Episode 9.5: William Vanderbilt Comic Strips, E.W. Kemble Slips In, 1882
On September 23rd, 1882 — one day after the New York Daily Graphic published Charles Jay Taylor’s strip A Sporting Connoisseur (presented yesterday), showing William Vanderbilt having a fun time racing his horses — the New York Times published the article A Collision in the Dark — Terrible Accident in a Hudson River Railroad Tunnel, detailing a fatal crash between two passenger trains (Click Here to read it).
The trains involved were part of Vanderbilt’s railroard empire. Similar passenger car accidents had already occurred on Vanderbilt’s lines.
Public anger over recurring train disasters was beginning to be aimed at Vanderbilt, with accusations made that the cause was Vanderbilt cutting costs on safety measures, to preserve profits over lives. The below cartoon sequence by Edward Winsor Kemble - published on the Daily Graphic’s front page on October 5, 1882, and titled, The Recent Disaster in the Fourth Avenue Tunnel - reflects that anger. I’ve labelled this “Episode 9.5″, as, being by Kemble, it’s really not part of Taylor’s series. But, it does contain sequential elements, plus appears within the time-frame of Taylor’s Vanderbilt strips.
Click on the picture to open a version large enough to read.
As we will see in the next couple weeks’ Vanderbilt postings, the furor over train travel safety continued to build, made worse by Vanderbilt’s own callous and arrogant response. Click on the 1881-82 William Vanderbilt Comic Strips hyperlink, to find the previous episodes.
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— Doug
[...] we saw the October 5, 2025 Edward Kemble comic, The Recent Disaster in the Fourth Avenue Tunnel, involving a deadly two-passenger train collission on William Vanderbilt’s railroad lines. [...]
[...] Takes Care of His Patrons appearing in Puck magazine, and, on October 5th by Edward Kemble’s The Recent Disaster in the Fourth Avenue Tunnel, in the (New York) Daily Graphic. Both cartoons took Vanderbilt to task for his hiring of [...]