when the town hall was crowded on the bringing up of eleven prisoners, charged with sleeping in the fishermen’s rope-shops where they had no right to be. On the preceding (Sunday) morning, a fire was discovered in one of the said shops at the bottom of Bourne street, and one which had replaced the row of shops consumed by fire, a few years before. The fire was luckily discovered by Sergt. Phillips and Supt. Phillips; who pulled out a quantity of smouldering nets and sails, and thus prevented what might have caused great destruction. They then searched the other boat-shops, and found them full of railway labourers, who, as it afterwards turned out, had been in the practice of sleeping in them night after night, and for that purpose had wrenched off padlocks, bolts, and other fastenings. The prisoners —some of whom had barely slept off their drunken bouts, pleaded inability to obtain lodgings — some because they had not the means, and some because there was no room for them where they applied. The Mayor said he was determined to put a stop to the practice, and so sentenced nine of them to a months’ imprisonment.
On the 17th of June, William Hilton and Thomas Hewett, carter on the railway works, were accompanying a load of timber down the old London road, and when near to Mr. North’s residence the skid-pan came off, and the shaft-horse not being able to hold the waggon back, Hewett, who was riding on the shafts, jumped off, and was fatally crushed by the wheels.
On the 22nd of the same month, several railway accidents occurred, but although serious, they were not fatal. A labourer, named Clark, fell in the Ore tunnel from the centering to the floor, and got a deep wound in one leg by a large nail; a boy, named Friend, had a muscle partly torn from one leg; through being caught against the bumper-board at the tip in the Priory Meadow; and a man, named Macdonald, was greatly injured in head and hand by a truck in the Ore tunnel running against him.
The foundation stone of the Hastings railway station was to have been laid on the 4th of July, but was prevented by wet weather. Of the exact date when the ceremony took place I have no knowledge, but I suppose it would be the first later day that was favourable.
On the 17th of July a Polish railway workman named Edward Lisiechi, while mounting a train of empty trucks in motion at the Priory, fell under the wheels and received severe injuries by three trucks passing over his legs.
For the acceleration of the railway works, on the 7th of September, an engine drawn by 16 horses arrived on a ponderous carriage; and, two days later, Hastings witnessed the first puff of the same engine as it climbed the incline from the Priory to the cutting at Bunger Hill with a long train of empty trucks. The trucks or waggons, when filled, ran down by their own -
