Dickens’s Railway Ghost Story

The story as it is told

The story people tell begins with a train. On June 9, 1865, the boat train from Folkestone to London ran onto a bridge near Staplehurst, Kent, where workmen had lifted the rails, and most of it left the line. Charles Dickens was aboard, coming home from France, in the carriage that went off the line and hung over the bridge. When it was over he worked for hours among the dying and the dead, and, as he later told his readers, climbed back into the wreck to rescue the manuscript he had left behind. By this telling, he never got over it.

A year and a half later he poured it into a ghost story for the Christmas number of his magazine. "The Signal-Man" opens with a stranger calling down from the top of a railway cutting to a lonely signalman who works by the mouth of a tunnel, and it follows the signalman, who is haunted by a figure that appears by the red danger light before every disaster, waving and crying out. Then, by the same telling, Dickens died at Gad's Hill on the anniversary of the crash.

What we can confirm

On Friday, June 9, 1865, the boat train from Folkestone to London ran onto a bridge near Staplehurst, Kent, where workmen had lifted the rails. The Board of Trade's report by Captain F. H. Rich found that "10 persons were killed and 40 others injured, some of them very seriously." The foreman in charge had mistaken the time of the "tidal train," and the flagman, who should have stood about 1,000 yards out to warn the driver, was not far enough away.

Dickens was on that train, returning from France. Writing the next day, in a letter quoted by his friend and biographer John Forster, he said: "I was in the terrific Staplehurst accident yesterday, and worked for hours among the dying and dead. I was in the carriage that did not go over, but went off the line, and hung over the bridge in an inexplicable manner." In the postscript to Our Mutual Friend, dated September 2, 1865, he told readers that he had climbed back into the carriage to rescue the manuscript, joking that he went back to "extricate" his characters, and that he "can never be much nearer parting company with my readers for ever." Forster wrote that the effects were "perhaps never wholly absent" up to "the day of his death on its fatal fifth anniversary," and Dickens died at Gad's Hill on June 9, 1870.

Each year Dickens's magazine All the Year Round put out an extra Christmas number, and the one for 1866, Mugby Junction, dated December 10, 1866, is a set of railway tales by several writers. Dickens's own "No. 1 Branch Line. The Signal-Man" fills pages 20 to 25 and opens with a shout from the top of a cutting: "Halloa! Below there!" The narrator befriends a signalman who works by a tunnel mouth, and a figure keeps appearing by the red danger light, waving and crying "For God's sake, clear the way!" Each appearance comes before a disaster. At the end the signalman is killed by a train, and the driver says he shouted "Below there! Look out! Look out! For God's sake, clear the way!"

The story never names Staplehurst, and in none of the sources we found does Dickens say the crash inspired it. The dates and his letters make the connection a natural one, but it remains an interpretation.

The facts

• Staplehurst crash June 9, 1865; "10 persons were killed and 40 others injured"; foreman mistook the tidal train's time; 1,000-yard flagman rule. Board of Trade report, railwaysarchive.co.uk
• Dickens's June 10, 1865 letter; "fatal fifth anniversary"; died June 9, 1870. Forster, The Life of Charles Dickens, PG #25851, gutenberg.org
• Our Mutual Friend postscript, dated Sept 2, 1865. PG #883, gutenberg.org
• Mugby Junction, Extra Christmas Number, Dec 10, 1866; "The Signal-Man" pp. 20 to 25. DJO page scan, djo.org.uk ; contents list, Dickens Search, dickenssearch.com
• Story quotes. PG #1289, gutenberg.org

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