The South Eastern Railway Folkestone-to-London boat train…

The South Eastern Railway Folkestone-to-London boat train derails at 3:13 PM on June 9, 1865, while crossing a viaduct where a length of track had been removed during engineering works, killing ten passengers and injuring forty.

In the Board of Trade report it will be found that a man had been placed with a red flag five hundred and fifty-four yards (five hundred and seven meters) away, but the regulations require him to be one thousand yards (nine hundred and ten) away and the train had insufficient time to stop.

Charles Dickens, returning from Paris, is traveling with Ellen Ternan and her mother on the train; they all survive the derailment.

The first seven carriages of the train had plunged off the cast iron bridge; the only first-class carriage to remain on the track is the one in which Dickens was traveling.

Before rescuers arrive, Dickens tends and comforts the wounded and the dying with a flask of brandy and a hat refreshed with water and saves some lives, though some of the victims die while he is with them.

Before leaving, he remembers the unfinished manuscript for Our Mutual Friend, and he returns to his carriage to retrieve it.

Dickens will later used this experience as material for his short ghost story, "The Signal-Man", in which the central character has a premonition of his own death in a rail crash.

He also bases the story on several previous rail accidents, such as the Clayton Tunnel rail crash of 1861.

Dickens will manage to avoid an appearance at the inquest to avoid disclosing that he had been traveling with Ternan and her mother, which would have caused a scandal.

The experience affects Dickens greatly; he will lose his voice for two weeks and afterwards will be nervous when traveling by train, using alternative means when available.

Although physically unharmed, Dickens, according to his son, will never fully recover from the trauma of the Staplehurst crash, and his normally prolific writing will shrink to completing Our Mutual Friend and starting the unfinished The Mystery of Edwin Drood.

He will die five years to the day after the accident.