Episode 10: C.J. Taylor’s 1881-82 William Vanderbilt Comic Strips: “The Public Be Damned!”, Part 1
The past two weekends, we saw comics about The Disaster in the Fourth Avenue Tunnel, wherein William Vanderbilt is confronted with the collision of two passenger trains on his railroad lines, with resultant death and injuries. His reluctance to spend money on safety measures — as doing so would cut into profits — were blamed as the cause (an [...]
John Leighton’s 1847 “London Out of Town”, Part 1
To round out our series of Victorian Era Summer Comics, today we start a three-part serialization of the story of a family taking a summer vacation - London Out of Town, or The Adventures of the Browns at the Sea Side. This 1847 British comic book / graphic novel, was published by David Bogue, and written/drawn by [...]
Vanderbilt’s Tunnel Horror, Part 3
On September 22nd, 1882, in the comic strip A Sporting Connoisseur, Charles Jay Taylor depicted for the (New York) Daily Graphic, the events of a relatively light-hearted carriage horse team race between William H. Vanderbilt and one of his rivals. The following day, September 23rd, the mood changed dramatically, as the New York Times reported on [...]
The Tunnel Horror continued: The Selfish Millionaire
Last Saturday, 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. The collision was caused by the exact same safety concern as other recent deadly crashes on Vanderbilt lines (the Spuyten Duyvil references), directing public anger at him, for his resistance to [...]
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 [...]
