Elizabeth Joplin (1810), Harriet Margaret Hay (1814),
Cecilia Barbara (1815), Maria Lewis Finlayson (1817), Robert Collins (m.Grace
Bell), and a younger son, station master at Perth, who was killed in a railway
accident:
On Saturday forenoon a shocking occurrence took place upon
the Dundee and Perth Railway... It appears that, after the arrival of a
passenger train from Dundee at the company's station in Prince's Street, Perth,
upon the south side of the river, Mr Craigie, manager of the passenger traffic,
and Major Dreghorn, of St Alban's Cottage, which after depositng their
passengers, are generally pushe back across the river to the company's station
at Barnhill -- for the purpose of proceeding to the north side of the Tay. After
the carriages had cleared the bridge, and were nearing Barnhill, the engine
driver found that a goods train was coming upon them in the opposite direction,
and immediately reversed the engin. As the curve upon the line, however, is very
sharp, and prevents a person seeing far before him, he was too late, and the
engine of the goods train ran into one of the passenger carriages, which was
smashed to pieces. Mr Craigie, who is supposed to have been looking out at the
window to see what was wrong, was so much hurt about the head that he only
survived, in an insensible state, till Sunday evening, when he died. Major
Dreghorn, although much bruised and cut, is understood not to be dangerously
injured. After the collision the engine-driver either leaped or was thrown from
the engine, which, with its steam reversed, and freed from all encumbrances by
the snapping of the coupling train, rushed away across the railway bridge at a
velocity of thirty or forty miles an hour, and dashed through the passenger
station in the direction of the general railway terminus, which is about the
quarter of a mie distant. Close beside the terminus the Dundee line crosses the
main entrance upon the level, and at this place there is a gate upon the road,
where a man is in constant attendance... This man, seeing the runaway train
approach, had only time to open the half of the gate and escape out of the way,
when the engine drove through the other half of it, and ran with tremendous
velocity into a goods train, which was standing upon a side line of rails. Here
it wrought terrible havoc, smashing the trucks and scattering about the goods
and grain, with which the train was loaded in all directions. Yet great as the
damage was which it did here, it was a providential circumstance that the goods
train was in the way, for had the road been clear, from the way in which the
points were placed, the engine would have ran [sic] into a passenger train from
Edinburgh, which had drawn up at a wooden platform for the purpose of taking the
passengers' tickets. The primary cause of the disaster is said to be that the
driver of the goods train either did not see, or did not pay any attention to, a
danger signal which was hoisted to warn him against crossing the bridge over the
river. This man, it is said, has since absconded. Mr Craigie, who has met such
an untimely fate, was a young man -- a son of Laurence Craigie, Esq. of
Glendoich [sic], Carse of Gowrie. He was universally esteemed, and his death has
caused a very general feeling of regret in the public mind. (3)
The account in the Dundee Courier adds that the train was stopped when
'it smashed several loaded trucks, whereby it was obstructed and thrown off the
line, when a Mr McDonald, an engine driver of the Edinburgh and Northern,
succeeded in putting off its steam.' (4)