Recasting American Liberty: Gender, Race, Law, and the Railroad Revolution, 1865–1920

Abstract

This novel but uneven book examines three aspects of the law and public policy governing railroads and streetcars during the period 1865–1920. Part 1 concerns the tort law of accidental physical injury that resulted from railroad operations. Part 2 deals with the law of “nervous shock,” or emotional distress, which developed partly as a response to the horrific consequences of railroad accidents. Finally, part 3 deals with the law of segregation as applied on railroads. Most of the tort cases Barbara Young Welke describes in part 1 deal with passengers who were injured trying to board or exit from moving trains—a common phenomenon generally tolerated by the railroads through the Gilded Age. Virtually all of the victims in those cases were men, because only men raced after departing trains or attempted to disembark before a train had stopped. As Welke describes and illustrates with photographs, the attire that Victorian women wore in public places made diving on or off a moving train much more hazardous for them than for men. Welke's description of the male-centeredness of the resulting accident law as “gendered journeys” seems strained, and she offers no support for some of her conclusions. For example, she states that courts held that plaintiffs were not necessarily contributorily negli-gent—and thus were eligible to recover—for such boardings only because they were men.