Left Holding the Baby
A gentleman travelling home from London by train reached his destination carrying more than he set out with.
after 1839
Queen Victoria 1837-1901
© Smiley.toerist, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0.
Carriages from the old London and South Western Railway, at Sheffield Park on the preserved Bluebell Line in Sussex: see The Bluebell Line.
Introduction
In 1830, the world’s first intercity passenger line began running steam-hauled trains between Liverpool and Manchester. Half a century later, Richard Pike compiled a collection of vignettes about life on the ever-growing railway network, some about engineers and locomotives, others about the surprising things that could happen in a railway carriage.
AN incident of an amusing though of a rather serious nature occurred some years ago on the London and South-Western Railway. A gentleman, whose place of residence was Maple Derwell, near Basingstoke, got into a first-class carriage at the Waterloo terminus, with the intention of proceeding home by one of the mainline down trains.*
His only fellow-passengers in the compartment were a lady and an infant, and another gentleman, and thus things remained until the arrival of the train at Walton, where the other gentleman left the carriage, leaving the first gentleman with the lady and child. Shortly after this the train reached the Weybridge station, and on its stopping the lady, under the pretence of looking for her servant or carriage, requested her male fellow-passenger to hold the infant for a few minutes while she went to search for what she wanted.
* LSWR trains began running between Waterloo and Basingstoke in 1839. A Down train is a train travelling away from London; a train travelling towards London is an Up train.
