Casey Jones

Go up to someone and ask if they have ever heard of Eliot Ness, Frank Buck, or even Wyatt Earp. It's possible, possible mind you, they have.

But the author of CooperToons was shocked! shocked! to learn some who know of these gentlemen don't know that they actually existed. Wyatt Earp? Eliot Ness? Frank Buck? Why, just macho he-men fabrications in a society crafted from male-dominated fantasies. Wyatt Earp, Eliot Ness, and Frank Buck? Simply creations of the same culture that produced James Bond, Indiana Jones, and the Marlboro Man.

And Casey Jones? Certainly nothing more than the made-up Paul Bunyanesque hero celebrated in a hackneyed children's song. Casey Jones? Wasn't he the main character in a 1950's Saturday morning television show staring future Gilligan's Island skipper, Alan Hale?

Soddy, folks. But point of fact, John Luther Jones was born on March 14, 1863 and was indeed killed in a famous train wreck on April 30, 1900 (not 1906 as the otherwise admirable book, Folksongs of North America by Alan Lomax, states). Starting out a little before 1 A. M., Casey was in charge of the passenger run of Train No. 1 from Memphis, Tennessee to Canton, Mississippi. Pulled by Engine No. 382, Train No. 1 started late because the original engineer wasn't available. Casey took the assignment, and although an hour and a half behind schedule, he felt they could make up the time.

Although in Casey's day there really wasn't quite the dictum to "get there on time or stop by the office and get your time", schedules were flexible and regulations of train speed were practically non-existent. Yes, engineers did have to follow orders and pull over to a siding and let higher priority trains pass by. But when on the move it was the engineer who decided how fast he could push his engine. During his trip, Casey ran some stretches at near 80 miles per hour. That was a phenomenal speed in a day when 50 mph was a good clip, and "going like sixty" was an expression for the fastest speed imaginable.

As the night wore on Casey had made up the lost time steadily and surely and as the clock crept toward a quarter to 4:00, he was approaching the last few stations. He was due in Vaughan at 3:50 and was only two minutes behind schedule. He fully expected to reach the final stop, Canton, "as advertised".

In the usual story the train rounded a curve which was blinded on the engineer's side. The fireman, Simeon T. "Sim" Webb, leaned out of the cabin and saw red lights up on the track. He called to Casey they were about to hit something, and Casey yelled for Sim to jump. As Casey hit the air brakes, Sim swung low from the cabin. He hit the ground hard and was knocked out.

When Sim regained consciousness about 35 minutes later, he was lying on the floor of the station house. Casey's engine had plowed into the back of Train No. 83 which had been hauling freight and was pulled by engines 870 and 871. The engineers of No 83, J. Markette and C. W. Murchison, had earlier pulled onto a siding, but due to technical problems, had left the last three cars on the main track. The last two cars only held hay and corn, and no one had been in the caboose. None of the passengers on Casey's train were seriously injured. Sim, too, recovered completely from his rough landing, and so Casey was the only fatality.

The newspapers played Casey up as a heroic engineer who stayed in the cabin to slow the train down as much as he could. One of the earliest accounts was by a reporter who was actually a passenger on Casey's train. He told the story pretty much as given above. That is, coming upon the stalled train without warning, Casey had reduced the speed from 70 miles per hour to 35 and saved all the lives but his own.

But even in that day, transportation accidents were investigated, and as was (and is) common the findings often differed from popular accounts. But with no National Transportation Safety Board the investigators were usually the railroad companies themselves. Of course, despite some appearance of conflict of interest we know the companies would investigate all accidents impartially with no thought to self interest or negative publicity. Yes.

In any case, the report stated that after No. 83 had stopped, the flagman, John M. Newberry, had moved 3000 feet up the track and planted a "torpedo". Torpedoes were small explosive devices which were laid down on a rail to be detonated by the pressure of an engine wheel. Now considered obsolete due to wireless communications and soundproof cabins, torpedoes alerted an engineer to danger ahead. If an engineer heard a torpedo go off, he was to slow his train to 20 mph. He had to be prepared to stop on seeing a signal given by a flagman who was to station himself down the track. If the engineer saw no signalman after 2 miles he could resume his normal speed.

