Introduction
The first railroad line in the Ottoman Empire was opened in the mid-1850s, and it did not take long for the Ottomans to realize that the new technology was a dangerous one. In the runup to World War I, hundreds of passengers and railroaders were injured or killed in train collisions and derailments across different regions of the empire.Footnote 1 Railroads were also dangerous to any individuals crossing over or walking along the tracks, many of whom were unable to avoid being struck or run over by trains. Although there is a rich literature examining how the coming of the railroad affected the lives of Ottoman people socially, economically, and culturally, the question of how the Ottoman state, people, and railroad companies struggled to address the hazards created by this new transportation technology remains largely unexplored.Footnote 2 This study focuses on precisely that question, seeking to shed some light on different approaches in the late Ottoman Empire to dealing with the risks and dangers posed by new industrial technologies.
Throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Ottoman state improved its capacity to intervene in the lives of its population in order to gain greater access to both material and human resources. It was for this purpose that the state also began to play an increasing role in caring for its subjects.Footnote 3 This study will show that the railroad industry did not remain unaffected by these developments. Like its counterparts in Europe and North America, the Ottoman state actively sought to protect individuals against the risks that railroads posed. By means of concession contracts and legal regulations, it mandated the use of certain devices that then facilitated the safe flow of railroad traffic, and it also introduced measures aiming to discipline railroaders, passengers, and trespassers into appropriate behavior. However, the state was only one actor among many, including railroad companies, their employees and workers, and pedestrians walking along or crossing over tracks, all of whom struggled in one way or another to address the hazards posed by railroads. As Mohun has pointed out in the context of the United States, all such actors “viewed safety as a value to be weighed against cost, revenue, convenience, and personal autonomy.”Footnote 4 Hence, they often had different understandings of risk and safety, and disagreed about how to manage them. This article will explore these different understandings of risk and safety and trace how they were contested and negotiated. In doing so, it seeks to provide a glimpse into how the residents of the Ottoman Empire experienced the arrival of new industrial technologies.
The Ottoman railroads and Ottoman adoption of new technologies
Between the mid-1850s and 1914, some 7,500 kilometers of track were built in the Asian and European provinces of the Ottoman Empire. Because local entrepreneurs did not have sufficient capital for construction, the state took the initiative and built several lines itself. For instance, in 1900, the government of Sultan Abdülhamid II (r. 1876–1909) initiated the Hejaz railroad project, intended to connect Damascus to Mecca. Over the next nine years, more than 1,450 km of track were completed, with the line ultimately reaching the holy city of Medina in September 1908.Footnote 5 However, because of the serious financial problems it was facing at the turn of the century, the Ottoman state was able to use this funding method only rarely.Footnote 6 Instead, in most cases, it awarded concessions to ventures funded by foreign capital for the construction and operation of railroads. Thus, by the late 1890s, European entrepreneurs had built and begun to operate four major lines in the European provinces of the empire. These lines, extending over nearly 2,000 km, connected the imperial capital of İstanbul to Sofia and Salonica, and Salonica to Mitrovica and Monastir.Footnote 7
In Anatolia, the first tracks were laid between the port city of İzmir and Aydın in the early 1860s, and over several decades British entrepreneurs extended this line to Denizli and Dinar in western Anatolia. In 1866, a second line was opened to İzmir through Kasaba. About 30 years later, the French-controlled İzmir-Kasaba Railroad Company extended its tracks to Uşak and Afyon in western Anatolia.Footnote 8 In addition, the German-financed Anatolian Railroad Company built a line from the Marmara Sea town of İzmit to Ankara in central Anatolia, with a branch extending southward to Konya. As a result of all these efforts, Anatolia had acquired some 2,900 km of track by the early twentieth century. Finally, in the Syrian provinces of the empire, railroad building began in the early 1890s, and by 1910 French-dominated companies had completed the construction of Jaffa-Jerusalem, Beirut-Damascus, and Riyaq-Aleppo lines.Footnote 9
To encourage foreign investment in railroads, the Ottoman state provided entrepreneurs with attractive financial assurances. In most of the concession contracts, it used a financial technique called the kilometric guarantee system. This system assured railroad companies a certain minimum revenue per kilometer of track in operation, with the state promising to make up any shortfall.Footnote 10 Yet even as it granted profitable concession rights to railroad companies, the state also sought to closely regulate and control their activities. The contracts it signed with European concessionaires specified the type and quality of materials to be used in the construction and operation of railroads, and also obliged the railroad companies to keep tracks and trains in good repair.Footnote 11 In order to supervise the companies’ execution of their responsibilities concerning construction and maintenance, the Ministry of Trade and Public Works (Ticaret ve Nafia Nezareti) appointed railroad commissioners and inspectors for each line in the empire.Footnote 12
The Ottoman state also required the railroad companies to make certain technological investments that would facilitate the orderly and safe flow of railroad traffic. The government officials negotiating the concession contracts apparently knew that in both Europe and the United States the telegraph had been used extensively to control train traffic, and they asked the European concessionaires to adopt the same method in the Ottoman Empire.Footnote 13 Hence, concurrently with track-laying operations, telegraph lines were erected along the empire’s railroad network. Once put into service, this technology provided the companies with several tangible benefits, such as reducing the probability of collisions and enhancing control over trainmen.
