Saturday, February 24, 1900 The Globe (Toronto) Page 20

Derailing cars.

At Aurora a Metropolitan Railway car narrowly escaped disaster through the placing of a spike on the rail. The obstruction caused the car to jump the track and the motor was stopped with the front trucks a few inches from the edge of the bridge. Another foot would have thrown the car over the brink into the ravine thirty feet below. Whether the spike was placed on the track in malice or stupidity is not known, but attempts to wreck railway trains are sufficiently common to warrant the suspicion that the same criminal idiocy may be turned against electric railways. The placing of obstructions on railway tracks is generally the work of boys of little wisdom and much mischief, but the risks and dangers involved are so great as to warrant drastic measures in dealing with every established case of guilt. A bill has been introduced in the British Parliament to authorise courts to punish train-wreckers by flogging. The law already in force, which was passed in 1861, authorizes whipping if the prisoner is a boy under 16 years old, and the present bill, which was brought in by Sir Edward Saxson, declares in its preamble that the punishment awarded by the existing law, which may be penal servitude for life, is insufficient to deter from the crime of attempting to wreck trains.

The bill proposes that a person convicted of the crime of maliciously derailing trains or throwing things at trains, may, if a male, in addition to the punishment already awarded, be once, twice or thrice privately whipped. If the offender be not over sixteen years old, the number of strokes at each whipping must not exceed 25, and the instrument used shall be a birch rod. In other cases the strokes must not exceed 50 each time. In each case the court must specify the number of strokes and the instrument to be used, and the whipping must always take place within six months after the sentence is passed. A bill aimed primarily against train-robbery is now before the Iowa Legislature. It provides that if any person willfully and maliciously causes a railroad train to be wrecked for the purpose of stealing money or property therefrom, or from any person thereon, whereby the life of any person may be endangered, he shall be punished by death, or imprisonment for life at hard labor in the penitentiary. This legislation will have a deterrent effect, as it will impress on the public and on those who need such lessons the terrible danger to human life involved in the placing of even a small obstruction on a railway track. A full discussion of the matter must lessen the danger through stupidity and mischief.

Railways: Met.Ry.

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