A Stronger Stomach

In the news recently was an engine driver who accidentally drove his engine over a goat and was so traumatised that he was invalided out of the service and given compensation by the railway company of £32,00

As always our newspaper archive can come up with a cutting that shows that railwaymen were once made of far sterner stuff, particularly on the Cambridge line from Sudbury, and could be relied on to do their duty however extreme the circumstances.

Now the more delicate readers must be warned that the following news item is extremely disgusating, and you should immediately avert your gaze and read no further.

January 4th 1905

On Wednesday morning at about 7-15, as Platelayer Free of Stoke by Clare was making inspection of the line near Clare when he saw the body of a man lying beside the line near the level crossing on the Ashen road
On examination he found the scalp part of the face with one eye had been cut off and lay beside the rail. The body was well dressed with kid gloves on. With the help of the Clare station master, Mr Beare, they searched the body and found some letters addressed to F.J.Tatham a native of Stoke by Clare, he had been in the army and in Essex asylum.
An early cattle train for Bury had passed in the darkness of the morning so Mr Beare telegraphed Colchester to ask if the Bury train or the Colchester train bore any marks of the accident, the reply was that the last train for Cambridge on Tuesday night bore marks of an accident with blood and brains on the engine. The body was viewed by the relatives but owing to injuries to the face they were unable to identify him.