Painful Results of Stoutness

1901

A stout man lifted himself into a Heights car the other morning and took the only vacant seat. Pretty soon a lady came aboard, and the stout man quickly arose to tender her his place. As he reached a standing position the car suddenly started, and he sat down with a sound like a broken slat. Blushing deeply, he once more struggled to his feet and was about to step out into the aisle when the motorman saw a wagon on the track and fiercely applied the brakes. The car stopped so suddenly that the stout man doubled over on a thin young man in the front seat and almost cracked his slender neck. The young man pushed the dents out of his derby hat and muttered some remarks that were not complimentary to fat people in general.

Then the fat man braced himself for the third time, and the lady sympathetically remarked, "Please don't trouble yourself." But the fat man's spirit was up. He crowded out into the aisle and filled it so full that the lady could not get by him; then, with a polite wave of his hand, he indicated the seat and backed out of the way.

"Thank you!" said the lady very sweetly. "But I get off at the next stop."

Then the fat man went out and filled up the back platform. — Cleveland Plain Dealer.

Circus Elephant Heeds "Jump" Command Before Train Wreck

1905

TILLIE'S LITTLE TRICK WINS

Brookville, Ind., Aug. 17. — Circus tricks saved the life of Tillie, a trick elephant, in a freight wreck here yesterday. The Robinson circus train was standing on the Big Four tracks waiting for orders when a fast freight, running about thirty-five miles an hour, ran into it. Tillie was in one of the forward cars, and when her keeper saw the train bearing down on them he shouted:

"Jump, Tillie; jump."

The elephant, used to the command in the circus ring, jumped as she was bidden and cleared the car, receiving a slight sprain from the impact with the ground, some distance away. The trainer also jumped. The car in which they had been was wrecked. The circus employees nearly all were asleep at the time, and were thrown from their bunks to the floors of the cars, and some of them sustained serious injuries, but it is not thought that any are fatally hurt.

—The Fort Wayne Sentinel, Fort Wayne, Indiana, Aug. 17, 1905, p. 3.

Crowded Mass Transit Train — The Fat Man and The Spinster

1905

ON STRANGER'S LAP SPINSTER RODE IN CROWDED ELEVATED TRAIN

Situation Enjoyed by the Other Passengers, but Decidedly Distasteful to the Principals — Fat Man Finally Succumbs to Fate

The elevated train was chock full when the very stout man got on at Thirty-third street. There wasn't room between platform and platform for a famine victim; but the stout man, like all stout men, didn't see how he could make any difference. He stepped upon the platform buoyantly, mashing a messenger boy flat against the door and spreading a lemon-faced little spinster all over the window like jam or butter.

At Twenty-eighth street half a dozen people got out. Instantly there was a rush for seats and standing room left inside the car. But alas! when a fat man gets wedged in a doorway, who else can penetrate it? Again, like all fat men, the fat man was lucky, and, strange as it may appear, he managed to get one of the seats recently vacated.

When he had sat down the little spinster gathered herself together and found a foothold in front of him, and the others, with some new passengers just taken on, crowded in after her and packed themselves like sardines. They were squeezed so tight that the spinster reached for a strap to keep from being pushed over on the fat man's head and shoulders. But just as she made a grasp somebody else caught the only remaining strap. The bell rang sharply and the train started with a jerk. The little spinster lost her breath and balance, toppled for a moment on her toes and then sank struggling down upon the fat man's lap.

The fat man gasped and the spinster gave an awful cry of consternation and reached for the floor. But there was no floor! Every inch of space was covered by the feet of the determined passengers. The moment she sat down they had spread out over her space. Then she blushed. Some people looked her way and laughed, but nobody moved. She couldn't wedge her knees down from the altitude they had assumed at the first lurch.

She continued to struggle and strain to reach a strap, while the fat man sat helpless with that energetic mite of femininity going through the jiu jitsu exercises on his knees. At the next station more people got on and the fight of the lone spinster became more difficult and desperate.

Flesh and blood, even 300 pounds strong, could stand it no longer. Like a mountain rising and casting off the small cities on its surface, the ponderous one rose and pushed the sardine-like passengers out of his magic circle. The spinster slid off his knee like a drop of water off a duck.

"Madam," said the fat man, lifting his hat gravely, "will you do me the honor to take my seat?"

"Well, it's about time!" snapped the ruffled little spinster ungratefully. — New York Press.

Crazed With Grief for Husband's Death, Woman Jumps from Train

1878

A Lady Jumping from a Train

A lady who was accompanying the remains of her husband from Florida to her home in Akron, Ohio, jumped from a rapidly moving express train on Friday night, just before she reached the end of her journey.

