Show STATION IS UNIQUE Railroad Porters Near Asylum Have Peculiar Experiences Some Harmless Inmates Allowed to Goat Go-at Large and Are Frequent Visitors Visit-ors Make Singular Inquiries Inquir-ies of Employes London Unique In Us way Is the station of Coulsdon a small roadside halt nestling In the Surrey hills some six miles south of Croydon Coulsdon Is tho station for three great lunatic asylumsthe London county Caterham and tho Surrey county coun-ty Institutions which between them shelter just under DOOO lunatics The porters at Coulsdon are tall strong mildmannered men and beyond be-yond learning his official work the station sta-tion master has undergone a special training In tho treatment of the Insane at the hands of Sir James Moody of the London county asylum Some of the station hands have some odd experiences to relate Taking them on tho whole the lunatics lu-natics wo got here are exceedingly well behaved said one of them and less than six months ago I unloaded some 200 or more from one special train and saw them all Installed In tho asylum brakes without the slightest hitch of any kind occurring On the other hand however a single sin-gle lunatic passenger will often prove fractious even though his mania takes no more dangerous a form than sitting sit-ting down suddenly In tho waiting room exclaiming that he Is the prince of Wales or Edward tho Confessor and firmly declining to move until he imagines Ima-gines that everyone has had time to realize tho Importance of tho occasion But all my experiences havo not been quite so mild Some years ago for Instance two unhappy men dashed Into the station In a state of seni nudity rattled on the booking office window and threatened the astonished clerk with sudden and violent death If I bo did not quickly produce pro-duce two tickets for the north pole Then only last Saturday evening a well dressed woman with a far away look In her eyes walked Into the ofllco and asked for a ticket to Croydon Before Be-fore she could be supplied an asylum attendant ran In after her and seized her from behind A violent struggle ensued and It was home time before wo could pacify the woman and arrange for her return to the asylum Many of the harmless cases are given tho complete run of tho neighborhood neigh-borhood and it Is no unusual thing for ome of them to call in here and ask for a ticket somewhere Their manner or their dress however how-ever always betrays thorn and our Invariable In-variable practice on those occasions Is to give them the ticket they ask for show them Into tho waiting room and then quietly communicate with the asylum officials In nearly every case they return placidly enough Despite tho easy access to tho railway rail-way line bore I cannot recall any case of actual or attempted suicIde But the Inmates do occasionally stray on to the metals and have before now been found sketching the bridges from underneath or gazing In profound abstraction at a signal post But they have always managed to stand quite out of danger Regularly about four days a week I for years one old man used to como to tho station and ask endless questions about the typo of tho engines tho time of the trains scan timetables and so on But one other regular caller wo still possess Ho tiptoes Into the station most mornings of the week and with I an air of Intense mystery buys a dally 1 paper Then ho tiptoes out again You can see for yourself concluded conclud-ed the official that the lunatics hero are not really very dangerous And he pointed to a small plantation almost adjoining tho staten where ttree lunatics with a uniformed attendant at-tendant were engaged In cutting trees With immense delicacy of touch two of thorn wcro employed In setting u ladder against a tree while tho third a whitebearded old man wearing a dark opera cloak and a felt hat was humming a tune and beating time with a small rusty saw |