Trauma In Literature
Survivor writes Potters Bar book
Evening Standard (London), Mar 15, 2005
NINA BAWDEN, the author who survived the Potters Bar train crash, has written a book in which she recalls the moment the train derailed and her husband died.
The book, written as a letter to her dead husband, Austen Kark, deals with the tragedy and its aftermath. The children's author had feared she would never write another book because of the physical and emotional pain.
In Dear Austen, Ms Bawden, 79, tells of coping with her husband's death and her own recovery. It is also a damning indictment of Jarvis and Railtrack, at the time responsible for the line's maintenance.
Charles Dickens: Train Crash Survivor, 1865
[Sources: Peter Ackroyd (1990) Dickens. London: Sinclair-Stevenson). Also see humwww.ucsc.edu/dickens and Jill Matus, Trauma Memory and Railway Disaster in Victorian Studies 43.3 Spring, 2001 pp 413-436
In 1865 Charles Dickens was travelling on the Folkestone to London train when, at 30mph, it jumped a broken line on the viaduct at Staplehurst, Kent. A rail worker had misread the timetable and had removed two rails. One carriage hung over the viaduct while the others fell into the river below. 10 were killed and 49 injured. Dickens was in the precariously balanced coach. He was reported as running with his hat full of water trying to comfort the dying. He climbed back into the coach to retrieve his manuscript of his book, 'Our Mutual Friend'. His later book, 'Dombey and Son' includes a descriptions from his experiences. He lost his voice for 2 weeks and had difficulty writing or speaking about the crash until a year later when he confessed, "I have sudden rushes of terror even when riding in a Hansom cab, which are perfectly unreasonable but quite insurmountable." [Liz comments: reactivated sensory reminders; trauma goes beyond logic] His reactions were made worse by guilt because he did not want the public to know he was travelling with his mistress and her mother.
His daughter wrote: "My father's nerves were never really the same again - we have often seen him suddenly fall into a paroxysm of fear, tremble all over, clutch the arms of a railway carriage. Large beads of perspiration standing on his face, and suffer agonies of terror. We never spoke to him but would touch his hand gently now and then. He had however no idea of our presence; he saw nothing for a time but that most awful scene" [Good description of a classic flash-back as if he were still there - images not yet processed as a memory of a past event]. Sometimes he left the train and walked home instead. He never really recovered until his death in 1870 - he was ill before the crash and worked too hard afterwards. [Who says trauma counselling wasn't needed in the past?]
Beliefs about PTSD in Victorian times
Train crashes were not uncommon then and doctors of the time noticed sleeplessness, emotional disturbance and headaches and paralysis of limbs were common reactions. They were divided into 2 camps - those who thought they were nervous in origin ('nervous shock') and those who thought the nervous system had been damaged ('railway spine'). An early description of nervous shock describes how, in sleep or when awake, the scene becomes alive and the terror is repeated causing uncontrollable crying, followed by extreme despondency. People with physical injury had an advantage because they had a concrete reminder of the cause of the suffering.
Other literary descriptions of trauma reactions can be found in ancient literature, in Shakespeare's Macbeth and in Samuel Pepys Diaries of the Great Fire of London.
19th century legal issues and trauma
The 2 views had legal implications in compensation cases. Lawyers defending the railway companies quoted the 'nervous shock' view, while the 'railway spine' view was used by survivors.
The whole field of trauma has largely been shaped by medical-legal arguments when compensation cases for railway and industrial accidents became common from the start of the Industrial Revolution in the 1840s.
(See 'On the Origins of PTSD' by Allan Beveridge in 'Psychological Trauma' Eds: Dora Black et al (1997) London: Gaskell)