Being the unique experience which befell Mr. John Eke, a Great Northern Railway foreman. Clinging desperately to an iron rod, and with his feet braced against a brake, he travelled underneath the Manchester express from London to Grantham, a distance of over a hundred miles, at a speed of nearly seventy miles an hour. Only an iron will and extraordinary endurance saved him from a fearful death.
Introduction
This amazing story has been brought to our notice by former Grantham fireman John Aldous who discovered it in a compendium of stories of travel and adventure titled True Adventures for Boys.
The story tells of a Great Northern Railway Carriage Examiner aged 52 years who, on a June day in 1898, was attending to a fault beneath a carriage of an express train at London King's Cross station when it moved off, next stop Grantham 105 miles down the line.
For copyright reasons we cannot bring the complete original story to you here on our website, but you can read it online here as first published in The Wide World, a monthly magazine (Vol. XIII April 1904 to September 1904, Issue No. 73, May 1904, pages 2-8). There are accompanying photographs and illustrations.
An abridged version of the story is included below as it was carried by The Grantham Journal in July 1898. Following the story is a brief biography of the man who made the perilous journey, John Eke. Records available online today enable us to explore something of his background and his career on the railway.
From The Grantham Journal Saturday July 9th 1898, page 4, col. 3:
A PERILOUS RAILWAY RIDE.—A brake examiner named Eke, employed in the Loco. Department at King's Cross Station, has recently had the unique experience of riding on the ironwork underneath the carriage of a Great Northern express train from London to Grantham, a distance of about one hundred and five miles.
It appears that some two weeks ago the man, whilst in the execution of his duty, thought the brake gearing of one of the coaches on the two o'clock train from King's Cross required examining, and got underneath the carriage for that purpose. No sooner had he done so, however, than the train started. It was impossible for him to get out, and he had therefore no alternative but to remain where he was. He succeeded in getting into a sitting position on the rods, where he was obliged to remain until the train reached Grantham, that being the first stoppage, in two hours.
On arrival of the train here, he was seen crawling out from underneath the carriage by other brake examiners, and they, thinking that he was a stowaway having a "cheap ride," enquired what he was doing there? He explained who he was, and afterwards saw Mr. Budge, of the Grantham Loco. Department. Mr. Eke went back to London by another train, apparently none the worse for his extraordinary adventure, beyond being covered with dirt.
In giving an account of his sensations and experiences to the Daily Mail, he remarked : —"It is impossible to describe the awful sensation I felt when I realised that she was really off, but I kept myself cool, pushed my hat down over my head, and turned my coat collar up. The rush of wind was terrific, and I durst not look downwards, for the sight of the earth rushing away from me made me feel giddy.
So I held on like grim death, but presently my hands began get numb, and I had to keep changing, holding on with first one and then the other. The rattle and roar made a terrible sound, and when she slackened speed going into Welwyn the action of the brake sent a fearful sensation through me like electric shook, but when we went into Peterborough it was even worse. My position wasn't too comfortable, for I was half-sitting, but my arm shading my eyes kept the dust out a good bit.
The worst part of the journey was the last five miles, for we went down an incline, and the dust here was fearful. It was a most peculiar sensation when I got on the platform. Every sound seemed intensified, and yet everything they said seemed all jumbled up, and it was some time before I could distinguish what they said.
The following photographs and illustrations were published in 1904.
Below: a train for Manchester departs from Grantham in the late 1890s. The London King's Cross to Manchester London Road service was operated jointly by the GNR and the Manchester, Sheffield & Lincolnshire Railway (MS&LR). Trains were hauled by GNR locomotives south of Grantham and by MS&LR engines from Grantham to and from Manchester.
These trains rivalled services over their own routes between London and Manchester by both the Midland Railway and the London & North Western Railway. In 1899, with the opening of the MS&LR's independent route to London and under its new name, the Great Central Railway, the partnership with the GNR ended.
Brief biographies of persons mentioned in the article
We have compiled the following using information available in online resources, including family history records:
Jonathan Eke (b.1845)
Jonathan Eke was born in the mid-Norfolk at East Dereham, the son of an agricultural labourer. In 1861 at the age of 16 he was living with his parents at the Old Workhouse on the Norwich Road, and his occupation is given as a tailor.
By 1866 we can presume he had moved to London because he married Elizabeth Ann Gummer from the Old Kent Road area. By 1871 they were living in Islington, North London. Their first child, John, had been born in 1869 and Jonathan worked as a railway porter; in 1881 his occupation was a railway carriage examiner, and the family were living in the newly-built Beaconsfield Buildings in Islington.
Situated off the Caledonian Road, the Beaconsfield Buildings were designed by Charles Barry Jnr. and were built by the Victoria Dwellings Association in the late 1870s to provide ‘healthy and comfortable housing for the labouring classes’. The 383 flats were an attempt to alleviate overcrowding but quickly came to provide accommodation for over 1000 people. Conditions quickly deteriorated with the Buildings becoming known as ‘The Crumbles’. The flats were cleared during the late 1960s and early 1970s and the site became Bingfield Park and adventure playground.
In 1891 and 1901, during which period the above 'perilous railway ride' took place, the growing Eke family were living at addresses in Tottenham, Jonathan continuing in railway service as a carriage and brake examiner. We learn in 1911 that there had been 8 children born of whom 5 remained alive. Jonathan, aged 65, and Elizabeth were lodging with a son and daughter in law, in a room on the Seven Sisters Road in the Finsbury Park area.
By 1921 Jonathan had retired; he and Elizabeth were still living in Finsbury Park.
District Locomotive Superintendent at Grantham - James Maclagan Budge (1843-1926)
James Budge was born in Forfarshire, Scotland. He was the District Locomotive Superintendent at Grantham from early 1886 until June 1900. Budge was, therefore, the Grantham Loco. Superintendent responsible for locomotives and their crew during the 'Railway Races' of 1888 and 1895, when the East Coast lines competed with the West Coast route to cut the time taken to travel by train between London and Scotland. He lived with his family in a railway house, No. 6 Station Road, which is still there today.
Before he took charge at Grantham, Budge had been a locomotive engineer on the Great Northern Railway at Doncaster, at Peterborough and at Leeds, having started in July 1856 as an apprentice in the locomotive and carriage department at King's Cross. For eight years from 1873 he held the government post of Locomotive Engineer of the Great Southern of India Railway (the South Indian Railway after 1874) whose works was at Negapatam (today Nagapattinam) in the Madras Presidency, returning to the GNR afterwards.
In 1900, two years after he met Jonathan Eke in such unusual circumstances, James Budge moved to become GNR Loco. Superintendent at York, a post from which he retired in 1912, at the age of 69, after 56 years' railway service at home and abroad.
The Illustrator - Edward Smith Hodgson (1866-1937)
Also a Scot and, by strange coincidence also from Forfarshire, E.S. Hodgson's work as an illustrator appeared in popular weekly or monthly magazines which published general interest articles and short stories at a time when broadcast media were as yet unknown.
Having given up a career at sea as a young man due to injury, he began his artistic career by studying, exhibiting and setting up a studio in Dundee. He moved to Bushey, Hertfordshire in 1894 in order to study at a renowned school of art in the town, so it would have been from his home there that he travelled in 1904 to talk to Jonathan Eke about his experience and to make sketches for the illustrations above.
A remarkable story and a positive ending