Railroad lines in the Ottoman Empire were built as single track, and as a result traffic density on some of the lines had increased considerably by the turn of the century. For example, in 1873, the Oriental Railroad Company operated twelve passenger trains per day between Sirkeci and Küçükçekmece, İstanbul—six in each direction.Footnote 14 By the early 1890s, however, this number had risen to 52, with the company often having to run four trains simultaneously on the line.Footnote 15 Such density put considerable pressure on the track and increased the likelihood of collisions. To address this problem, the Oriental Railroad Company and some other railroad companies began to employ the telegraphic block system, in which the line was divided into blocks, often extending between stations. Before a train dispatcher could allow a train to proceed, he had to telegraph the next station down the line to see whether the previous train had cleared the block and whether any train was incoming.Footnote 16 Although the sources do not give annual empire-wide figures for railroad accidents, the fragmentary evidence suggests that, as was also the case in Britain, the use of the telegraphic block system considerably reduced the risk of collision.Footnote 17 While the Ottoman state documents, newspapers, and magazines consulted for this study provide information about 48 accidents that took place on the İstanbul-Edirne and Salonica-Mitrovica lines of the Oriental Railroad Company between 1885 and 1912, only four of these were collisions between trains.Footnote 18
The telegraph also enhanced the capacity of the railroad companies to control whether trainmen performed their duties properly. As railroad historian Mark Aldrich argues, “prior to the telegraph, once a train left the station it was like a ship at sea […] since no one save the crew knew its whereabouts.”Footnote 19 Thus, it was notoriously difficult for railroad managers to monitor the activities of trainmen. With the introduction of the telegraph, however, the situation had changed somewhat: henceforth, train crews who were careless or negligent of their duties could be more easily identified. This was, for instance, the case with a certain Dalpado, who worked for the Salonica-Constantinople Junction Railroad Company. On the night of May 6, 1897, this Italian engine driver was in charge of a locomotive pulling a 21-car military train from Ferecik (Feres) to Salonica. At 11:40 pm, the station master at Yeniköy (Stavroupoli) sent a telegram to his counterpart in Buk (Paranesti), the next station down the line, reporting that Dalpado’s train had passed his station without stopping. Thereupon, the Buk station officials put a barrier on the tracks, and in this way managed to halt the train. After a short while, they telegraphed the company’s chief inspector in Drama, informing him that when they had arrived at Buk, military officers on the train had detained the Italian engine driver because he was intoxicated.Footnote 20
While the construction of telegraph lines along the tracks was a contractual requirement, Ottoman railroad companies also undertook technological investments not specified in their concession contracts. For example, early types of train brakes underwent considerable improvements as new technologies became available. Accident reports prepared by government officials and representatives from railroad companies show that, in the 1870s and 1880s, most railroad cars were equipped with manually operated individual handbrakes. For instance, on May 7, 1888, a train headed from Salonica to Skopje ran over a 12-year-old boy named İlya while crossing a bridge near its destination. In his testimony before the investigation committee, the train’s engine driver said that when he noticed an object standing in the middle of the tracks, he immediately gave the stop signal, and in response the brakemen hurriedly turned the brake wheels on their cars.Footnote 21 However, by the early twentieth century, Ottoman railroad companies, like their counterparts in Europe and the United States, had increasingly begun to use continuous brakes operated by either air or vacuum, which allowed engine drivers to stop their train from the locomotive with the turn of a lever, thereby significantly reducing stopping distances. Moreover, in case a train broke into two or more parts, an automatic continuous brake could instantly act without the involvement of the engine driver.Footnote 22
