The Queen's Staghounds Narrow Escape

Cartoon, ink pen (stylic art), "The Queen's Staghounds Narrow Escape on the Great Western Railway", by C.A.S., a satirical comment on the railways' intrusion on the countryside, depicting a hunt disrupted by a train, about 1838 - 1843.

This is one of a series of cartoons satirising the early railways. The image shows a hunting party being disrupted by a train. Despite the title claiming that the hunt had a ‘Narrow Escape’, a horse can be seen under the train. The horse’s rider is sliding down the embankment. Other member of the group have manged to avoid the train, however several are still in significant difficulty. The passengers on the train are looking on, horrified. It was not uncommon for people to go onto train tracks in the early years of the railway. This new technology was still not fully understood, and people did not always treat the infrastructure with as much caution as they should. As the railways became a familiar part of the landscape, the dangers they posed became more widely understood and more caution was given to railway lines. Even still, campaigns to display the danger that railway infrastructure can pose are still shown today in order to keep the public safe. The illustration is attributed to ‘C.A.S’. It is possible that C.A.S refers to Charles Alexander Saunders who worked for the Great Western Railway until 1863. The artist and the date of creation remain unknown.