Two gentlemen took their seats at Liverpool in one of the
compartments of the express train to London. In it they found
already seated an elderly lady and a large, powerfully built
man, apparently Irish, respectably dressed, but with a lowering,
suspicious visage. Though one of the two gentlemen noticed this
peculiarity as he entered the carriage, he gave no thought to it,
but, going on with their conversation, he and his friend took their
seats, and in a few moments the train started. Scarcely was it out
of the station when the stranger changed his seat, placing himself
on the other side of the carriage, close to the window, and at the
same time, in a menacing way, incoherently muttering something to
himself. The other passengers looked at him, but felt no particular
alarm, and for a time he remained quietly in his seat. He then
suddenly sprang up, and, with a large clasp-knife in his hand,
rushed at one of the gentlemen, a Mr. Warland by name, and struck
him on the forehead, the knife sliding along the bone and inflicting
a frightful flesh wound. As he was in the act of repeating the blow,
Warland's companion thrust him back upon the seat. This seemed to
infuriate him, and starting to his feet he again tried to attack
the wounded man. A frightful struggle ensued. It was a struggle for
life, in a narrow compartment feebly lighted, for it was late at
night, on a train running at full speed and with no stopping place
for eighty miles. The passenger who had not been hurt clutched the
maniac by the throat with one hand and grasped his knife with the
other, but only to feel the blade drawn through his fingers, cutting
them to the bone. The unfortunate elderly woman, the remaining
occupant of the compartment, after screaming violently in her
terror for a few moments, fainted away and fell upon the floor.
The struggle nevertheless went on among the three men, until at
last, though blinded with blood and weak from its loss, the wounded
Mr. Warland got behind his assailant and threw him down, in which
position the two succeeded in holding him, he striking and stabbing
at both of them with his knife, shouting loudly all the time, and
desperately endeavoring to rise and throw them off. They finally,
however, got his knife away from him, and then kept him down until
the train at last drew up at Camdentown station. When the ticket
collector opened the compartment door at that place he found the
four passengers on the floor, the woman senseless and two of the
men holding the third, while the faces and clothing of all of them,
together with seats, floor, windows and sides of the carriage were
covered with blood or smeared with finger marks.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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