The moment of the accident: culture, militarism and modernity in late-Victorian Britain.
The moment of the accident: culture, militarism and modernity in late-Victorian Britain.
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事故发生的时刻：维多利亚时代晚期英国的文化、军国主义和现代性。
DOI：
10.1163/9789004418516_009
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发表时间：
1997
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
R. Cooter
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
R. Cooter
在19世纪的最后三分之一之前，意外伤害，无论是随机发生的还是经常发生的，很少引起公众的关注。除非发生重大灾难，人们很少关注他们，也很少呼吁采取集体行动。一场可怕的铁路相撞事故、一个煤矿塌方、一个工厂锅炉爆炸，可能会引发一笔针对受害者及其家属的救济基金，以及一个调查委员会，有时还会修建一所医院。关于这些悲剧的布道很常见；有时是民谣、故事或诗歌。但是，所有这些反应都是为了转移人们对致命和非致命伤害的注意力，这些伤害有时被称为“身体事故”。在英国——本章关注此类伤害的主要背景——根据1846年登记总长的数据，事故造成的暴力死亡“是欧洲其他国家的两倍”。然而，这些行为仍然被认为是“上帝的行为”，与此同时，它们往往被归咎于疏忽。报纸上没完没了的报道强化了他们武断、天意的天性，这些报道包括闪电、被猪咬、从纪念碑和卧室窗户上摔下来、掉进新石灰坑和啤酒麦芽汁大桶里，以及传说中的各种消费，从烟草、吐牙石、鸦片、砷（误以为是氧化镁）、老鼠药和腐蚀性升华剂，到硬豌豆、大理石和假牙。因此，事故被认为是个人的，主要是私人的不幸，无论它们发生在家里、街上，还是在磨坊、矿山、工厂和车间。
Before the last third of the nineteenth century accidental injuries, whether occurring randomly or routinely, were seldom a matter of much public concern. Except when a major disaster struck, attention rarely turned towards them, and collective action was hardly ever called for. A horrible railway collision, a coal pit collapse, a boiler explosion in a factory, might trigger a relief fund for the victims and their families, along with a commission of inquiry and, sometimes, the building of a hospital. Sermons on these tragedies were common; oddtimes a ballad, a tale, or a poem. 1 But all such responses did was to divert attention from the routine of fatal and non-fatal injuries-what were sometimes specified as' bodily accidents'. In England-the principal setting for this chapter's concern with such injuries-violent deaths from accidents, according to the Registrar-General in 1846, were'twice as frequent as in other countries of Europe'. ³ Yet they continued to be decreed'acts of God', at the same time as they were often attributed to negligence. Their arbitrary, providential nature was reinforced by endless newspaper accounts of bizarre deaths from bolts of lightning, bites from pigs, falls from monuments and bedroom windows, slips into pits of new slaked lime and vats of ale-wort, and legendary consumptions of everything from tobacco, tartar emetic, laudanum, arsenic (mistaken for magnesia), rat poison and corrosive sublimates, to hard peas, marbles and dentures. 4 Accidents were thus conceived as individual, mostly private misfortunes, whether they occurred in the home, on the street, or in mills, mines, factories and workshops.