Dickens had PTSD after train disaster

Charles Dickens suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and struggled to travel on trains after being involved in a rail disaster, a newly discovered letter has indicated.

The novelist walked away from the Staplehurst rail crash in 1865 which left 10 people dead and 40 injured. The train derailed crossing the viaduct at Staplehurst, Kent, causing several carriages to fall into the river below. Dickens tended to the victims, some of whom died in front of him.

Two months later he described the effect it had on him in a letter now being sold at auction. He said he was scared of travelling on trains, which he used regularly from his Kent home to work in London.