The companies initially adopted this safer braking technology partly because of pressure from their workers. For example, when the workers of the Oriental Railroad Company went on strike in the fall of 1908, they asked management to install Hardy vacuum brakes on trains operating on the company’s Salonica-Monastir line.Footnote 23 Continuous brakes also promised important economic benefits to the companies in both dense and light traffic conditions. On busy lines with high passenger volumes, the brakes allowed them to increase the number of daily train trips, and thus also their revenues. Because new air and vacuum brakes reduced stopping distances, company managers could run trains closer to each other without thereby increasing the risk of collision.Footnote 24
On lines with light traffic, the companies often left railroads unfenced and unguarded. When these lines passed through grazing land, it was easy for cattle to get on the track, which sometimes caused train derailments. On the night of October 18, 1885, a train heading to Aydın from İzmir hit six water buffalo grazing on the track; thirteen of its cars derailed, killing three people and injuring one.Footnote 25 About seventeen years later, in August 1902, one Oriental Railroad Company train ran over a water buffalo and derailed in Küçükçekmece, causing a damage of 1,731 piasters.Footnote 26 Although the owners of trespassing animals were liable to pay for any damage to railroad equipment, at times they simply could not be tracked down by the police.Footnote 27 In such cases, railroads had to cover expenses incurred for the repair or replacement of locomotives, cars, and other equipment. Moreover, the companies also often had to pay compensation to passengers or their families. This was because—as was also the case in England, Germany, and the United States—they were held liable for any injuries to passengers that resulted from derailments and collisions.Footnote 28 For example, when a troop train derailed in the province of Salonica in the early 1890s, killing 35 passengers and injuring 41 others, the Oriental Railroad Company paid 1,500 liras in damages for injuries and fatalities.Footnote 29 Since air and vacuum brakes, as compared to individual hand brakes, were able to stop trains over a shorter distance, they helped the companies to reduce the likelihood of such accidents, and thus to ease the financial burden that repair and replacement expenses and compensation payments imposed on them.
The limits of new technologies and the problem of labor control
Despite the improvements they brought in safety, the use of the telegraph and continuous brakes did not completely eliminate the risks of railroading. Indeed, in the early twentieth century, a number of fatal accidents resulted from the failure of continuous brake systems. When a Beirut-Damascus train equipped with vacuum-brake cars was passing through the Aley district of Mount Lebanon in early April 1904, the valve linking the car reservoir on the locomotive and the brake cylinders of each car suddenly broke down. Because its brakes had thus stopped functioning, the train entered the Aley station at a very high speed and, within seconds, struck a rock there, killing at least eight passengers and injuring eleven others.Footnote 30 Likewise, neither the new brakes nor the telegraphic block system could eliminate human error. In February 1911, the dispatcher at the Ayastefanos station in İstanbul misread a telegraph informing him that a commuter train had just left the nearby Makriköy station for Ayastefanos, and so he allowed a freight train waiting at his station to proceed to Makriköy. Moving on the single-track line, the freight train soon collided head-on with the commuter train, killing one passenger and injuring eight others (see figures 1 and 2).Footnote 31
Figure 1: The aftermath of the collision of February 1911 near Ayastefanos Station – Broken cars of the commuter train
Figure 2: The aftermath of the collision of February 1911 near Ayastefanos Station – Derailed locomotive of the commuter train
Moreover, although use of the telegraph certainly enhanced railroad managers’ ability to supervise and control their personnel, railroaders still enjoyed considerable personal autonomy. The companies still often became aware of any acts of misconduct on the part of trainmen only after they had caused an accident. For example, on November 23, 1897, an Oriental Railroad Company train headed from Yedikule to Sirkeci ran over and killed a woman named Marina near the district of Yenikapı. According to the testimonies of five government officials who had been on the train, the engine driver, named Theologos, had been drunk at the time of the accident.Footnote 32 Similarly, when two trains of the Anatolian Railroad Company collided near Bilecik in northwestern Anatolia in July 1909, an injured passenger claimed that the negligence of a drunk switchman had caused the accident.Footnote 33
