Today’s story is a bit late because I’m working on forthcoming exhibition about the railway in Peterborough. Which is…prescient considering today’s story.
I was looking for a murder for this week’s newsletter, and in a break from my usual extremely rigorous methodolgy, asked my husband to name a county.
“Rutland”
Well, he would say that, it’s where he’s from. So I combed through the 1880s, looking for a murder and found nothing. This is hardly surprising - Rutland is the smallest county in England, and had a total population of 23000 in 1881, half the population of the city of Peterborough. Murder, as I keep telling everyone, is rare and random, which is why I look for manslaughter and serious assaults too.
So I went back to the 1870s, and among the larceny and rape and bestiality, I found today’s case. A manslaughter trial.
This death was not the result of a fight or a grudge, it was not a crime of passion. It was not personal, quite the opposite. Instead, it’s a story about the danger of the railway…
William Cashmore worked for the London and North Western Railway, on the Stamford to Rugby section, and was based in Rugby. He went on the railway with his dad in 1870 when he was about eighteen, starting off as an engine cleaner. By 1875, he had been promoted to fireman. He spent several months working on the line between Stamford and Market Harborough, before being promoted to engine driver.
Jeremiah Preston also worked for this railway. He had a much longer service history, having been first employed in 1845, around the time the line was built. He had originally worked at Wansford as a porter, later working as a brakesman in Oxford. After an injury, he was given a job as a crossing keeper, apparently a common way to look after railway servants injured in the course of duty. In 1878, he lived and worked at Lyddington crossing in Rutland. His second wife, Sarah, also lived there. The crossing was about a mile south of the village, and although the line was lost to the Beeching cuts, the cottage still stands.
On 4th April 1878, the Mid-Lent fair was in town at Stamford. An engine that was supposed to be bringing a train through to Rugby broke down at Stamford. It was taken into the shed for repairs. William, another man named William Gibson and a fitter were sent from Rugby to Stamford on a scheduled train, with a spare engine attached to replace the one that was out of action. Their instructions were to fix the engine and bring it back. William Cashmore was to drive, and William Gibson was to fire the engine.
The men arrived in Stamford in the afternoon. The fitter got to work on the engine, while the two Williams waited. The repairs took an hour and a half. At 5:30pm, William Cashmore went into the station to tell the station master he was going back to Rugby, but there was nobody there. So, the men went into town to enjoy the fair.
At 8pm, they came back to the station. The engine was now repaired and in steam, but they knew that if they left immediately, they would be tailing a goods train all the way home. So, they went back into town for an hour. They later said they’d had no more than a pint or two each, but this seems unlikely over three hours.
Why wouldn’t they want to follow the goods trains? Well, there was no traffic on the Stamford to Rugby line between 10pm and 6:30am, so the men could run the engine fast and get home quickly. Against the rules, obviously, but quick. Ordinarily, the goods train that the Williams were so eager to avoid would carry a signal lamp on the back to let the crossing keepers and station staff know that an unscheduled train was coming, but the goods train staff didn’t know. Nobody told the signalman at Stamford that they were leaving.
The signalling block system was not (yet) in use on this line. Once the train left the station, there was no way to warn anyone ahead it was coming.
Nobody on the line knew they were coming.
The men left Stamford station at 9:30pm. At Seaton, the station master stopped the (unscheduled) train and asked them where they were going. He asked William if he knew the road, and warned him:
“You must stop at every gatehouse as they will be closed and will have had no intimation of your coming.”
You see, the crossing keepers knew the timetables better than anyone. They closed their gates once the last scheduled trains went through and went to bed. The station master telegraphed Market Harborough station to let them know the engine was coming, but there was no way to let the crossing keepers know.
The first crossing after Seaton was at Thorpe-by-Water, and by luck, the engine arrived there just as the last passenger train to Stamford was coming through the other way. The gates were open, and William passed through without issue. It was only a short distance to Lyddington, and the crossing keeper listened for a warning whistle, knowing the Prestons would have gone to bed, and heard nothing.
