Thomas Mitchell, 58, died three days after being run over on the controversial Darlington Street Railroad. The unfortunate ironworker, who was ‘rather dull of hearing and had bad sight’, had had his right leg ‘sadly mutilated’ by a horse-drawn tramcar while he was crossing Northgate outside the Railway Tavern.
The American-style tramcar, which ran at 11mph from North Road station to the Market Place, was the third in the country. It opened on 1 January 1862, promoted by the Pease family in conjunction with the American eccentric George Francis Train, who famously travelled around the world in eighty days.
Its rails made it deeply unpopular with horse-owners, who spilled coals and parked wagons full of steaming manure across it. During ‘the Northgate blockade’, they padlocked their carts so the tramcars couldn’t get by, causing driver James Temple Mangles to flog his horses in a bid to get them round the obstruction. Magistrates agreed he wasn’t cruel, but instead fined him 21s for driving them onto the pavement.
Then a tramcar ran over a prize greyhound. Its owner, auctioneer Charles Miller, sued the Peases for £50. At the Durham Summer Assizes in July 1864, they argued that the Streetcar Company was liable and not themselves, but the company couldn’t pay, so its two trams – named Nelson and Wellington – ceased running on 1 January 1865.
(‘Memories’, The Northern Echo, 2008)