The available evidence suggests that acts of drunkenness and other misconduct by railroad employees did not go unpunished. In 1885, the company operating the Haydarpaşa-İzmit line dismissed an engine driver for not arriving to work on time, which caused the late departure of his train.Footnote 34 Likewise, a Greek Ottoman doctor working for the Anatolian Railroad Company wrote that company managers would fine engine drivers even for minor mistakes.Footnote 35 It seems that, although dismissal was hardly unusual as a punishment,Footnote 36 railroad managers were often not able to resort to it easily. For example, after the accident that caused the death of Marina in 1897, the engine driver Theologos was probably warned and fined, but not dismissed, by the Oriental Railroad Company. Moreover, when the railroad commissioner in charge of the Yedikule-Sirkeci line asked the company managers to investigate whether the engine driver had been intoxicated at the time of the accident, the managers filed a report stating that Theologos was not in the habit of drinking alcohol.Footnote 37
Similarly, in May 1897, the Office of the Commander-in-Chief (Seraskerlik) received a report from Major Asaf Bey, a passenger on the engine driver Dalpado’s aforementioned Ferecik-Salonica train. The major wrote that, on the night of May 6, 1897, he and some other military officers took Dalpado into a room in the Buk station building for questioning. In response to a question about why the train had failed to stop at the Yeniköy station, Dalpado confessed to being drunk: “I had been working day and night for the last six days. Being overwhelmed by the workload, I drank some alcohol.”Footnote 38 Based on this report, both the Office of the Commander-in-Chief and the Ministry of Trade and Public Works demanded that the Salonica-Constantinople Junction Railroad Company dismiss this Italian engine driver. However, despite the fact that they were already informed of Dalpado’s misconduct, the company managers did not accede to this demand. Instead, in their response, they described him as an experienced and careful engine driver who was by no means addicted to drink.Footnote 39
This sort of protective response on the part of the companies stemmed from two causes. The first had to do with liability issues. In 1867, the Ottoman government promulgated a 22-article regulation that delineated the offenses and penalties for railroad safety violations. Several of this regulation’s articles were concerned with acts of misconduct by railroad employees and the liability of the railroad companies for these acts. According to Article 4, any person who through unwariness, carelessness, neglect, or non-compliance with laws and regulations caused a railroad accident resulting in death or injury would be sentenced to imprisonment for a period ranging from eight days to two years.Footnote 40 Likewise, Article 6 stated that railroad companies were responsible for any damage or loss occasioned by the fault, negligence, or other actions of their employees and workers.Footnote 41 Hence, in denying allegations against their trainmen, the companies were essentially seeking to avoid their own liability to injuries suffered or damage caused because of the trainmen’s actions.
The second cause for the railroad companies’ protective approach stemmed from the frequent scarcity of experienced and skilled labor in the Ottoman railroad industry that is suggested in the available evidence. For instance, in response to increasing acts of sabotage against railroads in the Balkans in the early twentieth century, the Ottoman government ordered the railroad companies in the region to recruit watchmen and road workers from among its Muslim subjects. In 1905, the Oriental Railroad Company and the Salonica-Constantinople Junction Railroad Company reported that, although they largely complied with this order, it was not possible to find experienced Muslim railroad workers to replace those who had been called to serve in the army.Footnote 42 Likewise, when some of their employees and workers were called to serve in redif (reserve) army units in 1908, the İzmir-Kasaba Railroad Company and the Salonica-Constantinople Junction Railroad Company vocally complained about the scarcity of reliable and skilled railroaders.Footnote 43 Three years later, labor scarcity reappeared as an issue in the context of the Ottoman-Italian War in Tripoli. When companies dismissed their Italian engine drivers in accordance with a government order, they encountered difficulties in finding new drivers to replace them.Footnote 44 In this tight labor market, railroad managers knew that if an experienced and skilled railroader were to be dismissed because of misconduct, they might not be able to find a replacement immediately. Thus, in standing up for engine drivers like Theologos and Dalpado, they were quite possibly hoping to avoid the difficulties of having to recruit new engine drivers.