The Prestons had gone to bed. Jeremiah had noticed the extra engine coming through that afternoon, and checked the last goods train for a signal light to see if it was coming back. He got Sarah to check too, but were reassured by its absence. He closed the gates, went into the house and put on his slippers, and Sarah went up to bed. She heard him go out, and then heard a train coming through at ‘passenger’ speed, going straight through the closed gates.
The train stopped.
Sarah threw on some clothes and went outside, and found her poor husband lying on the line.
“Oh dear, you are killed, you are a dead man.”
Jeremiah wasn’t dead, but he knew she was right. He said:
“I am going to leave you.”
Sarah screamed at the men on the engine to help. Two of them helped her carry him into the house, while one - the fireman - stayed with the engine. She screamed for anyone to help, and eventually, help came in the form of her neighbours and the police. Jeremiah died half an hour later, having suffered bilateral thigh fractures, a spinal fracture and a skull fracture.
The train crew arrived at Rugby at midnight. It’s not clear whether they waited to see if Jeremiah died before moving on.
The inquest was held in Lyddington across two days, on 15th and 16th April. This delay was unusually long - it was usual in nearby Peterborough for inquests to be held within three days, even when the railway was involved. The inquest took hours, not completing until almost midnight on the second day, although it was only briefly reported in the newspapers.
The testimony of Sarah Preston, various bystanders and the Thorpe by Water crossing keeper was at variance with that of the train staff. According to the William Cashmore, he had slowed the train down when he reached Lyddington, almost stopping, but alas, he caught Jeremiah with his engine as Jeremiah opened the gate. He told the inquest Jeremiah had been waving a white signal light, meaning “ignore the red danger light, the line is clear”.
But if Jeremiah had been carrying his signal light, it would have been smashed along with everything else on and in Jeremiah’s body. Bits of it would have been all over the line.
It was not. His signal light was in the house, under a table, untouched.
The gates had been closed, with a red signal light on them. It was a very dark, clear night. The red light could be seen from Thorpe Mill, almost a mile away.
William was lying.
William simply belted down the line from Seaton, and went straight through the gates. Jeremiah, who was older, slow and had a limp, heard the engine coming and went out to open the gates, but was hit. William’s story placed Jeremiah as the cause of the accident, almost certainly at the company’s instruction. Jeremiah became the scapegoat to save the company’s blushes.
The inquest jury returned a verdict of manslaughter against William Cashmore, with a rider censuring the LNWR for allowing a lame man care of a level crossing. William was arrested, but immediately bailed. The company probably paid for his bail.
His trial was held at Oakham Castle, a courthouse which saw very little action, on 15th July. The only other defendants were a couple of navvys working on the Welland viaduct, who had been stealing from each other.
William was found guilty of gross, but not wilful, negligence, and sentenced to six weeks in prison, without hard labour.
The two navvys were each sentenced to six months with hard labour.
It was incredibly rare for engine drivers to be prosecuted for causing a fatal accident in the nineteenth century. My thesis dataset has railway fatalities galore, including one where a train derailed in a station, yet the coroner’s court never finds a homicide verdict and nobody is ever prosecuted. Just a few weeks before this incident, two LNWR signalmen were prosecuted at Northampton for causing an accident that killed four people. They were acquitted.
The railway companies did not appreciate government oversight, and preferred to deal with things in-house. They came prepared to fight at inquests, bringing representatives to protect the company’s interests and manipulate the verdict, if possible. In this case, the enormous delay between collision and inquest was probably deliberately engineered by the LNWR to allow time to develop a plausible story that put the fault with dead Jeremiah, therefore exonerating William (and the company) from blame.
But William Cashmore’s actions were egregious, and almost certainly fuelled by drink. His utter disregard for standard safety procedures could not be excused. But even then, the judge baulked at a long sentence. He issued the sentence regretfully, saying William had ‘minded his signals’, which was clearly bullshit, but impossible to prove.
The maximum sentence for manslaughter was life imprisonment, but he was given six weeks with no hard labour. Six weeks to sit and think about what he’d done.
He was fired, of course. He went to work as a stationary engine driver, unable to move around and kill people, and died in 1930.
Jeremiah Preston
(1816-1878)