable. Into the fire and down through the bridge the train plunged in an awful wreck. Over 100 persons were killed outright, and four timta that number injured. Seventy-three bodies, mangled almost beyond recognition, have been taken from the wnok. The work of rescue was a hard and brave one by the survivors. It is fully told in the despatches below. PLDNGING TO DSATH. The train was composed of six sleeping cars, six day coaches and chair oars, and three baggage. It was tarrying 950 passengers, all excursionists, and was bound for Niagara Falls. The train was so heavy that two engines were hitched to it. Three miles east of Chat*worth is a little slough, and where the railroad crosses a dry run about 10ft deep and 15ft wide. Over this was stretched an ordinary wooden trestle bridge; and as the excursion train came thundering down on it, what was the horror of the engineer on the front engine when he saw that this bridge wag on fire. Bight up j •fore his eyes leaped the bright flames, and the next instant he was in the fiery furnace. There was no chance to stop. Had there been warning half a mile would have been needed to stop that on-rushing mass of wood, iron, and human lives, and the train was within 100 yards of the red-toDgued messenger of death before the fatal signal flashed into the engineers face. But he passed over in safety, the first engine keeping the rails. As it went over the bridge fell beneath it, and it could only have been the terrifio speed of the train which saved the lives ot the engineer and his fireman. The next engine went down, and instantly the deed of deathwas done. Car crashed into car, coaches piled one on top of another, and in the twinkling of an eye nearly 100 people found instant death, and 50 more were so hurt they could not live. As for the wounded, they were everywhere. Only the sleeping eoaehes escaped, and as the startled and half-dressed passengers came tumbling out of them they found a scene of horrid death, and such work to do that it seemed as if human hands were Utterly incapable. It lacked but five minutes of midnight. Tint ADDS ITS HORROR. Instantly the air was filled with the cries of the wounded and the. shrieks of the dying. The groans of men and the screams of women united to make an appalling sound, and above all could fee heard the agonising cries of little children who lay pinned alongside their dead parents; And there was another terrible danger yet to be met. The bridge was still on fire, and the wrecked .cars were lying on and around the fiercely! burning embers.. Everywhere in tbe wreck were wounded and unhurt men, women, and children, lives could be saved if they oould be gotten out, but whose death—and death in a most horrible form—was certain if the twisted wood of the broken cars caught fire. To fight tbe fire there was not a drop of water, and only some 50 able-bodied men who still had presence of mind and nerve enough to do their duty. # Tha only light was the light of the burning bridge. And with so much of its aid the 50 men went to work to fight the flames. For four hours they fought like fiends, and for four hours the victory hung in the balance. Earth was the only weapon with which the foe couli be fought, and so tbe attempt was made to smother it out. There was no pick or shovel to dig it up, no baskets or barrows.to carry it, and so desperate were they that they dug their fingers .down into the earth, which a long drought had baked almost as hard as stone, and heaped the precious handf uls thus hardly won upon the approaching flames, and with this earthwork, built handful by handful, kept back the foe. . " . So they dug up the earth with their hands, reckless of the blood streaming out from broken finger nails, and heaping it up into little indunds, while all the while came the heartrending cry, " For God's sake don't let us burn to death." FitfHly tbe victory was won. The fire was put out after four hours of endeavor, and as its laat sparks died away the light came up in the east, and dawn came upon a scene of horror. MEN WORSRIRAK GHOSTS. No sooner had the wreck occurred than a scene of robbery commenced. Borne band of abominable, heartless miscreants was on hand, and, like the guerillas who throng a battle field the night after the conflict and filch from the dead, the money they received for their meagre pay, stealing even the hronzo medals, and robbing from the children of heroes the other worthless emblems of their fathers' .bravery, so,did these banian byedas plunder the dead from this, terrible aeoident, and take even the shots which covered their feet. Who these wretches are ii not bow known. Whether they were a band of piok. pockets who accompanied th« train, or som« » *

robber gang who were larking in tbe,Ticinity, c»nnot be 6»id. The horrible suspicion, -boweyeri exists— and there are many who give it oredit—lhat the accident wag a deliberately planned case of train wrecking; that the bridge was set on fire by»iniscreants who hoped to seize lh« opportunity offered. It seems hardly possiblethat man could be so lost to all the ordinary feeling which animates the basest of the human race, but ■till men who will rob dead men, who will steal from the dying, and will plunder the wounded, held down by the broken beams of a wrecked car, wounded whose death by fire seemed imminent, can do almost anything which is base; and that is what these human fiends did: ' They went into the ears whan the fire was burning fieroely underneath, and when the poor wretches who were pinned there begeed them "for God'i sake to help them oat," stripped them of their watches and jewellery, and searched their pockets for money. When the dead bodies were lai4 out in the corn-fields, these hyenas tamed them over in tbeir search for Valuables, and that the plundering was done: by an organised gang was proven by -the fact, that this morning out in the cornfield 16 purses, all empty, were found in one heap. It was a ghastly plundering, and had the plunderers been caught, they would surely hare been lynched. »' SOKNES^HD INCIDENTS. H. W. White, orre of the survivors, says: On* of the horrible incidents was a man well ! dressed who was so badly injured that his I bowels were protruding, fie called passionately for water, and as he could not be attended to, he finally pulled out his revolver and shot himself through the head. One little boy the son of the Methodist minister at Abiagton, Frank Snadeckar, was found ou the boeona of his dead mother. His left leg hung by the skin, his right arm was broken, and one eye was put out. Be never uttered ; a groan as they pulled him out, and tried to give him a drink of brandy. He refused to take it, and siid, "Give me water." He never uttered a groan. I found a head hanging from ihe truck. It was apparently a man, and bad been caught by tbe hair. I found several headless bodies. Those who recognised the dead immediately ticketed them. Theie was one incident of the accident which stood out more horrible than all of those, horrible scenes. In the second coach wa« a man, his wife and little child. When the accident occurred, the entire family of three was caught and held down by broken woodvoi k. Finally, when relief came, tbe man turned ejo hit friend and feebly said: " Take out my wifa first. I'm afraid the child is dead." So they carried out the mother, and as a broken seat was taken off her crushed breast, the blood which welled from her lips told how badly she was hurt. They carried the o'jilal, a fair-hailed, blue-eyed girl of three 4, and laid her in tbe corn-field, dead alongside of her dying mother. Then they went back for the father and brought him out. Both big legs were broken, bat he crawled through the corn to the side of his wife, and feeling her loved features in the darkness, pressed some brandy to her lips and asked her how she felt. A feeble groan was the only answer* and the next instant she died. Tbe man felt the forms of his dead wife and child, and cried out, " My God, there 13 nothing more for me to live for now," and taking a pistol from bis pocket, pulled the trigger. The bullet went surely through his brain, and the three dead bodies of. that little family lay side by side amid the waving corn.