Using the tracks as a pathway: Fences and trespassers
Another important problem for the safety of Ottoman railroads was the prevalence of trespassing. Around the turn of the century, scores of people and animals were injured or killed while walking or lying on the tracks.Footnote 45 Since the early days of railroading, the Ottoman government had adopted various measures in order to deal with this problem. For one thing, to make trespassing physically harder, it required railroad companies to erect fences wherever their tracks passed through a town, village, or station.Footnote 46 Likewise, the railroad safety regulation of 1867 sought to discourage people from getting on the track by increasing the financial cost of trespassing. Article 14 of this regulation stipulated that, in cases where any person not employed in railroad service trespassed on railroad track or other restricted railroad sites, he/she would be fined twenty piasters.Footnote 47
Such measures, however, did not prove very effective. Despite the risks of being injured or fined, pedestrians continued to get on tracks.Footnote 48 This was partly because railroad tracks could serve as convenient shortcuts, as can be seen in some examples from the imperial capital of İstanbul. In 1895, the Oriental Railroad Company complained that, although there was a grade crossing just 90 meters beyond the Yenikapı station, the customers of a coffeehouse near the station did not use the crossing but instead took a shortcut by climbing the fences at the station and then crossing the tracks.Footnote 49 Ten years later, in September 1905, an Oriental Railroad Company train headed to the Sirkeci station ran over and killed a Persian fruit seller named Ali. According to a report prepared by the station police, at the time of the accident Ali had been returning from his workplace in Sirkeci to his home in the nearby Soğuk Çeşme district. Rather than using the available pathway, he took a shortcut across the tracks, and in doing so he somehow failed to see or hear the train approaching from behind him.Footnote 50 In the same year, Oriental Railroad Company officials at the Kumkapı station reported that unidentified perpetrators wishing to use the tracks as a shortcut to their destination were occasionally breaking down the fences erected by the company.Footnote 51
According to reports by Ottoman government officials, the Oriental Railroad Company often neglected to repair its damaged fences and to replace low wooden fences with higher and stronger ones. Under such conditions as these, it was easy for pedestrians to get on the track. For instance, in the summer of 1908, the Ministry of Police (Zabtiye Nezareti) reported that the track between the Sirkeci and Kumkapı stations was poorly fenced. As a result, crowds of people—men and women, young and old—had begun to use the tracks there as a pedestrian path.Footnote 52 To prevent such occurrences, at various times the government asked the company to repair and strengthen its fences in İstanbul. However, the company managers often did not respond positively to such demands. For example, when a company train struck and injured a child near Yedikule in October 1885, the managers complained that the police had not been properly patrolling the tracks. Unless this situation changed, it would be futile to repair and strengthen the fences, because trespassers could easily break them down again.Footnote 53 In adopting this position, one of the managers’ primary goals was apparently to reduce the company’s expenditures on fencing. As will be discussed in the following section, the fact that accident investigation committees and courts saw trespassing cases primarily as a matter of individual responsibility gave the managers a free hand to pursue this goal.Footnote 54
The investigation and adjudication of trespassing cases
Article 21 of the 1867 regulation delineated how railroad offenses were to be investigated and tried. It stated that when an accident occurred, the railroad commissioner in charge of the line must go to the scene of the accident together with a local police officer to investigate whether any of the offenses enumerated in the first section of the regulation had been or were being committed. Once this two-member committee had completed its work, the case would go before the court.Footnote 55 However, by the 1880s, under pressure from the railroad companies, the government had made one important change to the procedures defined in Article 21; namely, the size of the investigation committee had been expanded from two to three members, with the third member to be an official of the railroad company that was involved in the accident. In this manner, the companies themselves were given a say in the conduct of the investigations undertaken to determine whether they would be liable for any damages and losses resulting from accidents.Footnote 56
The work of an investigation committee generally consisted of two steps. First, the committee members would personally go to the scene of the accident to gather information on why and how the accident had occurred, as well as about any people who had been injured or killed. Second, they would interrogate the crew members of the train(s) involved in the accident, as well as other related railroad employees and workers, such as station masters and switchmen.Footnote 57 Once this investigative work had been completed, the committee members would prepare a report on the causes of the accident and deliver it to the local public prosecutor’s office, together with their interrogation records and any other documents produced during the investigation, such as sketches depicting the scene of the accident.Footnote 58
When dealing with trespassing cases, investigation committees typically viewed trespasser casualties as being caused mainly by the poor judgement and unruly behavior of the trespassers themselves. This did not, however, mean that railroads had no duty of care toward them. An engine driver, for instance, was required to sound his warning whistle before the train turned through a curve or passed a crossing, and whenever he saw a person or animal on the track as well. In the latter case, if necessary, the engine driver and other crew members also had to stop the train.Footnote 59 During an investigation, the committee members would seek to ascertain whether these duties had been properly performed. This is apparently why engine drivers, in their own accounts of accidents, would stress that they had cut off the steam and sounded the warning signal as required, and that they had not taken their eyes off the track. For example, after an Oriental Railroad Company train had injured an elderly woman named Medine between the Sirkeci and Kumkapı stations on July 11, 1908, the German engine driver, Bruno Heinz, gave the following testimony:
Q: What do you know about this incident?
A: Two and a half kilometers after the Sirkeci station, there is a curve in the road. Before we entered this curve, I blew the warning whistle in accordance with the rules. When the fireman told me that we had hit a woman, I immediately stopped the train […] I did not see anyone on the tracks. The victim was within the fireman’s sight.
Q: Are you sure that you blew the whistle?
