From the Darlington & Stockton Times of June 10, 1871

“A FATAL and shocking accident occurred on the Ingleby Incline about 20 minutes past eight o’clock on Saturday,” reported the D&S Times 150 years ago, and you had to have a strong stomach to read on.

“The poor man who met with so sudden and awful a death was John Sanderson, fish dealer of Whitby, who has travelled this district several years with shrimps etc.”

The Ingleby Incline consisted of winding gear placed on top of the Cleveland Hills above Stokesley. Ironstone was mined in Rosedale about ten miles away and brought by a railway to the winding gear which then lowered it 600ft to Battersby at the foot of the hills where it joined the railway system and was carried into the Middlesbrough blast furnaces.

As the ironstone was lowered down the incline, empty tubs were drawn back up to the top.

The trouble with railways was that they were often the most direct route between two places, which encouraged people to walk along them.

Mr Sanderson had sent a consignment of fish from Whitby round the coastal railway via Saltburn to Guisborough and was walking over the moors to meet it. The best way down from the moors was to follow the incline.

Mr Sanderson exchanged pleasantries with the breaksman at the top, and was never seen alive again.

He made it halfway but at got caught at the point where the up wagons passed the down wagons.

“Two men, James Chapman and James Barron, who were coming down the incline, found the body severed in two, and the lower extremities mutilated in a most shocking manner and scattered up and down the line for a space of 50 yards,” said the D&S.

It gave a few more gruesome details before reporting that the coroner had recorded a verdict of accidental death.