James Lawrie Monfries in court: the case of the injured quarry horse

James Lawrie Monfries in court: the case of the injured quarry horse
The Cardiff Times of 30 July 1870, reporting on the cases brought before the
Glamorganshire Summer Assizes, featured ‘a suit to recover £50 damages for
injuries to a horse by the negligence of the railways’. The plaintiff in the case was
James Lawrie Monfries, who had to provide horses to work in the Pwill-y-pant
quarry, ‘the property of the Earl of Bute’. In March 1870 he had bought three
horses at the Brecon Fair, which he had intended to send back to the quarry by
the Mid-Wales Railway. There was no proper horse box at Talgarth Station, so
the horses were put in a cattle truck; when they arrived at Talyllyn, it was found
that one of them had severely injured two of its legs after falling through a hole
in the truck floor. James was suing the railway company, as carrier of the horses,
for being negligent in their duty to provide ‘suitable and proper accommodation’
for their ‘passengers’. James Lawrie said that when he loaded the horses, he was
instructed not to tie them up in the truck, ‘as they would ride better unfastened’.
He travelled as a second-class passenger, and when he had to change carriages at
Talyllyn he found the injured horse; he paid for a vet to attend the accident and
his view was that it had happened solely through the ‘unsoundness of the truck’.
However the horses had been loaded at the plaintiff’s risk, and the railway would
be liable only if the truck was indeed unsound when it left the station, which it
contested. Its case was that while plunging about in an untethered state, the
horse’s hoof had got caught in one of the gaps in the truck floor and wrenched a
board out while trying to get free, which the company could not have been
expected to guard against. The jury did not believe it and upheld the suit, leave to
have a stay of execution to review the case was refused, and James Lawrie got his
£50 (£5,000 today).
Thanks are due to The Cardiff Times of 30 July 1870 for their court report. and to Barbara.

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