Train travel revolutionised life for Victorians.

Suddenly it became possible for people on modest incomes to travel more than they could comfortably walk in a day, and in a shorter time, be it for a school teacher to visit friends and family or for a farm worker to travel in search of a better paying job, or even for an office worker to live out of town.

But train travel also brought its own risks, robbery, murder or sexual assault, and partly the reason lies in the design of trains in Victorian times.

If you’ve travelled by train recently, either or a local or intercity service, the chances are that the train carriage you travelled in was open plan.

You might have travelled in what is called a standard corridor coach in Britain and beloved by heritage railways in the UK – in it seats are arranged in groups of six in little compartments with a sliding door that gives access to a narrow corridor giving you access to the lavatories at the end of the coach, or onto other coaches and perhaps a buffet coach if you are lucky.

As well as their British versions I remember travelling in their big bottle green French equivalents as well as one in Slovenia as late as 2015.

But why would you design a train carriage like that – current open plan designs are so much more sensible.

The answer lies in the design of early train carriages, which evolved from the early stage coach design. Early British, and other, trains consisted of a set of wooden compartments with no access to each other, no toilets or any other modern facilities, and sometimes passengers were locked into their compartments between stations.

This led to a quite understandable fear of being trapped in a compartment with a murderer, a robber or a rapist, with no obvious means of escape.

Victorian newspapers are full of accounts of men being robbed and thrown from a moving train, young boys being assaulted by vicars, and young women being assaulted on trains.

While doing some family history research I came across the story of a young woman suffering an attempted rape on the Montrose to Inverbervie line (unfortunately I havn’t found an open access source for the story), which shows it was a constant risk even on quiet country lines.

This was far from am isolated incident – the newspapers of the time report a depressing number of assaults including the more high profile cases of Catherine Scragg, or that of Valentine Baker’s attack on Kate Dickinson.

By the time of these attacks passengers were no longer routinely locked in their compartments, and there was supposed to be a communication cord to attract the attention of the train conductor – as a deterrent they were completely useless as there was no way a train conductor could render assistance until the train stopped at the next station.

One feature of both the Dickinson and Scragg cases was that they opened the door of the compartment while the train was in motion and stepped out – they were able to do this as most coaches had a running board, as in this picture of a preserved Caledonian railway coach, along the length of the coach as an aid to boarding.

Undoubtedly dangerous, but these women were in fear and desperate to escape. It might even have been possible by hanging on to the door to bang on the window of the next compartment to attract attention and gain some help.

So when you read about women in the nineteenth century routinely using hatpins that could double as a stiletto, or a distinctly vicious looking fruit knife, it wasn’t a joke, there was a very serious reason…