The official report, then, concluded the stalled train had been properly protected, and adequate warnings given. But Casey had not stopped. Perhaps it was to further imply that Casey was accident prone, the report also appended a list of the times Casey had been suspended anywhere from a few days to a month for infractions ranging from running through switches to hitting other trains. Naturally the Illinois Central was not a company to mercilessly trash their employees, and they acknowledged Casey was a "reasonably good engineer". Still, the report concluded, it was the engineer, John Luther Jones, who was solely responsible for the accident.

Now a historian would argue the official report is the most immediate and comprehensive source and should be given precedence over other accounts. Therefore we should accept that it was largely through an engineer ignoring safety procedures, lack of attention, and excessive speed that caused the accident. So another heroic legend falls in the face of firm documentation. Case closed.

Weeeeellllllllll, not quite. The report of the accident actually consisted of two letters. The earliest was signed by the General Superintendent of the Illinois Central Railroad Company, A. S. Sullivan, and stated that they believed Casey neither saw the signals nor heard the torpedoes. This, in fact, agreed with what the reporter wrote. The information of this early letter and the news story was certainly provided by Sim.

But in the second letter - the "full report" and also written by Mr. Sullivan - the story changed a bit. It said Sim testified he had heard the torpedo. Not only that, but the postal clerks and baggagemen on the train heard the explosion. Even the working crews at Vaughn Station heard the boom, for crying out loud. Furthermore, the report continues, had Sim or Casey been looking ahead - we must assume this means if they had been watching where they were going - they would have seen the signals and had time to stop.

At this point the report goes into details about Sim's actions. If the report is true, it certainly sounds like Sim took his own sweet time about checking things out. First he looked up ahead and saw the signalman. Then he crossed the cabin to the other side. Next he looked down the track and saw the caboose lights on the track. Only then did he yell for Casey they were going to hit something. We can only wonder what Casey was doing while Sim was walking back and forth across the cabin.

Obviously the more skeptical can see some problems with the revised story, and perhaps the executives of the Illinois Central can forgive us if we rehearse a few questions regarding their version of the events. First, the report stated that Flagman Newberry planted the torpedo, yes, but that he then went north - that is up the track to signal any oncoming trains. But if Sim saw the signals after the torpedo exploded, that means John would have had to have stationed himself south.

More importantly, the report says that upon hearing the torpedo, Casey (not Sim) immediately applied the air brakes. That certainly seems a bit at odds with the previous paragraph which has Sim moving back and forth around the cabin while Casey was apparently oblivious to anything going on around him. And if Casey had immediately applied the air brakes, then how can the report conclude that Casey "disregarded" the explosions and warnings which is in fact what the report does say.

Of course there are some double checks on the various versions. Flawed though they may be, the newspaper stories were even more contemporary than the report. Without exception the newspapers reported that Casey and Sim saw no warnings and heard no torpedoes. The reporter - who as we said was actually on the train - made no mention of hearing the torpedo nor were any passengers quoted as having done so.

Finally with the exception of his paraphrased testimony, Sim consistently went on record that he heard no torpedoes and they saw no signals. Sim stuck to that story from April 30, 1900, the day of the wreck, until he died at age 83 in 1957.

Yes, you can argue back and forth about who was most objective in rendering judgment. But the report, we have to point out, has a tone quite like that written for the accident investigation of the plane crash that killed Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper. It is the pilot (or in Casey's case, the engineer) who is not around to defend himself that is - surprise! surprise! - the one found solely responsible for the accident.