A: I have no doubt about it.Footnote 60
In emphasizing how they had properly performed their duties, engine drivers largely attributed the accidents to negligence on the part of the victims, accusing them of such actions as sleeping, walking, or suddenly jumping on the tracks. When a freight train heading from Haydarpaşa to Kartal in İstanbul struck and injured a night watchman named Mehmed in August 1883, the German engine driver, Joseph Nofer, testified that the watchman had been sleeping on a railroad tie, and he (i.e., Nofer) had only noticed him when the distance between them was 50 meters. This was because, near the scene of the accident, the train had rounded a downhill curve that obstructed the driver’s view of the road ahead. Nofer further claimed that, as the distance between the train and the sleeping watchman was shrinking rapidly, he blew the whistle, shut off the steam, and signaled the train master, named Kazım, to apply the brakes.Footnote 61 Fortunately, the engine noise awoke Mehmed at the last moment, which saved his life. In his waking stupor, however, he was unable to prevent his head from being struck by a locomotive lubricator.Footnote 62
Engine drivers were accompanied in the locomotive cab by a fireman, whose main responsibility was to feed the locomotive’s fire with coal. Because of his location, the fireman could often see how an accident happened better than a train master, conductor, or brakeman in the back cars. For this reason, his testimony was particularly important for the investigation committee to find out what and who had caused the accident. In the investigation files I consulted, firemen never challenged their engine drivers’ accounts. For example, when an İzmir-Aydın Railroad Company train heading from İzmir to Denizli struck and killed a 60-year-old woman named Fatma in the subdistrict (nahiye) of İneabad in October 1897, its Italian engine driver Fabiano and Ottoman fireman Yanni gave identical accounts of the accident. Since the track curved through a cut near the scene of the accident, the engine driver blew the warning whistle. Shortly after the train had passed through the cut, both Fabiano and Yanni noticed a woman about to cross the tracks. Although Fabiano immediately blew the whistle and applied the brake, the woman did not step back and was thus struck by the train. The woman’s body was then put on the train and carried to a nearby station. When her relatives came to the station, they told the official there that she was deaf.Footnote 63 Bektaş Mustafa, the fireman on the train responsible for injuring Medine in June 1908, testified that engine driver Bruno Heinz had blown the warning whistle before the train entered the curve between the Sirkeci and Kumkapı stations. He also claimed to have seen Medine shortly before the accident. When the train was only eight meters away from her, she started to cross the tracks before quickly stepping back. In this way, the woman narrowly escaped being struck by the train, but she still fell down near the tracks and was severely injured. Bektaş Mustafa concluded by stating that, having witnessed all the relevant events, he had immediately asked Heinz to stop the engine.Footnote 64 These remarks corroborated Heinz’s claim that the victim had been within the fireman’s sight, and he was informed of the accident by him.
Likewise, after the accident that caused the death of the Persian fruit seller Ali in September 1905, the engine driver and fireman of the train that had struck him—named Salvador and Yanni, respectively—blamed the victim for his own death. Approaching the Sirkeci station, the engine driver saw a man walking close to the tracks and blew the whistle. However, the man ignored the warning and attempted to cross the tracks when the train was only five or six meters away from him. Upon noticing this, the fireman immediately called out to the engine driver to stop. Salvador, in turn, gave the emergency signal, shut off the steam, and applied the brake. These efforts, however, could not prevent the accident from occurring: the train, operating at a speed of 25 kilometers per hour, could not be stopped within a distance of only a few meters.Footnote 65
Besides the engine drivers and firemen, other trainmen, including train masters (also known as chief conductors) and brakemen, also appeared before investigation committees for questioning. These individuals mostly argued that they had been unable to see how any given accident happened, but went on to make statements that in one way or another corroborated their engine driver’s account of the incident. For example, in his account of the accident that resulted in the death of Fatma in October 1897, the Italian train master Epaminondo said that when the train went into the curve, he heard the engine driver blowing the whistle.Footnote 66 Likewise, Bruno Heinz’s claim that Medine had been out of sight to him at the time of the accident was corroborated by the train’s Greek chief conductor, Antoine Cossini, who stated: “When I got off the train, I saw an old Turkish woman lying on the fireman’s side [of the locomotive cab].”Footnote 67
The above cases show that trainmen, especially engine drivers and firemen, were able to corroborate one another’s accounts of the accidents. This consistency stemmed from two factors. First, although some railroad companies did open vocational schools devoted to the training of skilled railroaders, by and large Ottoman trainmen, much like their counterparts in the United States, learned their skills on the job from their co-workers.Footnote 68 In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many firemen who aspired to become engine drivers apparently learned the required skills by observing their engine drivers and practicing driving under their supervision.Footnote 69 Moreover, engine drivers and firemen generally helped each other to carry out their respective duties. For example, during a long journey, the fireman of a train might have to leave the locomotive cab in order to shovel coal from the tender; in such cases, the engine driver would temporarily take over his position in the cab and stoke the fire in the boiler.Footnote 70 Under such conditions, firemen, especially those who saw themselves as informal apprentices, did not want to undermine their relationship with engine drivers by testifying against them.