She was crazed with grief and a morbid apprehension that she would be blamed by his friends for having taken him away to die. When the train left Cincinnati she seemed to be calm, and the family physician, who accompanied her, thought she would sleep after so much exhaustion. Worn out with watching and anxiety he went to sleep himself in a berth opposite to her. When the train neared Akron, early in the morning, the physician arose, and, to his horror, found her berth empty and the window open.

Search was made all through the train, but she was nowhere to be found. When the train stopped the poor physician was almost speechless. How could he give to the sorrowing friends the dead body of Mr. Phillips, and tell them that his wife had committed suicide? The telegraph was used at once to get tidings of the missing woman, but it was several hours before any response came, and then it was announced that the woman was lying at a house in a little village some distance off the railroad, not far from Mansfield.

A train was chartered and friends hastened to bring her home. They found her in bed, conscious, but almost exhausted. The people said that she knocked at their door a little while before daylight, and when they opened the door they found her all covered with mud, and unable to tell her name or anything about herself. She explained that after she went to her berth she could not sleep. She finally opened the window and looked out. It was raining, and the feeling that she was rapidly approaching her home brought an indefinable dread and a powerful impulse to escape it. With this feeling she threw herself out of the window while the train was in full motion. She fortunately struck upon a sandbank, and was thus saved from immediate death, as well as from severe injury.

Hoboes Start "Wild West"; Capture Train

1920

Hoboes Start "Wild West"

Deputies Have Exciting Chase After Seven Tramps Who Refuse to Pay Fare

LOS ANGELES, Neb. 25.—After a day of "Wild West" activity, started by the report that a gang of hobos had held up and "captured" a Southern Pacific freight train outside of Mojave, and a series of gun plays and thrilling automobile chases by officers, seven men were lodged in the county jail on the charge of evading railroad fare.

The seven were nabbed by deputy sheriffs after they left the freight train at Saugus. Three of the seven jumped from the train before it arrived at the station, and made a temporary escape by boarding a passing truck. They were chased by the officers to San Fernando, and there taken into custody at the point of sawed-off shotguns.

At least twenty men were in the gang when the brakeman of the train, W. S. Brown of Los Angeles, discovered them, he told Deputy Sheriffs Bell and Couts. Just before the train arrived in Saugus the majority of the gang, which included armed men, became suspicious of the reception that awaited them there, and boarded a freight train bound in the opposite direction.

The men refused to leave, and, when he threatened to put them off, offered resistance.

"You just try to put us off," one of the bunch called out, pulling a revolver from his pocket. Another gun was flashed, and then the brakeman was told that the train was "captured," and informed that he'd better go on to Los Angeles, the officers say.

An account of the situation was telegraphed to Los Angeles, and the Sheriff's office was notified, Deputies Couts and Bell were called from their homes and with Driver Arthur Cabbage were sent ahead to Saugus to meet the train.

The deputies nearly lost their prisoners when the county car, speeding toward Saugus, broke down a few miles from its destination. A passing automobile had to be commandeered, and the officers arrived in Saugus just in time to organize a posse.

With Constable Collins and the volunteers the officers "covered" the train when it pulled into the station, and told the men on it "to stick 'em up." Only four hobos came out of their hiding places, hands high up in the air. The officers realized that several had escaped, and soon learned that some of the gang boarded a truck a few miles outside of Saugus.

It was then that a second chase was started. The truck was overtaken near San Fernando and the three men on it taken into custody. The seven prisoners will be held for further investigation.

—The Evening State Journal and Lincoln Daily News, Lincoln, Nebraska, February 25, 1920, page 3.

Pathetic Scene at Depot

KENDALLVILLE, Ind., March 23 -- A pathetic scene was that enacted at the union depot this morning, when a mother and her three-year-old baby were reunited after a ruthless separation of nine months. Some months ago Mrs. Rosa Case, of Rome City, wife of Charles Case, left her husband on account of his excessive drinking and went to live with her parents west of LaOtto, taking her little daughter with her. About nine months ago, Mrs. Case says, the husband took the child and since then she has tried to get possession. She hesitated to begin legal proceedings, but was finally compelled to do so and as she had in her possession some very damaging letters of Mr. Case's she agreed to exchange the letters for the child and this morning the exchange was made through the efforts of Mrs. Case's father and an officer of the law. Mrs. Case and her father reached Kendallville on the 9:35 G. R. & I. train from the south and Mr. Case and his friends were in waiting. The mother, avoiding the husband, went direct to the depot, the baby staying with its father in the buggy until he was satisfied that the letters were turned over to him. The efforts of the mother to win some sign of recognition from the child were indeed pathetic. The little one showed no signs of recognition, but looked on in mute astonishment. The mother and child returned to Collins on the next train.

--Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette, Fort Wayne, Indiana, March 24, 1907, page 6.