There is one final point - a touchy one, we admit - which has to be addressed. Although on the television show Casey's fireman, "Wallie Sim" was played by white actor Dub Taylor (Michael J. Pollard's father in Bonnie and Clyde), truth in fact, Simeon T. Webb was a black man. The accident happened - again a touchy subject in these excessively politically correct times - in the Deep South of 1900. So if it suited his employer's pleasure for Sim to have heard the torpedoes, then by Godfrey, the report would have Sim say he had heard the torpedoes. Sim could have done nothing about it regardless of what really happened or what he had really said.

In the end it is difficult to see how an engineer with Casey's experience would have ignored the explicit warnings described. Probably what happened is John laid down one torpedo which was standard practice. He may also have accidentally "short flagged" Casey and placed the charge closer to the stopped train that his estimated 3000 feet. It is clear, though, John moved north up the track because a curve prevented a clear view of his train and perhaps he reasoned the engineer would have more time to see the signal there than if he had gone down the track. Although John's intentions were good, the decision to depart from standard protocol did mean Casey would have easily have missed seeing the signals. He would have had no warning until he heard the torpedo and even with that warning a short flagged train could be difficult to stop.

In later years, the rules for warning approaching trains were changed so that more than one torpedo had to be laid down. So the warning standards of Casey's day were indeed inadequate. In 1942 a veteran signalman read an article about Casey and the wreck. He said it was no surprise that Casey hit the train.

The versions of the song are many but the "Ballad of Casey Jones" with the widest popular success was written by two professional songsters, T. Lawrence Seibert and Eddie Newton. The songs varied in accuracy and some even skirted with libel - not against Casey necessarily but with Mrs. Casey (who lived until 1958). Casey's musical legacy lived well past the mid-twentieth century and the Grateful Dead sang a version which (personal opinion) is one of their more forgettable songs. It, too, made a non-historical, very 1960-ish, and completely invented story about Casey's use of ... well, since there was no evidence that Casey even had a drink before his run, we'll let that pass.

You can read on the Fount of All Knowledge, The Great Irrefutable Internet, that the "Casey Jones" of Mississippi John Hurt first spread the fame of the ballad. But in 1909 John was only sixteen years old. It was nearly 20 years later that John's famous series of 78 recordings were released.

Instead, John's famous telling of the legend of Casey was actually an independent work and a much better song than the usual ballad. Calling his tune "Talking Casey", John used slide guitar to "speak" lines and dialog like the time Casey got mad because he had to slow down his train, got behind time, and "commenced cussin'". That part always drew chuckles from the audience.

Instead, the original "Ballad of Casey Jones" was written by Wallace Saunders, a black engine "wiper" (a man who cleaned the engines when they came into the station). Wallace knew Casey well and there was already a railroad tune in oral circulation called "Jimmie Jones". A switch of "Casey" for "Jimmie" was straightforward and the new song soon gained popularity in Tennessee - Mississippi region among the railroad workers.

Then an engineer named William Leighton learned the song and taught it to his brothers who were vaudeville performers. But it was the rendering of Seibert and Newton (who obtained copyright) that soon had people all over America singing about Casey Jones, and soon everyone knew about the "rounder" who drove his train from California to Utah. Those two gentlemen made a bundle, but no one of the Jones family - and certainly not Wallace Saunders - ever saw a penny.

References

Folk Songs of North America, Alan Lomax, Doubleday (1960). This has the song "Casey Jones" of course and provides a distillation of an early article by Eldon Roark.

The Water Valley Casey Jones Railroad Museum. Every now and then you do find a web site that provides high quality information on a subject. Unfortunately, sometimes the web pages change and some of the original information is moved or lost. The original web site had the articles and original documents (including the official accident report) about Casey as well as considerable information about Sim Webb, Casey's fireman including the article by Eldon Roark.

"Casey Jones: Historians Mark his Wreck", Life Magazine, January 26, 1942, p. 61. A general article written about Casey while both Mrs. Casey and Sim were alive.

"Casey Jones", John H. Reese, Letters to the Editor, Life Magazine, February 16, 1942. The correspondent pointed out that the specific manner in which the signal was given to Casey would varied for accepted practice of the day (1942), and he was not surprised Casey missed the signals.