Second, because railroad companies had a strong stake in the outcomes of investigations, it is quite possible that they drilled engine drivers, firemen, and other trainmen on the proper answers to questions they were likely to encounter. While preparing for their interrogations, these individuals were not under serious time pressure, as investigation committees usually questioned them several days and sometimes even weeks after any given accident: for example, the accident of the İzmir-Aydın Railroad Company’s İzmir-Denizli train that killed Fatma occurred on October 18, 1897, but the engine driver, fireman, and chief conductor were not questioned until October 24.Footnote 71 Likewise, the committee investigating the Oriental Railroad Company train that injured Medine did not interrogate Bruno Heinz, Bektaş Mustafa, and Antoine Cossini until three and a half weeks after the accident.Footnote 72
However, the fact that trainmen managed to provide coherent accounts of what had happened in an accident by no means guaranteed that the investigation committee would write a report favorable to them. In addition to questioning the trainmen involved in an accident, committee members often also investigated the scene of the accident and conducted interviews with other witnesses, as well as with friends and relatives of the victim. If the information collected at the scene did not contradict their statements, the trainmen might well obtain a favorable report. Indeed, in all the cases mentioned above, this was exactly what happened. For example, after the accident that caused the death of Fatma in 1897, deputy railroad commissioner Ali Rıza and an official from the İzmir-Aydın Railway Company went to İneabad. There, working together with the deputy subdistrict director, they found that Fatma had a garden near the railroad line, and on the day of the accident she had been walking around the tracks in order to collect brushwood. She had not heard the train’s whistle because she was deaf.Footnote 73 As these findings corroborated the testimony of the engine driver Fabiano, the investigation report ended up favorable to him and the other trainmen, stating: “No negligence is found on the part of the train crew […] It is understood that Fatma died because of her own carelessness.”Footnote 74
When the fruit vendor Ali was run over and killed by a Sirkeci-bound train in 1905, the railroad commissioner in charge of the line investigated the scene of the accident together with some police officers. They then reported to the investigation committee that Ali had not been able to hear the whistle of the approaching train because he was a deaf mute. Based on this report, along with the testimonies of Salvador and Yanni, the investigation committee concluded that the train crew could not be held responsible for the accident.Footnote 75 Similarly, based on the testimonies of trainmen, the committee investigating the case of Medine ruled that the engine driver Bruno Heinz and fireman Bektaş Mustafa had properly performed all their duties. It is important to note in this case that, although the road between the Sirkeci and Kumkapı stations was poorly fenced at the time of the accident, the committee members did not make this an issue or even mention it in their report.Footnote 76
For trainmen and railroad companies, securing a favorable investigation report was an important accomplishment—but it did not necessarily save them from prosecution. On the contrary, public prosecutors, victims, or, in the case of death, victims’ close relatives could all bring suits against engine drivers. That was exactly what happened to Bruno Heinz in 1908. When Medine had been struck by the train in June of that year, she was taken to a nearby hospital, where she died shortly afterwards. Several months later, Heinz was charged by the office of the public prosecutor and/or the victim’s relatives with causing her death, and was therefore summoned as defendant before the İstanbul Criminal Court of First Instance, Second Department.
During Heinz’s trial, the court, just like the investigation committee, sought to determine whether there had been any negligence on the defendant’s part. And also like the comittee, in dealing with this question, it did not touch upon the poor fencing issue. Instead, after hearing the testimonies of Heinz and witnesses, the court sent a letter to the Ministry of Trade and Public Works to ask whether the contracts between the Ottoman government and the Oriental Railroad Company set speed limits for curved track between Sirkeci and Kumkapı. Officials at the ministry referred the question to the Railroad Administration, which, in response, reported that the contracts had no provisions regarding speed limits.Footnote 77 Thanks to this report, Heinz had a good chance of winning the case. So long as, at the last moment, neither he nor the other crew members changed their testimonies before the court, or if the public prosecutor proved unable to produce witnesses to challenge these testimonies, the German engine driver would probably be acquitted by the court.Footnote 78
Earlier, in late May or early June 1904, the tracks between Sirkeci and Kumkapı had been the scene of a similar accident. An Oriental Railroad Company train struck and killed a day laborer named Abdi. Shortly afterwards, a suit was filed at the İstanbul Criminal Court of First Instance, First Department, against the train’s Austrian engine driver, Proti, who was accused of causing Abdi’s death through carelessness and non-observance of the laws.Footnote 79 Proti denied this charge, claiming that Abdi had suddenly got onto the tracks three meters away from the train. Moreover, some of the witnesses heard by the court noted that when Proti blew the warning whistle, the distance between the train and Abdi had been only five or six steps. In their view, it was not possible to stop an engine operating at a speed of thirty kilometers per hour over such a short distance. After hearing these testimonies, the court followed a path similar to that followed in the later case against Bruno Heinz. In July 1905, the court wrote a letter asking the Ministry of Trade and Public Works to clarify two key questions about the accident; namely, could Proti have stopped the train within three or four meters, and what was the speed at which trains were accustomed to running between Sirkeci and Kumkapı?Footnote 80
The ministry officials forwarded this letter to the Railroad Administration, which in turn passed it on to the railroad commissioner in charge of the line, Elkoyadi Efendi. In late July 1905, more than a year after Abdi’s death, Elkoyadi issued a report arguing that the Austrian engine driver was not at fault in the accident. In response to the court’s first question, he wrote that, according to the investigation committee’s report—which had been submitted to the office of the public prosecutor in June 1905—the Sirkeci-bound train’s speed was about thirty kilometers per hour, and that a train operating at this speed could be stopped over a distance of thirty to forty meters. Then, with regard to the second question, he noted that between Sirkeci and Kumkapı, trains were accustomed to moving at a speed of about thirty kilometers per hour, and that, at the time of the accident, Proti had not been exceeding this customary speed limit.Footnote 81 Upon this report and the testimonies of witnesses, the court quite possibly decided in Proti’s favor and dropped the charge against him.Footnote 82
Conclusion
As part of its increased role in caring for its population in the nineteenth century, the Ottoman state enacted various rules and regulations meant to safeguard individuals against the dangers to human life posed by the newly built railroads. One major goal of these rules and regulations was to impose orderly behavior on both railroaders and pedestrians by limiting their individual autonomy and freedom of movement. What is more, they also required the railroad companies themselves to exercise care for the safety of both their passengers and any trespassers on tracks. However, this does not mean that the companies owed an equal duty of care to people travelling in their cars and to those walking or lying on the track. On the contrary, both investigation committees and courts viewed accidents involving trespassing as primarily a matter of individual responsibility, and therefore they treated those unlawfully present on the tracks as individuals who had exercised poor judgement. Hence, as the above cases show, trainmen were often able to shield themselves and their employers from liability for trespasser casualties by presenting themselves as employees who carefully complied with safety rules.
The way that trespassing cases were handled by investigation committees and courts also allowed the companies to avoid contractual obligations with respect to fencing, and thereby to reduce their building and maintenance costs. Even so, economic concerns did not always hamper investments in railroad safety. Instead, at times they actually encouraged the companies to incorporate new technologies that would enhance the orderly and safe flow of railroad traffic. They built telegraph lines along the railroads, not simply because the government forced them to, but also because this communication technology, together with continuous brake systems, enabled them to run more trains simultaneously on single-track lines while also reducing the risk of train collisions, which might incur a considerable financial burden.
Nevertheless, neither the state’s railroad safety rules and regulations nor the companies’ technical innovations proved able to significantly curtail unruly behavior on the part of pedestrians and trainmen both. Pedestrians, who were not legally allowed to walk on the tracks, weighed safety against convenience—and, for many of them, the latter outweighed the former: in the imperial capital of İstanbul, they turned the tracks near their homes, workplaces, and coffeehouses into pathways. Likewise, in performing their duties trainmen enjoyed considerable freedom from control by railroad managers. Under such circumstances, it was easy for them to engage in hazardous behaviors, such as drunk driving, which offered them a means to deal with particularly difficult working conditions. Finally, the fact that railroad companies adopted a protective stance toward trainmen accused of drunkenness suggests that railroaders had some degree of bargaining power with their employers. Because this power stemmed in great measure from a shortage of experienced and skilled labor in the railroad industry, it was difficult for companies to make frequent use of dismissal as a punishment for unruly workers.
